Bad Intern

by Luke Mason

  Bad Intern

  Luke Mason

  Contents

  New Books

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Dear Reader

  BAD INTERN

  Copyright © 2016 by Luke Mason

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  New Books

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  Prologue

  Making the right decisions every day is hard. That said, I haven’t had a drink in seven months. No, I’m not an alcoholic, but I do have a “drinking problem.”

  Just not the normal type.

  —Jen

  One

  I exit the elevators and pass the semi-pretty women working the reception desk. Why the company needs two of them is a mystery. They sit there every day, smiling away like robotic bimbos saying bye if someone says bye, or hello if someone says hello. They whisper a lot and sip lipstick-smeared java-mocha-whatsits from expensive porcelain mugs. They have papers and office supplies on their desk that haven’t moved in the month I’ve been here. These women irritate me to no end. I call them “bimbots” for reasons that reflect poorly on my upbringing.

  If I seem bitter, there’s a reason. I tried saying hello on my first day. I then complimented their lovely mugs (while wondering secretly if everyone got them or just some people).

  “Oh, you like our mugs?” the one on the left said.

  “Yeah. They’re beautiful.”

  “We know,” she said, staring pointedly at my little orange badge. “That’s why we bought them.”

  While I stood there tense and hurt, mouth open in shock, the other one rolled her eyes like she’d never seen so strange a custom as simple politeness before. All because of my badge.

  Everyone wears a badge. They come in three colors: clear for employees, green for contractors, and orange for interns. Which means whenever I’m going somewhere with my boss, it feels like a perp walk.

  The daily slight of being an intern makes me overly critical about superficial things. Like the bimbot on the left with the blonde hair, the cutesy nose, and the overly long head. She has a makeup-smeared cold sore that’s been there so long I’m tempted to ask if it’s actually a gooey mole. She wears her boobs up high in a pointy bra, making them stick out like stubby dinosaur arms. I immediately dub her Dino Tits.

  Graaaaaaar!

  This isn’t like me at all. I feel bad for judging other women by their appearance, but these two really bring it out in me.

  Her friend is also blonde. She has too many teeth for her small mouth. Makes her lips look full unless she messes up and fake-laughs at something someone says. Unlike her herpes-afflicted friend with the tits, she’s a real blonde. As in no black roots creeping their way out of her toothy little head.

  Some years back, I went through a metaphysical phase. Astrology, palmistry, feng shui, that kind of thing. The Kabbalah says that over every blade of grass, an angel floats saying, “Grow! Grow!” I sometimes giggle when I pass these women. I imagine their heads crowded with tired angels imploring them to “Know! Know!”

  Blonde jokes. It’s come to this.

  Okay, fine, I admit it: I’ve been blonde and brunette so many times now I’ve forgotten what my real color is. Brown … I think. With maybe a hint of red if you squint your eyes, hold your breath, and…

  And turn on a red light. Okay, another truth: I’d cut off my pinky to be a redhead. Redheads in high school were made fun of and never got dates. Grownup redheads get stared at like they walk around naked, powdered in cocaine, with hundred dollar bills leaking from their mesmerizing pussies. Redhead pussies are foldy, hot-ball pink, and sinfully sleek. There isn’t a guy in the world who wouldn’t want to chew on one until his jaw and cock ached in tantric unison. Even gay guys. Why? Because redheads aren’t human, that’s why. They’re freaky sex aliens with tractor-beam pussies.

  I walk past the two receptionist things. Having learned my lesson, I don’t say hi or wave or make eye contact. They don’t either. They’re too busy not-noticing the seven or eight IT guys always in attendance checking their phones or talking about techie stuff in overly loud voices. Well-paid IT guys, by the way. I’ve seen their cars. The bimbots have, too. I know because I heard them in the bathroom gushing over someone’s Corvette. The IT guys hope their obvious income disparity will make them more attractive (sad fact: they’re mostly unattractive). The bimbots hope if they pretend not to notice the crowd of horny men, they’ll seem mysterious and unattainable.

