Disappear: Into Shadow

- CHAPTER SIX -

Cities, like all life, breathe and grow. Their noise, their motion and energies reach both skywards and below into the ground. These are aspects of the changes you can watch in the world. Once, buildings, like humankind, only sat on the ground. Now, thy invade both land and sky. Their change and progression are parts of the never-ending process of evolution.

As people, when human nomads settled they became villagers. Their collected shelters became hamlets, which then grew into towns. The towns blossomed into cities. Some cities even ballooned into metropolises. Cities, like generations, have come and gone. They begin and they end, both living and eventually decaying. Like mankind, despite their outward appearances, cities are similar. Some are quieter than others, and the city Camael now found himself in was not one of those.

Nestled deep in the downtown core of this most bustling western metropolis was a great glass monolith. Inside, on one of the higher floors, a woman worked as a stockbroker in the middle of a furious and bustling trading office. Camael watched the chaos surrounding her: phones were ringing, people were shouting, talking and agonizing over the numbers displayed on their desktop monitors. Fax machines and printers buzzed, collated and whirred. She appeared at home in the midst of the office's madness.

ThereIsContinualNoiseAtTopSpeed.

In a well-cut power suit, the attractive blonde exuded calm as she spoke on the phone. She explained to her client how the market, today, would see nothing but gains. Now was the time for him to buy in. Absent-minded, she twisted a lock of hair between her fingers as she waited for the right moment to explain another prospect the client should be interested in. Listening to the hemming and hawing on the other end of the line stop, she knew the sale was made.

While tapping the entry into her computer, an expensively dressed older man sauntered over. Standing next to her desk, he snapped his fingers. Ignored, he rolled his hand over and over in front of her face, urging her to pay attention to him. She waved him off, and turned her chair away. Undaunted, he looked around the floor. Seeing everyone else wrapped up in their own affairs he stepped forward, reaching over her chair and began to rub her shoulders.

"No, I understand Mr. Harris. That's beyond you at the moment, and that's fine," the woman said into the telephone while simultaneously brushing away the hands that were creeping down towards her chest. "For the moment we'll just stick with Correct Corp."

The older man chuckled at her slap, continuing to rub her shoulders. Her voice betrayed only the slightest hint of anger as she wrapped up the deal. "Very good, you won't regret this Mr. Harris. I'll set up the trade right now. Thank you, sir and good bye." She said, setting the phone back into its cradle and turned to the older man.

"This may be your company, but if you ever do that again I'll scream harassment so fast your head won't stop spinning until you're trading out of a coffee shop. Do we understand each other?" She said with cold finality.

"Fine darling, that's just fine..." He chuckled and winked.

"I'm going to get a coffee," she said.

Standing, she straightened her skirt. The fashionable hems stopped a few inches short of her well-shaped knees. The older man watched with lecherous approval. As she walked away from the bullpen floor, he fell in beside her. Susan pictured him as an unattractive, annoying puppy in need of serious discipline. She stopped and said, "I'm going for a coffee... on my own, Harold."