Is it quitting time yet? (Autumn/Public)

"Underworld Industries, Autumn speaking-"

The scarecrow sat at the receptions desk, carefully unbending a small colorful paperclip as she spoke through her headpiece.

She had found herself so lucky to land a job as the Monster division's receptionist; She thought it fit her well; She loved talking to people and, unlike some of the others on the floor, she didn't have a stick up her butt all the time. However, there were times she grew wary of the constant ringing of phones and the having to write down every little message passed to her.

It was repetitive.

"Uh-huh, and would you like those faxed to you?" Autumn leaned over the desk to adjust one of her potted plants, aligning it perfectly with the others. At that moment, a slippery monster wandered by, not only bumping the pots out of place, but dropping a rather stuffed (and sticky) manila folder on her desk. The small female offered a broad smile (it looked awkward and forced, showing more teeth than intended) but 'it' only scoffed, sliding away to carry on its job. Her shoulders slumped.

"Yes, sir, right away-- er, ma'am? Oh, I'm deeply sorry-"

Click.

Autumn took the headpiece off , picked up the paperwork left on her desk, and stood up. Now all she needed was for one of the fax machines to be spared from Yakaterina's earlier incident.

She could feel a small tugging at her leg as she circled around the desk yet thought nothing of it. She had often heard stories about the spirit division sometimes playing little pranks on the other floors, she was probably just one of their victims...Not surprising. The scarecrow glanced back, large eyes scanning for an unfamiliar hand-

She shrieked and slid on the previous monster's slimy trail of goop, comically face-planting onto the hard ground below her. She took a few moments to regain composure, and to fight off the urge to cry, before lifting her head up. A few coworkers chuckled, some covered their mouths in horror, and others stared down at her not concerned in the slightest, but they all eventually returned to their usual work.

'Just walk it off, walk it off...'

Autumn fell back onto her side as she attempted to push her light frame back onto its feet. Odd. It was as she were off balance..More than usual. The woman slowly glanced behind her and groaned. Only a few feet away was her detached leg, she could see the thick black thread connecting to it leading to her desk. Probably snagged on something while she wasn't paying attention.

The scarecrow groaned and let her head fall back on the ground. Today was so unfair.

(I...I don't know. xD Don't worry, she isn't going to be this pathetic/accident prone all the time. :\ Ijustwanthertosufferforthisonetopic---)

It certainly wasn't the most pleasant of settings,this over-crowded, work hazard of an elevator , but Douglas functioned by default to the philosophy of "grin and bear it." He had no choice, seeing how he possessed a literal skeleton grin. Skull joke~

He swore he could feel his entire left appendicular limbs slowly compress into their ancient joints. Needless to say this was one of the many reasons he avoided taking the elevator at all costs. His lucky stars must have lost considerable mass since the day had gradually spiraled into that no-mans-land between tedious and normal. The messenger of Death was reduced to nothing more than an actual messenger in this day and age. The head honchos decided that his gross input (see: soul-taking) wasn't meeting their expectations. Douglas was understandably appalled when they informed him that he would be performing his usual tasks by way of fax machines and mass emails.

His frame rattled as he shook the simultaneous disbelief and monster goop from his shoulders. It wasn't easy adjusting to being kicked off his death-dealing pedestal, but it wasn't said he didn't expect it at one point or another. The ancient Greek psychopomps fell out of favor within their cults ages ago as the times changed, as did his old friend the Morrigan. As Lovecraft aptly said: "in strange aeons, even death may die." Douglas sighed quietly and shook out the memos that were to be doled out to the Monster division. From what he could understand, there had been some losses, so to speak, within the company. Not too many, but Douglas still held any supernatural death within his field of interest. Did that make him a gossip? "Oh God, I hope not."

He was so caught up in his self-consciousness that he had completely bypassed the secretary's desk. Performing a textbook u-turn through oncoming monstrous traffic, the demoted Grim Reaper made a beeline to the receptionist's desk who, much to his surprise and confusion, was lying face-first on her workspace. Douglas fidgeted awkwardly for a moment, briefly wondering if she had died just before he arrived. Irony always seemed to plague him at the worst possible times. "Miss?" He prodded the still woman's cornsilk hair softly, "Miss, are you feeling well?"

Autumn let out a miserable sob and lifted her head. If she had the capability to actually cry, she probably would have looked like an absolute wreck. More than she already did. The scarecrow propped herself up onto her elbows, goop staining the front of her shirt and skirt (that would be fun to clean), and took a deep breath. He was in for an earful.

"Not at all! I witnessed a fight the other day, called a woman a man- which on my defense, she had an extremely deep voice!-, got slime all over the papers I was supposed to send to him/she/it, got slime all over myself--! And to top it all off," She jabbed her thumb towards her body part lying on the ground. "I tore my leg. clean. OFF."

Her lips had curled into a full-blown frown at this point and her large eyes stared up at the skeleton sadly; She looked just like a child. The woman took a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh.

Just because she wasn't having a good week didn't excuse her from manners.

