Hello and welcome to meters pod Episode Seven. I'm your host D
meet us. Before we get started on this episode, I want to
welcome our new Senior Producer Jay Wolf and producer Andy
Holman. J. Wolf is a speculative fiction author and submissions
editor at Uncanny Magazine and general podcasting enthusiast,
find her on Twitter at JX. Wolf, that's J y. I'll tell you more
about Andy in a little bit. I'd like to thank you both profusely
for supporting the show monetarily. Like I said, in the
last episode, every penny helps and I'm looking into producing
some extra content that we released exclusively for our
monthly supporters. If anyone else would like to help us out,
you can visit me this pod.com and click the donation link at
the top of the page. Now on to our story for the week. Douglas
Nikki, administrative assistant, written by our very own producer
Andy Holman, and he lives in Philadelphia and an apartment
that he shares with his girlfriend and their pet tree.
He works in an office by day and this will be his first published
work outside of a student publications. He blogs at whole
story.blogspot.com. his Twitter handle is at the whole story.
And some of his online videos can be found on YouTube by
searching for West villeins. Or you can just check our show
notes for this episode. I have everything linked up there. The
story is read to us by Brian Rollins. Brian is a voice actor
living in Denver, Colorado with his wife, two kids and a Great
Dane that thinks she's a lapdog. We're not narrating audiobooks,
he's on stage or chipping away at that steampunk novel that
lives in the back of his brain and won't go away. He also
writes reviews for the Sci Fi website, bureau 42, and blogs at
the voices in my head.com. If you're in the Denver area, you
can see Bryan on stage this march with the magic moments
production of a dark and stormy night, which he co wrote. magic
moments Incorporated is a nonprofit organization
established in 1983 that produces annual musical and
theatrical productions. Each production integrates persons
with physical and developmental disabilities into a total
performing cast of amateurs and professionals. The mix is truly
magical for everyone involved, cast staff and the audience. You
can find out more at magic moments inc.org. All of those
links can be found in the show notes. Without further ado,
here's our story.
Doug Lipnicki, administrative assistant written by Andy
Holman, read by Brian Rollins. Some people, especially people
who work in offices, live by routine. In the morning, they
wake up at night, they go to sleep in the middle, they go to
boring jobs. Maybe they even get the chance to look out a window
and see natural light at some point during the day. It's not
perfect, but it pays the bills. Right. Now it used to be me,
wake up, go to work, sleep, repeat. But these days, my job's
about as far from boring as you can get. My name is Doug
Lipnicki. And I'm an administrative assistant. This
is the story of why my boss lets me wear jeans to work. I should
clarify that. When I say I'm an administrative assistant, I
pretty much mean that I'm a male clerk. But by calling me an
assistant, they get to also include other duties as assigned
to my job description. I don't have a fancy job where he talked
to clients or anything. But as my story begins, I was wearing a
tie anyway. Not only did company policy say that I had to wear
one. But my boss Frank had particularly strong feelings on
the matter. When I asked him about relaxing the dress code
shortly after I started, his response was mail being
delivered in jeans would be an affront to the integrity of the
position. Would you trust mail being delivered to your home by
a man wearing jeans? It would be like getting a diagnosis from a
doctor wearing a clown wig. It was then that I knew that I
would never have any respect for Frank. Anyway, when I got to
work on the day in question, Frank was out of the office. I
think he was in his boss's office getting chewed out,
presumably due to his poor managerial style, failure to
earn the respect of his employees if I had to guess. So
I tried to make good use of my time. I turned on my computer,
hoping I can actually get some work done before he returned and
resumed his mismanagement. I also switched on the radio,
relishing any opportunity to hear something at work other
than his aggravated mutterings and raspy breathing. I was just
catching up on that morning's emails. When Frank stormed into
the office. He brought with him his usual aroma of coffee and
stale cigarette smoke. He was rhetoric sweaty er than usual.
