Miss Renfield's Last Day

"Million things going wrong and he wants me to deal with Legal," she growled, making Miss Rigby hiss and duck under her desk until the elevator took Miss Hexuba away.

I knew the Corporation's various levels and I had seen many things, but I'd never seen anyone more afraid than when they were forced to go to the Legal Department. The Legal Department was the only level that was below the hive. Whenever someone was already in the elevator when I got in at the hive level, that person was always very pale and whimpering things to themselves. I had never been to the Legal Department and I was curious. "Miss Rigby, the Corporation has witches in HR, vampires in Executive Management, and thralls everywhere else... what do they have in Legal that scares everybody?" I asked.

"Lawyers..." Miss Rigby hissed, then she hunched her shoulders as if she intended to hide her head inside her jacket.

Just then, Mr. Durant came walking quickly out of his office. "Miss Rigby, Miss Renfield will be regaining her memories this afternoon. Please make preparations for all she will need," he said, ignoring her joyous reaction. "Eden... I want you to be very careful today. There is unrest in the corporation. I will need to go sort some things out. I will not risk losing you, not when you're finally mine again. Do not use the elevator without me, do you understand?" he asked. I nodded vehemently, visually drawing a red X over the elevator in my mind.

Mr. Durant smiled down at me, cupping my face in his hands with a look of relieved joy, and kissed me tenderly. The kiss went longer than either of us realized, stopping only when we heard a faint crunching noise nearby because Mrs. Rigby had come to watch us more closely, bringing along a nutritious hexapod snack. Then, he looked flustered and left.

Miss Rigby looked up at me with shining eyes, "You must have pleased Master very well last night," she said approvingly.

"I... I guess...?" I said.

Miss Rigby's expression changed into one of concern. "What do you mean, 'you guess?' Fair Favored One, you are about to become Companion to the Master! This is an honor of which no mortal is worthy! Did you please the Master or not? What did he say?" she asked, putting down her bag of bugs and seizing my arm tightly.

I thought back to our night and morning together uneasily... had he enjoyed himself? "Um... at first he said I was killing him..." I said, recalling when I was softly exploring his turgid member with my lips. Miss Rigby hissed, pulling her lips back in a grimace. I knew that was not good. "Then... it seemed like he had a hard time finding where it felt good inside me and he kept jerking around, trying harder and faster and harder to find a place that felt good..." I said, realizing that while it might have felt like heaven to me, it was probably very tedious for Mr. Durant to keep thrusting back and forth, trying to find satisfaction in my pitiful mortal body.

"Did you clench? You're supposed to clench to make it feel good for him!" Miss Rigby asked.

"I... I clenched his arms?" I said, with a sinking sensation in my stomach. How could I possibly hope to please a man that had existed for thousands of years with my inept fumbling?

Miss Rigby had her hands covering her face, now. "Did the Master, at least, favor you with his attentions again?" her muffled voice asked through her hands.

"Oh, yes! Many times!" I said, nodding. "Of course, he... he kept moving around, trying to make it feel good... and then he tried moving me around... and then he tied me down... and then he tried using different places to see if those would feel good..." I said, my voice choking up as I realized what a horrible failure last night and this morning had been. "This morning in the shower he even tried going up where the waste tube goes... and then he kept trying so long that he started yelling and swearing, grunting 'fuck... fuck... fuck... fuck...' and then he screamed 'EDEN!!!!'" I recalled, tears beginning to roll down my cheeks. It had felt so good at the time, but upon sober reflection, I realized what an utter disappointment I had been. After all that, Mr. Durant was a saint to even think of taking me on as his companion.

Miss Rigby shook her head, "Master's Pet is sexually incompetent," she said, despondently.

"It's not my fault!" I yelled. "I said I needed the Sex Thrall training, but he didn't think I would need it to be a companion! It's not fair! It's not like I don't want to please him!" I sat down in my chair and cried hopelessly. I had so wanted to be good at sex.

When I had cried myself out, I sniffed and looked up to where Miss Rigby stood with a thoughtful expression on her face. "Master did say I was to make preparations for all you would need... perhaps Miss Rigby thinks Master's Pet needs the Sex Thrall training..." she said, her eyes darting slyly around, looking for observers.

