Over the Top
Bugs Wilson barely had a presence outside his corner cubicle in the office. It was a large office and every morning, he showed up at precisely eight-thirty, shuffled to his desk in the back corner, and opened his thick, dog-eared book of codes. That book was his entire job - the fortress of rules that told him what numbers to apply to what forms. He applied codes, validated them with his employee number and then made certain that his outbox was neat. None of the majority of pretty young women who worked there, knew his name. Bugs was a fixture, as forgettable as a buzzing fluorescent light on the ceiling.
It surprised him, then, to find something wedged under his keyboard one morning: a heavy envelope, engraved, his name scrawled in caligraphy across the front.
“Mr. Wilson, Accurate LLC Processor:
Admit One to the Over the Top Funhouse.
Ralston Community Carnival. Courtesy of the Sons of Hades.”
He turned it over, half-expecting a prank, but the thick card stock was real, and the letters gleamed like brass. For once, he left the office with a bounce of anticipation in his step.
The carnival grounds smelled of french fries and funnel cakes. The rides constant spinning movements were outlined in animated neon lights. At the center stood the funhouse: a crooked castle with an eerie facade lit by colored spotlights. Bugs clutched his invitation as he stared up at the many depictions of fear portrayed on it's front. Whoever did the art, had created an intriquing montage around a mysterious clown near the top of the sign, inviting anyone interested in for a chance to experience the unexpected.
Pumping out his chest before he stepped inside, was a message to himself that he was not ruled by anything but common sense.
After gaining admission by a clerk dressed in a bright striped suit, he went around a corner and entered a room as large as the main floor of his office, that alternated mirrors and plexiglass, and showed him his face multiplied and sometimes going on to no end. The clear walls were so clean that he'd sometimes bump into them headfirst.
The mirror maze seemed bigger and longer as he stumbled through it but eventually he found an exit, which put him in another hallway: this one with mirrors that stretched, shrunk, and bent him. He raised his hand, and a warped version of himself raised his back. He climbed a short, uneven flight of stairs and entered a room that tilted violently left, then right. The floorboards creaked, slanted, and dropped beneath his shoes as if the eerily lit and striped room had been in an earthquake and was teetering unevenly on the edge of a cliff. He steadied himself against walls that sloped like children's slides.
Next came the spinning barrel: a giant cylinder that rolled beneath his feet, tossing him sideways and forward. He tumbled, crawling on hands and knees out of the barrel and into a gradually narrowing passage. It looked like an opitical illusion at first, but it kept getting narrower. Tighter. Smaller. He ducked, crouched, and squeezed through a tunnel that forced him to crawl. Then, just when he thought it would be too small to fit: the tunnel opened into a long, steep slide. Down he went, rapidly, until he landed with a thump on a giant cushion.
A camera flash blinded him. Cheers arose. When his eyes adjusted, he saw them: everyone from the office, clapping, laughing, slapping him on the back. The people who had never once spoken his name, were now calling by his real one.
“James!” they called. Not Bugs but James. His real name.
“James, we didn't forget! We wanted to get you out of hiding for your birthday,” said Esther, the office manager.
For the first time in years, James Wilson felt seen. People fetched him coffee, slipped him helpful notes, even offered to finish some of his work. He sat taller than he ever had as a kid.
With his inbox empty and his outox full: the next day, at his desk, he had more time to breathe. With his hands behind his head and smiling, James Wilson felt popular, friendly, and wanted.
As his work load lightened, the forms that others did for him, began to come back wrong. Codes were misplaced, numbers swapped and whole stacks rejected. His book of codes, once his most important reference, couldn't be found. In it's place was an ancient looking hardcover book of Wuthering Heights, and prank that really bothered him.
One afternoon, while trying to find his book of codes, James lingered outside the break room door. Inside, laughter roared. He pressed an ear to the frame.
“…He’s pathetic. Did you see him smiling at us like we were friends?”
“Do you think he'll read that book you got him? Wuthering Heights?” another asked.
“Call him Bugs, what a name. He should just do us all a favor and -”
A pause, then a voice hissed it: “Kill himself.”
They laughed harder than ever.
Bugs staggered back, his mouth dry. The walls of the office seemed to close in like the shrinking passage of the funhouse. Then later, at home, he found himself staring at a bottle of pills and the world blurred with exhaustion and humiliation. He swallowed until everything went dark.
When he awoke, it was morning. The alarm buzzed as if nothing had happened. He blinked at the gray ceiling, the hum of the radiator, the same cramped apartment. Outside, a bus hissed to a stop. Cars honked as usual. His code book would be waiting on his desk at work, the carnival nothing but memory or a nightmare. Oh, how he wanted to believe that everything that happened after that funhouse was only a nightmare. Maybe it was, and he was back off in the corner where he couldn't be seen.
