It was a normally quiet day at the office, not unusual for someone from around the area. It was pretty late at night and all of the employees went home after a tedious week of work. There weren't a lot of breaks this week which was why everyone looked forward to the weekend for time off they deserved. They could do whatever they wanted and hardly anybody stopped them from enjoying it, including Reficul, the Stoic Devil and CEO of the Shadowed Sanctuary's Ministry of Black Magic. She kept them in line, though was otherwise very lenient as she allowed them to do anything. It was usually like that, except she was starting to become a little more easygoing in that regard, likely because of her recent trip to the Gray Garden where she participated in the defense against Ivlis to some extent. Perhaps the peaceful lifestyle in the Gray Garden was starting to rub off on her. In any case, the aloof Devil was finishing up some paperwork before she could head home herself. Sin and Lzet were away in the Flower World on business and wouldn't be back for about a couple more weeks and Mors was also in the Devil's Kingdom for the same reason, so she had the Umbra Keep all to herself. It would be spent reading and listening to some music, peaceful tracks unlike the various metal and rock & roll tunes some of the other demons she knew liked. One could've said the Gray Garden influenced that, but her choice went deeper than that because it brought back memories of her time as an angel in spite of her disdain for serving the Goddess.
Putting her signature on one final document, Reficul placed it upon a stack of other papers and brought them over to a nearby room where several copy machines were set up. She could have done it herself, but there were workers in charge of that assignment already and she really wanted to get home and rest. She yawned and stretched as she headed back to her office to get her stuff. It was raining pretty hard outside, so she brought a coat and an umbrella to shield her from the storm. The briefcase she brought with her contained important files and the laptop she used to get much of her work done. It was one of her greatest tools in the office. If it broke, she would need to order a new one that usually came a month following the order's placement and set it up to keep working. After acquiring her things, Reficul casually sauntered over to the elevator and pressed the button to bring it up. She waited for a couple of minutes until it arrived at her floor and stepped in, heading to the first floor and silently walking across the lobby to the front door. Nobody else was around as she left since she was the last to leave, so it was a relatively quiet walk aside from the torrential downpour blanketing the city as she made her way through an alley across the street to the nearby train station. She was lucky it was just pulling into the station as she stepped up to the platform.
The ride was simplistic during the hour-long ride. All the Stoic Devil could do was observe the scenery that went by, sighing out of sheer boredom while she waited for the train to make its stop at the train station near her home where the carriage driver was waiting to pick her up. From then on, the weekend would be quiet so she could rest from a hectic workload that took up the entire week. A good night's sleep was all she wanted at the end of today so she could be fresh for a full two days of reading and music. It wasn't the most exciting way to spend a weekend, but it was comforting and satisfying enough to keep her occupied without having to worry about work.
The train pulled up to the station, and Reficul disembarked to head home after making sure she had everything before stepping off the train. That was when her cellphone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and answered the call, recognizing the voice of one of her employees on the other end. "Hello, Ms. Reficul, are you there?" the caller had raised his voice a bit to talk over the rain.
"Ah, yes, Uhluhtc," Reficul responded as she set her things down by a bench and sat down to focus on the call, holding a hand up to signal her instruction to wait to the carriage driver when she saw him. A small bit of rest from the train ride was good, and she much rather preferred taking the call here under a roof instead of in the pouring rain. "I have just gotten off the train now. Is there something you wish to inquire before I head back to the keep? It's not work-related, right?"
"Wait, you went home already?" Uhluhtc asked as if something crucial had come up on his end with an expectation that Reficul could offer assistance. This was but the first of the red flags.
"Indeed, why? Has anything come up with work? I'd have thought you finished everything for the week, correct? Or is there another matter you'd like to discuss before I hang up and leave?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
Reficul was somewhat confused, unsure she understood where Uhluhtc was going with this line of inquiry despite worrying it was indeed related to the work they were doing. "Come again?"
"It's about finishing the paperwork."
Now Reficul was completely confused. Why was her employee inquiring if she'd finished her work or not? She was certain that the final stack she signed off on was the last bit of paperwork she needed to do. Perhaps it wasn't the best idea, but she'd bite even if it did wind up biting her in the ass back. "What about finishing work?" she demanded, still hoping she didn't need to go back.
"Those documents regarding the big project next week. Have you gone through them yet?"
"Documents?" Reficul asked. She didn't miss those papers, did she? They were part of the last stack, right? She swore they were, but began to doubt her own integrity. "I do not recall seeing them when I was finishing up tonight," she stated, hoping her employee would jog her memory.
