Brink by WikedFae
Summary: Inspired by the first few minutes of the movie Margin Call, which highlights aspects of the financial crisis of 2008. A character exercise I tinkered with after reacting to Stanley Tucci's performance.
"Mr. Dale?" Her soft alto floats across the sterile wasteland that is my office.
I ignore her and keep clicking away, that sharp tap, tap, tap echoing above the whirr of the computer fan. She clears her throat. Shit.
"Mr. Dale? This way please." This just isn't my day.
For the first time I look at her. Business black, with the wide white border of a blouse slipping down to a point and barely covering her young assets. The matching skirt brushes just below her knees; further down and she's clearly trying to impress with lotioned limbs and feet contorted in too high heels. Fuck. Why couldn't she have been ugly? It makes it so much harder to hate her now.
She's motioning with a reassuring smile plastered on her face, like she knows what's about to happen to me and somehow thinks her sympathy will make in more bearable. Well, I know too, and I'm not smiling. Little priss. Anyone who's about to be fired will tell you a perfect smile doesn't soothe the soul one damn bit.
Then again, judging by the downward spirals maiming the charts on my screen, perfect smiles weren't going to help anyone anytime soon. In fact, a perfect smile'd probably elicit a punch to the teeth in the coming months.
She's still waiting, hovering at the door like some morose hummingbird. Better get this over with. 'Save'—such a strange command to give when the data shows there is something incredibly wrong and a savior is a long way off. One last click and the screen goes blank. I palm the flashdrive, twisting it in my fingers as I slide it into my pocket. A glance around the office and I turn towards her, crossing the barren expanse and heading out into the bustling hallway.
As I follow in her clipped wake my soon-to-be-former colleagues keep their heads down and shoulders hunched; they look like gravemarkers, lined up in rows at their little desks. They don't know the worst is still to come—they're just hoping to weather this one last calm. The flashdrive is warm against my thigh, heat bleeding through the pocket lining. Her heels cease their clicking with an ominous halt as she opens another door and waves me through. Suddenly, I'm not sad to go at all.