“Faking a smile is so much easier than explaining why you are sad.”

Anonymous

“Acicentre, for all your insurance needs. How may I help you today?” Milly recited with false cheer for the twenty-third time that day—at least according to the productivity counter in the bottom corner of her ancient monitor. At the corner of her desk was Mrs. Anand’s paperwork, still untouched.

I’ll never get that paperwork finished by the end of the day. God, I hate this job.

“Yes, of course I can help you with that,” she said chipperly. “I’ll connect you to Ishaan. Please hold.”

With a practiced flick, she transferred the call to Ishaan and sighed, already exhausted.

“This job would be so much easier if no one bought this terrible insurance,” Xavier complained beside her. His feet were kicked up on his desk and he was busy playing his Nintendo Switch, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to make sure Mr. Fredrickson wasn’t watching. “Acicentre is the sketchy, back alley car dealership of insurance companies.”

“And Fredrickson is the scummy salesman,” she agreed. “He gave me all of Mrs. Anand’s paperwork this morning. And I’m not allowed to leave work until it’s done. I’ll be here until midnight again.”

“He gave you his secretary’s paperwork? The same secretary he’s having an affair with? I guess that’s one way to make sure her nights are free. If he tried that with me, I’d have slugged him.”

She chuckled at the thought. Xavier was the one positive in her life right now. He was a couple years older than her, and his chiseled features, short black hair, and piercing brown eyes gave him a handsomeness he was completely oblivious to.

As far as she could tell, he only had two interests in his life—working out and playing video games. The former accentuated his handsomeness, his rippling muscles and broad shoulders enough to turn the eyes of most women in the office; the latter kept anyone but Milly from spending more than a few minutes in his company.

Veronica, the part-time receptionist, popped by their cubicle with another stack of paperwork to be filled out.

“Here’s the next batch,” she said with a half-hidden yawn. She tried to hand the stack to Xavier, who looked up from his Switch and shook his head.

“It’s Milly’s turn,” he said, returning to his game.

Veronica plopped the pile on Milly’s desk, next to Mrs. Anand’s paperwork, and Milly gave a helpless little whimper. Veronica replied with a sympathetic smile.

She didn’t know much about Veronica, other than she was a single mother with two little girls. She worked three jobs so she could give her children the kind of life she never had. She always had dark bags under her eyes and seemed to exist in a perpetual state of exhaustion.

How different might my life have been if I’d had a mom who cared as much as Veronica?

As Veronica continued her rounds, handing a smaller stack of paperwork to Kenji and Amir across the aisle, she snagged the top form and started to fill it out.

“What were we talking about?” Xavier asked, distracted by his game.

“Fredrickson. It’ll be the third time this week he’s made me stay late. I’m so tired…” she started, but he interrupted her.

“No, I don’t mean that,” he said dismissively. “We were talking about something else.”

“Oh,” she said, quietly disappointed. “You were talking about a gun shooting game.”

He never asks about my life. I mean, that’s fine, I guess. What would I say? Hey Xavier, I read My Summer at Lac La Ronge for the thirty-second time last night and found some subtle foreshadowing in chapter seven. Isn’t that interesting? No, he'd just tune me out. After all, he doesn’t want to hear about my depressing life.

No one does.

“Right! A Gun in Time. So, the key to the ancient Rome map is to crouch behind the crates just outside the second spawn point,” he said, continuing his rant. “Everyone looks left first, which gives you a split second to shoot them in the head. The losers always accuse me of spawn camping, but it’s a legitimate strategy and it’s not my fault if they can’t adapt. That’s why I’m the twenty-third highest ranked player on the server. I’m just smarter than they are.”

“Spawn camping?” she asked, already feeling lost.

I thought he was talking about a gun shooting game? Why are people suddenly camping? Is it a hunting game?

In her six months at Acicentre, video games were all Xavier ever wanted to talk about. Each day was filled with a never-ending barrage of game minutia, strategy, mechanics, and explanations on how he manipulated each aspect of the game so he would be the highest ranked, or whatever the goal of the game was. Still, he was her friend, so she tried to be patient.

I mean…I think he’s my friend. Probably? It’s not like we’ve exchanged best-friend-forever pendants, or whatever it is friends do.

In reality, she wasn’t sure if Xavier was even a friend at all. Their conversations were one-sided, and he was blunt and overly critical. But it’d been a long time since she’d had a friend, and the concept was a flickering candle in a life smothered in darkness. So one day, after two months working side-by-side, she decided Xavier was a friend at work, and that was enough for now.

Xavier’s phone rang. He rolled his eyes and stopped his latest rant. She hadn’t been paying attention and had just been nodding her head, her mind elsewhere.

He was saying something about…fortnights…and tea bags? Is the game set in England? Maybe it has a queen.

His disappointment quickly turned to excitement as he saw the caller ID.

“It’s my guild master," he exclaimed, pausing his game and grabbing his notebook. "We’re raiding the golden dragon queen tonight and need to develop a battle strategy. Quick, stand outside our cubicle and keep an eye out for Fredrickson.”

She did as she was told. She didn't know what a guild was, but last week Xavier had started forwarding his personal calls to his work phone. Ironically, this had the effect of increasing his productivity tracker as his calls grew more frequent.

It meant she had to do the work he didn’t get finished—another reason her own paperwork kept piling up.

