Margie knew something was wrong the minute she walked into her office two weeks ago. There was a strange brightness that morning. Everything gleamed: the sun danced off of passing taxi windows, the puddles from a nighttime shower sparkled in a painful manner, even the white coat of her precious feline Snowball caused her to wince as she laid out his morning breakfast (complete with his preferred twig of parsley and fresh shrimp curled around the crest of the molded tuna. Cats can be so finicky.)

The phone was especially shiny that afternoon. The cleaning crew had done a floor to ceiling waxing after the bi-annual office sweep for bugging devices. Per usual, nothing was found and there was some relief from William Radolph Sloan’s paranoia. Margie had been enjoying the break from the constant soothing, the constant reassurance that Willaim Randolph Sloan needed to become copasetic enough to run the day to day business of the daily. She was getting tired of the peculiar looks she received when she picked up a pair of slippers from the near-by department store.

“This is the last pair we have,” the polite girl behind the counter informed her. “We won’t have another shipment in until December.”

Margie was sure that there would not be a need for another pair of slippers for Mr. Sloan. No, she was almost sure that she’d have a break now that he was over his ‘Bugs In The Office’ phase.

How wrong she was.