Office Duties Box Set #1(14)

“Actually, that’s probably true.”

“Well, you see you’re not that bad at your job,” Sam pointed out. They could give her leeway on the breaks. “You may have gotten the position through your dad, but you kept it all by yourself. I bet you even learned a lot of stuff from it.”

“That’s true.” Slinky rubbed her chin and solemnly nodded. “Yeah, you do have a point. I am pretty useful around that place.” She paused and glanced again at her watch. “Speaking of that place, we’d probably better get going. It’s ten till and it takes almost that long to walk back.”

Sam hurriedly grabbed her old clothes, they were unceremoniously stuffed into a bag, and the two friends made their way back to their workplace. Arm in arm they walked through the lobby, into the elevator, and out onto the nineteenth floor. No one could bother them in their bliss as they marched their way to their cubicles and made it just as the clock announced the lunch hour was finished.

“You two were almost late,” Winkle harshly scolded the pair when the two friends sat down in their seats.

“Almost, but not quite, Mrs. Winkle,” Slinky playfully reminded their supervisor.

Winkle was visibly ruffled at that remark, but she couldn’t argue. Instead she stomped away and left them to their triumph.

“Hey, Sam?” Slinky asked as she peeked over the wall. Sam had half a mind just to cut a hole in it to make it easier to talk. “What say we do lunch together from now on?”

“That’d be great, provided I can cook sometimes.”

“Why? Didn’t you like my food?” Slinky pouted.

“I did, but I don’t want breakfast for lunch every day.”

“Oh.” Slinky sheepishly grinned and slowly slunk down out of sight. “I guess I’ll take that as a good reason.”

“You’d better, it’s the only one you’re getting,” Sam countered.

There was quiet between them for a few hours as both of them were paged for certain duties from the board members. The afternoon was getting along before Slinky excitedly slunk into Sam’s cubicle. She had a wide grin on her face and her body was trembling with excitement.

“I got it!” she eagerly whispered. “I actually got it!”

“You got what?” Sam was almost worried her friend was going to have a heart attack from joy.

In answer to her question Slinky held up a familiar key chain. “I got Winkle’s keys!” Sam’s mouth dropped open as Slinky giggled in glee. “You know what this means?”

“We’re both going to get fired?” This was really bad. If their supervisor found them with that key chain she’d have every right to believe they stole it. Perhaps that wasn’t far from the truth. “How the hell did you get those, anyway?”

“She went in to talk with my dad and I overheard them discussing something about the security. I guess some of the higher ups are worried about a break-in because someone messed with the elevator cameras yesterday.” Thankfully Slinky didn’t notice when Sam flushed. Davies needed to get a better hand at hiding their illicit affairs. “My dad wanted an inventory of everyone’s keys made, so she had to cough hers up along with the other supervisors. I was just in there now and he asked me to give them to her. So you see? We won’t get fired if she catches us with them because I’m supposed to give them to her.”

“And why aren’t you giving them to her?”

“A simple question, my dear Sam.” Her grin widened as she clutched the keys in her hand. “I’m going to get some copies made, and then we can see what’s behind door number one.”

Sam’s mouth dropped to the floor. There were so many ways this was going to end badly. She thought losing her job was bad, now she had to worry about going to jail.





Part 4 - Hunger





“Are you serious about this?” Sam hissed as she followed her friend downstairs.

“Positive,” Slinky replied. The two were heading for the mail room. Slinky recalled her father mentioning something about all their keys having been made in the building by the mailman.

“You know this is illegal, right?” Sam nervously looked over her shoulder. She imagined the cops were chasing them right now.

“Only if we get caught,” Slinky assured as they swiftly flew down the flights of stairs.

“Yeah, which might just happen. Couldn’t we have just tried the keys to see which one would’ve fit the lock?” She was of course referring to the door leading to the twentieth floor.

“No time.”

