Month Long Special - Writing Challenge #10

Today we are looking at Day Four of the Writing Prompts Boot Camp from Reader's Digest. (Again you can find that here.) Today's theme was Sent to the Wrong Printer. As always there was a little more to the prompt that you can read on their website. Most if not all of these prompts are writing in the first person. I don't write like that for the most part so I write them in the third. Whatever you are more comfortable with is perfectly fine.

NOTE: As the author I can tell you first hand that this story is NOT one of manipulation or a "me too" type story. I can also say that the ending of this exercise may be a trigger for some people. So please know that this is a fake story, with fake people. No one was hurt in anyway and though it is suggesting malice, no hard or manipulation will take place (should the author ever finish the story).

Amanda Cullen had just started her job as a secretary in one of the only multi-million dollar companies in the city and she was still getting used to the way the systems worked. Everyone was very accommodating and she was learning quickly but still she made mistakes. One of the reasons she loved her new job some much though was all the perks it came with. The company had given her a new laptop, a new phone and they let her use it for business and pleasure as long as the expenses weren’t too extravagant. Which was a blessing. She had been unemployed for a while and it had taken a huge chunk of her savings just to keep up with the basic bills she had. If she was being honest, her savings has come and gone and she had to borrow money from a couple of places, all of which she was not looking forward to having to pay off later. But she was working now and that’s all that mattered.

One night as she worked into the late hours, Amanda got an email about one of her loans being due. She had been paying it off little by little but with all the money she owed she could only give a little to each one. She hit print on the email and sighed. Where in the world was she going to get the money she needed for that bill, and after that one there were four more just like it.

As she made her way to the closest printer, Amanda was confused. The printer was dark and it looked like it wasn’t even online. She walked to the other public printer and checked it but it wasn’t printing either. She returned to her desk confused, and when she saw that her document had finished printing she was even more confused. Where did it go? She checked where the print out had gone by trying to print something else. Only once she read the print screen over did she realize where it had gone.

“Shit.” The only other printer left on in the office was her bosses. He was the last person in the office besides her and her email had gone straight to him. Amanda took a deep breath and walked to his office. She raised her hand a few times and chickened out before knocking.

“You can come in,” he chuckled after the third time. He could see her shadow in the frosted door. And since he had her freshly printed bill in his hand, he knew she would be coming to him sooner or later. “I think we have a few things to discuss.”

He could tell she was freaking out. She had this cute little look to her and it seemed like she was seconds away from biting on her own lip. “I am so sorry, Sir. I really should have paid more attention to where it was going, I didn’t expect all the printers to be off for the night. . .” She continued to ramble on and on and he just let her go.

Erick Olivier was a prominent business man and he had done pretty well for himself. But even with all the success he had in his business life, he lacked any sort of social or personal life. Which meant lucky for him, he was in his office when Amanda Cullen tried to print out her e-bill. As she continued to ramble, Erick stopped paying attention. He knew about the debt she had taken on while unemployed. It was part of the background check he had done before hiring her.

“Here,” he smiled as he handed her a cheque.

“Excuse me,” she stared blankly at him, unsure what was going on.

“I don’t think you have twelve hundred dollars to pay off this debt do you?” Again, he already knew the answer. But he knew much more than that too. He knew that twelve hundred dollars was just the beginning. He also knew what she used her company laptop for but he would use that to his advantage another day. For now, twelve hundred dollars would buy them both sometime.