"Well, they were there," Uhluhtc asserted. "I placed them on the coffee table in your office since your desk was packed with other sheets on different projects the company was managing."
Reficul face palmed and sighed to herself in frustration. "Oh, those documents." Yeah, she definitely missed those. "Ah, my apologies for forgetting those. I shall read through them carefully on Monday and get back to you on them. If there is nothing else of importance, I'll be going—"
Uhluhtc interrupted her. "Those actually have to be finished by Monday."
She didn't like the sound of that. "B-by Monday?" she asked, her voice nearly faltering.
"Yep," Uhluhtc confirmed the day and added the time. "By seven-thirty to be specific."
"That early?" Reficul inquired, trying to keep her voice steady. She'd been looking forward to getting time off this weekend, especially as it was going to be pouring hard during the next two days. Nobody was going back to work then until Monday, so she found it hard to believe she might have to take the train all the way back either now or sometime tomorrow morning after some rest.
"It's in the schedule for Monday, the meeting between my Dreams and Nightmares Depot and a few of the other departments. You told me the other day you'd be sitting in on that as well."
If Reficul was still confused already, she was now baffled. "I don't remember having that in Monday's schedule. Who authorized that meeting in the first place?" she complained bitterly.
"You did," came Uhluhtc's reply over the phone. "Check your calendar. It should have the information on it concerning Monday morning's meeting. You had also sent out emails for it. I'll forward a copy you sent to me to remind you of it. I guess the heavy workload exhausted you."
"Oh, that meeting." Right…yes, now she recalled it. She'd given the go ahead on Tuesday. How could she have forgotten it? Perhaps it was because she was swamped with so much work. "Yes, it most certainly did. Thanks for the reminder," she said as she picked up her briefcase and crossed over to the other side of the station. "I'll head back to the office now and get that done in time for Monday's meeting," she said, unaware she was forgetting something else. "See you then."
"Alright, goodbye. Have a nice weekend, Ms. Reficul."
"Yes, you too. Goodbye." And with that done, she shut her cell phone and called out to the carriage driver to let him know she was heading back to the office for a while. As he departed, all Reficul had to do was wait for a while until the next train pulled in before boarding. It was another hour of silence, especially as she was the only passenger on board this time. Being on a train that was nearly devoid of other passengers, save for the conductors and other staff onboard, made the return trip a tad unsettling given the lack of communication with demons and the sheer absence of their presence. Not that the Stoic Devil was bothered by it, but now that the storm was picking up, she kind of wanted something to distract her from the loud crashes of thunder and lightning as well as the pending task approaching her. The task she was now returning to without a say in the matter.
When the train finally arrived at the station by the company, Reficul reached down to pick up her briefcase from the floor by her seat and also went to pick up her umbrella, though… "Ah, shit…" she muttered under her breath, realizing that she forgot it at the other station. She really needed to pay better attention to these things so they wouldn't go right over her head. Then again, it was kind of understandable considering it'd been a hectic week and she barely got much sleep. She only had her coat for protection, so she simply put her hood up and held the briefcase close to her chest so it wouldn't get too wet as she disembarked the train and hurried towards the Ministry. "First the project and now my umbrella…" she muttered again in irritation, "this day can't possibly get any—" If she thought things wouldn't get worse as they kept going downhill, she was wrong. Fate did have an uncanny way of getting things to play out just the way it wanted them to. Reficul was aware of that, but she didn't make a connection between her forgetfulness and the mysterious ways in which fate moved. That was why she shrieked, first when she was nearly trampled by an unexpected horse drawn carriage rushing to escape the rain as she crossed the street to the company building and then again when she tripped over her own feet in the process of avoiding the carriage.
Throwing her arms out to catch herself before she fell, Reficul flailed them about as she'd begun stumbling onto the sidewalk. But the concrete was caked in muck all over the ground and, when mixed with a lot of water such as the pouring rainfall, it became too slippery when wet. The Stoic Devil shrieked again as her left foot landed in the slippery muck, causing her to slip and fall backwards onto the filthy pavement below her. In the accident that ensued, the latch keeping her briefcase shut came undone and the case flew out of her loosened grip immediately. She fumbled to catch it when she had stumbled, but slipping and falling back caused the briefcase to sail over her head with the papers inside scattering to the winds and her laptop falling victim to gravity and the large puddle of water the Devil had just sloshed through in her stumble. Her eyes widened in shock as she quickly whipped around while still falling before crying out in pain as her ankle got twisted in the sudden movement. Her sprained ankle hurt badly as did her side when her body hit the mucky pavement, but her attention was now on the fizzling laptop. It short-circuited for several moments before, to her dismay, dying out completely as the electricity still flowed in the puddle.
