Chapter 34
MOLLY
I hesitate for a moment when Sarah asks me if she can have a word with me.
I could just say ‘no, fuck off, I’m busy’.
No one would blame me; everybody knows Sarah is kind of abrupt and rude, and most people know she took a major dislike to me when I got the job that she had been bragging about going to be hers.
As tempting as it is to do that, I rise above the need to treat her as badly as she treated me.
“Sure,” I say. “What’s up?”
“Not here,” she says. “We need to talk in private.”
We could go into Joshua’s office. He still isn’t in yet and I don’t think he’ll mind but will that give connotations that I think I can use his office because we’re dating.
I hate being put in this position where I’m questioning how everything will look.
Before this rumor started, I wouldn’t have hesitated to use the office. That surely means it’ll be ok now then.
I didn’t think I would ever have anything to be grateful to Sarah for, but she saves me from having to make a decision about whether or not it’s ok to use Joshua’s office for this or not.
“Well? Come on then,” she says and then she turns on her heel and walks away, not even bothering to look back to make sure I’m following her.
I don’t like her attitude or her assumption that I will just blindly follow her, but I am curious as to what she wants, especially when she wants to talk in private. The Sarah I have gotten to know since starting work here would want to have things out in public with me to try and make me look bad.
She hasn’t decided she likes me overnight, so why not try and embarrass me now?
Maybe she’s fucked something up and she needs my help to put it right.
If that’s the case, do I be petty and refuse, or do I be the bigger person and help her?
Truthfully, I’d love to take the petty road, but I know that if it comes to it, I will no doubt help her, and she’ll be grateful for a day or two, maybe be nice to me, but then she’ll slip back into her old ways and nothing will have changed.
Sarah leads me down the corridor, past the rows of office doors, some open and some closed, until we reach the elevators.
I’m about to tell her that I don’t have time to go out of the building, but she ignores the elevators and keeps moving to the door of the stairwell. She finally turns back to look at me.
“We can talk in here. No one uses the stairs,” she says.
Ok, so she doesn’t want us to go outside. That’s ok then. The stairwell is actually a good place to talk privately, because she’s right, no one uses the stairs, or at least no one on our floor does.
She pushes open the heavy door and steps through it.
She holds the door open for me and as I follow her through the door, my pulse kicks up a little bit.
Something feels off here – maybe it’s the smile Sarah gives me as I step through the door, a smile that wouldn’t look out of place on an evil scientist type in a B list horror movie.
I tell myself to get a grip. She’s not some movie villain; she’s just a jealous girl who doesn’t realize she is her own worst enemy and that her attitude is keeping her from a lot of opportunities.
“You know this could have been different, don’t you?” she says. She still has that strange smile on her face, but it drops when she finishes her sentence, leaving her face strangely expressionless and blank.
I have no idea what she means by that, but I don’t have time to dwell on it before Sarah suddenly takes a step towards me. Her nostrils flare in anger and her mouth twists upwards. She looks like a rabid animal, and I take a step back.
“Sarah …?” I start, about to try and talk her down.
Without warning, she raises her fist, and I take another step back. Is she seriously going to hit me? No, I read that wrong. She doesn’t hit me. She slams her fist into her own nose.
What the actual fuck is going on here? I think to myself. She has officially lost her mind.
A sickening crack fills the stairwell as Sarah’s nose explodes in a burst of blood.
My eyes open wider in shock as she follows up her punch with another one that looks to be even harder than the first one.
That sickening crack comes again as her nose pops.
More blood bursts forth, spilling down her lips and onto her pristine blouse.
It comes out in a kind of spray and a few warm droplets of it land on my face. I reach up to wipe them away.
Sarah watches me and I watch her, horror gripping me.
"What the hell are you doing?" I say when it looks like she’s done kicking her own ass.
Sarah grins, her teeth smeared with blood. It makes her look deranged, especially when paired with the gleeful look in her eyes. I feel disorientated, like I’ve stepped into some alternate reality where people walk around punching themselves in the face and this is now seen as normal behavior.
"I’ve finally had enough of you," she breathes. "As if it wasn’t bad enough you taking my job, now you’re taking him too?
I can see now why nothing I did got you fired – it wouldn’t do if you were fucking the boss would it?
But this is bigger than that. He can’t just pretend like this isn’t happening.
I’m finally going to get you fired and out of my life.
I’ll get my job and show him how I am the best at it, and I’ll console him that you turned out to be a psycho and eventually, he will see that I have been right here all along and we’ll fall in love and get married, and no one will remember you. "
My stomach twists. I remember Patty’s warning about being careful because Sarah won’t let anyone stand in her way.
I still wasn’t expecting this though, and I doubt Patty was, even when she was warning me to watch my back.
