My Secret Santa's Secret Baby

I wondered about dressing sexy. Something to really grab attention and make me get noticed. Sure, some attention would be negative, but it probably already was in some corners. I couldn’t be too obvious about it or there would likely be rumors that I fucked my way into a permanent position outside the editor’s bedroom.

To no great surprise, I chickened out and went with the shin-length, plain black dress that I used to wear to church. I considered adding the hat that went along with it to my ensemble but decided against it, the resulting look turning out to be far too absurd. Not quite as absurd as the pathetic old custom that men absolutely had to take off their hats before going into church and women wouldn’t be allowed in without one, but it was a close second.

The toaster clicked, ejecting the sugary goodness of slightly off-brand toaster pastries, going me a taste of the college life without the crushing student debt to our government overlords. My mouth full of strawberry and icing, I headed out to the bus stop.

Jack Frost took a good-sized chomp at me as I waited by the sign, my nipples getting to be more like diamonds with each passing second. There had been a bench here at one point. I had overheard the legends about it by some veteran bus riders who were talking about it the day before. I wished it was still here.

As I passed under the bridge for the second time, no less wowed then the first, I wondered how many trips it would take before the architecture of New York would stop even being noticeable. I hoped never.

An impression I would have very much liked to shake was the nagging if quiet sense of doom when approaching my place of work. I was given to understand that a lot of people weren’t exactly thrilled about going into work, though it seemed unlikely that many would see the office as a potential harbinger of doom.

I’d seen other towers before. Most of the ones in Uptown didn’t really bother me. It was clear that there was an element of ‘yikes’ to the Pigeon building in particular that could only be the result of special effort. Or my Tolkien-addled imagination.

Sign-in went in smoothly today, Sam’s quick and courteous service making it less of an obligation than a pleasure. I was pretty sure I caught him eyeing my chest as I bent over to actually put pen to page, but I couldn’t blame him really. They really were right there, and I didn’t think he could see much through the layers of black cotton.

The first day had been pretty easy, mostly consisting of the staff meeting at which the assignments were given out. Being the nerd that I was, I didn’t get a bit of actual work done on the manuscript that I was meant to be reading, by an author named Scott Butcher, deciding instead to do prep work first. Prep work which mostly involved looking the author up on Wikipedia and reading a spoiler-heavy synopsis of the previous books on his list.

A bit of an oddball, Scott Butcher didn’t seem to have any series, only stand-alone books and relatively short ones at that. The longest tome bearing his name was a relatively scant 500 pages, despite it being listed under High Fantasy, a true enough moniker and probably the best in terms of marketing.

If it were to be called what it was, a grimdark slash fest with blood and carnage nearing the dizzy heights of splatterpunk horror, the potential audience would have been limited. From what I understood, 14-year-old boys didn’t tend to be the biggest readers of fiction.

The book seemed like a weird counterpoint to the holiday cheer, with the office decked out in seasonal jollification. Then again, the book, if accepted, wouldn’t be published for months and Christmas releases were a trend for a while. It mostly applied to movies, but it was there. Ultra-violent movies like Gangs of New York were even released on Christmas Day to cash in on the novelty.

Getting down to work and planning to read at least a quarter of the manuscript that day, I was up to my proverbial knees in gruesome gore and defiled maidens when there came a muffled knock on the exterior wall of my cubicle. I nearly jumped, not having seen it coming at all.

“Skye, right?” asked the person who poked their head in.

“Yes.”

“The boss wants to see you.”

I couldn’t imagine what Mr. Del Rey would want with me but judging by the crocodile grin on my co-worker’s face, I had a feeling that it probably wasn’t good. Hauling myself up from the desk, my legs no longer cooperating with the commands of my brain, I set out in search of Del Rey’s office.