And he stared at me like a man who just gotten yelled at by his
boss and wanted to take it out on his assistant. I hastily
reached over and turn the radio off, cutting off the newscasters
report about something going on at the labs downtown. Morning,
Frank, I said as gently as I could. I felt my mouth
reflexively creep into the plastic vacant. But
theoretically placating smile that I long ago started adopting
when dealing with Frank. I think I read somewhere that you can
get along with your boss more easily. If you don't treat him
like some kind of robot or alien powered by hatred, listening to
the radio Lipnicki. After a moment's hesitation, I began,
no, which was technically true. I mean, he'd seen me turn off
the radio and everything, but he interrupted me with a slam of
his hand onto my desk. He pointed out a large bin of
envelopes. The mail is not going to deliver itself. he stomped
into his office. So I sorted the mail, put it in a cart, and took
it to each of our offices. This was one of the better parts of
the day. Most of the other duties as assigned in my job
involves interacting with Frank delivering the mail didn't.
It also gave me a chance to talk to Jamie, a cute gal on the
ninth floor. Speedy Delivery. I said, checking her a bundle of
mail. Speedy she checked her watch. Wasn't this stuff
supposed to be delivered like half an hour ago? You can't rush
a job well done. I said. She made a face that might have
suggested to a less confident person, that she disagreed that
I'd done this job well, or perhaps done any job well, ever.
Ignoring the sudden and unrelated tightening in my
throat. I decided to exit gracefully, offering a quiet but
dignified. Well take it easy. Wheat, she called as I turned
away, a hint of anxiety in her voice. Have you been listening
to the radio? The randomness of the question juxtaposed with the
worried tone and Jamie's voice caught me off guard. I inhaled
sharply catching a whiff of her perfume. It smelled faintly of
apples. I turned back around attempting to convey
nonchalance, please, with Frank on my back. Why? What's up? I
don't know. She replied, shaking your head. Just some weird stuff
on the news. They were saying that the site is downtown.
Accessed some kind of portal or something? Oh, yeah, I heard
some of that. I think it's a Halloween prank or something.
She found Halloween isn't for another week. I shrugged. Don't
ask me. Some people have six senses of humor. She didn't look
satisfied. And I couldn't leave her looking like that. If I had
a motto, it would have been something to do with never
leaving a woman unsatisfied. So I added, besides, if anything
goes down, I got your back. She cracked a lopsided grin. I'll
hold you to that. I adopted a thoughtful pose. You know, now
that I think about it. That happens to be why the mail was
late. Oh, really? See, I was detained this morning by the
creepy kid who lives upstairs for me. He stopped me to warn me
that a portal to Hell open today. I do the words out like a
cartoon ghost. She rolled her eyes but I went on. Now they
think about it. An old hotel. groundskeeper tried to warn me
about this last week actually. She finally laughed. And I could
feel my pulse Quicken. See you Doug. And that my friends, is
how you slow motion. Whoo. A lady that Doug Lipnicki way.
When I got back to my office, Frank got on my case about
taking too long with a male again. Just as he was about to
get to the if you keep showing me you don't want to work here.
Then you can find yourself another job. Part of his speech.
The fire alarm went off. This isn't over. He said. Look up
your desk. Let's go. Frank headed for the sweet door while
I began locking up my desk. I wasn't finished before I heard a
blood curdling scream. I ran to see what it was only to see
Frank running toward me. I started to ask what was wrong,
wondering if he finally snapped when I saw it. Breaking through
the glass of our sweet door was a monster. I'm not seeing that
lightly. Picture the alien from alien and cross it with an ape
and a bull. And also some Robocop in there. Somehow. Frank
and I rushed into his office and shut the door. What the hell was
that? I guess Between ragged breaths, I could hear the thing
starting to tear up our suite. It sounded like it was flipping
my desk upside down. If that was true, it wasn't going to have
much trouble getting through the door to Frank's office. What are
we going to do? Surprisingly, Frank actually had a plan. It
was a bad plan, but it was still more than I expected.
