Felony Ever After

by Helena Hunting

  Hudson stood above her, unbuttoning his jeans. He was suddenly in the mood for another round right now? Her mole had magic powers…

  “Look!” Hudson mooned her like a fraternity pledge during Rush Week. And there it was: a little heart-shaped mole on his right buttock. It was so small compared to the veritable bonanza of tattoos across his magnificent body, she had completely overlooked it.

  They were tooshie twins. Caboose compadres. Butt buddies, if you will. This was a tiny piece of him, matched perfectly to a tiny piece of her. He’d had this mark his whole life, just waiting to find its counterpart. It was all too much to process, so Verity said the only thing you can say after realizing you might have met your soulmate.

  “Do you want to go grab some breakfast for dinner after you finish pulling the splinters out of my behind?”

  Verity Michaels @VerityPics03

  Mole butties with my boyfriend. #NotAwkward

  Verity Michaels @VerityPics03

  I have a boyfriend. #ThatsAnUpdate

  Verity Michaels @VerityPics03

  Is he too old to buy a varsity jacket with his name on it so I can steal it? #HighSchoolGoals

  Chapter 15

  The Box

  Katherine Stevens

  Verity rushed into work on the late side the next morning, but for the first time since she’d moved to the city, she had a real life outside her work—she was someone’s girlfriend and an official photographer again—so that helped her calm her frazzled nerves. She’d no doubt have to deal with some grief from Mr. Lay, but she’d had a great morning, even though she was wearing her last clean and least favorite pair of remotely presentable panties.

  She only did laundry when the basket was overflowing, and not a second sooner. The laundry facilities in her building left a lot to be desired. Like a miracle from a very strange bible, her laundry level had remained just below the basket’s rim for some time now. However, her lingerie drawer had sneakily dropped to nearly empty.

  As if she’d sensed Verity’s arrival, Angie stepped out of the elevator, coffee in hand. “Look what the cat dragged in! Did hot yoga take everything you had, or was it an eventful evening?”

  Smiling, Verity patted her bum in response. “Oh, very eventful. Happy birthday weekend to me.”

  “Do tell,” Angie breathed.

  Before Verity could speak, Lay barreled into the lobby. He stopped abruptly and stood watching her, seeming almost transfixed. Finally he seemed to remember himself and tried to look nonchalant. “Verity, there’s work to be done. I need you in my office immediately.” He inclined his head toward her confidante. “Good morning, Angie.”

  Angie arched an eyebrow at him, combing her hair away from her face with her middle finger.

  While Verity would have much rather stayed to chat with Angie, she also wanted to get Lay’s agenda out of the way as soon as possible. She could take her lumps. As long as they weren’t delivered to her backside.

  The three endured an awkward elevator ride upstairs together—had the car somehow gotten smaller over the weekend? Larold’s cologne was devastating—and Angie beelined for her office as soon as the doors opened.

  Verity continued down the hallway with her boss, and when they reached his office—no Marge in sight—he closed the door behind her and directed her to a chair. This was going nowhere good. Larold Lay had a lot of cards in his playbook: He could talk her ear off until she lost the will to live. He could guilt her into staying at the office all night to do Marge’s work. He could peek at her like a pervert for hours on end. Or, he could choose a combination move.

  Bring it, Verity thought. I’m a new woman today. My existence is more than this job. Also, I have a boyfriend. With a penis.

  Mr. Lay had turned his back to her, undoubtedly preparing his nefarious scheme, and he now spun to face her with a determined look in his eyes. He sat in the chair opposite hers and handed her an oval bowl filled with what appeared to be clay.

  “Hold this.”

  Well, this is new. “What is that?” Verity felt a chill run through her. This was surely a trap. Maybe he was making a bomb and wanted her fingerprints on it. Is that what’s been in the boxes?

  “Did I ask you to question me?” Lay seemed more agitated than usual.

