Posted at 7:33 am on Jun 26, 2015 by:
Derrick Scrivens
Wake-up Call
He finally reached the top of the ladder in the company. Everything went as planned and his colleagues couldn't stop congratulating him. In the distance, there was the ringing of a telephone. Why wasn't his secretary answering it? He really needed to fire her. A man in his position didn't have to tolerate a secretary who couldn't handle her job.
He felt someone shake him, waking him from his dream. In reality, he was at home, in bed, with his wife. The only thing that had actually existed apparently, besides his terrible secretary, was the ringing phone.
"Derrick, wake up!" Emily shook him again, harder this time.
"What is it?" Scrivens asked calmly, keeping his eyes closed in a faint hope of being able to go back to sleep and hopefully returning to that amazing dream.
Even without opening his eyes, he knew it couldn't be 6:00 AM yet. He felt like he'd only slept for a couple of hours at most.
"It's your boss!" He could feel her trying to place the receiver in his hands, the cord of their old fashioned phone stretched out about as far as it would go.
"Which one?" A serious question as there were several people at his job that he would consider to be his superiors. He was high up in the company, but if he could make his dreams come true, there would be a lot less people he'd have to answer to.
Eyes still closed, he took the receiver before she could try to answer him and said, "This is Scrivens."
"Scrivens, Faust here." His least favorite of his superiors. He was younger than Scrivens and was only one of Scrivens' superiors thanks to his father pulling some strings. "I need you to come in for an emergency meeting. It seems that your little pet project went down earlier."
Scrivens' eyes were open and he was wide awake now. He'd dreaded receiving this particular phone call. The phone call that shattered his dreams of being at the top of the company. He was sure Faust already got few good laughs in over his misfortune. The bastard thrived on the failures of others, despite having no real accomplishments of his own under his belt.
Sighing, he said, "Okay, I'll be there as soon as I can."
Handing the receiver back to his wife, he slowly sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. A glance at the alarm clock as he rubbed his eyes told him it was just past 2:00 AM. Too early to have to deal with Faust.
"It's happened, hasn't it?" He could hear Emily sitting up in the bed too after putting the phone back down on its cradle.
"I don't want to discuss it." He didn't look at her, instead sighing again before he stood up and headed to the bathroom to start getting ready.
By the time he was out of the bathroom and dressed, Scrivens could smell coffee, bacon, and eggs in the kitchen. His wife was a good woman even though she could be annoying with her questions about his job. He hardly ate that morning, too anxious to find out what exactly happened with his project to bother with things like eating.