I'm gonna call 911. You're gonna go out there and buy us some
time.
I felt my cheeks get hot. It may already be apparent that I never
liked Frank very much. But at that moment, any resigned
disaffection I had for Frank was replaced with a hot seething
fury. It was stronger than any emotion I'd ever had before.
Stronger than the pride I'd had when I got my first job.
Stronger than the disappointment I'd felt when my family moved
across the country away from all my friends when I was 12. I
wanted to stab Frank to death using icicles made from Frozen
shit. Unfortunately, I was too angry to articulate any of this
at the time was the best I could come up with. Frank placed a
pair of scissors in my hand and shoved me out the door. I
stumbled out of his office screaming.
I think my intention was to scare and surprise it, but
neither happened before I'd taken a few steps. The thing
back handed me my body slammed into a wall, the wind knocked
out of me a crumpled to the floor. I struggled to breathe
and tried to come up with a new plan, but was none too pleased
to see that I dropped the scissors. I frantically started
to look around for them. When the monster approached me. Each
of its many claws clicking on the floor as it neared, a long
tongue hung from its mouth dripping with saliva. I was
pretty sure it wasn't going to lick me and tried to be friends.
I spotted the scissors and tried to lunge for them. But it swung
at me again, sending the spiraling headfirst into our
small paper shredder. For a moment, everything seemed to go
purple, and the only sound I could hear was my own heartbeat.
After a moment, things seemed to mostly settle down and I could
hear again. Unfortunately, this returned a sensation brought
with it pain throughout my entire body. And when I tried to
stand up, the best I could manage was to pull myself up
into a slump against the shredder. But by now the monster
was practically on top of me. It smell was a noxious cloud that
made me miss Frank's Coffee and Cigarettes, a mixture of rotting
milk and body odor, as well as surprisingly, the scent of dryer
sheets. And I almost gagged despite everything else. For a
moment, the only thing I could think of was how much I didn't
want to throw up. Thankfully the moment passed, but through
double vision, I could see the creatures mouth opening and I
knew it was about to strike. In desperation, I reached behind me
and picked up the paper shredder, hoping to shield
myself with it. I closed my eyes expecting to meet my end.
Instead, I felt the creature ran into the paper shredder and
heard it shriek I opened my eyes and saw that it somehow gotten
its tongue caught in the paper feeder. It flailed back and
forth as the shredder began eating its tongue, totally
forgetting about me, as desperately tried to dislodge
itself. I crawled over to the scissors. I picked them up and
stood unsteadily. I had no idea what the most vulnerable part of
the creature was. But I did know that it could free itself at any
moment and finish me off with a primal scream. I stabbed the
scissors into what looked like it's gut. It's thrashing
increased, so I knew I was at least inflicting some pain. I
withdrew the scissors and stabbed again. And this time, a
blackish purple liquid sprayed everywhere. The monster
collapsed but kept struggling so I kept stabbing it. The
sculpting sound and sensation made by the scissors going in
and out of the monster started to make me queasy again. But I
found myself experiencing a mixture of other emotions too.
Part of me was proud. I was killing a frickin monster. Part
of me wanted to cry, because my first response to a mysterious
creature was to kill it. And part of me was crying because
the monsters viscera kept getting in my eyes. Eventually
it stopped twitching. I dropped the scissors and staggered over
to Frank's door. Frank, I quote let me in. He slowly opened the
door. He looked kind of relieved though I'm fairly sure it had
little to do with my own survival. I don't believe it. He
whispered, wiping some sweat off his red brow. He quickly got a
hold of himself and began filling me in. We're all
supposed to Get to the 10th floor and hold up there till the
police clear the building. They've got food up there to
last a day, maybe two. At that moment, eating was the last
thing on my mind. But the idea made sense. On the 10th floor,
they seem to celebrate three birthdays a week. In all
likelihood, there was a fruit basket and leftovers from at
least two cakes up there. We set out armed with whatever we could
find in the office that might come in handy. I had scissors,
letter openers, a staple gun, some extension cords, a roll of
duct tape, and the kind of confidence that only comes from
having just killed a freaking monster. We move slowly through
the seventh floor and then the eighth informing as many of our
co workers as we could. We got to the ninth floor and got ready
to repeat the process.
