Addendum 26

            Junior Executive removed the chains from the toilet late Sunday evening.  He managed to get some water into Corporate Man and in the early hours of Monday morning a few crackers went in and stayed down. 

            Corporate Man slept on the bed, all but dead to the world.  Junior Executive shackled Corporate Man’s foot to the bed, just to be sure, though he really doubted that his mentor would be waking up any time soon.

            At some point, before the sun came up, Junior Executive fell asleep on the couch.

            The thing that brought him out of his dreams of financial uncertainty was barely perceptible.  It was like a whisper of silence cutting though the soft, ever present, background noise.   His eyes flicked opened.  A second sound cue, something not quite a whistle and little more than a sigh, triggered a reflex reaction that ejected him from the couch.  The final thudding noise that followed was the result of a black throwing axe lodging into the wooden frame of the couch, precisely where Junior’s blissful, sleeping face had been only seconds before.

            Pink Slip stood in front of the bedroom’s open door.  A second black axe gripped in her left hand.  Was she coming from Corporate Man’s room?  Had she just killed him?  There was no blood on the axe she was holding.  But the axe sticking out of the couch cushions could’ve been used to do the job.

            “Hmmmm,” she purred.  “You move well.”

            Junior Executive did not acknowledge the compliment.

            “Too bad I’m on the job or I’d make time to play with you.”

            There was no hint in her body language that the assault was coming.  No twitch in her fingers or flare of her eyes.  And when she moved there wasn’t even a noticeable weight shift in her musculature.  She’d covered half the distance between them, which wasn’t much to begin with, before his brain even registered the change.  And the axe no longer dangled at her thigh.  It sliced down at his face.

            Junior Executive flinched away and thrust his arms up defensively.  The axe struck his forearm.  The force of the blow slammed his wrist into his face.  Blood sprayed from his nose and stars burst in his eyes.  There was no blood where the axe had struck.  No chunking sound as blade buried into bone.  Instead there was a metallic clang. 

            Pink Slip did not seem to notice.  She was already three moves ahead in her mind.  While her left hand dealt damage to Junior Executive’s arm and face, her right hand snagged the handle of the axe imbedded in the couch.  As the left-hand-wielded blade rebounded off the defensive forearm with the incongruous metallic clang, the right hand swung the recently retrieved couch-stuck axe into Junior Executive’s upper ribs.

            The sound this time was hollow and thudding.

            Pink Slip’s lips curled like spooning lovers.  And that’s when the metallic clang registered and her eyes shifted to Junior Executives forearm.  Most of the shirt fabric of his custodial uniform was shredded from wrist to elbow.  The protective gauntlet underneath was almost fully uncovered.  Her eyes had only strayed for a moment, but before they could flick back to her opponent’s face, his forehead slammed into the bridge of her nose.  As she stumbled back his wrist gauntlets smashed together, her ears and temples caught in between.  Something rammed into her stomach and another something hammered into back, just below her neck.

            If there were subsequent blows, Pink Slip was far too unconscious to feel them.

            Junior Executive yanked the axe from his side.  For a moment he considered dropping it to the floor.  He also considered returning it to its owner in a very direct manner.  Finally, he settled on holding it at the ready as he unzipped his uniform down past his stomach and pulled something from an inside pocket.

            It was a small book, nearly cleaved in two.  On the cover were the words:

THE UNION

BYLAWS

            Below this was a rounded graphic that incorporated the scales of justice, a briefcase, dollar signs, percentage symbols and the words:

International Association of Economic Superheroes.

Addendum 25

            He was not at his desk.  This was an outrage.  An outrage!

            Corporate Whore slammed her office door.  She wanted to break something.  Where was he?  Could he have used the weekend to kick the Bonus?  Impossible.  She glared at the bare walls.  She needed some artwork in here.  Something that would shatter into thousands of satisfying pieces.

            She dialed Donald Jackson’s home number again.  It rang and rang and rang.  She slammed the phone back in the cradle.  That felt good.  Perhaps she’d call him again in a minute or so to give her an excuse to repeat the exercise.  She picked up the phone and hammered it against the desk a few times, to hell with the pretense, and then returned it to the cradle in the same cathartic method as before.

            She took a deep breath, checked her hair in a pocket mirror, and then pressed the special button on her phone.  The one that blinked with powerful pink light.

            The door at the back of the office whispered open casting a rosy glow into the room.  Corporate Whore did not bother to look back.  She said, “Can you track him down?”

            “Of course,” Pink Slip said.

            “Do it.”

            “Am I bringing him back?”

            Corporate Whore hesitated for a moment.  She bit her lip and then said, “Yes.”

            “All of him?”

            This brought a hint of a smile to Corporate Whore’s lips, and diamonds twinkled in her eyes.  Then the smile slipped from her face and the light ceased its iris dance.  Corporate Whore said nothing for a long while.  Then, ever so slightly, she nodded.

            Seconds later she turned to make sure her affirmation was understood.

            Pink Slip was already gone.

Addendum 18

            Golden light glinted off champagne flutes.  This was the day of the announcement.  The celebration of the merger.  All the employees were excited and all the decorations were gold, from the place settings and serving platters to the bowties of the wait staff.  Even the light bulbs had been changed out for special imported jobs that cast a golden glow over everything. 

