From: LilithK1013@aol.com Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 22:10:48 EDT Subject: xfc: xfc- The Office by Andrina Source: xfc From: LilithK1013@aol.com Title: The Office Author: Andrina Feedback: YES, I love it forever and ever and ever....(LilithK1013@AOL.com) Rating: G (but please read it anyway) Category: Fluff....OMG, did I just say fluff? Nononononono...... Summary: Early in the morning... Disclaimer: Not mine, never were, never will be. Author's Notes: This was my first major assignment this year. It's for my graduate English class. My teacher told me I write like a sixteen year old, which is awfully funny considering I AM sixteen, and then changed her mind when she "accidentally" found my work on Xemplary. She liked this, so, Professor McC, this one's for you. --------------- The Office --------------- It is a large place, built not unlike the typical living room. It is spacious, though you wouldn't know it from the clutter of the room. Several corkboards filled with pictures of UFO sightings, autopsies, and other strange paraphernalia adorn the walls. A file cabinet stands alone in a miraculously uncluttered corner. The cabinet is filled to the brim with files. Some have managed to find their way over the top of the large drawers and onto the gray metal object itself. A few feet away from the cabinet sits a large, Government Issue metal-and-wood desk. Files, trimmed in red and white, are scattered over the surface of the desk and flung about its perimeter. Several old Styrofoam coffee cups, most half-filled with ancient coffee, sit on the desk along with a few plastic sandwich wrappers. Sunflower seed shells are strewn on the floor in a careless manner, though there are three trashcans within easy reach of the desk. A woman stands in the doorway, her cream colored suit and red hair standing out against the dim grayness and shadows of the large room. She wears an expression of annoyance on her small face, but in her eyes is a glimmer of amusement. She rolls her eyes at the chaos of the room and sighs as she sits at the desk and begins to clear it of the debris from the previous day, coffee cups and shells going in their proper place. She does this everyday, clears his desk for him. She doubts he notices. If he does, he doesn't say anything. She files the folders trimmed in red and white, puts the loose papers in the right spots and is setting a pencil in just the right spot when she realizes she is being watched. She looks up, toward the door, and offers a shy smile to the suddenly filled space. "Sorry," she says in a voice meant to be penitential, but that comes out sounding like that of a four-year-old caught in the cookie jar before dinner. He smiles and shrugs, an I-thought-it-was-you shining in the hazel depths of his eyes instead of the Keep-out-of-my-space she had feared. He looks at the desk appreciatively and puts his brief case down beside it. "Thank you," he says, and puts a hand on her shoulder for an all-too-fleeting moment. Then he turns and leaves, going for what she knows is the inevitable cup of coffee. ----------------------- "Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." --Gene Fowler