“It doesn’t matter,” she lied to herself. “A few late nights at work isn’t a big deal. It’s not like I have a life anyways. Besides, there are benefits to standing guard. Like the view.”

She stared across the chaotic cubicles towards the big bay windows that overlooked downtown. Kayaks floated along the lazy river that bisected the city, and a hot air balloon drifted in the sky. It was picturesque, and she lost herself in the fantasy of soaring above it all like a bird.

Stiff from the morning bent over her computer, she stretched her arms towards the ceiling and cracked her back. Her hoodie rode up her stomach, revealing her bellybutton. She quickly pulled it down in a panic, hoping no one had seen.

Unfortunately, someone had.

“Careful there, Mil-dead. Reach any higher and your belly won’t be the only thing you’ll be showing off,” Calista sang, her long crimson ponytail swaying as she strode down the aisle. Her high heels clicked on the floor as her short skirt clung to her hips. “Unless, of course, you’re trying to give me a sexy little show.”

Milly’s face burned red with embarrassment as Calista laughed. She pulled the bottom of her hoodie down as far as it would go and kept her head low, not wanting to attract more attention.

It didn’t work.

Calista leaned against Milly’s cubicle and scanned her from head to toe. She hooked a finger in the pocket of the hoodie and Milly flinched.

“You dress like a hobo. Or, like, a half-assed goth girl. Do you know that?” she observed, wiping her fingers on her skirt as if to rid herself of the hoodie’s residue. “I know you can do better than…whatever this is.”

She kept her eyes fixed on the carpet, silently wishing she would go away.

“Why don’t you fuck off, Calista?” Xavier spat angrily from their cubicle. “Your voice is like sandpaper scraping away my brain. My entire guild is complaining about the harpy shrieking in the background.”

“My voice is angelic, and you are an absolute tool,” Calista hissed back, losing her composure in Xavier’s presence. “Let me guess? You’ve suckered Mil-dead here into doing all your work for you? You’re a shitty person, Xavier. You were shitty back in high school too. And Milly…some advice?”

With an angry huff, Calista grabbed half of Milly’s paperwork and threw it onto Xavier’s desk. “Grow a damn spine!”

She spun towards the photocopier and marched away, colliding with Milly’s shoulder on the way by. She stammered a meek apology and ducked back into the cubicle.

“God, I hate her. Skank used to bully me in high school,” Xavier said, returning his share of the paperwork to Milly’s desk. “A second-string cheerleader who wanted to be queen bee. Her shitty personality was enough to make high school hell for those of us in her way. And she hasn’t changed much. If she thinks you’re weak, she’ll target you. She’ll tear away everything you love. And she won’t stop until she’s driven you under her heel.”

“If…I’m weak??” she asked softly, rubbing her shoulder where Calista slammed into her.

“Yeah, she loves picking on weak people. Probably why she targeted you.”

His casual statement was like a kick to her stomach.

She collapsed at her desk. Her elbow knocked over the pile of paperwork and spilled it across the floor. She felt the weight of the world press down upon her as the paperwork scattered.

It’s too much. I can’t handle it! I’m totally overwhelmed right now.

Tears formed in her eyes as she picked up the papers and silently sobbed, while Xavier recounted his various min-max strategies, oblivious to her pain.

***

Milly didn’t leave Acicentre until just before midnight, barely catching the last bus of the night. She spent the two-hour ride home staring out the window as the neon lights of the city passed her by. My Summer at Lac La Ronge lay at the bottom of her bag, the fantasies within forgotten.

Another day alive and another day alone. Another day behind me in the unrelenting march towards oblivion.

“God Milly, stop being so melodramatic,” she said, scolding her reflection in the glass. “It could be worse. You’ve lived through worse.”

Yes, but I had hopes and dreams back then. Dreams of a family to call my own and a job that helps people. Now? I’m living in a void, without purpose. Just waiting for it all to end.

The bus arrived outside her apartment, and she made her way upstairs, avoiding the drunk man in the stairwell. She crawled straight into bed and pulled her thin blanket up to her chin.

In the brief moment before she collapsed from exhaustion, she wondered when tomorrow would finally be different than today—and when she would finally be allowed to join the world that had left her behind.

***

In the world of the gods – far beyond Milly’s dreams – the stolen keys jangled upon the hip of the Goddess of Foresight and Prophecy as she and the God of Knowledge fled through the labyrinthian hallways of Godhome. The keys were older than the memories of the gods, forged from creation itself.

“We’re almost there, Thoth,” Oracle promised, gasping for breath. Her white dress, embroidered with celestial sun and stars, flowed around her slender frame as her legs carried her as fast as they were able. “Just a little further.”

“He must know by now what we intend, Oracle,” chirped the knowledge god, his ibis eyes scanning the halls ahead. “We must hurry. We…”

They rounded a corner, and Thoth stumbled as they came across Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest, propped up against a white marble pillar.

Her lifeless eyes open and clouded with madness.

The Non-Canonical Aftermath:

"Author, I'd like to make a creative observation," Milly said as she read the chapter.

"What is it, Milly?"

"Workplace bullying is a serious matter that would be immediately cleared up by management. I insist you retcon this glaring plot hole in a future chapter."

"You've…never actually worked at a call centre, have you?"

"Well, I'm a creation of your imagination, so that gap seems like it’s your fault."

"Sigh...this is going to be a long journey together..."

Character Art by Ayammbetutu (vgen.co/ayammbetutu)