• Joyce had been behind that cheap particleboard desk for nearing ten years. Surrounded by the same fake plants, the same obnoxious clients, and the same vending machine with the flickering Pepsi sign. Day in and day out, it was the same thing everyday. It wasn't a pleasant job being a secretary but it had one perk. Her boss.

    Mr. Lindsey wasn't like the other corporate suits she had slaved under in her previous jobs. Only Mr. Lindsey had given her time off when her children had come down with the flu. When her birthday had came around, he had thrown her a party and paid for her entire family to go to Red Lobster. The work he gave her was easy, he didn't keep her late, and unlike all of the other gray-haired jerks, he treated her like a person and not part of the office furniture.

    Two years ago, he had started to write a novel about his younger days when he played RPGs online. Mr. Lindsey treated it like his baby and Joyce often left work seeing her boss hard at work on the next chapter. It was his passion and whenever he let her read a few pages, she was often careful to downplay some of the errors she saw, out of respect for him.

    It was nearing lunchtime and as she did everyday, she left her dreary desk and headed to his office to get today's lunch order. As she opened the sturdy mahogany door, she was greeted by a snowstorm of papers.

    The office looked like it had been ransacked, bombed, pillaged, and hit by a tornado all at the same time. His swivel chair was thrown in to the now cracked wooden cabinets. The trash can was flipped over on top of the splintered bonsai tree that she had given him for Christmas. Every single file cabinet was open and one of them was thrown on the floor. The only thing that looked in place was Mr. Lindsey standing over his computer; his gaunt face flushed.

    “Mr. Lindsey? If everything alright, sir?” She asked nervously.

    The look of insanity was plastered across his face. “No! Everything is not alright!”

    “Ummm...”

    “Get over here and look at this!” he commanded.

    Afraid of provoking him any further, Joyce meekly stepped behind the desk and took a look at his computer screen.

    “Remember the new beginning to chapter one I was writing? Look at it!” he howled. “Look at it!”

    The computer screen showed a forum site that Mr. Lindsey liked to post his work on. She could distinctively remembering him say that he loved to post his stories for the people of the world to read. That they were the best folks in the world and always said nice things about him.

    “You posted it online, sir?”

    He grabbed the crimson ornament that his girlfriend had given him and smashed it against the wall in a fit of rage. Joyce noticed the knife that he sometimes used for making displays and discreetly slipped it off of his desk and into her pocket.

    “Did something happen online, sir?”

    “Yes!” he roared. “Look at the comment at the bottom of the page! How dare they!”

    At the bottom of the page, under a few other comments, was a very detailed critique of his work. It didn't take much effort to see the numerous corrections and complaints the poster had with his descriptions and grammar.

    “They didn't like it, sir?” she asked with a very submissive tone.

    “Didn't like it? Didn't like it?” he screamed. “They insulted it! They defecated on it!”

    Joyce was starting to worry about her boss's sanity. “You often say yourself that you don't like to write large amounts of descriptions, sir.”

    Mr. Lindsey started to slam his foot against the desk over and over again. “Who gave them the right to say such crap about a literary masterpiece? Don't they understand the mood I'm trying to create?”

    “Well-”

    “I asked for good, objective advice! Not some twelve year-old kid to spout idiotic nonsense about something they can't understand!”

    “Sir-”

    “Lack of personality? They're going to have a lack of an a** if I ever find out who they are!” Mr. Lindsey roared and went back to throwing papers around. “If they insult my work, they insult me and the two years I spent working on it!”

    “Well, sir, they are kinda, sorta right...” she replied meekly.

    “What!”

    “And they did spend a lot of time reviewing the two pages you posted...”

    “Outrageous!”

    Joyce took a few steps so she could be on the other side of the desk and away from her crazy, near-homicidal boss. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.”

    Mr. Lindsey started to stomp around his office, crushing papers and reports under his feet. “Idiots! No freaking idiot should be able to get away like this! If they tried this sort of stunt in this building, they would be fired on the spot. There would be numerous reports of their scandalous review and...” He suddenly fell silent and stood as still as stone.

    “Sir...?”

    “That's it! That's how I can get the little S.O.B.!”

    “Sir?”

    Mr. Lindsey grabbed his chair and whipped it back up and to his desk. “I'm going to tell them where they can stick their moronic advice! I'm going to flame this little b*****d until they understand that you can't go around insulting people online and not pay the price!”

    “Isn't that a little childish, sir?”

    “It will solve the problem! I'll teach them a lesson their parents should have taught them years ago! Joyce, get me a cup of coffee! This is going to take a while!”

    Glad for the chance to escape, Joyce stepped out of the room and slowly closed the door on the madness.