As Bugs Wilson rose, buttoned his shirt, and stared at a tired face in the mirror, he was convinced it was over. He'd just picked up the phone to call in sick and it began to ring in his hand before he could touch it. It was Elaine Manello, his boss. She skipped the usual formalities and hit the ground running.
"It would probably be better if you kept that group at the office as just Facebook friends. You're the best we have James. I fired five of those freeloaders this morning so you can come back in and work in peace. I'm also giving you a raise as a training manager. You can start with a new hire who starts today. I promise you'll like him James. I told him all about you. Then why don't you and me meet after work today. I'll tell you all about your new responsibilities. You'll train and have short workdays. I'm sure you'll appreciate the possibilities."
James Wilson was still gripping the phone and sitting where he'd dropped to after Elaine Manello’s surprising announcement.
He'd thanked her when she said: “I fired five of those freeloaders this morning. We're promoting you to be the new training manager.”
Being suddenly thrust into a spotlight, felt like a roller coaster. First he'd been down and then he'd been brought over the top by his conniving co-workers, then he'd been let down again. At his lowest he'd considered ending it with an overdose of pills, but then his boss called him and instead of calling in sick, he took the call.
"I have faith in you. With your promotion, youre not supposed to feel like you're in charge right away," Elaine said.
"I feel as though the world is favoring me with a chance, expecting me to rise for a change. But I don't know how to do it."
"It would help if from the start you were happy," she said.
James had been given a new desk in a little glass walled office near the front, across from his boss Ms. Manello’s office. His nameplate now read: James Wilson -Training Manager.
He'd really gone from zero to hero, he thought as he ran his thumb over the engraving. He was so thrilled that he was almost afraid it would wipe away.
So he went into his new office, with it's wood panelling and pictures on the wall, with its full sized desk and bookshelves. But where was his code book. He checked the single cardboard box beside the desk. While he was leaned over searching for his missing code book, Elaine Manello herself swept into the room, tall and sharp in a navy suit, her perfume leaving a wake that turned heads. She stopped at his desk, leaned slightly in, and gave him a smile no one else ever had.
“James,” she said, like she was addressing the latest celebrity. “You deserve this. You’ve worked for years without complaint, and now you’ll show others how to do it right.”
He nodded, fumbling for words. “Thank you, Ms. Manello. I mean, Ma'am.”
“You can call me Elaine,” she replied, loud enough to be heard in the other room, her hand brushing the back of his hand longer than necessary. “Meet me in my office at four. We’ll discuss your new... role and perhaps celebrate, if you’re not the type to go straight home.”
She lingered a heartbeat too long, then strode away, heels clicking like a metronome.
James trained his first hire that morning: a fresh-faced college kid named Trevor, who was bright-eyed, and tried to call him “Jim” within five minutes. James corrected him stiffly: “It’s James.”
Since his code book must have been misplaced in the move: he winged it, doing the best he could with what he knew.
By lunchtime, Trevor leaned in conspiratorially. “So… what’s she like? Ms. Manello. Everyone says she’s got a thing for you,” He trailed off, smirking.
"She is the only one who recognized my talent. I've appreciated what she'd done for me so far and am looking forward to the extra responsibilities," James said, but young Trevor didn't buy it.
"Thanks for the official acceptance speech," Trevor said, with the glint in his eye that James knew too well. It was like he was waiting for a chance to see what James was made of.
So he just kept it professional, straightening the stack of forms between them and pointing out the obvious: “I'm looking forward to the extra responsibilities.”
Trevor shrugged, but James saw something in his grin. So the kid had him figured out? He'd been suddenly cast from the dark and into the spotlight. He wasn't ready for the extra scrutiny.
After lunch, James stepped into Ms. Manello’s office. The blinds were half-closed, the desk lamp casting warm amber light. After reminding him to call her Elaine, she poured two glasses of wine into thin-stemmed glasses, as though it were ordinary.
“You’ve earned this,” she said, pushing one glass across the desk. “Relax. For once.”
James held the glass but didn’t sip any of the red wine in it. “Work comes first.”
Elaine tilted her head, watching him over the rim of her glass. “You want to wait until late in the day instead, when everyone is going home?"
James nodded with uncertainty and set the glass down without drinking any wine.
"That’s why I like you. You keep it professional. So I'll see you after four thirty then?" she asked.
James nodded and headed out. She stopped him before he left to remind him that she "really liked" him.
He paused and sighed.
“I’m here to do my job. I’ll train them. I’ll keep the office on track."
"That’s what matters," Elaine said and smiled faintly, as if his refusal only deepened her interest. “And that’s why you’ll rise here. Because you’re not like them. You’re a real pro.”
