The Filing Clerk From Hell

Elaine had done her very best. She always did try hard. To not get on the wrong side of people, to understand them and to be understood. She usually counted to 10 if someone upset her. Mostly this worked.

SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG.

She didn’t really know what had gone wrong this time... all she knew was that she had a large carved jade shark in her hands... and it was dripping with what appeared to be blood. Shards of glass surrounded her. She wasn’t sure where she was actually... in some kind of corridor,...’ she slumped there. And tried desperately to piece together what was happening. What had happened.

TRAPPED

The corridor wasn’t actually a corridor .. it was a stairwell. A heavy door that she could not open barred her way. Not that she tried very hard to get past the door . She felt shaky and weak. She shifted her position .. the glass crunched beneath her feet… where the hell had it come from? . She looked around her confusion mounting even as she could feel herself returning to some sort of clarity. Looking up she saw it. A curved glass ceiling above her appeared to be the source of the glass.

Surely she hadn’t done that? If she’d fallen through there.. she’d be dead. Wait, was she dead? She felt so groggy. She knew she’d been drinking but this spacey feeling coupled with the inability to recall a damn thing was at a frightening next level.

FEAR

She glanced down at the heavy red speckled ornament in her hand… On God, she hadn't hurt someone? She was tiny... a puff of wind would blow her away and she still bought clothes from the kid’s department, She felt achy and there was a ringing in her ears.

Suddenly she was gripped by a wave of nausea, she’d noticed a collection of mops and pails in an alcove by the heavy door.. she bolted over there just in time to empty her stomach contents into a tin pail with a tinny splash.. and again. She had not drunk that much.. at least she didn’t think she had.

Where and why had she been drinking anyway?

Trembling .. Elaine rested her back against the door… “think!” She told herself. She felt her phone press against her hip. She dragged it out of her pocket. Yes! There was plenty of battery power… but no, there was no signal.

CLUES

She decided to look at the only thing her phone would allow at the moment, much though she wanted to ring..ANYONE, or maybe triple zero.

The first photo she looked at appeared to be of someone’s elbow, but then she saw it… a sharp juddering breath escaped her.

SHE MIGHT HAVE KNOWN

She began to piece things together.

The smug expression on the face of her worst enemy was not a surprise to her.

It was who she was with. That was the shock.

She had always felt in her waters (as her mother used to say) that Clarissa held a candle for him.

But to see it illustrated in a photograph was a gut churning, painful and quite simply cruel wake up call.

Clarissa coyly but firmly held in her embrace, Dean, Elaine’s husband.

If she had seen this before, or as it actually unfolded in real life, it would certainly go some way to explaining why she had spun out. She had never felt good enough and it wouldn’t be the first time that a male she had trusted had strung her along until someone “better” appeared. Yes! She could well have lost it! However, she was still unable to fully access her memories.

She was so discombobulated. apparently trapped behind an extremely heavy door, inside what? A shopping centre?

She continued to scroll through the photographs. Wincing at that one of those two together…

A FUN NIGHT

So, a party .. well as she realised she knew many of the faces appearing in the photos, it was the office party. But where … and how did she end up here.. surrounded by broken glass and trapped?

Then there was the statue of a shark, pretty, but a hefty weight. She’d been trying to ignore it, because if was truly the most terrifying of all the loose ends.

She swiped a finger over its surface, lifted towards her nose and lips… was this blood, whose was it?

A vague fruity smell emanated from her fingertips… and photo number 7 gave her her biggest clue,

The massive punch bowl.

THE PUNCH

She had a picture in her mind of a massive punch bowl. People swarming around it, their actions becoming more exaggerated and ridiculous as the night wore on….

It had been spiked. That realisation was the only thing that made sense.

As whatever it was had been in her system continued to decline.. she began to recollect more.

A VENUE

The Grange Mall was a massive shopping and entertainment complex the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere. Above the shops there were a variety of clubs and venues…

This was where she was… but it still didn’t explain how she ended up in a deserted corridor, in the basement of the building.

As Elaine continued to scroll through her photos ( HER photos, did she actually take these…?) desperately looking for clues, a massive wail issued from behind the locked door. The sound was both welcome but worrying … what if she couldn’t make herself heard? She identified a floor polisher as the culprit.

HELP!!

Bawling at the top of her lungs, she hoped she could be heard. She knew she couldn’t get out by herself.

She was in luck. The operator of the polisher stopped the machine. She didn’t stop hollering.

A stocky man with a resigned expression pulled the door open.

“You ok love?” He smiled thinly. “You missed the crazy goings on out here at Club X. Someone threw a statue into the punch bowl. Then some crazy bitch .. oh, excuse my language miss, took the whole kit and kaboodle, pushed the lot off the balcony.. apparently she didn’t appreciate being called a cheating husband stealer.”

SAFETY

Who ever called her that took to their heels after grabbing the statue as weapon. I’d guess…I don’t blame them mind you. That woman was completely nuts.. I’d say she was dangerous. I was on the second floor I could hear everything.

“That Accountants firm, (our firm, Elaine thought, Dean and she were business partners) well they will be in deep trouble, well someone will be …they found that the punch wasn’t just red wine and fruit.. “

Clarissa. The difficult office junior Dean had hired.

Elaine might have known. Why she thought she could be a friend to such a woman, she, Elaine, was too accommodating and cared too much. Well, this was her wake up call to stop that crap.

Clarissa might not make a great friend, she definitely would not, but as the fog in Elaine’s brain continued to lift, she realised she had shown up some issues with her marriage and business that needed her attention.

First order of business would be checking the hiring practices of their firm. A filing clerk should not be able to wreak such havoc.

Then her marriage. That might take some time, but her head was out of the sand now.

Pity it took the temporary belief that she might have murdered someone to wake her up.