Chapter 2: Stay Late
The fluorescent lights in the conference room buzzed like trapped insects, casting a sickly pallor over the budget spreadsheets. Milo sat stiffly, his chair pulled a careful distance from the table, the scent of Mr. Henderson’s overcooked aftershave mixing with the dry-erase markers. He’d been corralled into staying late, the “numbers guy” who could find a missing decimal in a heartbeat.
Izzy was a vision of professional demureness, perched at her boss’s right hand. She wore a sensible cream-colored blouse, the top button fastened. To Mr. Henderson, she was the picture of efficient innocence, nodding along as he droned about quarterly shortfalls.
To Milo, she was a live wire.
The moment Henderson’s balding head dipped to scrutinize a figure, Izzy’s face would transform. Her blue eyes, wide and attentive for the boss, would slide to Milo. The polite smile would curl into something savage and knowing. She stuck her tongue out, not a playful tease, but a flat, pink slab, licking slowly across the width of her painted lips. Then she’d cross her eyes, letting her head loll to the side in a mockery of obscene pleasure.
Milo’s pencil snapped. The sound was a gunshot in the quiet room.
“Everything alright, Milo?” Mr. Henderson asked, not looking up.
“Fine. Sorry. Clumsy.”
Izzy’s expression snapped back to serene concern. “Would you like another pencil, Milo?” she asked, her voice sweet as syrup.
As Henderson turned to the projection screen, Izzy moved. She leaned forward, pretending to adjust her notebook, and the cream blouse gaped. There was no bra. Her heavy, pierced breasts swung free for a second, the silver bars catching the light. Milo felt a jolt of heat travel straight to his groin. He looked down, his face burning.
The performance escalated. When Henderson asked her to pull up the previous year’s data, Izzy’s hands flew across the keyboard. Her body, however, was a silent scream. She began to slowly, deliberately, trace a finger down her throat, her head tilting back. Then she pushed the finger into her mouth, past the knuckle, her cheeks hollowing. She mimed a gag, her eyes rolling back, before sliding the wet finger out with a pop only Milo could hear.
He was drowning. The numbers on the page blurred into grey static. Every cell in his body was tuned to her grotesque pantomime. He was horrified. He was rigid in his cheap trousers.
“Izzy, your thoughts on the marketing allocation?” Henderson said, turning.
She pulled her finger from her mouth, now using it to thoughtfully tap her chin. “I think it’s a bit… stiff, sir. Not nearly flexible enough for what we need.” She didn’t look at Milo. She didn’t have to.
The hour stretched into a kind of torture. Izzy pretended to sneeze, bending over to bury her face in her elbow while her other hand snaked behind her, fingers splaying and kneading the air inches from her own backside. She mouthed words at him: Come on. Look at me.
Finally, Henderson slapped the table. “Right. That’s the shape of it. Milo, get those finalized by noon tomorrow. Izzy, thank you for your… focused assistance.”
Izzy beamed, gathering her things. “Of course. Always happy to help the team.”
The walk to the parking garage was conducted in a brittle silence, their footsteps echoing in the concrete stairwell. The civilized world had been stripped away, leaving only the smell of damp and exhaust. Milo fumbled for his keys, his hand trembling.
Her voice cut through the gloom, all pretense gone. “That was so fucking boring I almost died.”
He jumped. She was leaning against his sensible sedan, her professional demeanor shed like a skin. The garage’s bare bulb lit her from above, casting shadows under her eyes and between her breasts.
“Izzy, I… I have to go.”
“You liked the show, though.” It wasn’t a question. She pushed off the car and took a step closer. The scent of her perfume, something cheap and aggressively floral, overwhelmed the gasoline smell. “Your little pencil didn’t just snap, did it? Got all worked up watching me.”
“Please.”
“Please what?” She laughed, a short, sharp bark. “You think that was something? That was just me keeping myself awake. I’m gonna go home, crawl into bed, and think about you sitting there all red and twitchy. I’m gonna get myself off so hard thinking about your scared little face.”
Milo couldn’t breathe. He stared at the oil-stained concrete.
“Wanna guess what I’ll use?” she whispered, now right in front of him. She held up her hand, flexing her fingers in the dim light. “Not just these. I’m gonna start with these, sure. But I can fit my whole hand inside me, Milo. My whole fucking fist. I get so empty sometimes. I need to be… filled.”
He made a small, choked sound. The image was at once clinical and devastating, a violation so complete it short-circuited his mind. This wasn’t the teasing from the break room. This was a raw, ugly confession.
She saw the shock in his eyes and her grin widened, devoid of warmth. “Yeah. Think about that while you’re correcting your decimals. Your nice, safe numbers.” She finally stepped back, giving him space to flee. “Night, Milo.”
He fumbled the door open, collapsing into the driver’s seat. His heart hammered against his ribs. In the rearview mirror, he watched her walk away, her hips swinging in a slow, deliberate rhythm, a queen returning from a successful hunt. The engine roared to life, but it couldn’t drown out the echo of her words. They coiled in his gut, a cold, heavy knot of fear and a thrilling, shameful pull.
The spreadsheets were forgotten. All he could see was the ghost of her hand, fingers curled into a tight, impossible fist, and a dark, hungry space waiting to be filled.