Telecommunications
—
Steve Gergley
ON MONDAY MORNING, MY BOSS called me into her office and informed me that my work performance over the previous financial quarter was the worst she had seen in her 143 years with the company. Hearing these words, all liquid dissolved from my tongue. My body vibrated with violent muscular contractions. I slipped thirteen black raspberry Warheads into my crackling mouth and returned to my disgusting cubicle.
At 10:03 a.m., in an attempt to remedy the fraught and terrifying situation of my work performance, I sent my boss a light-hearted email of apology containing a humorous and endearing picture of my beloved pet manul, Ref.
Twenty-seven minutes later, a pair of police officers tapped me on the shoulder and escorted me into the back of their squad car in the parking lot.
When I returned to the house at the end of the week, I did not tell Ref about my termination and subsequent arrest for malicious menacing. Instead, I snapped the court-ordered monitoring device around my left ankle and stayed home with him for the next three months, where we enjoyed a relaxing and hedonistic summer of Japanese horror movies on our big-screen television fixed to the wall of our walk-in shower. •
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Steve Gergley is the author of a bunch of books and a lot of weird writings of an indeterminate nature. His most recent book, The Topine Trilogy, was published by Anxiety Press in August of 2025. He tweets @GergleySteve. His fiction can be found at: https://stevegergleyauthor.wordpress.com/. He's also the editor of scaffold literary magazine.
Website | @GergleySteve
At 10:03 a.m., in an attempt to remedy the fraught and terrifying situation of my work performance, I sent my boss a light-hearted email of apology containing a humorous and endearing picture of my beloved pet manul, Ref.
Twenty-seven minutes later, a pair of police officers tapped me on the shoulder and escorted me into the back of their squad car in the parking lot.
When I returned to the house at the end of the week, I did not tell Ref about my termination and subsequent arrest for malicious menacing. Instead, I snapped the court-ordered monitoring device around my left ankle and stayed home with him for the next three months, where we enjoyed a relaxing and hedonistic summer of Japanese horror movies on our big-screen television fixed to the wall of our walk-in shower. •
Steve Gergley is the author of a bunch of books and a lot of weird writings of an indeterminate nature. His most recent book, The Topine Trilogy, was published by Anxiety Press in August of 2025. He tweets @GergleySteve. His fiction can be found at: https://stevegergleyauthor.wordpress.com/. He's also the editor of scaffold literary magazine.
Website | @GergleySteve