Focus Emmaline, my grandma whispered. Or at least she would have if she were still alive. Yet somehow I still hear her in my head. Feel her sunny warmth on my back. Smell her lavender perfume as if she was just in the room. Am I crazy? Probably. Do I admit my conversations with my no longer existing relative? Fuck no.
It’s been 3 years and 5 months since I last saw her, moments before she was gone. Those moments still haunt me. Witnessing the life evaporating from her weak childlike body changed me. Like a door opened in the back of my mind connecting me to whatever came “next”. Heaven?Valhalla?Nirvana?I call it the after land. Wherever she is, she is still looking out for me like she has been all of my life since my parents died. Strange to think that my Grandma can interject anytime she wants yet I haven’t heard from my parents since the day of the car accident that took them from me 20 years ago. Vanished. Eventually my memories of them vanished as well.
I could interpret this spiritual mumbo-jumbo as insanity, but some deep seeded feeling or intuition is urging me that it is real. It has to be.
“Emmaline?”This time it was not my granny ghost. Somewhere lost in quizzical thoughts I forgot that I was in the middle of a post season recap meeting. I blinked twice, bringing myself back to the present and notice my boss, Gwen, staring at me with a disapproving look from behind her fashionable cat eye glasses.
“uh-ya yes! Here” Emmaline could feel the heat of embarrassment ignite in my pale ivory cheeks.
“Yes… I see that you are. Do you have access to the sales promotion reports from last month?” Of course the one time she acknowledges me in this entire meeting is to ask for something that I did not have prepared. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job. I am in purchasing for a large women’s fashion apparel company in Calgary, Alberta. So basically, I shop for a living. Or at least I like to pretend I do. I am the person who runs reports, fixes problems, deals with orders and runs around like a chicken with its head cut off.
“I, uh, couldn’t print it off due to our system failure this morning..” An awkward silence followed.
“Well that won’t do us a whole lot of good now will it? Jacob, please pull up the report on the projector for all of us to see” Gwen requested with unnerving annoyance.
“No problem!” The always chipper Jacob replied while giving me a quick glance of pity. ‘Thanks Jacob. You little know-it-all geek’. I thought to myself while pretending to look at something else on my laptop.
Breathe, Emmaline. Let it go and carry on. Also, stop biting your nails! I swiftly removed my thumb nail from my mouth and sat up straighter. Granny always knew how to snap me out of my self-pitying funk.
“Does anyone have an idea why our sales didn’t take off during our big sale in week 40?” Gwen asked while scanning over the report. I could see the wheels of frustration turning in her head. She was quite a pretty woman. Tall, long dark hair, physically fit. She was relentless in the boardroom, always working late hours to ensure her selections and business was running smoothly. Constantly brainstorming better ways to run her business, she became a force to be reckoned with in the industry. I wanted to be her from my very first day working at Freedom Fashions head office. Powerful and in charge. She embodied exactly what I thought my future looked like. Until I found out that she had 3 divorces on her record. From how my dating life has been so far in my 23 years of life I realized that I was grooming myself to be a mini-Gwen.
“I might have an idea” I hesitantly interjected.
Go on honey, be brave.
“Yes?” Gwen looked at me with what seemed to be either a surprised or amused look on her face. With her, it is hard to tell. I nervously twirled a strand of my long ice blonde hair around my finger and carried on.
“Well I was doing a little research comparing our promotions plan to that of our biggest competitor. And it kind of seems as though they are piggy-backing our promotional offers” I pulled out a line chart I created that illustrated how our competitor, “Ella’s Elegance” started their sales the day after we launched ours. “Not only have they used the same sales message and dates, they are also offering a deeper discount, personally if I had to choose as a customer, I would go to Ella’s too…”
“That’s impossible” Gwen muttered. “There is no way they could have their sale signs and computer systems ready for a sale in 1 day.” A look of clarity quickly masked by fury came across her face.
“Oh –I didn’t think that deep into it” I stated, although secretly I had. I put two and two together weeks ago when I recognized a pattern. I had hoped that Gwen would have noticed as well. Only three people on our team had access to the promotional marketing plan and that was Gwen, Jacob, and I. I sure as hell didn’t leak it. That’s when I started thinking. Why would Jacob purposely leak information to our biggest competitor? He had only been with the company for 5 months! I was coming up to my second year work anniversary in a few weeks at the end of November; my loyalty was unwavering no matter how much Gwen stressed me out. Technically I had seniority over him and if I were in his position, I would be doing everything I could to prove myself. A cloud of suspicion churned inside of me like a swarm of grey gathering for a storm. I looked into Jacob’s background on Facebook and while clicking through his tagged photos I found one of him last summer drinking a beer with the daughter or Ella’s Elegance, Ella. I found it hugely ironic that the company decided to put the word “elegance” next to her name. Her bikini barely covered her nipples! Anyways, without evidence, I only had a strong gut feeling. To which my grandmother conceded in my mind with: What a little prick!
That is when I came to my next plan of action. Lay the puzzle pieces out in front of Gwen and let her piece them together. Mission accomplished.
“Thanks for your initiative, Emmaline. I will look into it.” I bet you will.
Feeling like a vigilante saving our company from the death grip of a villain, I gathered my laptop and notes and headed back to my cubicle. I could hear Gwen call Jacob into her office as I was shuffling my papers trying to look busy. I eavesdropped on Gwen’s sharp accusatory tone. Poor little Jacob. Teacher’s pet is getting put back in a cage I thought. After a few moments their voices became very hushed. Twenty minutes later Jacob exited her office and walked straight past my desk with a smug look on his face. I never understood why guys who knew very well that they couldn’t grow facial hair, tried. Jacob’s greasy mustache was barely visible, but visible enough to give me the creeps. I can’t believe I thought this guy was just a whimpering nerd. Replace the word whimpering with diabolical and that describes Jacob bang on. Oh well, he won’t be here for much longer. I have never set out to purposely have someone fired before, but there was something about what he was doing that just wasn’t right and needed to be stopped.
“Emmaline, I need to speak with you in my office, now” Gwen said as she popped her head out of her corner office.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for reading the first excerpt of "The Beast Within"! Check in next Thursday to find out what happens next, Emmaline is just full of surprises.
Please leave comments, I would love to hear from you!
xx
MM
No comments:
Post a Comment