The office is reimbursing me for these khakis by the way, I said
as I peeked through a small glass window as we done one
floor below the coast look clear. Frank's reply was
predictable. The hell we are looking at Missy they got when I
was fighting that monster saving your life. I saw him reading
when some of our co workers nodded approvingly. You think a
dry cleaner is going to be able to get a monstrous guts out of
khakis. Now, if these were jeans, I probably wouldn't care.
But Frank muttered something unintelligible as they slowly
opened the door and stuck my head out into the hallway. I
couldn't see anything. But I heard the same telltale clacking
of claws against the tile floor. I leaned back into the
stairwell. Sounds like there's one out there. I said. We looked
amongst each other uncertainly for a moment. We've got to keep
moving, said Leonard from accounting. There's nothing we
can do for any poor soul who's still on this floor, added
market from research. I looked around. None of them would look
me in the eye. Look, kid, Frank said, putting a damp hand on my
shoulder. He actually sounded really earnest. And for a
moment, I was afraid he was going to try to have a heart to
heart with me. Maybe something like the reason I've been so
hard on you is that I know you've got it in you to be the
best damn mailroom manager in Philadelphia someday, if only
you would finally live up to your potential and then call me
son or something. Instead, he said, we all feel really guilty
about this. But there's nothing we can do for them. We've got to
keep moving. I side. I guess I can't say I blame you gotta look
out for number one, right? Frank's face got redder. But I
made a promise and I'm going to keep it. I turned around and
grabbed the doorknob. I had a plan. The first thing I did was
grab the axe out of the fire safety box. I trolled the floor
for a few minutes until I heard the monster nearby. Then I
ducked into an office and close the door. For good measure. I
pushed a bookcase in front of it. I grabbed the phone and
started calling the offices that I hadn't checked. Maybe I get
lucky and everyone had already made it to safety. At this
point, it occurred to me that we could have saved ourselves a lot
of trouble if we called our co workers in the first place,
rather than wandering around to tell them all in person. I
figured I could blame this one on Frank. Only one person
answered the phone. It was the last call I made. I must have
put it off because I'd been dreading it the most. There was
Jamie. As the phone rang, I felt my heart racing. What would it
mean if she didn't answer and she made it out safely? Or had
the monster gardener with each ring? I found myself starting to
fear the ladder more and more. Just when I couldn't take it
anymore. The phone stopped ringing. I bit my lip expecting
to hear Jamie's voicemail greeting and knowing it would be
the last time I'd hear her voice. Except it wasn't her
voicemail. It was a very quiet whisper. Hello. I let out of
breath. I hadn't realized I'd been holding. Jamie it's Doug.
Are you okay? Talk? Oh god, you're alive. I had expected her
to sound scared. But she sounded really scared like pee your
pants scared. It made me wonder if she actually had peed
herself. It would make my valiant rescue a lot more
smelly. Jamie calm down. Are you alright? The unspoken question
lingered in the air. Did you pee your pants? I'm I'm okay. I
guess everyone else made it upstairs I think but I can hear
the thing right outside my office. I think it heard the
phone ringing shit. After a moment. I took a deep breath in
steeled myself. Stay where you are. I'm coming to get you.
What? Are you crazy? You're gonna get yourself killed.
Despite the verge of hysteria tone in her voice. I couldn't
help but smile at the thought she actually cared about my well
being Hey, every cloud has a silver lining, right? I did my
best to project an air of confidence. Just stay put and
relax. No, this is insane. I can't let you do this. You have
to Jamie, I love you. I heard a soft gasp on the other end of
the phone. But other than that there was no immediate comeback
for that one. Score one for Doug. After a moment, she said,
really? I wasn't prepared for this particular follow up.
