Chapter 5

"So, this is it," Philip says, his slow-paced words stressing his mental exhaustion. He looks to Ruth, who's sitting next to the company Associates who came to watch his painstaking three-hour presentation, and some sort of relief comes through with her smiling at him.

"Very well, Philip. This is all we needed to get this going," Agatha says, sternly looking at her laptop, not even bothering to look at him. Her arrogance and disdain for him don't seem to match her white floral dress. All about her — her looks, her mannerism, her everything — has really gotten on Philip's nerves since the beginning of the meeting. "Now that you have this finally done, we need to have the Transports Ministry portal demos done for this Friday. Get the team working on it. Thank you."

Philip and his three other colleagues feel like a train just hit them.

"Excuse me?" he asks.

Agatha and the Associates look at Philip, raising an eyebrow in surprise.

"Are you guys serious?" his voice climbing in tone, and his body language following suit. "Me and the other guys have been through Hell all of last week, and now you want us to do overtime? AGAIN! That's UNBELIEVABLE!"

"Easy, Philip, what's the matter?" Darien asks, the most senior Associate in the meeting room.

"What's the matter? Daniel is gone! And you keep pushing us to the LIMIT! What the FUCK do you think is the matter?"

"WATCH your tone, boy! That's no way of addressing us!" Mariah, a company Associate sitting next to Agatha, warns.

"Please, please calm down everyone!" Ruth nervously intervenes. "Philip and the team are very worn out, and we should give them a rest! This was way too much work for them!"

"THANK YOU, Ruth! But AGATHA there has been kicking us with no kind of respect for our work. Daniel quits the company, and everyone is all good and dandy while me and my colleagues here don't have any life besides her FUCKING PROJECTS!"

"Philip ... You are getting out of line here," Darien says.

"I'm sorry, I thought I was just telling the TRUTH here! I bet she doesn't even tell you how the FUCK she gets this shit done in a FUCKING WE..."

"Is this boy serious?" Mariah contemptuously interrupts. "Agatha, how long have you been dealing with this kid?"

He looks at Mariah, the brunette with long straight hair sitting next to the other bitch in the room, and his anger starts building towards her as well. The grin on her face, the insult ... Calling him a "kid"? Who the fuck does this fucking whore think she is?

"Very well, this is going to stop," Darien abruptly intervenes, his tone chilling the entire room. "Philip, Ruth, and all the other programmers, please exit the room."

Philip is about to protest when Ruth grabs his arm and forcibly pulls him out of the meeting room. The programmers follow them both, their heads down and their mouths shut.

Twenty minutes later, Philip and Ruth meet in the hall for a coffee.

"Damn, Ruth. I ... I just blew up back there..."

"Easy. You are right, they can't overload everybody with work like this. They're probably talking with Agatha about what is going on with these projects. I bet more of the programmers are going to leave as well, and they can't just ignore that!"

"Jesus, I can't take this shit anymore ... But what fucking choice do I have?"

"Well ... Have you been looking out?"

"Yeah ... Over and over ... Hey, who the fuck does that Mariah think she is? She's even more ... more stupid than Agatha!"

"Yeah, she's the Marketing Director and also company Associate. She's about Agatha's age, maybe a bit less, thirty nine years old or so..."

"By her fancy clothing and the ridiculous amount of jewelry, I thought she would be something useless like that."

"Yes, well, those two bitches are like best friends. I even heard one time Agatha's kids call her aunty, here in the corridors."

Philip and Ruth both look to the hall door as Darien's secretary walks towards them. "Philip, please get back to the meeting room. Alone, please."

Philip looks nervously to Ruth, and heads to the damned meeting room.

Stepping into the room, he finds Agatha, Mariah and Darien, now looking directly at him. For some reason, only Mariah seems somehow entertained, with a stupid smile on her face.

"This is not a kindergarten," Agatha says, the words coming from her mouth matching the annoyance in her eyes. "We will let you run a team of programmers as you see fit, but I want you to deliver what we pay you for."

"What? You can't..."

"Philip, please refrain yourself," Darien interrupts.

"But this is WRONG! She can't..."

"PHILIP! We are handing you responsibility for a team! And this is enough!" Darien once again intervenes.

"Ha ha ha ha," Mariah mockingly laughs. "This is too funny. Now we have to lecture these kids!"

Philip feels his head turning red with anger and humiliation.

"Philip," Darien says, while looking with disdain at Mariah. "Get this done. Please leave the room, this meeting is over."

Philip turns, barely containing himself, wanting to get the hell out of that room as soon as possible, to explode elsewhere.

"Wait," he hears from Agatha. "Stop by my office at 8PM. Now leave, before I say everything I have to say to you in front of my Associates."

"Agatha..."

"NO, Darien. This ... KID, like Mariah says, thinks he can get away without any sort of a reprimand after his little show today in front of everyone? I don't think so! And YOU, I already told you to LEAVE!"

Philip's anger and humiliation are boiling so much that he furiously leaves the room, slamming the door on his way out.

What the fuck has just happened? How did this come to this point? Thoughts race in his mind, like his job, Ilene, Ilene's mother, money, everything.

Philip sits in his desk, his head in his hands.

"Hey ... Did the presentation go wrong?" Ilene asks from the opposite desk.

He looks into her sad, questioning eyes, not knowing what to say. They humiliated him, they treated him like a child, and they were fucking his life, again and again. And he doesn't know what to do, but to work and get shit done.

That's it, he thinks to himself. He'll do the work. He'll continue to search for jobs. Better days will come. As long as he has Ilene and a roof above his head, this shit isn't anything. He has to keep thinking like this or he'll explode.

"Everything's all right. I'll work it through ... I have one last meeting today, and then we can go home."

Ilene stares at him for a while, unconvinced, but returns to whatever work she has in her laptop. The veil of blankness and emotional detachment immerses her once again.

And that's for the better, Philip thinks. She doesn't need to bear this shit as well.

It's 8PM.

The coldness and darkness lurking outside slowly but surely begin to seep into the building as Philip walks to Agatha's office at 8PM, as she demanded.

He's furious.

The bitch made him stay in the company until this late, and not only him, but also Ilene, who's waiting at her desk, already with a load of tiredness showing up in her face. Added to that, he's freezing, because the heat has been turned off since 6PM, and no building can keep outside the coldness from this dreadful winter.

Trying somehow to contain his irritation, he knocks on the door and enters, finding Agatha sitting at her desk, with her son and daughter standing there.

"Lea, go ahead and take Theodore to aunty's car, I'll come down in a few minutes."

Her daughter, a 16 or so year-old slim blonde girl, smiles at him, giggles, and grabs her brother's hand, a brown-haired kid who looks about fourteen years old.

"Come on, Theo, mommy has some business with this boy!" Lea says. Something about that girl's giggle and the way she referred to him as "boy" annoyed Philip even more, but they finally walk away and close the door behind them.

Agatha stands up from her desk, and, seemingly aloof to the coldness in her meager white floral dress, she walks towards him, and stops inches away from him.

Without a warning, she slaps his face, hard.

"WHAT THE FU..."

"SHUT UP!" she yells. "You will SHUT UP, unless you want to fucking LOSE your job! Is that what you want, you piece of shit? You think you can talk to me however the FUCK you WANT? And in FRONT OF MY ASSOCIATES?"