NoWere's Hiring

WOOMP

The door slammed behind Tanya so hard that Shane could see the hinges shake in the frame. As an empath, he could tell something was wrong.

“Did the interview not go well, Tanya?” Viola asked, without rising from her chair.

Tanya turned and with a glowering stare, shot daggers across the living room.

“No, the interview did NOT go well.”

She slung her tote bag from her shoulder and dropped it onto the couch.

“The interview went the OPPOSITE of well, actually. No, actually, the interview went very FUCKING poorly.” She said, yelling the words she felt most firmly.

Tanya plopped down beside her bag and started prying the very uncomfortable “kitten” heels off her feet. Her girlfriend Sophie had bought them for her at the beginning of the month. They fit beautifully then, but we were a week away from the Full Moon and it seemed liked everything was swelling. With a haphazard swing, she tossed them in the general direction of the shoe rack beside the door. Viola was very particular about the carpet, and had been eying her feet since she walked in.

“What happened?” Viola asked as she snagged her tea from the coffee table. It had long since gotten cold, but it needed to be drank none-the-less.

“WHAT DIDN’T HAPPEN?!”

She yanked out a pair of electric blue basketball shorts from her bag and waived them in the air.

“EVERYTHING that could go wrong, did go wrong. EVERYTHING.”

From the back of the hallway, Carmichael’s door swung open.

“For the love of GOD,” he yelled out from the absolute darkness of his room. “Can you please shut the hell up, I AM TRYING TO SLEEP.”

Tanya furiously wriggled her shorts on underneath her pleasant, though a bit out of date, black pencil skirt.

“OH, I’M SOOOOO SORRY. I FORGOT I HAVE A ROOMMATE THAT SLEEPS PAST 5:30 IN THE AFTERNOON.”

This only added more fuel to the fire. Carmichael yelled something back about being a vampire, and Tanya in turn shot back that that should mean he shouldn’t have to sleep at all then. Carmichael took it a step further by asking her if it was “her time of the month.” A statement that Tanya said was simultaneously “disrespectful,” as well as “sexist,” and “were-prejudicial.”

Shane and Viola sat there in annoyed silence while their friends screamed back and forth, having their own conversation through a series of looks and coordinated blinking. It went a little something like this,

Shane bit his lip: Why do they do this every time?

Viola responded by ever so slightly shrugging her shoulders: Your guess is as good as mine; they’re basically children.

Shane took a deep breath, flaring his nostrils and glancing toward the door: If they keep this up, we’re going to get a noise complaint.

Viola conceded that he had a point, by tilting her the right side of her face to the floor:

I’ll handle it.

She took the last gulp of her tea, and with a scrunch of her nose and a twist of her lip the apartment was silent.

“Speaking is a privilege and you both have lost it.”

Viola’s calm voice was the only thing that could be heard in the apartment. Tanya and Carmichael both continued to try and speak, but nothing would come out. Their mouths just kept opening and closing, like puppets without voices.

“I will give it back when you have both calmed down,” Viola paused, heavy in thought, “and once you’ve both given me a treat, as payment for being forced into the role of mother.”

They both stared at Viola, filled with stupefying rage. She just stared back with gay amusement.

“I would recommend something chocolate; do you want anything Shane?”

Shane shook his head, and leaned back in his recliner, “No, I’m good.”

Much to everyone’s surprise, it was Carmichael who moved first; not because he had accepted any wrongdoing, but because he knew that Viola was an immovable force. Tanya tried for about five or so minutes to break through the charm, but only succeeded in making herself hoarse without ever getting out a sound. Carmichael made Viola a cup of Swiss Miss. It was well received after the tepid tea. Tanya begrudgingly sacrificed one of her chilly Twix bars from the fridge.

“Tanya you’ve had a bad day, and Carmichael you are tired. However, neither I, nor Shane, nor our neighbors should be subjected to your screaming,” Viola said,” there are more constructive and efficient ways to communicate.”

She was right. At the moment though, that didn’t really matter to either of them. Tanya had had a very shitty day and was about to have to go to work where it would undoubtedly get worse. Carmichael was exhausted and being up before dusk made him anxious, black out curtains or no black out curtains. They wouldn’t argue with her, though. Viola had made her point and arguing with her would only end poorly for them. She set her hot chocolate down on the stand beside her and snapped once with each hand.

At first, they hesitated to say anything. It was Carmichael again who made the first move.

He announced: “I’m going back to bed,” and without another word, stalked back to his room and shut the door behind him. Tanya sat down on the couch beside her bag and stewed in her funk like a scolded child.

Shane tried to break the uneasy tension.

“Do you want to talk about your interview?” He asked.

She shot him a half-hearted glare. The wind had drained out of her sails, at least enough to discuss one of the most embarrassing things she had experienced since the entirety of her high school career.

“Yeah, we can talk about it.”

Viola took the first sip of her Swiss Miss and grimaced. Carmichael had used too much water and now it was bitter. You never can trust a vampire to make human food or drink. She abandoned it on the stand. Oh well, it was the thought that had counted.

“So, to start with, I left the shop late because some old bastard just could not decide between a Radiant and an Asscher cut.” Tanya said, rubbing the soles of her feet.

“I was supposed to leave at 3:30 but I didn’t end up leaving until closer to 4. So, I was basically running to my interview to try and make it on time. By the time I got there, it was less than five minutes before my timeslot, and I was covered in sweat.”

She lifted her arms to reveal two large yellowish stains spreading from under her armpits. They were immense.

“I smelled terrible and when I was walking into the office, I bumped into someone and sent them sprawling,” at this point she was on the verge of tears with her face buried in her hands.

Viola tried to ease Tanya’s nerves, “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad-”

Tanya groaned from behind her hand shield, “it is, V, it’s so much worse than you think.”

Shane had effectively decided that her story was more entertaining than the commercials on the television and paused his show.

“What happened, Tanya?”

She let her hands fall away from her face, and dangle between her knees. As she looked up at Viola, tears began to well in her eyes. Viola thought that her eyes almost looked heavy in her face.

“The person I bumped into was the hiring manager.”

Her head drooped again, and her voice echoed up from between her knees.

“I ran into them so hard, guys. They literally fell into the wall and since I was so sweaty…”

At this point in her story, Tanya’s voice started to crack and the tears started to fall.

“I left a fucking wet spot on their back.”

A deathly hush filled the apartment. Viola pursed her lips together so hard they rolled back between her teeth, Shane’s jaw dropped in (what he would later claim was sympathetic) awe, and Tanya just sat there with her muted shame. No one wanted to be the first to say anything. Shane and Viola both knew there was nothing that could fix the situation; it was one of the worst things they had ever heard.

From the back of the apartment, Carmichael’s solitary voice floated out and broke the silence.

“How big was the wet spot?”