“And we have time to do this?” Sam pointed out. Slinky stopped so suddenly her friend nearly ran into her and caused them both to fall down a long flight of dangerous stairs. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“You’re really pessimistic, you know that?” Slinky sharply questioned. “You ever wanted to live a little?”

“Yeah, but if you stop like that again I won’t have to worry about living.” Her heart was beating wildly as she looked down the flights of stairs below. Moderate heights she could handle, but glancing down those swirling flights of steps was both nauseating and frightening.

“Just think of this as a little adventure.” Sam wondered if Slinky feared anything. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“We lose our jobs and get jail time,” she curtly pointed out.

“See? That’s not so bad.” Slinky proceeded down the stairs, leaving her friend dumbfounded on the landing.

“You’re kidding, right?” Sam had to remember her friend had the luxury of her father’s bank account. She had no such piggy bank to fall back on. “If I lose my job, I lose everything.” Slinky paused on a step and thought about that for a moment.

“Well, if you do lose your job you can come live with me or we might share a cell together. You can be my bitch so no one would suspect we’re not lesbians,” she comically offered. Sam wasn’t sure she would take the first as a good arrangement, and the second definitely was bad, but at least she had someone to fall back on. “And we have to sneak down the stairs. Someone will see us if we take the elevator and they might snitch to Mrs. Winkle that we went down to the lobby.”

“Does she even have someone who likes her enough to do that?”

“I doubt it,” Slinky snorted. “But there’s a couple of people on some of the other floors who wouldn’t mind a promotion, so I’m not taking any risks.” She resumed her stepping and reached the next floor. “But that’s why we need to hurry up, slowpoke,” Slinky called back over her shoulder to her friend above. “These keys aren’t gonna copy themselves.”

“This is so going to go wrong,” Sam muttered as she went after her companion.

The two women reached the bottom floor and snuck into the mail room without a single soul seeing them. They soon found the mailman, Mr. Cass, getting ready to ship some items out to other offices operated by the company. Slinky put her finger to her lips and, with a grin on her face, slowly snuck up behind the elderly gentleman. Her body was tense for the pouncing, and Sam crossed her fingers that they weren’t about to have a heart attack victim on their hands.

“You should ease up on that perfume, Miss Slink,” Mr. Cass commented.

“Damn it, Ed, why’d you have to go and ruin my fun?” she complained.

“Because you’re not very good at sneaking up on people. I’ve told you before to lay off that stuff.” He turned around and smiled at his pretty, young visitors. “Now what can I do for you ladies?”

“We need some keys made, Ed, and real quick.” Slinky held up the chain with the wide assortment of keys. He squinted at the items and frowned.

“These kinda look familiar,” he commented. He glanced between his two visitors. “You ladies aren’t doing anything illegal now, are ya?”

“Nah, just a prank on someone, honest, Mr. Cass,” Slinky sweetly lied. She jingled the set in front of him, but he wasn’t convinced. She sighed and rolled her eyes. “If we promise to give the copies back to you in a week, will you make them for us?”

“Certainly,” he agreed as he took the set. There was an evil twinkle in his eye. “And if you don’t keep your promise, I can’t promise that weekly box of chocolates ya get through the mail won’t disappear. Those things smell mighty tasty. I wouldn’t mind having a few of them sometime].” Sam wouldn’t have thought the gentle, quiet old man had it in him to blackmail someone.

“You drive a hard bargain, old man, but I’ll make sure they’re back and you get what you want,” Slinky sullenly promised.

“Now that’s the way to do business,” Mr. Cass agreed. In a jiffy he disappeared into a side room and they heard a machine start up.

“So why couldn’t we just try the old set on the door upstairs?” Sam asked over the sound of the machine.

“With how the old witch makes her rounds, we probably wouldn’t have had time to test half of that stuff,” Slinky pointed out. “Now we’ve got a whole week to try these babies out on that door.”

“Unless Ed decides he doesn’t trust us and says something to someone,” Sam countered. Anyone who could blackmail could also back stab. Her sneaky friend, however, wasn’t too troubled.