I gasped and jumped up, squealing and grabbing Miss Rigby into an enthusiastic hug, but then my heart sank. "He said I wasn't to use the elevator without him, though! How am I going to get all the way down to HR?" I said, sinking back down into my chair.

"Fear not, Fair Favored One. I know a passage in the building. Very secret. I will show it to you before I leave to prepare things at his apartment. The passage is unused by any but spiders, and its endless, dismal, winding paths have been known to cause madness, but I swear to you that it will eventually bring you to the sulfurous gates of HR and beyond. You must only have faith," she said, taking me by the hand and leading me to a heavy metal door with a sign painted "ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE."

Reading the sign, I sighed with relief. Hope was one of the first things destroyed by the HR trainings, so I knew I was doing the right thing. I leaned down and gave Miss Rigby a kiss on the cheek and pulled open the creaky door. *** *** ***

Though it was against the rules, I did enter the secret passage with a sense of hope. I couldn't help myself. I would do anything to please Mr. Durant. He was so good that he would take me, even when I was sexually terrible, and that only made me want to become the companion he deserved.

The path was made of steps that zig-zagged downward, pausing every 12 steps with a landing where I needed to turn around and then go down another 12 steps again, but in the opposite direction. The treads on the steps sparkled like they had never been walked-on. The lights were very dim and buzzed. The spiders didn't mind the buzzing, though. When I looked closely, it appeared that the spiders were the reason the lights were so dim because their webs covered the buzzing lights almost like a cocoon. I collected several spiders at every floor and put them into a large Ziplock bag that Mrs. Rigby had given me.

After zig-zagging twice, I arrived at a landing that had another door. The number 209 was painted next to it. Curious, I knocked on the door. "Is anyone there?" I asked. There was no answer. So, I kept going down.

I zig-zagged several more times and stopped by a door that had a lot of muffled yelling behind it. "Hello?" I called.

"Quiet! We're in the middle of planning another re-org!" a voice yelled back.

"Oh... okay. How do you re-org?" I asked.

"You'd need an MBA to understand, but first we decide who is to blame. Then, we cut off their right arm, cut their budget in half, and then double their workload," the voice said.

"But, what are they to blame for?" I asked, confused.

"Not meeting stockholder expectations! Don't you know anything?" the voice hissed.

"No. I just serve drinks at meetings and do things with coats... well, that, and I do stuff on the SharePoint," I explained.

"Oh my god, the SharePoint sucks! Any time we try to post anything to it, the damn thing shows up in some alternate dimension! Why hasn't anyone thought to blame the SharePoint before? Hey, what's your name and budget ID?"

"Um... Eden Renfield. I... I don't think I have a budget ID. What's it for? What would it look like?" I asked.

"Perfect. You're clueless *and* useless... we'll just make you a VP and create some bullshit department for you to run. Your budget ID is a 14 digit number, starting with a two digit prefix... like ours is: 19-29816680234746. So, give us your budget ID and then stick your right arm through the door once we get it open... there are no buttons on the wall next to it, though. How the fuck is this thing supposed to work?" the voice yelled, banging on the wall next to the door.

"Um... I'm sorry, but I can't give that to you, right now. I have to go get a training. I'll get you my budget ID after come back, okay? It's been nice talking with you!" I said.

I continued downward, sometimes stopping to talk at the various floors, if I heard voices near the doors. Most people didn't know about doors that open with handles, much less about the secret passage with steps and spiders. The numbers next to the doors kept getting smaller, and then I realized that they must mean what floor of the building I was on.

I kept going. It was pretty boring, but I was collecting lots and lots of spiders in the large Ziplock bag. It was all puffed out, now, like a spider-filled pillow. The Middle Management floors were very quiet until I came to one floor where they all had gathered. They were worried because they had stopped getting numbers from the Customer Service and Surveys floors... plus they were hungry and the vending machines were out of Cheetos. Middle Management needs Cheetos. They couldn't go down to the cafeteria, either, because the elevators weren't working anymore. I felt bad for them.