I know Sarah is a bitch, but I didn’t think she was off the wall psycho like this.
"You’re insane,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief that I have found myself in this crazy, fucked up situation.
“You call it insane. I call it getting what I want,” Sarah says with a shrug of her shoulders. She winces slightly and I guess the movement hurt her nose which is still bleeding.
“No one will believe I did this to you," I say.
"Oh really?" she says, and she tilts her head to one side and studies me the way I imagine a cat studies a bird it is about to devour.
The cruelty in her gaze sends icy shivers down my spine.
"Come on, Molly. Think about it. Plenty of people know I was coming to talk to you about a mistake you made. It makes sense that you would lash out at me.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I say. “Who would punch someone in the face for pointing out a mistake?”
“Well, you would, obviously,” Sarah says indicating her nose with one hand and giving a slightly manic sounding laugh. “Think about it. Even if it seems hard to believe you would overreact like that, doesn’t it sound more believable than the idea that I did this to myself?”
I have to give her that one. No one would think someone would do this to themselves. Sarah seems to know she’s got me, and she grins widely, showing her bloodied teeth again. At least the flow of blood from her nose is now a mere trickle.
“Who are they going to believe?” Sarah says. “The poor, battered secretary who has worked here for years without any drama or the new woman who slept her way to the top?"
"I didn’t sleep my way to the top," I snap. I realize I’m probably focusing on the wrong thing, but I hate that anyone would think that.
The worse part of it, which I obviously can’t tell Sarah, is that excluding Vegas, I didn’t even sleep with Joshua until after I got the promotion.
I settle instead for a less personal truth.
"I got the promotion because I earned it. "
Sarah sneers.
"Ok honey, you keep telling yourself that,” she says.
“It wasn’t even Joshua who gave me the job. It was HR,” I say, hating myself for needing to get her to believe me.
She grins widely and I know I’ve lost the argument, although I don’t know how until she speaks again.
“Oh, it’s Joshua now, is it? I suppose Mr Redfern is a bit formal once you’ve had his cock in your mouth,” she says.
“Sarah,” I exclaim, shocked that she is being so crude and annoyed that I let myself slip up like that and use his first name. “I have heard quite enough of this and if all you’re going to do is make crude accusations, then we’re done here.”
I go towards the door, ready to leave Sarah to her own crazy devices, but she is quicker than me and she jumps to one side and blocks the door, trapping me here.
We face each other, and for the first time since I saw Sarah standing beside my desk after my lunch break, I’m actually afraid of her.
I don’t look away from her. I feel like that would be a mistake.
My breath is coming fast, and my mind is racing, desperate for a way out of this.
I can’t go through Sarah, and if I start down the stairs, I’m afraid that she’ll follow me and attack me, and at least here, if I call for help, someone has a chance of hearing me.
On the actual stairs, I don’t think anyone would be able to hear me from their offices.
Before I can think of what to do, Sarah lunges forward and she puts both hands on my chest above my breasts and she shoves me hard.
I was expecting to be hit, not pushed, and I stumble backwards a couple of steps until my foot finds only air.
My arms pinwheel wildly and I somehow manage to grab the railing and stop myself from falling.
I’m relieved, but my relief is celebrated too soon.
As my foot comes down, it rolls to the side, turning my ankle in a way an ankle was never meant to be turned.
Hot pain flashes up my leg and I scream and try to hop onto my other leg to take the pain off my injured – broken I reckon – ankle.
My other leg unfortunately is not placed on a stair, and I find that again, I’m falling.
The world tilts violently around me, and when I try to grab the railings again, all I succeed in doing is smacking my hand off them and making that hurt too.
Pain explodes through my whole body as I crash down the stairs.
My body twists in ways it really shouldn’t twist. Despite my best efforts to keep my injured ankle still, my limbs flail around all over, smacking off the railings on one side of me and the wall on the other.
I can feel the sharp edges of the steps slamming into my ribs, my back, my head.
I feel sick and dizzy by the time I reach the bottom of the stairs and pain is firing through my whole body.
It doesn’t help that I come down on the back of my head.
A new, brighter pain explodes through my head, and I understand now what people mean when they say they banged their heads, and they see stars.
I can see swirling silver lights, just like stars and then my vision goes white and begins to face.
I can’t pass out here. If I do, Sarah is likely to kill me.
I struggle to stay conscious, breathing deep and even, and the dizziness I’m feeling starts to go away.
I need to get up and I try to roll over to push myself up, but that movement sends a sickening pain through me, and I can’t stay conscious anymore.
Black starts to crowd in, replacing the white, and the last thing I hear before that darkness swallows me whole is Sarah’s voice, high pitched and full of mock panic.
"Quick, somebody call an ambulance. Molly’s hurt bad.”