The day was slow and boring at the office, there was no meeting scheduled for today, no outing, no luncheon, just boring office paperwork which she had surprisingly finished long before noon.
Keith had not stepped out of the office since he arrived in the morning, even his lunch had been delivered to him in his office. Donna did find that odd, she knew her boss was not one to stay cooped up in one room for very long, even if he was dead ass busy.
Severally, she had considered going into his office to check up on him to know what he was doing, but every time she thought about it, she wiped it away. It shouldn’t be her business anyway, but was that not supposed to be the business of a personal secretary?
A knock came on her door and she looked up from her phone to see Paige walking into her office with a big and bright smile plastered on her face and holding in her hands a rather big wrapped box. Donna sighed and reclined on her chair then placed her phone back into her bag, grateful to have company even if it would be for less than a minute.
“A package for you, Donna.” Paige said with a smile as she walked into Donna’s office and set the box down on the desk. “Looks like someone is gonna have a good Christmas.” she said and winked, planing both her palms on the box.
Donna blushed and reached to playfully slap Paige’s hands off the box, before she dragged it across the desk closer to her side where she sat. “It just might be more work, we never can tell.”
“More work came wrapped up nicely in a box with a decorative wrap? I would love to have such work delivered to me every god damned day.” Paige giggled as Donna did and them made to sit but Donna gave her a quizzical look.
“Don’t you have work to do, Paige?”
“Oh… don’t mind me darling.” she said and swiped one hand in the air in front of her face. “I just desperately want to see what mystery has been wrapped in there.”
Donna chuckled but kept her eyes fixed on Paige who then sighed and rolled her eyes before standing, lifting both hands in the air as she turned to walk out of the office. “…don’t mind me, I’m just the delivery girl.”
“Thanks Paige!” Donna yelled after her with a chuckle.
As soon as Paige had stepped out of her office and shut the door, Donna attacked the package, she had a smile on her face as she thought of Wayne, he had been surprising her everyday at the office, sending lunch, sending flowers, sending greeting cards and all that, and today he had sent this rather huge box. Her curiosity and eagerness to know what was wrapped inside the box was overwhelming.
She stood up just as the wrapping came off and then opened the lid, in the box was a white teddy bear, but it was stained by something red. Donna’s smile softened and her eye brows furrowed in confusion.
“Terrible customer service.” she said, putting the blame on the company that had packaged this, but her heart was still warm just at the thought of Wayne sending her this.
She pulled out the teddy bear and noticed that something else was in the box, she set the teddy bear down on her chair and reached her hands inside to pull out what laid at the bottom.
She felt them, they were pictures, but sticky. She pulled them out of the box and a strong smell hit her nose. Blood.
She frowned now and looked at the pictures, they had all been smeared in blood and she couldn’t clearly see the face of the person in the pictures, so she wiped it clear with her thumb and that was when she began to panic because Alix was in the pictures.
She scanned through the pictures in horror as each picture captured her daughter at home, in school, on the bus, almost everywhere she had been to n the city, and written on the back of each picture was a message; “STAY AWAY”.
With her trembling hands, she dug into her bag to find her phone, her eyes darting to her phone as she fumbled to find the call log, she could barely take her eyes off the picture. She dialed her mother’s number and brought the phone to her ear.
“Donna-”
“Mum, where is Alix?”
There was a momentary pause on the other line before her mother responded. “You called by this time of the day to ask that?”
“Mum please!” she didn’t know when she yelled but frankly no one could blame her, she was already loosing it and her heart beat had quickly accelerated. “Where is Alix right now?!”
“She would be in school, where else?” came her mother’s instant reply, not sounding upset at her daughter’s tome of voice.
Donna cut the call, threw the pictures back into the box, grabbed her car keys from the desk and rushed out of her office, she still had the blood from the pictures smeared on her hands so whatever she touched was also stained in blood.
She raced out of the office and made a straight run for the elevator, once inside, she pushed the button that would take her to the underground car park like a dozen times, cursing at the inventor for making the machine respond slowly.
The ride down was the longest she had ever had to wait, as she uneasily paced the length and breath of the small space within the elevator. When the elevator stopped, dinged and the doors slid open, she rushed out, stumbling as she did but managed to regain her composure without falling.
Her car wasn’t parked that far away and she found herself being grateful to Keith for allowing her park her car in his reserved spot. She jumped in, started the engine, reversed to make a turn and them zoomed out of the parking lot and onto the premises, heading for the road.