Even though I was tired, I liked going by the Customer Service and Surveys floors the best. The musicians said that the phones had all shut down, so they couldn't play classical music for the callers anymore, so they were just "riffing." I didn't know what riffing meant, but the music sounded nice... confusing, but nice. There was also a strange, smoky smell coming from most of the floors, too. I didn't think that was normal, but after a while it seemed perfectly acceptable. Everything seemed perfectly acceptable after I got through all the smoky floors. I was really hungry, though. Perfectly, acceptably hungry. I wanted to sit in the stairwell next to the smoky riffing floors and eat Cheetos for the rest of the day. I decided to make a rule about that when they made me Vice President of the Bullshit Department: when you get tired and hungry in the secret, smoky passage, you can sit and eat Cheetos and listen to riffing.

"Eden, is that you?" a strange, yet familiar, voice called out of the echoing darkness above, startling me and making me need to pee. It was a low, hungry voice... the sound of it made the spider darkness seem even dimmer. In my head, I heard a crunching noise and saw my hive neighbor's crushed face on the floor. "I heard you were down here, pretty..." it continued, "you be a good girl and just hold still for me. I'll be right there," it said.

"Who... who is that?" I asked the darkness. The darkness didn't reply. Then, I heard fast footsteps thumping down toward me from many floors above. I didn't like that sound. My head felt fuzzy and I was still hungry and tired, but something inside told me that there was something very wrong with this... and my HR training must have been almost gone, because even though I thought things were very wrong, I was certain that there was nothing wrong with me. I pushed myself up onto my tired legs again and began going down the stairs as fast as I could, my clacking heels making a racket in the echoing darkness.

"Eden, wait! Please!" the voice called, "Don't be like that. Don't be that girl. I just wanted to talk with you. Come on... I'm a nice guy," he said, running even faster down the stairs, leaning down and calling over the railing.

My feet and ankles screamed in my high heels with every step, but something inside drove me to go faster and faster. Once I reached a landing, I used the rail to whip around the corner and continue downward without missing a beat.

"Eden, come on! Do you really think Durant thinks you're something special? He's just another rich jerk that all you sluts fall over yourselves about. You think he really cares? He's had a million of you. You're nothing to him. He doesn't see you the way I do. Eden, I deserve a chance! Talk to me!" he yelled, his voice closer... too close.

I was out of breath, but the numbers on the floors told me that I was getting close. HR was on floor 3 and I was on number 11. I kept running down the stairs, the hope of safety, even if it had to come from HR, driving me faster. I was whipping around the turn at floor 7, when I heard a loud boom just a few floors above me. I screamed and twisted my ankle, falling to the floor and hitting my cheek on the rail. From my vantage point, I saw that he was climbing down through the open spaces between the levels, dropping down and landing rather than going step by step. He moved with the casual grace of a predator, focused on its next meal.

With the adrenaline of prey, I pulled myself up and continued limping downward, glancing up at the dark, lurching figure advancing to show me what a nice guy he was. I didn't want to know how nice he was. I didn't want to think about how unfair I was being to him. I didn't want to worry about how to explain that I felt uncomfortable around him without making him angry. I wasn't trained to do any of those things and it felt like doing them badly would have terrible consequences.

He kept leaping from floor to floor as I scrambled down, gaining ground on me effortlessly. At the fifth floor, I jumped across the gap and crashed halfway down onto the last flight to the third floor. I pushed myself up off the floor and ran to the door and grabbed the handle, when I felt a body land heavily behind me and put his hand over mine. "Eden..." he murmured, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling my back against his chest. I felt his breath, cold and immortal, brushing the loose curls against the back of my neck. "Go ahead. Open it. Do you really think there is anything behind this door that will save you? You're even less to them than you are to Durant. You're nothing. You should be grateful a nice guy like me even noticed you," he whispered, running his lips along the back of my neck.

Maybe HR would help me, maybe they wouldn't. This murderer was an Executive. I was almost certain of it. HR protected Executives more than anyone else in the company, and I was just a thrall. Still, I had no other choice. Closing my eyes, I twisted the handle and pulled with all my strength, losing my balance and falling to the floor as the door whipped open.

Bright light shone into the secret passage, revealing my pursuer. I remembered his face. I had seen him in the elevator, looking at me without looking at me. Brushing against me, when there was no one to move aside for. Wiping the blood of my hive neighbor off the membrane separating us. His face would be handsome if it had even the slightest bit of kindness in it, but the only thing that lived behind his eyes was entitled gluttony... an appetite that knew neither enjoyment nor satisfaction. He was everlasting, ravenous death...

