I hate Mondays. I pulled myself out of bed. I could smell the coffee I had set the machine to make for me at 6:30am. I drank a cup, popped a piece of bread in the toaster, and made myself two scrambled eggs.
I couldn't face eating anything so early, so I did my toilette (as the French would say) in the bathroom. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, checked my hair and decided to brush it, and then applied my make up.
I looked longingly at the vibrator, but I had to get to work. I ate breakfast, got dressed, and walked to the subway for the long ride through most of Queens, into Manhattan, and to my job.
Monday was taking revenge: There was a note from my boss to see him once I arrived. I was early, large coffee still in hand from the Starbucks on the ground floor of our building, and I went to his office with my coffee in hand. I stopped just short of his office, thought better of it, and went back down to Starbucks and got another coffee prepared the way my boss likes it.
We had had a brief affair, lasting several months, so I knew everything he liked. I mean that I knew absolutely everything; from his choice of coffee to what times of day he likes to have sex. I knew his favorite positions and the sex games he likes to play. The man has no more mysteries for me. Fortunately, the affair was over.
I entered his office with my two coffees. I offered him one. He greeted me with a big smile and a thank you. After I ended the affair, he no longer took me for granted. He still looked at me however with lascivious longing. Men always want what they cannot have. He had a new man with him.
"Mary, this is our new tech wizard, Samuel. Could you be so kind as to show him around the place today? Maybe take him to dinner?" my boss said. The way he raised his eyebrows I knew he was asking me to have sex with the visitor, too. He always thought if all the women laid the new men, they (the men) would be happy. Pity he'll never know. We are not about to do anything remotely close to that. I think I speak for all of us five women when I say that. Our boss is a pig.
But he did practice what he preached. My boss has slept with all five women employees of the firm. He succeeded in getting all of us into bed, one at a time of course, and not because he is irresistible. No, it is because he is highly adept at using his power over us to seduce us.
Maybe even he is happy with his conquests. If you ask me, they are empty conquests. I know, I know: Nobody asked me. Well, this time, and once again, his plan was doomed. I was not prostituting myself and sleeping with the new guy for the good of the goddam firm! The new guy would have to find pussy on his own.
I checked him out. He would have no problems finding a willing woman: He was a hunk. Sarah in the back office would love to take him on, I'm sure. But you have to follow orders from your boss. So, I smiled sweetly and led him around the offices. We are on three floors of a midtown office building: Floors 21 to 23. I introduced him to everyone.
I showed him how the tech unit worked and brought him up to speed on the little peccadilloes of our system. I told him who the super impatient people were; those you had to get to right away. Most of the others were people who were grateful for the help, and those people were the ones I liked.
I invited him to dinner that evening. I don't like restaurants since I am on a low salt diet, so I always eat at home. I therefore invited him over to my home for dinner. At dinner, I learned that he was bat shit crazy.
He asked me if I were a depressive. In fact I am, but I thought I hid it well. "Have you contemplated suicide?" he asked. Bear in mind I only met him that same morning. I contemplated suicide almost every day, but how the hell did he know?And why did he think it was appropriate to ask me such an intimate question?
"The reason I ask," Samuel said, "is that I have a proposition for you. Would you like to hear it?"
I was thinking how could I get this creep out of my apartment? Why hadn't we gone to a restaurant? Then I could have faked an emergency to get the fuck away from him! I decided I should humor him. He did, after all, seem harmless.
"I can give you extreme happiness. It is transient, but it is a bliss no human has ever experienced before. The downside is that it could soon kill you," Samuel said.
"That seems a high price to pay for some transient happiness," I said. My sarcasm was lost on him. You had to be there; when a strange man in one's apartment wants to propose something that might kill you, a normal woman would be alarmed, shall we say. Am I right?
But I was not alarmed. Samuel seemed harmless in the extreme. He was happy, and he wanted to share some of his happiness. Too bad it's fatal.
"Since you are suicidal and have considered suicide five times in the last month, I thought you of all people might appreciate my offer," he said.
I thought back. My depression, I'm told, is chemical: There is something wrong with the chemistry in my brain. Serotonin uptake meds don't help. Nothing helps. And when it gets bad, I lose all hope. Suicide seems like a good option at those times.
But how the fuck did he know about the five times I thought seriously about killing myself within the last month? I was direct: "How the fuck do you know that, Samuel? Are you spying on me? Are you a stalker?" I began to look around for hidden cameras and the like.
"No, sweet Mary. It's nothing like that. It's just that I have special powers. We all do on the planet humans know as Kepler 62f. I must say, you give some strange names to planets," Samuel said.
Bat shit crazy. For sure. How do I get rid of him?
"Well, Samuel, I am not suicidal any more, and I think I would like to be alone now. See you tomorrow at work?" and I got up and began walking to the door, in order to usher him out.
"Oh," Samuel said. Suddenly he looked sad. "Your boss told me he thought we could probably have sex tonight."
Jesus H. Christ! I thought. That fucking pig, telling poor Samuel that.
"He didn't actually say that, of course," Samuel continued. "I read his mind. I can do that, you know. That's how I know about you and suicide."
I need another description other than bat shit crazy. Loony tunes? No, he was worse than loony.
"What does loony mean, please?" Samuel said, now totally freaking me out. Seeing that, apparently, Samuel continued, "I'm sorry, I was reading your mind."
"Then you can tell you are freaking me out, and I want you please to leave now!" I said to Samuel. I was losing it.
"I can do better than your vibrator, you know. I know you cannot wait to get to it. Much better. You will have an orgasm better than any previous human. Ever," he said.
"Is that so?" I decided to stick with bat shit crazy.
"Yes, quite so. But if we have sex, you may go crazy with pleasure and lose your sanity. It's happened before, but not often. I'd say it's a 5% chance."
I looked at him as if he were a traffic accident happening in my living room. "The real danger is that you get pregnant, Samuel continued. "Giving birth will, sadly, end your life. But your child will be magnificent and save the world." Samuel paused. "There's a 40% chance you will get pregnant, and that is why I chose you. You are suicidal anyway."