I thought it would be easier to follow this particular storyline if I set it up separately. If you've been following my word prompt-inspired drabbles, then you'll probably have read the first three chapters of this.
I'm flying by the seat of my pants, so any words of advice are most welcome.
No copyright infringement is intended.
Word Prompt: Messy
She sat at her desk scrolling through emails and tried to ignore the creeping hands of the clock – surely it had stopped working altogether? Rose's latest temp job was the dullest yet and she had taken to counting the pinholes in the walls of her cubicle – eleven on the right side and a whopping twenty-two in the wall facing her. What did her predecessors pin to the walls? A plan of the building's emergency exits? A self-help guide to finding a better job? A do-it-yourself make-up kit to paint open eyes onto one's eyelids?
So far, Rose had resisted falling asleep and suppressed the urge to run screaming from the building; although the latter was a close-call on the afternoon she was asked to inventory the stationery cupboard and discovered a commune of spiders dwelling there. She couldn't help but wonder why on earth he even needed a personal secretary. The phone hardly ever rang and more often than not it was just someone looking for the chippers down the road (sometimes she listened to their orders before telling them that they had the wrong number). As for his day-planner, that thing had more tumbleweed blowing through it than you'd find in a John Wayne movie.
If Mr Masen wasn't the sweetest old man to ever wear a tweed jacket with elbow patches, Rose would have packed in the job and requested a re-assignment. Others in her position would have been grateful; a job like this was the equivalent of being paid to leave your brain in bed while your body went to work each day. She could catch up on reading for her thesis and had even completed a mid-term essay on a particularly slow morning, which, for Masen & Co, meant receiving no post instead of the usual special offers flyer from the local hardware store.
Even with all the perks, Rose didn't like the feeling that she was deceiving Mr Masen somehow, stealing from him. She had tried to talk to him about it, becoming perhaps the only employee on earth to ever explain why she felt her job was redundant, but he would hear none of it. He liked having her there, he said. She looked after him and he appreciated her.
She did look after him. He reminded her of her Grandpa Joe, who had died when she was a teenager. She used to visit him every afternoon after school and climb into his wide lap like an armchair. From the circle of his arms, she learned not to be frightened of the world, to open her eyes to what each day could bring.
In Rose's mind, cheating Mr Masen was like cheating her Grandpa and she didn't like that feeling one bit. She was only occupying the post for six months, but had already cleaned and re-organised every surface, including messy Majorie's desk – now there was a dead weight. In fact, if she thought about it, Mr Masen's office was like the museum of lost things. Marjorie had lost her husband and rarely made it through the workday without crying in the toilets. Brian was an ex-con who went to afternoon AA meetings three times' a week, and Megan had started working for Mr Masen when her husband ran off with the bank manager and her home was re-possessed. By comparison, Rose was the most stable employee there.
All of these things could have remained a mystery to Rose. She could have done her job for six months and then moved on without another thought. The visit of Mr Masen's son changed everything.