within the witch’s brew of her dream that night, which caused her to wake up at four in the morning in a cold panic, sweating in her pajama bottoms, feverish with moral horror, as if she caught corona of the soul.





The way he was being fired, which she had no part in, but felt complicit in none-the-less. The fact that he was going to the office alone, while everyone else was hunkered in with their families, staying safe. The lie she told him, unconvincingly due to her lack of practice in that field. The joy she took as she drove home that Friday evening. The way she told you with relief and a sick schadenfreude that her worst subordinate was finally at the end of his rope. Andher lack of conviction which led to her volunteering his body and mind to the prison of his workplace, instead of insisting she take that duty, a duty which she wouldn’t have minded much anyways. If anything, she would have enjoyed it.





And that was just it, she was past the point where she could claim it was only out of necessity which made her pick him out to stay. No, it was only cruelty on her part. That was the only explanation. And that realization was dragging her, kicking and screaming, from the comfort of rest now because of it.





She sat at the computer, ten past nine. If it weren’t for this pandemic, she’d have clocked in at work ten minutes ago. She took a sip of her