  The prudent thing would be not to aggravate him further. But… “Why would you ever ask me to question you? That doesn’t make much sense.” Verity felt like being with Hudson had instilled a firmer backbone in her—along with his impressive other bone.

  “Can you please just press your face in the clay?” Lay looked to be near tears.

  “Do what? Are you crazy?” Verity’s internal alarms went straight to panic. She batted the bowl out of his hand like a cat on meth.

  Lay caught it as it soared through the air. “Don’t get your brown panties in a wad! It’s a face mask we’re sampling for a client. Now put your face in the bowl!”

  Verity shifted in a futile effort to find a more comfortable position for her butt. The fake leather seat rubbing against her pleather skirt sounded like two sea lions with bronchitis mating on a beachhead. “You have lost whatever was left of your mind if you think I’m going to—wait, how do you know my panties are brown?” She hopped off her chair abruptly, putting an end to the semi-aquatic mating song.

  Lay shifted the bowl back and forth between his hands. “I—uh—I don’t. It was a lucky guess.”

  “Bullcrap. How dare you look up my skirt?”

  She thought he mumbled, “Research is research.” But she wasn’t completely sure.

  Verity was still formulating a plan that involved shoving that bowl into one of Lay’s orifices when the door to his office opened. There stood a bike messenger—and not her favorite one either. More like a cheap knock-off copy.

  “There was no one up front, so I let myself in.” The guy still had his earbuds in, so he spoke at least four times louder than necessary. The music pumping from him could be heard across the room. Under his right arm was another box.

  Lay grabbed it from the messenger before Verity could get her fingers around it. He walked past her, whispering creepily. “Curiosity killed the cat, Verity.”

  For a moment she imagined punching Lay right in his package. He would drop the box in her lap as he crumpled to the floor. Then she’d say something clever like, There’s a twenty on the dresser for you. But she didn’t. She wanted to be a girl unafraid of consequences who went around punching jerks in their meat and potatoes, but she wasn’t totally there. Yet.

  Still, she at least used the messenger’s exit as an opportunity to escape. But she paused when he got on the elevator. He looked at her, holding the door open, while she contemplated her life. She had her camera back, and she’d landed a really great guy, but neither of those things would pay her rent next month. Verity waved the messenger on, and as the elevator door closed, she decided to take the high road and at least leave things on a professional note with Lay. The bowl of face mask thing was weird, but he was such an odd duck, maybe it made sense to him. She could just politely decline.

  When she reached his office again, she knocked as she pushed open his door, which was slightly ajar, and caught the tail end of him opening his precious package.

  Verity wasn’t sure when she started screaming, or if she would ever stop. As Lay removed the last of the packaging, out popped a human arm that had been unnaturally contorted inside.

  Lay jumped to his feet, waving his arms. “Will you be quiet? It’s rubber; it’s not real!”

  This confused Verity enough to silence her. She stepped over to the appendage in question. It was indeed rubber, which almost made it creepier. She had a good mind to start screaming again. “What in the heck are you doing with a rubber arm, Lay?”

  He glanced nervously at the door to his private bathroom, then back at Verity, and then back to the door. “Nothing.”

  Verity figured she might as well go for broke at this point, since her version of being professional didn’t even
remotely seem to fit in this fun house. She charged the bathroom before Lay could stop her. As soon as she opened the door, someone started screaming again, and Verity was pretty certain it was her.

  In front of her stood a faceless, one-armed, one-legged life-size rubber doll—held together by Velcro, obviously having been constructed in pieces. Verity couldn’t decide on the most horrifying facet until her eyes found the doll’s adhesive name tag: Hello, my name is Verity. That’s when the screaming stopped.

  Verity swung around to look at the discarded bowl of clay on the floor, then back at her faceless doppelganger. “Sweet mother of frankincense, you were trying to make a mask.” And thus started another round of screaming.

  She did have enough of her wits about her to appreciate that the doll was wearing a beautiful set of glittered angel wings on its back—like a Victoria’s Secret model created by Tim Burton.

