Okay, so here is the first of the stories written with the 18 words(bolded in the text) some of you folks provided.I used Karin's words in this one.I didn't do a whole lot of editing on this one, I just kinda let it flow. I'll be curious what you think.
One Last Memo
“Shall I close my mouth? Is the glare off my teeth blinding you?” Simon asked and chuckled.
“No, but your breath is curling my hair! Criminy, what did you eat for lunch? Fish wrapped in dogshit and dipped in sewage?” Gina answered. It was shameless that way we flirted. Gina was the receptionist at the pebble refinery where Simon worked. She was a good egg, that Gina. When he first started working there, Simon thought she might be a misanthrope, but he was way off on that judgment. And he was glad that his miscalculation of her attitude had been so astronomical. She was one of the reasons Simon still enjoyed driving down that long and winding road to that grubby little office building, and taking that long elevator ride to the 18th floor.
That’s right, recently Simon have been thinking about turning over a new leaf, and getting out of the pebble refining business altogether. Shocking, huh? Because business is vigorous right now, but somehow the joy is gone, that visceral reaction he craved had just disappeared. And if he was not passionate about pebble refining, then nobody wins, you know? Sure you do.
He walked down the hallway to my office. He paused as he unlocked the door, did he really have the fortitude to do this anymore? I mean, pebble refining is a young man’s game, and while Simon wasn’t quite dead yet, he was no spring chicken anymore, either. He pushed the door to his office open, and caught his reflection in the mirror on the wall. His brown curly hair was receding ever so slightly, and the bags under his eyes didn’t go away with a good night’s sleep any longer.
He sat down at his desk and turned on his computer. He hoped we would not see another e-mail from that jackass McNulty. Good lord, was that man opaque. He head was where ideas went to die. He was one of the main reasons that Simon had contemplated taking the leap.
It wasn’t just that McNulty was absent inspiration, it was like he was literally some sort of human black hole. His mere presence in a room actually had the power to negate intelligence. It was like negativity and stupidity formed a bisect in his soul.
How could that man rob the joy out of pebble refining? Ever since he had inherited the company from his father, he took a prolific pebble refining workforce and ground the spirit out of it. And unfortunately, he used Simon as his conduit. As the office manager, it was Simon’s job to translate the younger McNulty’s stupidity into soul crushing memos. And it ate away at Simon.
Simon felt a duty to the elder McNulty, though. He had promised his boss that he would look after the company and his son, and he felt like he had failed at both tasks. He felt he needed to try and write the wrongs, but it was taking its toll, that’s for sure. He was no longer sure how much longer he could do it.
Actually, that was not true. He knew exactly how much longer he could do it. He took a piece of paper out of his desk and quickly wrote something down on it and placed it in his outbox. Then he stood up, walked across his office, opened the window, and jumped.
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