"Oh no…" she whispered, desperately wishing the laptop was still intact despite witnessing its death in front of her through wide eyes. "N-no, no, no, no, no…" Reficul panicked as she hurried to it and carefully, but also rather hastily, picked her laptop up once the electricity vaporized in the water and checked to see if it was working by pressing the power button on it. It didn't, confirming her fear which now led to the need of having to wait a whole month to get a new laptop for work. Her head hanging in exasperated shame, Reficul became angry at herself over her misfortune as she shoved the busted laptop in her briefcase and gathered as many papers she could gather, all the while cursing under her breath for suffering such a detrimental setback. "Shit, shit, shit, shit…"
Reficul stormed to the front entrance—more like staggered to it on her sprained ankle while uttering small gasps of pain—setting her briefcase down on the sidewalk so she could take out her wallet. She fumbled with it briefly as she pulled out her ID card and inserted it into the scanner to let herself into the building before putting the card back into the wallet. Reficul then grabbed the briefcase and entered the building after the system let her in, crossing the lobby once again to the elevator. She pressed the button and got in, her heart pounding from stress as the elevator went all the way up the floor her office was on. Once it reached its destination, Reficul got out and stopped briefly at a box of first aid equipment to get bandages for her ankle. She wrapped them around the minor injury before staggering down the hall to her office, slamming her briefcase upon the side table inside. Aware that her anger would have interfered with her ability to be objective in doing the paperwork her employee had brought to her office, the Stoic Devil took deep breaths to calm herself down. "It's okay, Reficul…" she whispered to herself, "there's not a lot of work left to do."
When she finally went to the coffee table, unfortunately, Reficul's mouth hung agape upon discovering there was not one, but multiple stacks of documents for her to go through after turning the light in her office on. "Just how big is this project?!" she thought to herself in disbelief at the amount of paperwork she would have to go through in order to finish it all entirely. Yet she sighed while taking a stack to her desk. Reficul knew she was never like this, aware she was acting out of character by expressing incredulity at so much paperwork. But to be fair, it really did look like a massive assignment, one she would need help for. It was unfortunate that nobody else was in the office to help her, otherwise the job would have gone by a lot quicker and maybe a lot smoother.
So, with a heavy sigh of exhaustion as she began to start the beginning of what would likely consume the entire night, eating away at that precious time she would've much rather spent on the weekend, Reficul set the stack down and went through them all one by one, stack by stack. Her eyelids grew heavier with each document, each stack completed, and she felt she couldn't keep them open for much longer as the hours passed. Several times she yawned and stretched her arms up in the air, but she was rooted to her chair for the whole night with nary a sound except the rain pattering against the window and vibrations from her phone which she put on vibrate so the calls wouldn't disturb her further. Reficul was already very tired from all the work throughout the week and tonight, so a sudden call would be like an alarm clock to her—a loud alarm clock capable of frightening her when she was this tired, and even that was certainly out of character for her too.
That was it. Nothing more happened that night. Just Reficul doing paperwork. It was a very tedious task, especially with this many documents, but someone had to do it. Unfortunately, that someone had to be Reficul, and only Reficul alone because none of the employees were around to help her. None of them were around to even do it all for her, she needed to do it all on her own.
By the time she finished it all, it was already morning even though the sky had not cleared. With the last document of the very last stack now placed where it should be, Reficul finally stood up and stretched. Her bones and joints were aching from hours of sleepless work without anything else productive going on aside from the paperwork. After the many trips and return trips she made back and forth between her office and the various other offices and departments, she finally put on her coat and took the briefcase with the destroyed laptop and ruined papers in it before heading out to the elevator so she could finally leave the office building behind at long last. She was free.
A good chunk of her weekend would be spent getting home and sleeping, leaving less time for her to read while listening to music. It didn't bother her too much, though. The paperwork was all done and she no longer had to worry about it anymore. It was now finally done and over with.
On the way down, she took out her phone to check how many messages she received last night while working. Reficul yawned, the bags under her eyes becoming quite apparent as she took a look through her messages. She expected them to simply be ordinary, perhaps a bit of spam with some from the servants at the keep expressing concern over her having to return to work all night.
Reficul's pupils dilated as her eyes widened in shock and her mouth hung agape again, the very same facial expression from last night when she first saw the stacks of documents. She nearly dropped her cellphone in horror at what she was now seeing on the screen in front of her. That was going to break the phone and leave her in an absolutely worse situation than the night before since she would've been in a rush to try and figure out what everyone who sent something to her wanted.
