UNFINISHED BUSINESS
By Royce Sykes
copyright 2001

He lays me onto a pile of money bags in the basement vault. My flesh chills as he opens my blouse. I wonder how I'll ever finish the Timmison analysis this afternoon.

Maybe I should ask for an extension to the short schedule I'm supposed to hold. Remembering my reputation for never meeting deadlines stirs that familiar tightness in my belly. I rub at the knot there, feeling the tension fade just as my career with First National Bank and Trust seems to be fading. After three years here, I feel weighed down like his hands upon my breast, painfully squeezed, crushed.

His sucks my nipple. I realize how drained of creativity and energy I feel. Doing the same sort of financial analyses for an endless stream of small businesses seems to trail down into futility, taking small nips out of the very center of my being along the way. I'm tired, if restless and should admit I know when I've been licked.

A sudden warmth and excitement touches me. I press my thighs together to draw his head closer to my swelling pussy. I know now I must leave First National and find a new job.

Yes, I'll find something new, something better than this same routine that almost always leaves me frustrated, I resolve, as he pries apart my thighs. The world is wide open to all sorts of possibilities, I tell myself as I draw him into me. I am filled with a sense of wonder at my own audacity in even considering leaving this, my first employer since college. But, if I pump myself up and really push, I know I can find something better.

His groans echo my inner ache at thoughts of starting the whole job search process once again. Research, resumes, phone calls, applications, follow ups, interviews, more follow ups, on and on like a rhythm without end. But I know if I work the system like I work my inner muscles over the throbbing presence within me, I will be able to not only find opportunities, but milk them for all they're worth.

There's no question in my mind. I've to get out now, make my escape. I'm choking in the corporate hands of First National. Yeah, he says I'll like it, but it isn't his lungs heaving desperately for air at the thought of leaving a comfortable, if boring, job for whatever might be better out there in the marketplace.

I grip his wrists at my throat as darkness threatens to engulf me. As from a distance yet growing louder, I hear the awful hammering of my life as it seeks to flee my claustrophobic cubicle, as anonymous as all the rest, yet whose walls seem draw closer, ever closer to suffocating me in the mundane.

I will never give it up, no matter how strongly he urges me, no matter how tightly I feel crushed. I will fight. I can break the stranglehold on my life. Excitement rises within as I realize I can kick and scream and make them notice me. I can demand a halt to the corporate throttling of my career, my hopes, my dreams, my very life itself.

Yes. Yes. Yesyesyesyes! I can do it! I can finish the Timmison analysis and add my own twist to it. I can get their attention.

Insight explodes within me. I will buck the system as hard as my pelvis even now crashes again and again into him. I will demand they listen to me, not with whispered pleas but shouts, even screams. My body shudders at this delicious thought of clawing my way up the corporate ladder, away from the trap of my current life. Visions of what can be burst upon me through which sparkle so many odd bits of memory, I just give them all up and drift off to dream of the new direction my future will take...

I wake, finally, yet remain awhile in the vault, unaccountably reluctant to leave.

This is no way for a future Bank Officer of First National to act, I chide myself and straighten up before leaving the vault. I'm alone, of course, for that's our arrangement. He always leaves first.

The main lobby seems strangely quiet this mid-afternoon. Maybe I can cover my late return from lunch by saying I was talking to the boss. And I do want to talk to him. Seriously talk with him, not just exchange empty whispered endearments in the dark.

What few employees I meet will not look at me as I walk through the lobby. No one responds to my greetings, or else they stare right through me. To hell with them if they think they know what is going on. I am heading onward and upward and anyone who slights me now will have to deal with me later, when they can't touch me.

I drift upstairs to the President's office. I'm about to knock on the half opened door when I hear voices. I peek inside to see Don, crying of all things. Ed the security guard, a couple of men in suits I don't recognize, and a uniformed police officer surround him.

Have we been robbed, I wonder and regret missing the excitement. If so, it explains the lack of customers and even employees in, but not the ambulance on the street below that I glimpse through a window. Maybe someone has been shot, I think, and decide to listen in, find out what has happened.

Everyone in Don's office is so intent on what he's saying, they don't even notice me standing in the office. Don just sits there, tears falling, staring at his hands like they are two unfamiliar beasts. For some reason, seeing those hands, the fingers slightly curled, I find myself shivering as if standing naked in a winter wind.

"I swear to God, I don't know what happened. Things just got out of control...I never meant to hurt anyone..."

His words bother me. I walk downstairs and to my desk, determined to finish the Timmison analysis. But, now, as I sit at my terminal, the stupid computer won't respond. I've tried every key, every combination of keys I can think of; it's as if I'm not even touching them. All the monitor shows is that stupid screen saver of people parading under a marquee sign blinking, "First National...Where People Come To Bank And Stay To Save..."

To hell with it. I've got a life to get on with and no stupid computer is going to get in my way. I'll just wait here until the problem is fixed. Surely Data Processing knows about it already, even if I can't send them the required email.

I'm going to finish this damn Timmison analysis, despite an inner voice urging me that it's time to leave this place. I'm going to stay right here and finish it, even if it takes me an eternity.

© 2001 by Royce Sykes

about the author: Royce lives, writes and plays by his own rules in the Central West End of St. Louis, Missouri (USA). His words have appeared in Sexy Thinking, Touch, Fireside, Literotica, Amarillo Bay, 3rd Muse, Unlikely Stories, Wired Hearts, Countless Horizons, Another Night And Day Alliance, Ygdrasil, 2River View, Poetry Magazine, Snakeskin, Switched On Gutenberg and Liberty Grove. Website: Sojourner Wolf's Cyber Den at http://www.geocities.com/sojournerwolf/index.html Email: waya@swbell.net