Chapter 14 A Delivery

 It’s been months since Jash had seen any of his family members. It was a national holiday in his native country, but he wasn’t the one who was supposed to celebrate it. Everyone else was gone except for him. They were with their families and friends, eating their favorite dishes and laughing at the joyful time spent together. Even the night security shift went somewhere, and he stayed in the factory alone in his little room, with his shower and his electric kettle. 

Suddenly, he heard something downstairs. A murmur. A noise. At first, he ignored it. Then, the noise repeated and he opened the door to check what was going on. He went downstairs. He heard a click. Then another click.
He rushed to the light switch. And instead of lightbulbs, something else was ignited. There was a light and a flame, and a blow. Then, everything went black. 
Kirk entered the DADANTI office for the first time in months. Not much has changed since he was gone, but the faces of his employees were still pale after what had happened. A young brunette passed him in the corridor; pale, with a disoriented look on her face.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, coming across Kirk.
‘Kirk’, he introduced himself.
She laughed in disbelief.
‘My notice is on your desk. I quit.’
‘Who was this?’, the next visible person in the office was Adam.
‘This girl? Paula. Don’t you recognize her? You two have been in calls for months. She told me this morning that it’s her last day. She didn’t take the accident too well.’
‘And who do you think did? Have you seen the pictures?’
‘Yes, we all saw them. It’s a miracle that only two people were killed. If she had decided to blow up the factory on a standard day, there would have been a thousand victims…’
‘I agree. Her family was shocked. Monika had worked here for too long, it seems. She didn’t take redundancy well. She bought enough explosives to blow up a few DADANTI’s offices. Not just herself and this one fellow who worked there at that time.’
‘Kirk, she blew herself up. She blew up the whole factory. This is unbelievable.’
Kirk was still limping a bit, even though his bones grew solid together. Also one of his legs was thinner and hairier due to all this time it was kept in the plaster.
‘On a different matter, have you seen Beata? I couldn’t contact her for months.’
‘Me neither. No one in the office could. Paula complained that she was unavailable.’
‘Adam, do you know Beata’s address?’
They both drove to the block of flats where Beata’s apartment was located. They passed a green couch in the corridor, left as if intended for a glamorous waiting room, where guests could sit down, relax and take off their shoes without losing balance. Looking at the address written in HR documents, they found the door. 
‘It’s locked.’
‘Have we ever phoned her family?’
‘Does she have a family? Adam was looking at a blank space where there should be an emergency telephone in case something happened. Who should I call?’
‘Can you smell it?’ Kirk stood close to the door.
Adam, instead, called for the fire brigade.
An hour later, they both stood downstairs while Beata’s body was taken by the fire brigade down to the ambulance, which arrived minutes later. Due to a special microclimate, which was created inside by very limited space (packages) and exotic plants (not watered for months), she was a bit mummified, but the rotting body still presented a terrible sight for all witnesses. Adam came back to Kirk with what he heard from firefighters.
‘They say that there’s no sight of drugs or suicide. She must have got drunk and fell asleep. And suffocated. There’s hardly any room to breathe. It’s like a sarcophagus…’
Michael, who was pissed that Kirk was back in the office, and to make matters worse he was in good condition - not broken, not aged after the recent accident and rumored funeral of his father - was cleaning his laptop from unnecessary documents. 
He remembered how stress-free it was when the boss was away. He could make fun with IT guys. They could joke at everything without this stiff, controlling man breathing over his shoulder. One time, they got high (no one had ever smelled the joints which they enjoyed in the office courtyard where smoking (of cigarettes) was allowed) and played with the sex toys’ designs. Another time they were joking about what if HENRY could swear and behave like a nightmare boyfriend. They even wrote down his exemplary responses which could be incorporated into the application. Laughing so hard, they created an entire file. Good times. Fun times. Michael was looking with nostalgia at the folder with a discolored vagina or a one-testicle penis, which inspired laughs during similar high afternoons, pictures he almost entirely forgot… 
‘Wait…’, he realized something.
He found the mail he was supposed to send a few months ago to the developmental team. He scrolled down for the attachment.
There it was. He downloaded it. Opened it. But it wasn’t the right folder. It was the fun folder with all their jokes sent as instruction with the official mail. No one there treated it as a joke. They treated it dead-seriously and applied what was given in files. 
Michael deleted the mail and decided that it was high time to look for another job. 
The second wife of Damian Adanti couldn’t make sense of it all. When all these delivery cars started leaving boxes at their drive, she only watched. Her husband was on a business trip, so he wasn’t aware. But once one box came one day followed by two dozen identical boxes, she didn’t have arguments to oppose. It was the right address and her husband’s surname was also there, confirming that the packages arrived at the right place.
But when she opened the package and saw the content, she was in doubt even more. 
There they were, packed in colorful containers, numerous one-ball dildos. She calculated them roughly looking at the number in each box. There were over ten thousand one-testicle silicone penises at her doorstep. Afraid of the neighbors’ reaction, using a shopping trolley, she moved all of them to the garage.  
It was the third time her husband forgot to consult with her about his business plans. Firstly, he changed his job, not even mentioning that his previous one was going badly. Secondly, he sold his car and bought a new one. And where was she in his planning process? And now these things.
‘Are you going to sell them?’ she asked once he was back from his trip.
‘Give me a break, woman! I’m tired. I’m not going to sell anything.’
At this point, she got mad. She married a fucking moron. A fucking pervert.
It was a bad way to leave, but she had enough. She took a knife and when her husband was asleep, she cut his testicle off, waking him up to the enormous pain.
‘So keep them!’
She took her suitcase and went back to live with her mother.
Paula took some time off. She bought a one-way ticket to Bali and decided to taste a slow life.
Colors were slowly coming back to her. At first, they were barely noticeable, mixed with brown and grey. In time, they were more vivid and tangible.
In Bali, she also met an American guy, backpacking for a whole year, just about her age. He was blissful and irresponsible. But he was good at one thing and managed something which HENRY couldn’t with all his modes and technology.
‘Shouldn’t we get to know each other a bit better?’ he proposed.
‘Why? Can’t we just enjoy each other?’
Paula was ecstatic as she experienced another burst of red and orange and another orgasm. 
HENRY meanwhile sent another message to her phone, which was closed in the same exact drawer in her old flat in Paris, now occupied by other tenants. 
Paula, on the other hand, felt free.

THE END