  “I’m going to need to know what the hell this is.” Verity faced her boss.

  Verity Michaels @VerityPics03

  I need hazard pay for this job. #IDidntSignUpForThis

  Verity Michaels @VerityPics03

  Yesterday > Today. #TheDollHasMyName #GetYourOwnNameBitch

  Verity Michaels @VerityPics03

  Need a more reasonable way to make money. Like drug dealing or prostitution.

  #ALittleRestForTheWicked

  Chapter 16

  A Way Out

  Belle Aurora

  Discovering that your boss has made his very own version of you is not going to go well under any circumstances. Finding a rubbery Frankenstein-esque monster-lady in your boss’s private bathroom—likely to be used for slap-and-tickle purposes—would have freaked anyone out. All things considered, Verity thought she’d handled it well.

  However, the mask-making sent her over the edge.

  He wanted her face.

  And he still wasn’t answering her questions. He looked a bit like he’d forgotten how to speak. Verity needed to jog his memory stat.

  Before she quite knew what she was doing, she’d delivered a swift kick in the nuts to one Mr. Larold Lay. He landed on the carpeted floor with an oomph. It felt good. Well, to her at least.

  “Christ, my dick,” he whimpered, cupping what was left of him. “My beautiful dick.”

  Verity glanced back at her lifeless double and shuddered. But along with revulsion, she felt a calm clarity. Strange as they were, things made sense now. Of course her boss had been receiving boxes with latex body parts in them. And of course he was assembling them into a replica of her. He was just weird enough to have that fall neatly into place. However, Verity was also keen enough to know this was a game changer.

  The tongue she’d almost always bitten as Lay’s employee now felt quite loose. She dragged a chair over to him, still curled like a shrimp on the floor of his office. She sat primly as she could, wanting to maintain an air of class as she spoke.

  “From the time I started working here, Larold—I can call you Larold, can’t I?—you have made my life super weird. And I guess part of me always knew you were a little strange.” She smiled. “But that—” She pointed behind them to the Madame Tussauds wannabe mannequin. “That is something else entirely. That isn’t filed under quirky. That’s filed under seriously jacked up.”

  Verity sat taller, liking the position she suddenly found herself in, the power that buzzed through her like electricity. “I think I need a new job,” she confessed to a quiet Larold Lay. “But I’m going to need this paycheck a little longer to make that work. Make sense, Larold?”

  He was still for a long moment, but eventually nodded, his face rubbing on the carpet.

  “In exchange for keeping quiet about the freakish sex doll you’ve been creating without my knowledge, I think I’ll talk terms. Don’t you agree?”

  He nodded again, slowly, still curled up on the floor. Then he spoke quietly. “What do you want, Ms. Michaels?”

  What did she want?

  What did she want?

  Holy hell in a handbasket. That was a loaded question.

  What didn’t she want? She thought of Hudson and felt brave, a laugh bubbling up.

  “I want what vintage Dolly Parton wanted,” she announced. At her boss’s confused stare, she rolled her eyes. “Nine to five. Marge can do her own work from now on.”

  Lay nodded quickly, obviously happy with the terms. “Okay.”

  Verity chuckled. “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “That’s not quite all.”

  Shuffling around, Larold sat up on the floor, keeping his knees spread so as not to brush his bruised ding-a-ling. “Anything, Ms. Michaels,” he said, offering his full attention.

  “No more peeks at my chest,” she began. “Or my freaking underwear. Jesus. If you drop another pen in front of me, I will find a place to put that pen, and I assure you, it won’t be comfortable. Please treat me with the same respect you’d offer your mother. Additionally, if I come in a little late from time to time, or have a long lunch, cut me some slack like a decent human being. I get my work done. That’s what matters.”

  He spoke through gritted teeth. “Is that all?”

  Was that all?

