So they kept going to Milton and he reiterated his advice. But he also informed them that they would receive a letter one day – nothing important – but they were to meet at Tower Bridge and wait for the Teacher to jump from the top. At that point, they had to ask themselves whether or not they wanted to die.

And they absorbed this information, but it was obscured. Remembered but not recalled.

Until now.

The broker slides his Zippo lighter down his leg to light it and sets fire to his activation note. He’s a smoker. He started late. Mainly because everyone else at work smoked. It’s a stressful environment. He still doesn’t like the way it makes him feel but he looks like he belongs and that’s just as important.

The Salesperson rips the page into small pieces and throws them into the waste disposal.

They’re both in their suits. They both have cars they don’t need. They’ve both tried to fuck their way to fulfilment. And they’re both on their way to the last day at the job that caused them to lose such a huge sense of their self-worth.

Later this evening they both get to die. Unfulfilled.

The Broker backs out halfway down and tries to land on his feet, snapping both femurs and dislocating his hips before his face crunches into the floor and his brain rattles around inside a broken skull.

The Salesperson embraces the fall. The ribs of her slender frame offer no protection from the impact with Earth and her lungs rupture while her heart continues to lurch forwards until it lacerates against broken bones.

Dr Milton had tried to help. He’d given them the tools to save themselves.

They thought their name at the top of the sales leader board meant they were winners.

All they are, are the two best-dressed corpses.

112

239 – AU PAIR

The problem with the Au Pair was that she ended up working for a man who, if he had been recruited into The People of Choice, would have been known as the Cliché.

He had abused his position as her employer and taken advantage of her situation. It had started with comments that flirted at the edge of decency and moved swiftly towards inappropriate touching and suggestion. By the time she was truly scared of him coming home before his wife, she found herself on her knees in the dining room doing something she didn’t want to do, while the children she loved looking after were glazed over in front of the television.

Then they were fucking and he was telling her how good she was at it.

And then he was telling her that he loved her and wanted to leave his wife even though he had no intention of doing so.

But this wasn’t quite the story she told Dr Erickson.