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When Bradley Cranston got the message to come upstairs to the corner office, his first move was to call his wife. It was unlike her not to answer at eleven in the morning like that, but he was too excited to think about it long.
“Babe, I’m about to get that promotion we’ve been dreaming about. That’s right, you me, ten days in Aruba! Just as soon as this goes through, I’m booking the flights,” Bradley said into the phone. “I love you babe, and I told you I could do…”
“This user's voice message box is now full, goodbye,” said a scarily humanlike robot on the other end of the line, the connection went dead.
Bradley looked at the device in momentary disgust, then got up from his chair and walked confidently to the men’s room. He checked his hair, perfect, his teeth, no breakfast left behind, and finally, because he was a nervous sweater, he sniffed his pits, just as Ronald from accounting came out of the stall.
“How’s it smelling, Bradley, boy? Been upstairs today? I hear it’s a blood bath,” Ronald said.
“What? What do you mean?” Bradley asked, his reflection paled.
“Dude, I’m sure you’ll be fine, but Axelman got the axe, along with Hot Jennifer and half the marketing department,” Ronald laughed. “Might be time for me to take my seat in the family accouning firm, ditch this place, cash in my stock options and work three months out of the year doing corporate taxes.”
“Shit.” was all Bradley could think to say.
“Brad, buddy, you okay? Just pull the ripcord on your golden parachute, I know Daddy wouldn’t let you go without a big severance… package,” Ronald said, thrusting his hips vulgarly as he laughed.
“Um, no, heh, I’m sure not, but I don’t have profit sharing or stock options, so….Probably just making room for me in the corner office,” Bradley said, aiming for confidence, but coming off somewhere between unease and sheer terror.
“Oh man, you didn’t prepare?”
“Well, sure, I’ve got a few, uh… investments,” Bradley said, forcing himself to sound nonchalant and this time succeeding.
“Yeah you do, you sly dog! What is it? Inside trades on blue chip stock?” Ronald Asked.
Bradley faltered.
“Savings bonds, real estate? Come on, it’s your boy, Ronnie, what are you feathering your mattress with, big dog?”
Bradley’s voice came out as a strangled whisper. Ronald looked at him quizzically.
“What was that? It sounded like you said, wait a second, you didn’t go in on that crypto bullshit Gene in shipping was into, did you?” Ronald asked.
“Um, yeah, a little, but…” Bradley was wheezing now. It felt like an elevator was descending in his mind, taking his consciousness with it. If he couldn’t get off, he’d be in a full blown panic attack in seconds.
“Oh man, well good thing you’re wife’s daddy is the boss,” Ronald said. “Otherwise,” he ran a finger across his throat. “That coin went belly up two months ago.”
Bradley let out what he meant to be a chuckle, but sounded more like a tiny gerbil’s cry for help. He turned and left the men’s room, barreling straight for the elevator. He pulled the gold key card out of his lanyard, prepared to insert it for access to the executive level. The doors of the elevator opened silently, two hulking figures took up most of the back half. They wore black suits, ear pieces, and even indoors, dark mirrored sunglasses. The hit squad, so called because they only showed up when someone who’d lost their position needed escorting off the premises. Bradley was beginning to have a strong feeling they were there for him.
As Bradley got on, then reached for the card key slot, the one on his right, grasped his wrist in a grip that made him feel as if the iron shackles had already been applied.
“That won’t be necessary Mr. Cranston,” an impossibly deep voice almost purred out of the man’s mouth, which didn’t seem to have moved. “I’ll take that, you won’t need it where we’re going,” the looming shadow growled, slipping the card from his fingers and releasing his wrist, which throbbed as the blood rushed back into his hand. They were there for him. His mind raced, what could be going on. Surely he wasn’t getting fired? His father in law had promised Sylvia that big things were in store for him, he’d overheard it himself.
“Don’t worry,” he’d said. “Bradley will get what’s coming to him soon enough.”
An instant later, an index finger the size of a baseball bat punched the glowing “P” on the control board, and Bradley felt the familiar sinking feeling elevators this fast always gave him when going down. The parking garage? This might be worse than he feared.
