Therapy Bits

Thanks Fandango for the challenge!

Fandango’s Story Starter #216 – Facts, Fictions & Fantasies

Today was her first day at her new job and she thought she was prepared.
Maya had rehearsed her smile in the mirror, ironed her blouse until it looked like it belonged to someone else, and memorized a mental map of the building. Preparation was a comfort blanket—something she could fold neatly around the jagged edges of her nerves.

The lobby was all glass and marble, a place where even footsteps seemed to hesitate before landing. She followed the signs to the thirty-fourth floor, her badge swinging like a metronome against her chest.

Her manager, Mr. Clarke, greeted her with a handshake that was firm but not warm. He ushered her through a corridor of humming cubicles and into a room she hadn’t seen on the map.

“This will be your desk,” he said, motioning toward an empty chair beside a frosted window.

The desk was bare except for a single object: a shard of glass, no bigger than her palm, resting on a folded piece of paper. She glanced at Clarke.

“That’s standard,” he said, already turning away. “You’ll get used to it.”

The paper bore her name in neat block letters. Beneath it, three words: Do not look.

Her pulse quickened. She tucked the shard into the desk drawer, telling herself she would ask about it later. Work first. Questions later.

But every keystroke, every phone call, her eyes dragged toward that drawer. The glass seemed to hum faintly, like it remembered her. By lunch, she could swear it was vibrating.

When she finally cracked the drawer open, the shard was upright, leaning against nothing. A flicker of movement rippled inside it—her reflection, except the mouth was moving.

The office around her fell silent, as though someone had pressed pause on the world. Her reflection whispered a word she couldn’t quite catch.

Then the door clicked open. Clarke stood there, expression unreadable.

“You looked, didn’t you?”

Her throat dried.

He sighed. “Nobody ever lasts their first day.”

The shard pulsed once, and the lights went out.