Love Me, Harm Me

(Unexpected) Interruptions

"You out there, in the cold, seeing the seasons
turning, me with my heartful of headlines
feeding works into a blank screen.
Is your life more real because you dig and sow?" - Letters from Yorkshire, Maura Dooley

.☀.🌑.☀.🌑.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of the morning passes in a mundane crawl. Not a fast crawl - no Elizabeth would never call it fast - but certainly not a slow crawl either. It was like a mediocre in-between, an awkward mix of an excruciatingly slow-paced shuffle that somehow had the same smooth transition as a solid, sturdy slide against freshly polished floors. If there was one word that Elizabeth could use to describe the usual morning at the office, she would say it was ordinary. Extremely ordinary.

Like all businesses, the Britannia Mail had its influx of gossips and creeps and ordinary workers. Diane - a proud socialite within the break room - always liked to teach the newer employees about the social dos and donts of the company. Elizabeth, always being tied to the hip of Diane, often had to endure these impromptu lessons, knowing all the information for herself.

Nerobasta, Ludociel's assistant, thought she was better than everyone else. A total snob. Elizabeth had learned that on day one when she'd shown up with a pretty floral blouse that Nerobasta had called, quote unquote "quaint". As if Elizabeth herself didn't know that was office code for "you've definitely got spirit, but that's all you have".

Then there were the office gossips, consisting of three workers who constantly hung around the break room. Deldry, Arden and Waillo were often the root of out of control rumours in the building - especially about the more juicer stories given to highly popular journalists. That trio alone could stir a whole scandal within the building faster than a group of news outlets competing for public attention. Most days it was miracle that this building wasn't plastered across the headlines of every other newspaper outlet.

Often, the gossipers tended to clash with the new influx of regulars - graduates from the most recent university wave: Jericho, Guila and an awkward intern named Luigi. There was never a full day that wouldn't pass without Jericho screaming at the gossips, telling them to shut the hell up as she devoured her twentieth doughnut of the day. All the while, the entire office would watch on in silence, journalists always being the sort to hang onto every little development in current action.

This morning, however, the office lacked the usual dynamic it held. Even though time passed in its usual current and flow, Elizabeth couldn't help but feel as if the day was quiet. Too quiet. Working away peacefully on an article was usually a chore; today she had managed to get a decent margin of her clinic piece done and was already jotting down notes for a new project in South London. That was definitely too productive for this office on a Tuesday.

Frowning, Elizabeth closed her laptop and decided to check out the break room. Most of the time if the action was lacking in the main office, it was transferred to the limited confines of the smaller break room. Elizabeth had learned that the hard way a few months ago when Guila guided a dazed Luigi to the elevators, holding a white bundle of tissue to his nose. Within moments it had been soaked red.

"Taking a break are you?" Diane sprang out from thin air, grinning as she matched Elizabeth's stride. Slyly, she nudged her, easily pinching a pencil from someone's desk. "That's highly unusual for you, Miss Liones. Could it have something to do with the change in the workplace?"

"Of course not," Elizabeth shook her head, face burning from the surprise of Diane's unexpected arrival. She never liked it when people sprung up on her like that - especially at work. Sighing, she pushed open the break room door. "I'm just making sure everything's in order."