I'm not sure. A note of accusations jumped into your
voice. I can't believe you'd say something like that so
cavalierly. What if you died? Well, I carry the guilt with me
for the rest of my life, knowing that the man who loved me died
protecting me. Do you really want me to go through that? Why
would you do that to me? If I die protecting you, I'm not so
sure how long you'd have to worry about living with the
guilt, I thought, but I kept that to myself. Look, I wasn't
thinking about that. I was just hoping, I guess that if I
survived, you'd go out with me when this was all done. Her tone
softened. That's actually kind of sweet in a very weird way.
But I guess that just might be the circumstances. A right.
Thanks. She hadn't actually said yes to going out with me. But
this didn't seem like the right moment to seek clarification.
When the pause threatened to become as large and frightening
as the monsters we were facing off against, I blurted okay, I
guess I'll just hang up now. Yeah, see you soon. Good luck,
she said and then hung up. I took a few deep breaths and
stretched. I'd hoped to sound calm and confident by saying See
you soon. But the more I thought about it, the more stupid and
foolhardy it sounded. Oh, well, she wouldn't be thinking about
that when I showed up to rescue her. I put everything I'd
learned in my first fight with one of these things to use when
I found one outside Jamie's office. I also learned some new
things. For example, if you're about to fight a giant monster,
don't waste your strength. Moving a bookcase back and
forth. My muscles were aching before the fight even began.
Still, the creature strength claws and repellent stitch were
no match for my intellect Righteous Fury and stainless
steel fire axe. Plus at one point, it tripped over a phone
cord. You should try a cordless in Hell is what I would later
wish to have said while dealing the final blow. I wasn't a
pretty sight when Jamie opened her office door for me. I had a
gash on my forehead which stung like hell and bloodied up the
rest of my face. And one of my eyes was just about swollen shut
might tie in most of my shirt were gone. And one leg of my
pants was torn off at the knee. My breaths came in ragging
Holton gasps and I had to lean against the wall to stay
upright. Still, she looked at me like I was an angel descended
from heaven. here alive. She hugged me with all her might.
And a flash of searing fain confirmed my suspicion that I
dislocated my shoulder. As I hugged her back to the best of
my ability. I gave a tentative sniff. No pee. Either that or
there was too much blood in my nose for me to smell anything.
She helped prop me up as we made our way to the stairwell. I
can't believe you actually did this for me. She laughed
nervously and looked down. I could hardly believe it myself.
But a guy will do plenty of stupid things to impress a girl.
She looked at me askance. Sorry, I think I have a concussion. The
scientist never did quite figure out how to shut that portal to
hell or wherever. Until they do or until a diplomatic solution
is found. West Philly will be infested with monsters. Everyone
got used to it pretty quickly. Actually, police officers
started wearing additional body armor and packing extra heat.
And every business has one or more of its employees trained in
the termination of monsters at my job. It was the
administrative assistants other duties as assigned, remember,
and that's why Frank lets me wear jeans to work. Accounting
did end up approving reimbursement for clothing
damaged while fighting the monsters. And after the fifth
destroyed pair of khakis. He finally relented, which was
almost a suite of victories killing a giant monster. I guess
I was lying about my life not being routine anymore, though.
I'm still doing the office every morning by nine pay. It's
corporate America. Some things never change. I'd also like to
pass on one piece of advice. If you're ever planning on rescuing
someone just for the sake of going out with them. Think
twice. Sometimes that person might already have a boyfriend
But won't decide to tell you until after you've rescued them.
Just saying
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check out more of their work at odd sprite.com linked in the
show notes. Me this pod is released under a Creative
Commons Attribution non commercial, no derivatives
license, share it all you like just don't change it or sell it.
Thanks for listening folks. We'll see you next time.