  Verity was stuck in a job she hated, working for a boss who creeped her out, all because the money was more than decent. She frowned. Was that all she was? Even her father would want more for her than that, wouldn’t he? Or did she even care?

  Trapped, underappreciated receptionist wasn’t the person Verity thought she was, and it definitely wasn’t who she wanted to be. She wanted to be someone who worked to live, not lived to work. She wanted to be free to make her own decisions, use her brain, be creative. Have some fun! Yes, she had a New York apartment and a bit of money. It had enabled her to get her camera back. But for what purpose? Had she ever felt more alive than she did taking those pictures of Hudson?

  Sadness washed over her. She rested her fingertips at her temples, massaging lightly. “What am I doing?” she muttered to herself.

  Hudson’s gorgeous face and tattooed neck came to mind, and Verity’s heart smiled. What would Hudson do?

  In that instant, her heart’s smile took shape on her face. Standing, she looked down at her poor excuse for a boss and spoke sweetly. “I’ve changed my mind, Mr. Lay.” She stood and turned away.

  As her feet took her toward the door, she could feel Lay start to panic and struggle to stand. “Verity!” he called out. “Ms. Michaels!”

  She paused at his office door, her hand already gripping the handle. She looked over her shoulder and beamed. “I quit,” she told him. She felt a humongous load lift off of her shoulders, and she chuckled to herself when she heard Lay’s stunned voice as the door closed behind her.

  “You’re not going to tell anyone about this,” he said. Then after a pause, he added, “Are you?”

  Without breaking stride, Verity sailed to the elevator and returned to her desk downstairs. It was funny how quickly she could pack her work life into a banker’s box, and the items inside weren’t even important.

  Verity held her head high, her box under her arm, and smiled as she said goodbye to the co-workers who happened past her desk. Angie popped out of the elevator and looked down at the box under Verity’s arm. Her eyes widened. “What happened?”

  Verity smiled. “I quit.”

  Angie seemed confused, but she smiled. “I can’t go for drinks at ten in the morning, but know that I will be in touch.” She raised her hand for a high-five as Verity breezed past.

  Verity smiled all the way out of the building and maintained that smile even as she maneuvered with her box down the subway stairs. She was able to step right onto her train and find a seat. She took this as verification from the universe that she’d made the right decision. She closed her eyes and laughed softly.

  She was free.

  Verity texted Hudson:

  You’ll never guess what I just did.

  He responded:

  At your ridiculous office, the possibilities are endless.
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  Verity smiled.

  It’s not my office anymore. I’ll be officing from home now.

  His reply was quick.

  No kidding? Let’s celebrate! I’ll add your new office to my delivery route today. See you as soon as I can.

  Hudson followed his text with her picture of the honeybee he’d sent himself back when they were getting to know each other.

  She wasn’t home ten minutes before her office box was unpacked, implements scattered on her coffee table: A scented candle. A mini cactus. A half-eaten chocolate bar from the day before. A mug from Angie that read, “Don’t go bacon my heart,” with two squiggly pieces of bacon underneath it. And a stolen office stapler, because truly, she’d earned it.

  The knock on her front door spread a welcome smile on her face like icing on a cake. She could so use a beautiful, toe-curling orgasm from Hudson right now. She was so taken with that idea that she flung open the door without first looking through the peep hole.

  Larold Lay put his body in the doorway, making it impossible to slam in his face. Dammit! What had she been thinking? Hudson never used her front door…

  “Get out!” Her hands started shaking as the impropriety of his presence forced her to fear for her life. Sure, Larold had always been a little socially awkward and creepy, but the Verity mannequin indicated he might actually lack any common sense. And now he’d followed her home. He wasn’t a weirdo, he was a predator! Verity could feel herself hyperventilating.

  “Can you hear me out for one minute?” he begged. “I’m in no condition to do anything except beg for your forgiveness.” He waved a hand at his ginormous crotch.

  “Good God! What the hell?” She backed away in revulsion, unwittingly allowing him to enter her apartment.