“It even had a little toothpick flag. I… uhhh… kept it.”
“Oh, my!” He looks at me with sheer delight. “You are worse than I thought.”
“Weren’t we meant to be finding out how to shut the trigger down?” I beg.
And as if I offended him, he pulls back and scoffs. “Fine.” He then smiles again. “We need to perform some experiments.”
“Experiments?”
He leans forward again; eyes glistening and licks his lips. He is clearly enjoying this.
“I think I know a way that could stop it. But it involves you giving in to your desires. Trust me, I won’t ask you to kiss me again; there are other things to test.”
There’s a quick sense of relief I feel. Because I know damn well if he asked me to kiss him, I don’t think I would have stopped him. But my ears wilt at ‘other things’. And if it involves doing what I did to that baguette, hell no. I have only ever done that in the privacy of my apartment, especially not involving anyone.
OK, besides all the times I had been caught at other jobs when the curse-arousal took over.
When I was literally fucking a discarded ham and cheese sandwich, using the leftover mayo as lube to glide through the… I shake my head. I need to stop thinking about it.
But besides that, I have been careful not to bring anyone into my drama. And here is a solution handed to me on a trash-covered platter, and I am hesitant. I wish I could allow myself to let people help me instead of pushing them away.
But I’ve been cursed for years now. Nothing I’ve done myself has worked. I need his help more than I care to admit.
The conversation continues, and we arrange to meet back here on the weekend when there would be no risk of being caught by coworkers. He leaves the logistics to me. Which now means I need an excuse to come here on the weekend, of which I’m not usually rostered on because the office shuts then.
Today being Thursday means tomorrow is Friday, and Saturday comes afterwards.Thanks, Rebecca Black, for confirming that for an entire generation.It gave me a day to figure it all out. Just one day… what could go wrong?
Chapter 6–Can’t Refuse Him
Ispend most of Friday morning trying to figure out how to tell my boss that I am required to come in on the weekend. I obviously have to omit that it is for deeply cursed reasons, but I need something real to use.
Fridays used to bring me joy. They were normally full of hopeful sips of my coffee, always in a travel cup and instantly washed up so I wouldn’t be tempting my own fate, and the glimmer that the week is nearly over.
But this Friday?
Mine begins with my fake laughing at Claudia's joke about ghosts in the photocopier while crafting a full-blown, morally dubious lie in my head. A lie about why Ineedto be in the office tomorrow.
The problem with lying? You must keep up the charade and remember who you have told, what you have told, and all the details. When I got cursed, after the first couple of times of being caught fucking a coffee cup stuffed with a sandwich or cheesecake, as if it were some sort of depraved discarded fleshjack, I had developed a method of keeping up with the lies.
Keep them simple and effective. I need to figure out something that would obviously be in my wheelhouse of tasks but not too specific or out of the ordinary that I would be questioned.
Claudia’s some sort of walking Bluetooth lie detector - probably tied to her being a psychic - because she sees right through me. She’s sipping her turmeric latte, waiting for her photocopying to finish, and eyes me with what I think is suspicious serenity. I feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead. She narrows her eyes as if she can smell my panic. Knowing her, she probablycould.
I keep my tone breezy, like my internal monologue isn’t full of a Shakespearean tragic soliloquy:
“So… I’m probably coming in tomorrow,” I say, pretending to look at my cleaning roster on my phone. “Do a little extra detailing. The carpets need a steam.”
Claudia blinks, and without missing a moment, smirks. She takes another sip of her latte. “You’veneverdone extra detailing. You barely detail the things you’re paid to clean during the week…”
Damn it. She’s right. This is fair. I internalise a chuckle and put my phone in my pocket to wipe the sweat off my brow. I am nervous. And I don’t know why. Claudia likes me, knows about the curse and The Grouch, and is truly my only friend in this place. She’s probably the only reason I still have a job here too.
No–I need to keep her out of it. It’s one thing to know about my affliction, another to know that I’m going to hang around outside of hours to experiment on it with a bin ghost. I’m sure there’s some kind of HR liability there…
“Well,” I stammer, doubling down on the lie, “we have that event next week with the heads of corporate attending, so I want to ensure the office is spotless.”
“I thought that was the weekend after this one?” Claudia adds and smirks again to herself as she drinks more of her coffee. The photocopier beeps, and she presses a button, causing more things to start printing and scanning.
She taps away at her phone. She hits a final key dramatically and then snatches whatever she had photocopied from the machine. I lean back.
