Greetings fellow Steemians! Here is my third 5 minute freewrite. This is the weekend version, and I chose to do the 3 sentence prompt, so these three phrases:

"I had this system for getting exactly what I wanted out of people. "

"He was skating on thin ice, that's all I can say."

and

"The day Sheila brought Hillary to my office"

are all prompts from the contest.

Freewriting is a daily practice for most poets and fiction writers, designed to loosen up and get things flowing, like stretching before exercise. Visual artists, especially those who draw or paint from life (figures, landscapes, still lives, etc) do something similar in "gesture drawings". After reading several of @poetrybyjeremy's freewrite posts, I got excited to try these again. Many thanks to @mariannewest for hosting this daily freewrite! https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-127-5-minute-freewrite-friday-prompt-sunburn

https://pixabay.com/en/coffee-drink-espresso-cappuccino-3171587/

The Message

I had this system for getting exactly what I wanted out of people. It worked great in my head, but it never seemed to pan out in real life, at least not in the ways I expected it to. In theory, there are methods of subtly influencing the thought processes of other human beings without their noticing, but my subjects always seemed to catch on well before the series of strategically placed subliminal messages, sequential thought detours, veiled threats, and sugar coated guilt pills I had so carefully tailored to my intended victim's painstakingly deconstructed vulnerabilities had had any chance of derailing their free will.

At the time I saw everything, including people, as a means to an end, and it was a perpetual source of frustration to me that I found others so difficult to manipulate in ways that might have been useful. In other words, I was that most wretched of creatures: an ineffective sociopath. And therein (unbeknownst to me of course) lay my hope of salvation.

He was skating on thin ice, that's all I can say. We'd been roommates since business school, and that had been... What? Three years? I was still assistant manager at the espresso bar at the end of the block, and during all of that time he'd been steadily working his way up the corporate ladder at the same company he had been with since his first interview. He'd practically walked off the stage at graduation and into a cush upper story office.

Drake wasn't particularly good-looking. He was of average height, nondescript, with vaguely uneven features and a nose that was noticeably large for his face. He had a habit of slouching when tired, of thoughtlessly introducing himself with a handshake that was either limp as a fish or too firm and eager to please, depending on his mood, and of chortling gleefully in response to the punch lines of any jokes that happened to be related in his vicinity, whether or not they were actually amusing. One time, with a withering look, I had told him to stop pretending to think the statistics professor's jokes were funny. He had offered a blank stare in response, and I'd realized with creeping horror that he genuinely found this sort of activity entertaining.

Drake's ongoing, if moderate, success had been difficult to take, but this, his new promotion and the resulting financial freedom that would allow him to afford his own place... this was too much. He was just likeable. There was something about him that made people want to do things for him, give him stuff. And it was adding up.

The day Sheila brought Hillary to my office, a tiny broom closet sized cubicle adjoining the receiving room at the coffee house, which the manager and I shared, I was already close to the breaking point. Apart from the fact of Drake's ever more infuriating success, the customers had been just nuts all day, the employees whiny, the figures I was looking at didn't seem to want to reconcile, and I kept thinking how satisfying - and frighteningly addictive - it might theoretically be to shoot somebody in the face. And now Sheila. This was like setting fire to the hairshirt.

I eyed her appraisingly, knowing that the prim look on her face meant another trivial infraction on the part of one of our employees (had she any belief whatsoever in the conservation of energy, she would have overlooked such insignificant details in favor of actually getting something done). I was trying to mask the hostility I felt, but probably not very successfully. "What is it?" I sighed.

I turned briefly to Hillary and gave her a raised eyebrow, and what I hoped was a reassuring smile. This was my attempt to let her know that I was more amused than infuriated by the situation, which I wasn't, but for Hillary's benefit, I was willing to pretend. Her face wore a little half smile and her cheeks were slightly flushed, which made her look more attractive than usual, and that was saying something. I had been using every strategy at my disposal to try to get her to go out with me ever since the GM had hired her on a month before, but without any luck.

"I found this one", Sheila proclaimed triumphantly, "hiding in the stockroom when she was supposed to be cleaning the bathrooms and changing the trashes and sweeping the deck. She was messaging some guy." Sheila handed me a phone that belonged to Hillary, judging by the pictures displayed on her Messenger page, which was open. The pictures made my eyeballs sweat, not because of the nudity or the provocative poses, but because of the way she was looking at the camera. I glanced at the recipient's address.

It was Drake's.

©2018 Bennett Italia