Midnight Creek Tales

#5. Lunar Darkness / Chapter 3

As we approached the main office to get to our rooms, Jane stopped us. "So did Marchisio crack a whip at you or what?"

At first both of us didn't know what to say, but then we realized we had the Houston plan, "Actually Mr. Marchisio called us in for some urgent help."

"Urgent help?" Jane asked as she lifted her head up from her busy desk.

If there was one thing I knew about Jane in all three years of working here, was that she wasn't one to be trusted. She might've had the appearance of an angel, but she had the mouth of a slutty teenage girl. Too many times she's spread rumors along the building, and if we let this one out Mr. Marchisio would probably fire us, so I knew to word my sentences carefully.

"He actually called us in for a trip to Houston."

"So that means he fired you?"

"No he didn't fire us, he just wants us to test out some things in Houston. It's pretty important experimental stuff, but with that we'll be back within two weeks." I walked to the wall connected to Jane's desk and clocked in Simon's working card, and then did the same to mine.

"Taking off early?" She asked fixing her glasses.

"Mr. Marchisio wants us to get ready for the trip, so he gave us the rest of the day off," I told her nonchalantly.

She nodded her head now uninterested, and we waved goodbye as we left the room, and then shortly later exited the building.

Once we stepped into Simon's car, we began to call home and explain the whole scenario. And to Mr. Marchisio's credit, everyone bought it!

"We are in the homestretch baby!" Simon said putting on his seatbelt and checking his rearview mirror.

"No, we're not! We're not even close! What if they try to call us during the trip or something?"

Simon halted for a moment and continued checking the mirror with a simple response, "Look while we're in space Mr. Marchisio will deal with everything that is going on here. Let's just focus on the actual mission, so we are prepared and don't end up waltzing in like idiots."

I looked at the car clock, and realized it was 9:30 and that we were released out of work extremely early! (And Mr. Marchisio wasn't the type of guy to give days off).

"Yeah I know everything should be all right, but when do you wanna pack?"

"I don't know about you, but I could go for a burger right now."

"A burger at 9:30 in the morning?"

"Yeah what's wrong with that?" Simon asked pulling into a McDonald's drive-thru.

"Look nevermind! Just promise me we'll get this done correctly. And no antics!"

"Yeah man I got you, there's nothing to worry about!"

"Good," I said falling back into my car seat.

"Rich."

"What now?"

"Do you want a Big Mac?"

I nodded my head, and he placed our usual order.

After we finished eating in the parking lot, we drove straight home to get started with the packing.

Parking around the huge apartment building we lived in, we took the stairs up to our room. And the reason why we didn't take the elevator was because ironically Simon was deathly afraid of elevators.

Even though taking the stairs became a bit of an inconvenience, I respected his phobia and at the same time got in some extra exercise.

As for living together, I was a huge neat freak while he didn't care where anything was. And you could tell the huge difference in tidiness by just comparing our offices at work.