  The sickening truth is they’re both right. It’s days like this where I feel like the slowest gazelle in the herd.

  I head to the cluster of lonely cubes way off by the conference rooms.

  “Shit,” I whisper and slump behind my nineties-era monitor. All the interns get old stuff, even though it’s more work for the help desk to maintain it. If it takes an hour to boot up, that’s an hour when no one has to bother with us. They want us to struggle.

  “Shit,” I say again and sip the untouched coffee I poured an hour ago. Then I perk up and smile. Cold coffee’s still better than a cold sore.

  “Are you okay?” Pete says from the adjoining cube.

  I perk back down again.

  Pete’s an intern, and a pain in the butt. He sits there all day waiting for even the tiniest reason to pop his head up to see if I’m “okay.” I don’t know what he thinks will happen to me if he doesn’t do that at least four times an hour. Die from an infected paper cut? Forget to breathe and fall unconscious? Forget he exists?

  Yeah, probably that, actually.

  “I’m still fine, Pete,” I say with suffering patience, voice husky from my third vape break that morning. Unfortunately, Pete seems nigh impervious to suffering patience.

  “You sure about that?” he says. “You know … if you ever need to talk … I’m a great listener …”

  You see how he trails off at the end like that? That’s Pete’s default mode of conversation. Leaves you thinking he’s holding out for you—just waiting for you to come around and be his best friend forever. It’s sort of weird, knowing he goes home every day and masturbates to me.

  An ex-boyfriend of mine said that’s what guys do the moment they meet a girl: rush home and masturbate to her image. I wish he hadn’t said that. Hard enough living in a world with unattractive IT guys. Now I can’t look at them without seeing homely red faces pounding it out four times a day to the image of my teeth covered in goo. I wouldn’t mind if it was Brett, the VP. But it’s always guys like Pete.

  For the record, Pete’s not ugly. He’s actually sort of cute, in a little brother kind of way. I think he even works out. It’s hard to tell because he wears the same suit every day to work. Like me, he’s poor. Unlike me, he doesn’t have wealthy parents to subsidize his life.

  I try not to think about Pete in terms of cuteness. That would be short-term thinking. I’m holding out for a wealthy, stable man in my life. Pete’s just an intern, and life’s too brief and hard to spend even a minute of it any poorer than necessary.

  My policy when I took the job: good-looking is ni
ce. Rich is nicer. Brett, the VP—my boss’s boss—is both good looking and rich.

  And he doesn’t know I exist.

  Two

  I’m fantasizing, eyes closed, right hand rubbing my clit under the desk:

  Brett enters the office supply room through the west-side hall entrance. Our eyes meet over a table stacked high with dry-erase pens and clerical tablets, while little motes of cardboard dust rain down on us like confetti in a New Year’s parade.

  “I’m not wearing any panties,” I say.

  “Me either,” he says and waggles his eyebrows seductively, the only way he knows how.

  A sense of humor. He’s a little imp, my VP. And I’m a sex goddess diva succubus from the spumy side of hell. His veiny cock is a force of carnal destruction that feeds on innocence. For the purposes of this fantasy, I’m a virgin who’s lost her way, and I’m terribly, terribly horny.

  “I’ve been watching the way you file files,” he says in a growling baritone that tickles the bones in my chest. “You’re the best I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen them all.”

  “It’s easy,” I say, blowing a puff of cigarette smoke his way. “You just open the flaps and slide it in …”

  He shoves a stack of folders aside and pushes me onto the table. He tears my skirt away and throws it across the room. I’m the beauty and he’s the beast.

  “I’m gonna fuck you so hard you sneeze,” he says.

  “Yes! Yes!” I scream. “But first … eat me … eat me …”

  His muffled response sends me into a swoon. He’s licking and sucking the way a real man would if he had any class and consideration. Scratch off most of the guys I’ve been with right there.

