“Right.” I gather up my papers but then stop. “Wait.” The last thing I want to do is extend this conversation, but I have to know. I force the words out, my voice quavering through it. “What could I have done differently?”
“We want something with more emotional punch. But I’m not sure you have it in you, Jane,” Drew says.
Basically what they’ve already told me.
I leave and head straight out the back into the alley, avoiding Mark, avoiding Alex, avoiding everyone.
There has to be something I can do. Something that can adjust or shift or something. I will find a pitch that works, even if I have to work on it all day every day for a month of Mondays.
I am not giving up. I will change this one thing about this day if it kills me.
Over the next however many Mondays, instead of working on keeping my job like I declared I would, I work on doing anything and everything I can think of to get out of it.
Having a panel of critical people staring at me and judging me and finding me lacking is . . . worse than having a mouth full of bees. I push through it, trying new things a half dozen times, but I need a break.
So I run some experiments.
First, with the closet. The magic closet only works for inanimate objects, and it doesn’t work for everything. When I try to sleep in the closet anyway, I end up back in bed the next morning. Twice.
Most inanimate objects stay in the closet without disappearing, like fabric, papers, toiletries, books. Everything but money. Money and me seem to be the only things the closet spits back out overnight.
The universe wants me to be miserable and poor. There’s my sign.
Attempting to stay awake all night doesn’t work either. I black out from forces beyond my control at around five a.m. And it’s a terrifying and sudden blackness. Not a fun experience, one I do not wish to repeat, so that one becomes a hard pass after the first attempt.
Leaving the city is impossible. When I go to the airport in the morning, the planes are grounded because of fog and low visibility on the runway, and there are no rental cars available. June gloom. Dammit, Karl.
I also go to a few different doctors. A neurologist first. They run tests—CT scans, blood work, an MRI—to rule out brain-tumor-induced hallucinations and any other physical cause. Everything comes back clean. As far as I know anyway, maybe they’re part of the hallucination too. Who knows? Also, a majority of the tests don’t have results for a few days. Ha. Yeah, “We’ll call you tomorrow” always gets a good laugh.
I try a psychiatrist, but I’ve done therapy before for my anxiety and they want to schedule future sessions and prescribe medication.
So I’m stuck. Even if it’s all a dream, it’s one I can’t get out of.
And the only way out is through. So time to choke on some bees.
“The scene is a crowded dance club. The camera fixes on a group of friends showing up together and having a great time dancing, but they get split up in the crowd. Both groups end up leaving. They need food after a long night, right? And then one group gets a notification that their other friends are at a restaurant nearby, and they find each other and eat together. The tagline can be: Splice up your life.”
Stacey winces. “Well . . .”
“A splice of heaven?”
“No.” Drew shakes his head.
“A family over the holidays, getting together, sharing the love, any way you splice it!”
The room is silent. Three sets of eyes staring at me.
Stacey smiles, but it turns into a wince. “Um. What exactly are we splicing?”
“The greatest thing since spliced bread.”
Blade sighs, his pen tapping on his notepad. “Jane, the demographic that would recognize that cliché is not using mobile apps.”
“Grab a splice of the action!”
Drew frowns. “I’m not sure dinner could be considered action.”
“And I don’t think the client wants to spend ad money on explosions.” Blade raises his brows at me.
“CGI may be too expensive, I’m afraid,” Stacey adds.
“Splice it right up your pie hole!”
Stacey frowns at me. “Wait. Um. What?”
“Never mind. I’ll see myself out.”
After twenty-odd failed pitches, however, the sting aches less and less. My nerves and anxiety aren’t quite as debilitating. They’re still there. I can’t imagine them ever going completely away, not with three people staring at me with their beady little judging eyes. I guess immersion therapy works somewhat though, because I keep screwing up, over and over and over, and gradually, I stop caring as much about their reactions.
Getting fired doesn’t hurt nearly as much the fiftieth time.
And that’s where my silver lining ends.
The Mondays continue and no matter what I say, over the course of weeks and weeks of Mondays, the results are always the same. I can affect some things, like how I get to work, who I talk to each day. I may be able to avoid getting poop on my hand and sleeping with Mark, but that’s about it. I still get fired. Over and over and over.
The more days pass, the more I realize how vile he is. Why did I ever hook up with that jerk? Ugh. It makes me want to spew just looking at him now.
He is definitely not what this love thing is all about and if he is, the universe is messed up.
I want to let him know exactly what I think about how much of a repulsive, sickening, revolting turd he is. I have a whole speech planned out in my head, crafted over the course of so many Mondays, using a lot of adjectives, but despite the anger bubbling in my veins every time he’s in my general vicinity, I can’t do it. I try a couple of times. I open my mouth to tell him off and