            Corporate Man stood at the back of the room.  He was the only one not smiling.  Something about this merger hadn’t sat well with him.  There’d been far too many signs. Evidence of The Greed and other fiscal villains.  And the numbers he’d seen for this deal were far too perfect.  He didn’t trust such boastful figures.

            A golden knife clinked against a champagne glass and the owner of the company mounted a small stage for the obligatory hurrah-speech.  Corporate Man felt a lurch in his stomach.

            A whine of feedback cut through the room as the owner picked up a golden microphone.  When he spoke his voice was nasally and asthmatic.

            “Well, it final.  All wrapped up,” he said. A chorus of cheers erupted from the crowd.  “And I think this will go down as the most lucrative merger in the history of finance.”

            Another round of deafening cheers.

            “Unfortunately for most of you, the benefits will not be quite as mutual as we led you to believe.”

            Uneasy silence gripped the room.

            “In fact,” he said with a raspy chuckle.  “Come tomorrow I’ll be soaking up sunshine on my private beach while you’ll find yourself among the unemployed.”

            A few of the quicker ones in the room shouted, or wailed, or cried.  The owner waived them off and said, “Consider this your notice.  With a Pink Slip to come.”

            The lights went out

            Panicked shrieks followed.

Then a pink spotlight picked out a woman in the far corner of the room.  She wore a short skin-tight pink dress with tall, pink leather boots.  A pink mask, part domino and part bandana, obscured her face.  She tapped a clipboard with a pink pen and when total silence fell on the room she said, “It looks like… we have to make a few cuts.”

She dropped the clipboard and unsheathed a pink katana.  Before the first screams escaped the throats of the jumpiest of them, several former employees were relieved of extraneous limbs and superfluous blood supply.

Pink Slip went through the unemployed congregation like a lawnmower through tall, plump grass.  Men and women in business casual were turned to mulch.  Fingers, hands, arms, legs, and heads fell wetly to the floor, piling up like so much lawn clippings.

Corporate Man dropped down in front of the pink dervish, his well polished shoe delivering a well placed kick to her midsection.  Pink Slip stumbled back.  Corporate Man’s necktie fluttered over his shoulder and he adjusted his glasses.

Pink Slip drew herself up, her sword held slack at her side rather than in front and at the ready.  Red fluid dribbled down the pink blade.

“Now listen here–”

The stroke came so quickly that Corporate Man didn’t flinch until the blade had already flicked past his throat.  A streamer of red fluttered to the ground and came to rest in a scarlet pool at his feet.

“That was my favorite necktie!” Corporate Man said, the first syllables cracking and the rest of his sentence a higher pitch than he would have liked.  Pink Slip raised her katana and pointed the tip at Corporate Man’s face.  They stood there, neither of them moving, awash in the horrible pink light.

Addendum 16

             “Don’t run,” the bosslady said.  “You wouldn’t even get the door open before she cut you down.”

            Corporate Man had no intention of running.  He knew what Pink Slip was capable of.  He also knew that he wasn’t prepared for a physical confrontation either.  He’d only faced her on his own once before and he was still surprised that he’d survived the confrontation.

            “Who are you?  What is all this?” Corporate Man said.

            “This… is Pink Slip,” the bosslady said.  “She’s insurance.”

            “And you?”

            “Me?”

            “Yeah.  Who are you?  You’re not just some small time executive for Great American Business Company.  You’re something more.”

            “Ah… How refreshing.  A man recognizes my worth,” the bosslady said.  She sifted some more powder onto her hand and sniffed.  “I’m something new.  There will be more like me, you can be sure about that.  Male and female.  In vast multitudes as the conglomerates continue to grow.  But I am the first.  I’m Corporate Whore.”

            “Not the most flattering of names.”

            “No?  The oldest profession?  That’s not notable?  Not respectable?”

            “I wouldn’t–”

            “Of course you wouldn’t, man-ling.  How dare a mere female enter the boy’s club of corporate finance.  Women belong in the home.  Let’s forget that the first business, that oldest of all professions, was started by woman.”

            “You’ve no proof that–”

            “And that business is still thriving today!” she shouted over him.  Then she paused for a moment, allowing the silence to stand as evidence of her victory.  “Now.  You will go back to your office and spend the rest of the morning working on strategies to maximize our bonuses.  You may have the afternoon off to struggle with your new addiction.”

            Corporate Whore raised her chin.  Her head cocked to the side almost imperceptibly.  Pink Slip’s whip cracked out, the tip popping inches in front of Corporate Man’s face.  He stood up, obediently, and walked out of the office.

            The bonus envelope and its shady contents gripped tightly in his hands.

Addendum 15

            In the archives of the Union, stored in the file cabinets at The Office, there is a dossier on Pink Slip.  It makes for some interesting, if unpleasant, reading.  She’s responsible for a number of economic atrocities including but not limited to:  termination, intimidation through threat of termination, destruction of personal financial security of millions of families due to termination.

            Where she walks there are tears and panic sweats and hastily cleaned out desks.  She is the eager pet of crooked tycoons; a Doberman Pincer in pink.  Bankers lust for her and fat cat Wall Street types casually toss her around like a flirty hand grenade.  She is ruthless and emotionless; like broken glass.

            She is terribly attractive and this makes her all the more deadly.