  His tongue probes daintily in and out before moving to my clit, flicking it faster than a boxer on a speed bag. He’s done this before and it shows. He hums as he goes, adding a vibratory element I’ve only heard about and dared not imagine. It’s driving me crazy, but I can’t give him his release yet. Not until I’ve had mine, greedy, innocent, virginal bitch that I am.

  It doesn’t take long, and then I’m coming, and it’s so good it’s almost painful. There’s a warm trickle of quim and drool sliding down my ass crack, and the feeling drowns me in cataclysmic waves of paralyzing bliss.

  Without warning, he thrusts into me hard, and he’s so damned big … I spread wider to allow for his ultra-smooth girth, then gasp breathlessly as his length pounds my tender cervix like a jackhammer. When I can’t take it anymore, he relents. He could do a lot of damage if he wanted to, my beast. My dragon.

  We’re moving together now, fucking away like machines, and it’s so damned HOT. He grabs my leg and yanks me half off the table—leg in the air, arms braced behind me while his cock slams into me in fast, smooth cycles, causing me to yelp each time our flesh connects.

  I’m overwhelmed and can’t help it—I sneeze.

  VP Brett’s groaning takes on a warning note, communicating that it won’t be long now. I’m trying to breathe and not pass out. It’s so hot down there, swampy as shit … and I’m falling into it again, drowning in delight, spinning and turning around because he’s the one. The ONE.

  “Jen, Jen!” he cries.

  “Jen! Are you even listening?” my boss, Tom, says over the cube wall.

  I squeeze down hard on my cunt, and my eyes fly open as I stare up in stunned horror at the concerned faces of Pete, Tom, and…

  Oh no!

  VP Brett! He’s looking at me like I’ve suddenly grown two heads—as if he can’t believe they hired someone so nasty as me.

  I’m devastated. Masturbating on the job. Normally a great experience, akin to sneaking it with someone at the beach under a towel, except I got caught. How could I be so stupid? I’m totally getting fired. Any minute now, they’ll lead me out with a coat pulled over my head like a disgraced celebrity.

  Shit shit shit.

  My middle finger’s frozen in place—inserted to the second knuckle—and my hand’s dripping with quim. I keep a box of liners in a drawer for these special visits to the supply room with Brett, but I can’t slip one on now.

  Maybe they’ll let me go to the bathroom before they toss me out.

  “Um, are you okay, Jen?” Pete says, a slight smile on his face. He keeps glancing from my face to the desk I’m slouched halfway beneath and back again.

  “We don’t pay you to sleep on the job,” Tom says. “This is a serious team. You wanna sleep, do it at home.”

  Really? Oh wow … They think I was asleep!

  “Now, Tom,” Brett says, patting his shoulder. “She’s young. Probably out late partying. Right, Jen?”

  “I’m not that young,” I say, and immediately regret how young that sounds.

  “Sit up straight,” Tom says.

  I see IT guys sitting like this all the time—sprawled under their desks almost parallel to the floor, staring up at their thirty or so monitors. But nobody gives them grief about it.

  Screwed, that’s what I am. I can’t possibly sit up. If I do—if I pull out—it’ll make a sucking sound, or maybe they’ll see the motion of my shoulder and know I was diddling myself at work.

  Paranoid? Yeah, big time.

  Brett reaches over the low wall. “Have we officially met? I’m Brett Lancaster.”

  His extended hand is a death sentence. No way can I whip out with my shiny, wet claw and shake it. Spreading my juices all over the VP? That’d be beyond embarrassing, not to mention illegal.

  How quickly we fall. Twenty-two years old and a handshake away from being a sex offender. They’ll show my mugshot on the news, the Internet, laugh at me on those talk shows I never watch. Just another freak—a bad person caught doing bad stuff in public.

  “Shake the man’s hand, Jen,” Tom says in a low, dangerous tone.

