The Roads That We Explore - 5. Office Shenanigains

Ducking under the flying coffee cup, empty thankfully, Brinda cursed softly and held up her binder to smack the not so empty carafe that came at her next out of the way. “Okay! Who pissed off the ghost?” she called out in complaint. “I know that I didn’t. I already left something shiny this morning.”

Markus stood up to look over the edge of his cubicle, wearing a safety helmet and glasses. “I think it was Maria. She said that ghosts have no power and that ours was the weakest. I don’t think that she knows exactly why we have a ghost,” he admitted as he ducked under a flying binder.

“And where did she fuck off to?” Brinda asked, handing over the binder she had used to bat at the carafe, taking a new one from Markus in return.

“Where else do you think? On her lunch break down the street,” he said. He sat back down as Brinda went back to her own work cubicle, wondering why she had agreed to take a job in an office building again.

Sighing, she remembered why. The paranormal company that she was building with her brother and her best friend was still in its infancy and she wanted to bring in some extra money. Alex and Brian were both doing the same to help pay for everything that they had to, and she hated to be doing nothing. Since she had an accounting degree with a business minor, she was using it to work part time. The owner had agreed to her working Tuesdays to Thursdays, and every other Friday. If she logged the hours that he wanted from her, he didn’t care.

She knew that half of her co-workers only came in once a day to use their workstations to print things out, gather assignments, go to meetings, and get mail. She was one of six who liked to work in the building. And thus, one of six who dealt with their office ghost. She knew that at one time he had been a worker who had been killed down on the first floor before the guard station, a casualty of a shooter who had a bone to pick with another office.

The asshole had ended up tasered, but it had been too late for the man who had loved the business and had stuck around after he had died. His daughter often came by on occasion with new pictures for his alter, using a digital photo frame to display them and to rotate out the gifts to him. The other things that they left for him were then placed into a box to wait their turn again.

The owner had even created a rule book regarding the supernatural part of their world, an entire section dedicated on how to treat him and how to deal with him in a respectful way. Brinda sighed as she placed her new project binder down before her on the L-shaped desk. “I hate that fucking woman. Why did I agree to train her?” she asked huffily, shaking her head.

“Because you need the extra money?” came a soft voice from the cubicle on her left. The very cubicle that Leon had worked in and now held his alter. Looking up, she smiled at the ghost, noting that he had placed a fresh, hot cup of coffee down on her desk in apology for almost hitting her with a carafe and cup.

“True.” She tilted her head to squint at him. “Did she really piss you off that much?” she asked him softly. The figure nodded his head. She idly mused that unlike most spirits, there wasn’t much to his form: mostly a lot of whispy smoke in a vaguely human shape. She knew from her research that he would get stronger through the years, strong enough to have his actual shape, but for the moment, he only had enough power for the whispy smoke and being able to toss things around.

And when he wasn’t mad at a person, make a very good cup of coffee.

Picking up the cup, she sipped before letting out a moan in appreciation. “Oh, I did need that, dear. Thank you. Did you like the pressed penny I left? I got it on the trip to Arizona. I visited one of the museum jails there,” Brinda said, smiling.

Leon tilted his head, a bare hint of smile coming through the smoke of his form. “I did. Thank you. It’s one that I don’t have,” he said, the two looking to the hanging flat pennies. “I’ll have my daughter punch a hole into it so that I can hang it, if you do not mind.”

“Not in the least. I didn’t have the five cents to include a hole in it, but that round section on top is for that as I found out,” Brinda said. “You go rest. You can torment the stupid bitch when she gets back,” she teased. The hint of a smile was back before he disappeared, most likely going to rest in his alter.

Shaking her head, she turned back to her work, taking a few minutes to send an e-mail to their department head about Maria. She warned her that if she didn’t do something about her that Leon would be doing so. And they couldn’t afford to get a new worker if he gave her a concussion again.

With her duty to warn done, she returned to her binder and started to shift through the paperwork with pen and highlighter, making notes as she highlighted various things. She smirked when the screech of anger and pain floated through the room as she was typing her changes into the main file. Maria, the woman who had dared to insult Leon and ghosts in general, went streaking past, a stain of coffee covering her front.

Brinda didn’t doubt that the coffee that had spilled on her had been steaming hot and Leon had waited for the right moment. She got a text from the head of the department saying that she was taking Maria to the local hospital to deal with the coffee burns. They weren’t horrible, mostly surface burns, but they still needed to be attended to.

Brinda snorted, put her phone onto the charging ring, and turned back to her work, humming softly to the song that played in the discreetly hidden headphones. She smirked at the chorus and snickered. “Time for an exorcism indeed. An exorcism of idiots,” she drawled. She sent Alex and Brian a text telling them what was going on in the office. Alex sent her an emot that was rolling it’s eyes, while Brian sent a recording of himself cackling and falling off a surface while Alex fondly called him an idiot in the background.