Word of the Day octothorpe A chapter from my NaNoWriMo project. Weeeeeee!!!! Two weeks after the tumult, things had gotten mostly back to normal at the office. Mercy was at her desk filing all the faxes and memos sent to and from the whole sales department. She was always amazed at the amount of paper the sales department used that was not for contracts but for communication, mainly between departments. Every day when she came in, there was a stack waiting to be filed from the day before. ‘Absolutely ridiculous,’ she said to herself as she began. Mercy found this to be the most tedious, boring part of her job as senior secretary to the sales department. Answering phones was better, typing out letter was better, taking notes at meeting was even better than all the mindless filing. The only good thing was that she could sit in her chair and roll from cabinet to cabinet. About halfway through the stack of papers in her lap, she stopped filing to run her fingers through her hair, rub her eyes, and heave a great sigh. When she opened her eyes once more, the files, the cabinets, the office itself had disappeared. Mercy felt the warm, bright sunshine on her skin. She whipped herself around, expecting to see people hanging from trees all around her. Instead, she discovered she was standing in the middle of a grassy field populated with living, smiling faces. It seemed that she had appeared in a picnic area because people relaxed on blankets on the grass, children played tag. The grass was green and fresh smelling, and the sky was as blindingly blue as in her last vision. Her anxiety quickly melted away, and she felt unreasonably joyful and peaceful. A soft breeze floated through the air and rustled her long hair. She noticed that, instead of the trousers and blouse she wore in her office, she was wearing a flowing, knee-length blue skirt, a cream colored camisole underneath a bright red cardigan and something on her back, strapped across her chest. Before she had a chance to examine the change in her clothing thoroughly, she heard a voice calling her name. Perplexed, she looked around to find a woman walking steadily towards her, holding something in her arms. ‘Is that you, Mercy?’ she said, breathing heavily, as she neared. ‘It is! But I barely recognized you. Everything seems to be so familiar here but so different, too.’ ‘Uhm,’ Mercy said, feeling strange to be speaking, like it was the first time she used her voice, ‘uh, Mina?’ She was trying to place the woman, but she was right: this person looked somewhat like a woman she knew named Mina, but very different as well. ‘Aren’t you Mina from the personnel department?’ ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Mina beamed. Mercy remembered Mina as a round-faced, pleasant looking woman, with short, frizzy hair before she became pregnant seven months prior. Now, however, her hair was nearly to her waist and fell in slender curls down her back, and she looked radiant, as if every pore of her skin emitted a faint glow. Mercy glanced at one of her own hands to observe the same phenomenon. Mina continued on: ‘We just arrived a little bit ago. How long have you been here? Oh, look!’ she continued without waiting for an answer, ‘here is my new daughter!’ She gestured to the bundle she held in her arms. Mercy looked into the blanket to see the smallest, frailest child she had ever beheld; she didn’t think children could survive that small. The tiny girl was bright pink with her hair matted to her head. ‘Isn’t it just beautiful here?’ Mina said excitedly. ‘I mean, when I arrived here and they explained everything, I was sad for a moment, but then I realized that it’s just a different sort of life. Right? I mean, I still have my daughter to raise, so it’s not that much different. Just so much more beautiful. Right?’ But Mercy was having problems following Mina’s conversation. ‘Different sort of life?’ she mutter confusedly. ‘Sure,’ Mina said sunnily, ‘that’s how I reasoned it out in my head. Like I said, though, we’ve only been here for a little bit, so it’s all still new to me. How long did you say you’ve been here? You were fine on Friday when we all left the office, I remember saying good night to you. Did something happen during the weekend?’ ‘What?’ No, I just got here a minute before you came to me,’ Mercy replied, extremely confused. ‘Ah!’ Mina said as her daughter wriggled in the blankets, trying to reposition herself. ‘What an amazing coincidence, then! You’d think that with all the people that die everyday, you wouldn’t meet someone you knew when you only just arrive.’ Mina continued speaking quite cheerfully, unaware that Mercy was not paying attention in the least. ‘Mina’s dead?’ she thought frantically, her eyes wide in disbelief, her insides cold. ‘Did she just say that?’ She looked around in disbelief and saw all the happy, smiling faces in that beautiful field—did these people all die recently as well? ‘Wait, if everyone here really is dead, than what about me? Did I die when I was filing? How could I have died then? I felt absolutely no pain or difference at all between then and now. What is going on?’ ‘Mina!’ Mercy said aloud, quite urgently. Mina stopped speaking and stared at her, slightly bewildered. ‘You said that someone explained to you what happened, right?’ ‘Of course, they talk to you right after you come here. You should know that, didn’t you meet with them?’ ‘No, I told you, I got here after you did, I haven’t even moved from this spot,’ Mercy retorted. ‘Where are these people?’ Mina looked at Mercy rather incredulously, but turned and pointed to a distant set of khaki colored tents behind her. ‘Over there,’ she said slowly. ‘Thanks,’ Mercy responded as she began to walk. However, she had taken but a few steps before she felt someone grab onto one of her wrists. ‘Mina, let me go!’ she said loudly as she tried jerking her hand away. ‘I need to talk to those people because I don’t think I’m—‘ ‘Sssshhh!’ said the person holding on to her. She turned back to find, not Mina, but a tall, slightly muscular man stopping her. He had great big hazel eyes and floppy blond hair that went everywhere. He had a finger to his lips, gesturing her to be quiet, and his worried face was close to hers. ‘—dead,’ she finished weakly. She looked from Mina, who stood behind this man clutching her daughter and looking a little frightened, to the man holding onto her wrist. ‘Please,’ he said gently, his melodic voice piercing Mercy in the heart with just its heavy, serious tone, ‘You shouldn’t be here. You’re in danger.’ ‘What is going on?’ she asked urgently but quietly, taking the man’s lead. She tried to stare into her eyes like he was to her, but she couldn’t keep up his intent feeling so she looked at his perfectly curved chin instead. The man, now that he had Mercy’s attention, released her wrist but took a step closer to her. They were now nearly chest to chest, so close that she could feel the actual warmth of his radiant skin. She took a breath in and realized that he smelled sweet, like fruit, and a lump jumped into her throat. He stooped slightly and positioned his head over her shoulder and said so that only she could hear— ‘I can’t tell you now, but I will, I promise.’ He turned his head slightly so that he could look into her face and continued seriously, ‘I’ll find you when you come next time, but for now, you have to leave.’ He gave her an incongruently broad smile for the situation and shoved her from behind. Maybe I'll post more later, yeah?