Apr 12, 2013

Busy Bee - Friday Flash Fiction Challenge - All audiences

This week's prompt for the flash fiction is the sentence "it's not unusual".
I hope you'll have as much fun reading this, as I had writing it.
It's what I like to call a "Moody Classic", meaning it has the classic "Moody Twist". For those of you who don't know me yet, you will soon find out what that means.

Have fun!!!



Busy bee.



She sat hunched over her keyboard and her fingers flew over the keys, pressing down quickly and lightly on those she needed. Her shoulders were slightly hunched and the frown on her brow deepened as the urgency in her eyes grew. She had to gather the information and she had to do it as fast as she possibly could. They were waiting for her and each minute that passed, was one too many. One more minute of danger to the teams waiting to proceed, one more minute added to the growing potential for total disaster. Her mind was racing, filtering through bits and pieces of information as they rolled across her screen, making connections at high speed. Connections that opened other doors. Doors that hid more information. Information that needed to be filtered.
Now!

She blew off her co-worker when he asked for assistance.
She didn’t have time for this.

“Not now.” she snarled as another one walked up to her station.

“Hey, but-”

“Can’t you see I’m busy!” she hissed, hunching her shoulders more.

She could only hope they would get the message and leave her alone.
She couldn’t afford to divide her attention.
Not now.

The frown grew wider and deeper. Things weren’t moving as quickly as they should and her feeling of frustration deepened along with her frown. She could feel the strain in her shoulders and arms, the building pain in her neck and the dull throbbing ache inside her skull.
This was getting ridiculous.
But she kept going, hands moving, muscles flexing.
She needed to get this done.
They needed her to keep at it and give them the information they needed.
Lives depended on it.
Lives depended on her!

Lives depended on her.

Lives never depended on her.
How come lives suddenly depended on her?
Shouldn’t they depend on someone else?
Shouldn’t someone else be responsible for the lives of those men?
Why was she-

Stop!
You don’t have time for this. Finish your job and get that information out there.’

She focused on her screen again, seeing the cursor blink on and off.
It never had time to do that.
Not when she was working on something as important as this.
Cursing herself softly, she went back to it, rereading the last entry.

“Can you help me with this?”

The voice startled her.
She hadn’t noticed anyone coming up to her this time.
She was too focused.

“I’m busy. Go away.”
She couldn’t put it any clearer than that.

“But-”

“Not now.”

“You have to help me, I can’t do it on my own.”

“What are we paying you for?” she snapped angrily.
God, she hated incompetent people.

Paying? What are you talking about?”

“Leave me alone. I’ve got a job to do.”

“You’re doing it again, aren’t you?”

“What?” she snapped, getting very upset now.

“You’re stuck in your story again, mom.”

She looked away from her screen so suddenly she almost dropped out of her swivelling chair.
Next to her stood her own son, not some incompetent Federal Agent who couldn’t do his job on his own.
She had been stuck in her story again.
When she was on a roll, it wasn’t unusual.





More entries can be found here

1 comment:

  1. Classic! Haha, we all can relate, I'm sure. :)

    ReplyDelete