  As managers go, Tom’s humorless, pushy, and finds fault in everything we do. He says stuff like synergy, low-hanging fruit, and deliverables. If you let him, he’ll go on and on about paralysis by analysis and knowing our why. He’s never smiled once at me or Pete or asked how either of us is doing.

  Oh shit, I think, staring at Brett’s still outstretched hand. It’s been there for a good seven seconds now. He’s looking at me curiously, as if trying to figure something out. My mortification turns to this terrible sense of impending loss. I’d fully intended to bag this buck, yet I’m doing everything I can to let him slip away.

  “My hand’s hurt,” I say quickly. “I’m protecting it.”

  I reach out and grasp his right hand with my left. It’s awkward as hell, but Brett smiles in amusement as we pantomime grownups being mature.

  “How’d you hurt it?” he says, eyes softening in a show of real concern.

  “Karate,” I say without thinking. “You know, breaking boards.”

  “You can do that?”

  I nod vigorously. “Big time. Stones too. Even cinderblocks.”

  Shut up, you nitwit!

  Brett’s eyes widen. “Seriously? Well right on, Jen.”

  Even Tom seems impressed, because he’s stopped glaring at me.

  Pete’s the only one who doesn’t buy it. I can tell because one of his eyebrows quirks into a ridiculous Mr. Spock, and he’s still got that irritating half smirk.

  Brett says, “You and … uh Pete, was it?”

  Pete nods. “That’s me.”

  “Some vendors from Oracle are coming by to pitch us on their new orchestration software,” Brett says. “I thought it’d be a good opportunity for you to meet them. Busy?” We shake our heads. “Good. Conference room, five minutes.”

  Three

  Catastrophe averted.

  After the bosses leave, I finally pull free of my pussy. I wipe my hand up and down my inner thighs and the inside of my skirt.

  Pete’s hanging over our shared wall smirking at me. “Karate, huh?”

  “Shut up,” I say. “And stop looking in my cube. You’re driving me nuts!”

  Pete raises his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, ju
st being helpful. No need to karate chop me.” He tosses a small wave and heads to the conference room.

  After a quick look around, I get up and head in the opposite direction.

  The receptionists are eating salads and drinking cans of Diet Coke.

  Yuck.

  I’ve been keto for a year, and it shows. I spent my first year in college a little on the chubby side, but the diet worked and I’ve never looked better. That said, sometimes I slip back to my old ways and go a little crazy. Like that pizza party last week, where I almost cut a guy going for the last slice of pepperoni and pineapple (my favorite). If there had been bacon on that pie, I’d now be in jail.

  The bimbots turn as one and stare at me with what I imagine are knowing looks. I’m being paranoid, I know. But having almost gotten caught, I feel a little guilty. Which is weird, because I also don’t think I did anything wrong. Sort of.

  I’m in the bathroom now and washing my hands. Both of them, because how odd would that look, me trying to wash only one hand? I know, I know—more paranoia, this need to look inconspicuous. But am I really paranoid? I’ve felt this way for the whole month I’ve been here. Like I’m being constantly watched. I think Pete feels the same way.

  A woman comes in and seems startled to find me at the sink inconspicuously scrubbing away. I flash her a winning smile and nod congenially. The woman smiles back and heads for the stall farthest away. If she’s like me, she’s hiding in there waiting for me to get the hell out. She’s in luck—I only have another minute before I’m late for Brett’s meeting.

  I dry my hands and leave, heading toward the conference room. All good, right? No, not good. The conference room is empty.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” I say, wracking my brain. “Ah, the big one downstairs. Shit …”

  I sprint past the reception desk to the elevators, then frantically slam the down arrow. Ignoring the bimbots, who stare at me with thinly veiled contempt, I pound my thighs in frustration and watch for the light over the elevator. The doors are mirrored, and I can’t help but check out my appearance: disheveled hair, no makeup, and I must have splashed myself with water, because my blouse and skirt have dark little spots now. With luck, no one will look at me.