As the doors opened, Thing 1, as he’d begun to think of the man on his right, lightly rested a hand on Bradley’s shoulder. He felt like he was in the grip of some massive, velvet lined crane. The man on his left walked ahead to his car, then stopped and turned.
“Your keys Mr. Cranston,” said Thing 2.
“What? You must be joking,” Bradley said.
“Do I look like I spend a lot of time at Open Mic nights?” The man asked.
“Sorry?”
The man sighed, “You know, comedy clubs, do I look like some kind of amateur comedian?”
Bradley studied the man for a half second, before realizing it was a rhetorical question, “Uh, no, sir, you do not. Maybe an Open Mic at a gym somewhere?”
Thing 1 chuckled.
Thing 2 scowled, “What the hell? You don’t laugh at my joke, but now…”
“What? His was funny, I’m always telling you, you shouldn’t joke, you’re just not funny.” Said thing 1.
Thing 2 held out his hand, and Bradley dug into his pocket and produced a key fob.
“Thank you,” the man said.
Bradley just looked at him.
“You’re dismissed,” Thing 1 told him.
“So, what, they’re taking my company car? Couldn’t they just have said that? Do you know who I am? My wife will not be happy when she hears about…”
The elevator dinged behind him. He turned to see his wife, Sylvia, sweeping out of the elevator, on the arm of a well muscled and younger, Antonio Banderez lookalike. To say Sylvia was fashionable would be a complete understatement. She looked like a cover model for Trophy Wives monthly, today, it was all black and gold, down to the Blancos, and the Gucci sunglasses perched at the end of her nose.
“Babe, I’m so glad you’re here. Raul? What are you doing here? What’s our gardener doing here? Babe, these guys were incredibly hostile, and now they’ve taken my car, office and house keys,” Bradley said.
“Good,” Sylvia smiled.
Thing 2 tossed Bradley’s keys to Raul. He unlocked the car with a chirp from the key fob, and walked to the passenger side, where he opened the door and waited for Sylvia.
“Oh, and boys, get his company credit cards,” Sylvia said.
“What is going on here? Has your father gone nuts?” Bradley asked.
“Oh, did no one tell you Bradley? Daddy’s dead. I’m the boss now,” Sylvia said.
Bradley’s confusion deepened. Was she pranking him somehow, was there a bigger better car waiting for him behind this one. Had the corner office suddenly become his, because Sylvia certainly had no interest in the company, never had. And how had her father died? While Bradley swam through a pool of questions, Raul backed the car out of it’s space so that the passenger door was directly in front of Bradley.
As the window slid down, a black gloved middle finger came out of it, “You’re fired.” Sylvia said quietly, as she turned her hand over and dropped the only gift she’d ever allowed Bradley to buy her, a 9 carat canary diamond in a custom band, onto the floor of the parking garage.
“What?” Bradley stammered.
“And obviously, I’m leaving you, darling,” Sylvia said.
“For Raul? You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Don’t make me laugh, Bradley, for Consuela, the maid, surely you noticed?” Sylvia said.
“I don’t get it,” Bradley told her.
“Simple, dear, I don’t like Dicks anymore,” she said, as the car screeched out of the garage, clipping the edge of the ring as it went, sending it rolling across the floor. Bradley watched the black Jaguar as it exited the building, and turned back just in time to see the $50,000.00 ring drop into a square grate, that dropped another fifteen feet underground into the storm sewer where it would now belong to the lucky rat that managed to find it.
Bradley was standing over the grate staring down to the faint glimmer of passing water underneath when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked up to see a ragged man, in a long robe. A scraggly silver beard came down to the middle of his chest, and he held out his left hand, with a manila envelope.
“Is that for me?” Bradley asked.
The man nodded eagerly, shoving the packet toward Bradley’s chest. He took it.
“Urgent: Open Immediately,” a bright red stamp on the envelope’s face read. At the top, in red sharpie, he read his name, Bradley Sturgis Cranston.
“What is..” he looked up to find himself alone in the parking garage. He swiveled around,but the robed man was nowhere to be found.