Count down!!! #WickedWednesday

She recognised him the moment he stepped through the door. He didn’t have that same arrogant look, the jutting jaw, the assured swagger of the last occasion she’d seen him in the flesh as he’d strode past her desk towards the Executive Suite. But she knew from his eyes and those silvery streaks in his fringe. It was definitely him, definitely Nigel.

His profile, and the face pictures she’d requested when he’d contacted her from her Fetlife account, hadn’t given her any clues. They were just as all the other profiles, friendship requests . . . and bookings for her services . . . that she would always receive. Darkened, out-of-focus, selfie-mobile phone pictures either taken too close-up and out-of-proportion, or too distant and blurry to give an exact indication of the individuals “normal” identity.

Even when she’d asked him to call, as she always insisted, and they’d spoken for a few minutes on her mobile, she hadn’t recognised his voice. Nervous and slightly echoey . . . as these first calls so often were . . . their short conversation hadn’t triggered any alarms, any memories.

But it was definitely him, definitely Nigel.

He didn’t recognise her of course . . . after all, in her five years at the company, they’d never spoken in person. She was just another PA to one of his junior-managers in marketing, another faceless emailer from the third floor. Just a name, a convenient scapegoat, along with her department manager, who would “just have to be let go” when that contract had been approved and signed with one zero, one apparently very important zero . . . before the decimal point . . . had been left off the final paperwork.

“How could it happen?”
“Weren’t these things checked and re-checked?”
“Weren’t the minutes cross-referenced and listened to again and again?”
“They’ll have to be let-go. Replaced! All of them! The whole department!”

It had been a huge shock at the time. Unexpected and cruel. But in one of those wonderful twists of fate . . . one of those life-changing turns in the road . . . she’d risen to the challenge of one of her, very drunken, colleagues at their unofficial, enforced, post-redundancy drinks sessions.

“Why don’t you become a Mistress? You know how you hear about all those suits and execs that like to be dominated and whipped and spanked before they go home to shout at their poor wives and kids?”

And now . . . 18 months on . . . now, in one of those wonderful twists of fate, here was Nigel . . . sorry, “SubNeil71” . . . stepping over the threshold of her dungeon door.

“Now, SubNeil71, I want you to count down . . . one nip, one bite, one swipe, one pull-of-the-chain at-a-time . . . One Hundred Thousand and Ten . . . One Hundred Thousand and Nine . . . !!!!”

Why am I telling you this story? Well, because this week’s theme at Wicked Wednesday is all about other women who have been fired from their job for getting a number wrong. But, take it from me ladies, all is not lost . . . a change can often be good news . . . For Some !!!

And I think you might find more counting and re-counting, from tap-tap-tapping on Marie’s button below!

Xxx – K

P.S. Any resemblance to real-life instances of Nigel’s or Neil’s, is purely co-incidental, unexpected . . . and unintentional!!!