This Is War - Chapter 14 – Oversized Sausage #2
“You’re impossible.” Chastity grabbed the sausage off my plate and held it up to my mouth. I tentatively licked the tip of it. I expected it to be the grossest thing ever, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was pretty delicious. I licked a little more. And then I went to take a bite.
Just then, Mr. Frost walked up behind Chastity. “Hey, just checking in…”
Chastity must not have seen him coming, because she jumped. And in doing so, she jammed the entire sausage down my throat. My eyes got big and I gagged.
“Am I interrupting something?” asked Mr. Frost.
I pulled back from the sausage and wiped the spit off the side of my mouth. I was fully aware of the fact that I had just deepthroated a bratwurst in front of my new boss. The same boss that I had already molested and then given a saucy wink.
“You’re not interrupting anything at all.
I was just taking a quick lunch break.” To drive the point home, I grabbed Chastity’s hand and brought the sausage up to my mouth so I could take a big bite.
I started chewing and… Oh my God. I had always thought sausage was gross, but this thing melted in my mouth.
It was an explosion of delicious savory yumminess. I actually moaned it tasted so good.
“You were supposed to take a ten-minute lunch break after the meeting. And then you were supposed to do Facebook ads for Wineflix and Chill from 2 to 3, and then…well, I don’t have to tell you. It’s all in the binder.” He tapped the binder and walked away.
“I guess we better look in the binder, huh?” I asked.
Chastity nodded.
I opened it up, and it was even worse than I thought. Not only had he broken down my day by the minute, but he also had painfully detailed instructions on how to do each and every task. Scale ads to 2000 x 2000 pixels. Duplicate ad sets, not ads. Have six ads per ad set. Yadda yadda.
We both got to work. And worked. And worked some more.
By 5 o’clock - the time when work was supposed to be over - I still had hours and hours of work to do.
But you know who didn’t? Apparently Mr. Frost. Because he was all packed up and out the door at 5 pm sharp.
Chastity and I didn’t leave until the sun had long since set.
I hoped that he just had somewhere really important to be, but the same thing happened Tuesday. And Wednesday, and Thursday.
I was a fast worker, but thanks to Mr. Frost’s stupid binder, everything took twice as long as it used to. By some miracle, I was able to catch up on all my work by 4 pm on Friday. One more task and then I would finally be free from his tyranny. Or at least…free from it for one weekend.
I opened up the binder and scanned my final assignment.
Friday - 4 pm - Draft 6 new creatives for Wineflix and Chill’s October campaign.
There were a ton of criteria under that, but one in particular stood out: ONLY buy images from PicStock.
“You ever heard of PicStock?” I asked.
“Nope,” said Chastity. “What is it?”
“I’m guessing some stock photo site. Apparently that’s what we have to use for images now.
” I brought it up on my computer and started searching for images we could use in the new Wineflix ads.
The first thing that caught my eye was that you could only buy exclusive rights to images.
You couldn’t just buy a normal license like you do on most sites.
The prices reflected that. Instead of $10 per image, this site charged $1000.
“They better have some good stuff on here…”
I did a few of my usual searches. Wine glass. Beautiful model drinking wine. Fashion model party. I had to admit, the images were good. And for a nice change in the stock image space, there were actually photos I hadn’t seen before.
Chastity watched over my shoulder and helped me save images that might work.
“Whoa, go back,” said Chastity suddenly. She sounded concerned.
I clicked back. “What? Did we miss one?”
She took the mouse from me and clicked on an image of a girl sitting on a cliffside looking off into the distance.
I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw the larger version of the photo.
It wasn’t just some random model in the picture.
It was Rosalie. My sister. Who went missing three years ago. I felt my throat constricting.
“That’s Rosalie, right?” asked Chastity.
I nodded.
“Did you know she did any modeling?”
“Never.” My brain was working overdrive. Was it at all possible that this was a new photo? If it was, it meant that Rosalie was still alive. And even if it wasn’t, it was still new information. A new lead to someone who might know what happened to her.
I stared at the image and tried to blink away my tears. I needed to tell Marty, Tanner’s PI, about this immediately.
My heart sunk. I couldn’t tell Marty. I wasn’t dating Tanner anymore. There was no way he was still looking into Rosalie’s disappearance now. And he’d totally ignored me the entire time Tanner had been missing.
I shook the thought away. I didn’t need a fancy PI anyway. And I definitely didn’t need Tanner. I was a freaking amazing stalker.