...and then he was dust.

"Oh, fudge... oh... oh... oh, fudge..." I heard a voice babble, as my pursuer's suit crumpled to the floor beside me, being held up only by dust, a sharpened pencil rolling away from the bundle of cloth.

"Was that... was that Barrett? Jiminy Freakin' Crickets, Morgana! You just killed Barrett!" another voice yelled.

"Fudge... fudge... oh, fudge... where did he come from? I didn't even know that was a door!" Morgana squealed.

"Peas and rice! What are we going to do?" the other said. I saw a smiling, yet panicked, woman crouching down and poking through the clothes and ashes, while picking up the pencil and hiding it. Then, turning to where I was mostly hidden behind the door, she screamed in surprise. "God bless America! There's a banged-up thrall behind here, too!"

"I... I needed a... training..." I gasped, breathless.

"Jeezum crow, you can say that, again! You never saw this, you hear me? Get in here, we'll take care of everything," Morgana said, pulling me to my feet and out of the secret passage. "Hilda, write up a termination for Barrett... call him a 'cultural misfit,' say we're 'upholding our corporate values,' the usual malarkey," she said, pulling out a small vacuum and unceremoniously sucking up the remains of my pursuer before closing the door that had a dartboard on it with a picture of a puppy taped on top.

"He... he killed the thrall next to me in the hive..." I said, still trying to catch my breath.

"Good! Perfect! They eat that woke stuff up! Racist thrall killer! Hilda, get that in his file!"

"No, he really did! I saw him—"

"Look honey, don't oversell it. Nobody cares that much about another dead thrall. Just try to look shaken and vulnerable... like you're suffering from a hostile work environment... good, that's good," she said, messing my hair up and rubbing my eyes until they watered up.

Hilda and Morgana recorded me telling the story of how Barrett had used company resources inappropriately for personal reasons when he raped and murdered my friend, then they shoved me into one of the training caskets and argued about what kind of training I would need. I didn't mind them arguing, because it gave me time to access the SharePoint and bring up the Sex Thrall training that I really wanted.

Part of me was still feeling upset, though. Having good sex was a nice thing, and thralls had hard lives. Nobody really cared enough to let us have something to enjoy in life. They just cared about who to blame when things didn't go right, or what they thought they deserved, or how to explain it when someone is killed. I wanted to do something nice for all the thralls, so I overwrote all the thrall trainings with the Sex Thrall training. That way, everyone would get good sex, no matter what.

I waited for my training to begin, watching the screen flicker slightly in the casket. Then, everything went dark. The power had gone out. That was my luck, today. I heard the electromagnetic lock release on the casket, so I pushed the door open and felt my way through the darkness back to the secret stair passage. Strangely, the buzzing spidery lights were still working. I had lost my large Ziplock bag of spiders somewhere in my travels, though. Miss Rigby was going to be so disappointed. Then, I heard a muted popping noise from behind the door, followed by the screeching sounds dozens of HR Witches screaming in horror. HR Witches hate spiders. I shook my head... hundreds and hundreds of spiders gone to waste.

I started descending the stairs again, hoping to visit the Hive, one last time. When I got to the door, I knocked, just in case they were playing darts or throwing axes or something. "Hello?" a confused voice answered.

"Hi... this is Eden Renfield. Is everything okay in there?" I asked.

"Completely a wreck in here. I can't even open the door, there' so much crap piled up. Everyone's just wandering around with nothing to do. Hey, do you know why girl thrall's pants don't have pockets that open?" the voice asked. "Everything is broken here, and I need to carry things, but I don't have pockets. The boy thralls have pockets, but they're refusing to even wear their pants, now... do you suppose I could just take some of their pants?"

I thought about it. "I wear skirts, but I don't have pockets, either. I wish I did, though. Then, I wouldn't have lost my spiders," I said. Then, I had an idea. "Hey, there's a place that wants to know when things are wrong! You can call them!" I exclaimed.

"Wrong?" the voice repeated. "Like, not 'perfectly acceptable?'"