There were infinite googols of messages and missed calls. Infinite googols.
And in the subject line given for what kind of messages they were…
Things related to work. Various requests, copies of more documents, questions concerning what to do for projects and assignments, etc. Everything…Everything that had to do with work.
And it was all due by seven-thirty on Monday. Everything by seven-thirty on Monday.
"T-this must be a bad dream…" she whispered in disbelief, her whole body beginning to tense with anger as she trembled with rage. Reficul was so furious she almost crushed her phone. Almost. Just great, more assignments for her to take care of. More work for her to do. "N-no…"
She trembled violently in anger before Reficul screamed in rage and fainted minutes later.
…
Following the successful completion of Sick Day on the Night Shift, I began working on Work is Never Done to poke some fun at another character featured in the Gray Garden. At the time Work is Never Done was first written, I had selected Reficul as that character because of how she presented herself as a professional Devil in the game with the exception of meeting Ivlis and his daughter and servants on their way back to the Flame Underworld. I considered writing more to it when I originally finished it, and even now after it has been updated a little over three years—close to four years at this point—after first being published, I still believe this one-shot is well-written enough that it does not require further elaboration. Sick Day on the Night Shift was a very good first attempt at writing fanfiction for the Okegom universe in my opinion as the author of that one-shot, though looking back on it I would say that writing it felt more like fulfilling the whim to contribute a non-canon story to this universe. Work is Never Done feels the same way in retrospect—once again, in my perspective as the author.
But despite it feeling like satisfying a whim, I thoroughly enjoyed contributing fanfics to the Okegom universe because it also felt like the universe had saved my hobby as an author of fanfiction. Prior to writing Okegom fanfiction, I'd been writing for other universes I liked, but haven't actually written anything major for those universes. Mostly my fanfics were just one-shots, though writing fanfiction for the Okegom universe really helped me blossom into my own. And in approaching these one-shots from the perspective of an author just getting into writing Okegom fanfiction, I can see that although they were successful, these first two fanfics were lacking direction as they were satisfying the whim to write Okegom fanfics. As it stands, they still do not lead into anything major in fanfics that proceed them. However, I think these two one-shots do not require much in that regard apart from remaking them to be more consistent with the style of writing I developed since first getting into writing for the Okegom universe. That is why I've chosen to let Sick Day on the Night Shift and Work is Never Done remain as they are now, fully updated and still retaining their semi-independence from the other Okegom fanfics even though both one-shots are connected to them in my timeline. They stand alone as do each of my other Okegom fanfics, though at the same time they are still merged with the rest of the fanfiction as small pieces of something larger and grander.
The rest of the author's notes below remain completely unchanged with the exception of the following paragraph regarding Uhluhtc which is partly the same and partly changed.
Uhluhtc is backwards for Cthulhu from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos if anyone was wondering where I got his name from. If you get a call from Cthulhu, would you answer?
Emperor853: Thanks for reviewing Sick Day on the Night Shift. I appreciate it. Sorry for responding to your review in a different fanfic, but I couldn't respond to you in another chapter of that story because it was a one-shot like this story is. I marked it as a completed work when I was publishing it on the site, but that didn't go through the first time for some reason—the same happened to the characters I marked as well. I also don't have PMs turned on, so I can't respond to others through that either unless I activate it; it's a personal choice of mine whether I want to use it or not, really, so I just reply through reviews or on forums.
As for your comment on Grora's abuse of Ater threatening to sever relations between angels and demons, I can understand why you might think it is wrong, though I wrote that bit based on common sense concerning truces like the one the angels and demons made in the game. When you have two different groups join together and then an individual from either one is acting mean to someone from the other group, there is bound to be friction whether that person gets banned from the entire party or causes the two groups to split back up and oppose each other. They could have been enemies to begin with until they united as one group, so the actions of one can threaten to shatter that unity by splitting it up.
In any case, thanks again for reviewing Sick Day on the Night Shift, and I hope you and others enjoy reading this story as I enjoyed typing it.
If you're wondering what my next fanfic will be, I actually have a pretty good idea of what to do. With Five Nights at Freddy's 3 coming out soon, I decided to write a crossover between the series and the Grey Garden. I've never played the first two games in the trilogy, but I've watched full playthroughs of those games as well and have taken an interest in them. So what better way to begin a fanfic than to commemorate one of the best horror franchises out there now that the third game is confirmed?
Disclaimer:
I don't own the Grey Garden; it's owned by Mogeko.
I don't own Cthulhu; he is owned by H.P. Lovecraft.