"Thank you for asking."

Autumn's gaze soon fixed on the memos in the others hand and all misfortune was seemingly forgotten. Receptionist mode was on.

"What are those? Do they need to be distributed? Copied?"

Douglas, in spite of possessing mostly fixed cranial joints, looked visibly uncomfortable. It seemed as if he could almost feel the eyes of curious passersby glue to his back as he fidgeted with the papers. The poor thing was obviously overworked. The Reaper patted her shoulder softly, and rattled off words of sympathy like "fighting at work is just crude behavior on their part" or "it was an honest mistake." The scarecrow woman then wailed about her lost limb which was still laying in the middle of the work floor with a trail of thread and stuffing leading back to its owner. Douglas reached down to retrieve the leg, holding it lightly between his boney thumb and index finger.

"Um, here you go? Don't cry, everything alright." The skeleton man placed the leg on her desk, feeling genuinely sorry for her. It often eluded his attention how people aside from himself have it rough in the office. While he was certainly older than the majority of creatures at the company, and while he typically refrained from showing any emotion during work hours, Douglas still felt a twinge of pity for those who were stuck in limbo, either literally or metaphorically. Ironically, the Grim Reaper knew the emotion of being stuck in a rut with no way out. It was an unsaid wish that he envied mortals who had the privilege of death, but more often than not wasted the gift of life with trivial pursuits. Still, he relented to whatever passion people possessed towards their goals since he served for the sole purpose of collecting and delivering souls into the afterlife. Douglas guessed that whatever role he was shoved into now could be used to make (un)life a little better for others in the meantime. Attitude was what really mattered, right?

Like a flip of a switch, the scarecrow;s mood leveled to a calm and collected business face that Douglas barely had time to register. He fumbled with the papers, thumbing through the names and subjects before handing the stack over to the receptionist. "Yes, these all need to be distributed to the parties addressed in the subject field, Miss...Autumn," he added as he observed the title from the plaque stationed at her desk. Looking over his shoulders, Douglas whispered to his co-worker, "if you need to "step out" for a moment to fix your leg, I'd be more than willing to file these for you in the meantime." Normally he rarely took on more than his workload for the sake of keeping his already hectic schedule balanced, but after her little melt-down, Douglas figured he could just throw the afternoon coffee break out the window. Not like he needed it to begin with.

"You don't have to do that--" The scarecrow dragged herself to her desk, pulled herself up in her chair and began digging through the drawers. "I really shouldn't be dumping all this on you anyway, I'm sure you have better things to do than listen to some lil' pathet-" She droned on quietly, more to herself than to the skeleton. It wasn't until she finally found the spool and large needle that she spoke in a normal tone again.

"-I'll have myself pulled together in no time. But really, thank you." An embarrassed smile followed.

Autumn glanced at the papers before her as she poked the thick, black thread through the eye of the needle. Her wheat colored forehead creased, the familiar frown returned; She was at a lost. None of the names rang a bell and this posed a problem. How was she expected to match names to faces when she knew almost nobody?

"Although may I ask one teeny favor of you Mr....?"

She swiveled around in chair, limb in lap, and looked to the rows of cubicles. A slender finger tapped against her black lips thoughtfully before her eyes fell back on man.

"Could you possibly point out who is who? I'm a bit new here you see. Haven't had time to socialize with everyone."

He dismissed her apologies with a flick of his hand. Douglas thanked the powers above for ridding him of all fleshly ways of expressing emotion or else he would have rolled his eyes at the receptionist's pitiful droning. Was she always this weepy? Having no choice but to listen, Douglas nodded and fervently shook his head when appropriate during her list of woes. "I honestly don't blame you for falling apart- er, metaphorically speaking of course. Stress happens to everyone." Douglas stated with a contradictory straight face. "At least you don't have 206 individual pieces to keep track of at all times," he laughed dryly.

Autumn's obvious confusion prompted quick instructions from the Reaper, "oh that's not a problem, see that guy with the hockey mask by the fish tank...?" Douglas rattled off names and appearances like people rattled his ribcage to see if it made xylophone sounds. Even though he had only been employed by this company for a short amount of time, Douglas was quick to make mental notes of names and faces. It made his job a heck of a lot easier.

"- and then please tell Mr. Faustus to meet me in my office pronto." Douglas finished as he returned the stack of memos. " and my name is Douglas, or Mr. D as some of them kids like to call me," he chortled while feeling the playful sting of the jibes at his age. "I understand your confusion, trust me. Just try to make heads or tails of sprites- you can barely see them with all of that glitter dusting the place!". Douglas ran his palm across his forehead dramatically. "It seems like everyone is quite busy these days. Well, the break room is a good place to start; and I heard that the company was supposedly going to host employee-only events- something about boosting moral," Douglas trailed off as he scratched his sun- bleached mandible in thought.

"While I usually reside in the Spirit Division, You might get to see me drift by every now and again, I tend to be the company gopher," the skeleton's normal upright tone dimmed on the last sentence. "But at least you'll have one friendly face!"