You Had Me at Halo

Holly flicked on her computer and entered her password only to be greeted with a flashing icon telling her that her username wasn’t valid.

Well that couldn’t be right and she frowned for a moment before realizing she had been taken off the system. So soon? Of course the Baker Colwell motto was that efficiency was the way of the future. But still, shouldn’t there be a period of mourning before these things happened? And why change her password but not pack away her desk?

Thankfully she knew Gemma’s password and she tapped it in. Her first stop was the Internet to look up the motion sickness pills but all she could discover was that taking too many could result in illness and occasionally death. Like, tell her something she didn’t know.

She scanned down the page. It seemed that the effects of the pills could last from four to eight hours, so it looked like she was going to have to map her movements for most of the Friday. Hmm, well that shouldn’t be too hard and she opened up a word document.

Ten minutes later she printed it out and had to say that it didn’t look promising. Nothing really stood out at her to announce that it was at this point she ingested four motion sickness pills, which had led to her falling asleep in the bath and ruining her life forever.

Perhaps Gemma would be able to make more sense of it tomorrow? She shoved it into the pocket of Vince’s jacket and decided while she was here, she might as well have a snoop through the personnel files and see what she could find.

She entered a search for anyone with a criminal past with a particular preference for drugging people.

Unsurprisingly she didn’t get any results.

Holly chewed at her bottom lip as she tried to figure out who would do this? Perhaps she had accidentally spilt something on the cafeteria floor and the cleaner had taken an unwholesome dislike to her from that moment on? Or someone who had taken exception to the way she poured her milk into her coffee before the water had boiled, or…

At that moment Holly glanced over to her to-do list again and caught sight of her neat handwriting reminding her of her presentation on Monday. Holly had only been in her new job for a month so this was her first important project and she’d been busting a gut to make sure that everything about it was perfect. Pity she hadn’t factored in dying.

She sniffed again. It was such a great job as well—okay so finance operations was a little on the hard side— but still great. Gemma had thought Holly was rushing things, applying for a promotion only a year after joining the company, but Todd had thought that it was important to show her bosses that she was a player who wanted to make something of herself.

Holly agreed, especially since she had wanted to make something of herself, which was why she’d bought the most adorable black ankle strap shoes to celebrate. After all, how could you climb the corporate ladder without a good pair of heels?

Oh and she bet Tina Macdonald was finding it hilarious that Holly didn’t manage to do her presentation, since it was no secret Tina thought the promotion should’ve been hers. She’d even gone as far as complaining to Personnel about an unfair interview process. Yeah right. As if Tina had the calves for ankle strap shoes, and—

That was it.

Motive.

Holly was perfectly still as she realized she had just figured out who had slipped her the pills. Goodbye earthly issues and Level One. She knew all it would take was a little application and organization. Wait until she told Gemma about it.

Oh, and it made even more sense because she specifically recalled that the morning she died— on the pretence of being nice—Tina had given Holly a cup of coffee when they’d been in the staff room. Even though at the time it had tasted perfectly normal, it was now obvious Tina had laced it with pills so Holly would be forced to cancel her presentation and perhaps risk getting demoted. It all added up nicely.

She turned off her computer, tidied up her desk and out of habit, reached into the bottom drawer to grab her latest Bride and Beauty magazine (in case she had problems sleeping) and headed toward the elevator.

It wasn’t until she was outside the building that she congratulated herself on being such a genius in working it out. Of course she always had been clever. She thought back to The Rich and the Restless, her favorite soap opera, where everyone was convinced Joanne and Carlos were going to get together, but Holly had been adamant Lee would win through in the end. And she had been right.

Being right was such a nice feeling and she was still basking in it as she sat down at the nearby bus stop and searched Vince’s pockets to find a cell phone to call Gemma.

There was no answer and Holly cursed. The sooner she got Tina’s address, the sooner she could confront the girl and put a stop to the suicide rumors. Then tomorrow she could concentrate on clearing the air with Todd. Well, it wasn’t her typical to-do list, but then it wasn’t a typical day.

“In fact, it’s probably been the weirdest day of my life,” she muttered to herself as she drummed her fingers on the magazine.

“I’ll say,” a disembodied voice replied.

“What? Who said that?” Holly jumped back to her feet again and spun around, only to see nothing except an empty street and a candy wrapper blowing in the breeze. Well, that was strange. And why did she suddenly feel so…weird?

“What’s going on?” the same voice demanded.

“That’s what I’d like to know.” Holly tried to stay calm. After all, she was dead. Technically nothing bad could happen to her. Could it?

“Ideas would be welcome,” the voice said with a hint of impatience.

“Who are you?” Holly croaked as she clutched at her throat. It almost sounded like the words were coming from inside her. But that was just impossible.

“I’m Vince, who are you? And more importantly, what the hell are you doing in my body?”

“What do you mean you’re Vince? Vince is dead,” Holly said into the thin air, feeling more than just a little bit silly (and considering the past two weeks, that was really saying something).

“I’m dead?” the voice sounded surprised. “Are you sure? Because I don’t feel dead. Perhaps I’m just having some sort of weird dream? I get them sometimes.”

“No, you’re definitely dead.”

“Oh, so this is heaven? Because I’ve got to say, I expected more. This place looks like the bus stop outside Baker Colwell.”

“Of course it’s not heaven,” Holly scoffed. For a start there were no dead people around. Sort of a give away. Though she still wasn’t quite sure why she was having a conversation with Vince’s body.

“So it’s hell then?” the voice continued to probe. Was Vince’s body always this annoying in a conversation?

“No,” she explained. “It looks like the bus stop outside Baker Colwell because it is the bus stop outside Baker Colwell.”

“Right. So how did I get from the funeral to here?”

Wait. This was getting ridiculous. Surely she wasn’t really having this conversation. Perhaps if she closed her eyes, the voice would go away?

The problem was, not only did the voice make her feel weird, but something strange was happening to her leg as well. It felt…twitchy.

An uneasy feeling lodged itself in her stomach, which she tried to ignore. Surely this was just a side effect from Dr. Hill’s plan and no doubt if she’d read the rulebook she would know all about strange voices and twitchy feelings in her leg.

She gave her thigh a wriggle.

“Hey,” the voice said. “How did you do that?”

Holly started to sing the latest Coldplay song in her head. It had only come out a week before she died so she didn’t know all the words but at least it would stop this voice from talking.

Then her other leg wriggled. All by itself.