Outside the office, the floor buzzed with gossip and speculation, but James barely heard any of it. He felt a new tension in the air: not the weight of being ignored but the pressure of being watched. He wasn’t invisible anymore. He was in the spotlight and it was a bright one.
Chap 3 The Shadow of Wuthering Heights
Sitting in his new glass office, James stared back at everyone who could see his every move. It offered him no privacy.
His promotion was not going to be easy to settle into. Five employees that his boss had fired at the same time that he was promoted, had left behind resentful friends who whispered in copy rooms and break areas. He was in the spotlight.
Pausing before he was seen, James stopped just around the corner of the break room where he couldn't be seen and caught fragments:
“Manello’s pet…”
“…never earned it…”
“…Bugs will love Wuthering Heights.”
The Bugs name needed some explanation. Although James had been at Accurate LLC longer than any of them, he just hadn't stepped up and so hadn’t been seen. He was someone who lived purely for the job, with no social life. They called him Bugs, because he scurried to stay out of their way, just contenting himself with getting his work done. He'd been the guy who almost single handedly carried the office alone through his fast, accurate and long unheralded hours. Now he felt like he was in the spotlight.
Trevor, his new trainee, grew bolder by the minute. At first eager to learn, he now lingered with the others, laughing with those who resented James. He could feel them all watching him, as if each of his steps was as unsure as those in the spinning barrel of a funhouse.
Elaine summoned him frequently. Sometimes for reports, other times with no reason other than to ask if he was okay. He would find her behind half-drawn blinds, the air perfumed and warm. She praised him, asking him questions about whether those under him were starting to respect him. He was about to say no when she said: "Don't worry. I've scheduled a training session where you can face those who hate you. If you can just tell me their names, I'll put them on notice."
"You think of everything," he said, after a pause.
His boss next encouraged him to tell on anyone who’d been causing trouble and as he did, she entered their names into her computer.
"They'll all be getting invitations," she said, and leaned in too close.
“I’m sure it’s an offer they can’t refuse,” James said, with a smile.
“You’re saving this place, James. Don’t you see?” she said, her hand brushing his sleeve.
“How am I doing that?” James asked, surprised and wanting clarification.
“By your example of hard work,” she said.
“I don’t have anything else but that,” James said, voice small.
“What if you did?” she asked, a crafty expression coming to her face.
At the moment, he felt like he was stepping into a hall of mirrors with no exit: the narrow tunnel, the tilt of the room, the slide that spat out into applause. But this time, when the flashbulb burst, it wasn’t his coworkers cheering: it was Elaine, standing alone, clapping slowly, her face duplicated in endless mirrors.
"What are you offering?" James asked.
"Happiness before you address the hostiles," she said. "Regarding that firing. We’ve been getting a lot of mistakes: numbers swapped, forms rejected, as though errors were games to test how much patience the new manager had.”
“For their birthday surprise they said they'd help me,” James reminded her.
“Yes, but wasn't that a surprise,” she said.
When James tried to protest against any additional firings, Elaine Manello said: "Get some rest James. You'll need it in the morning."
"What will happen in the morning?"
"The meeting to address your haters," she said.
He recalled coworkers’ laughter echoing faintly in the hall, rising, falling, as if the whole building were another tilted room.
Then he noticed Elaine's office across the floor, her silhouette against the blinds, unmoving as she entertained visitors.
Chap 4 FUNHOUSE
That evening, after the rest had gone home, Elaine Manello confronted him. She leaned against his desk, arms crossed.
“You’re fading into your old self,” she said. “You should be happy.”
James shook his head. “I’m working. That’s all I need.”
“No,” she replied, her eyes glinting. “You need a jolt to get you out of that corner. You need to come back with me to the funhouse.”
He stiffened. “Why?”
“Because if you fight through the fear, you’ll own it. And you’ll own them."
It wasn't something that James could understand with what he knew, which was very little about people but a lot about codes. When his face seemed to be a big question mark, Manello believed she was going to save him by promoting him. He was now a conspicuous figure in the office and the five fired employees had been circling him, blaming him and waiting for their chance. Like sharks smelling blood, they were waiting for him to stumble.
That Saturday night, under a sky streaked with carnival lights, James followed Ms. Manello back into the Over the Top Funhouse. The facade looked even more grotesque than before: fanged grins, twisted clowns, spinning devils painted in lurid colors. The Sons of Hades had made sure no detail was overlooked.
As they approached, he heard footsteps behind. The five of them - the five former employees, shadows from the past - had been loitering on the boardwalk and now had their catch. Their faces gleamed with delight when they saw James. They followed.
Ms. Manello’s hand brushed James’ wrist. “Inside,” she whispered, holding up two tickets. “Let the house do its work.”
The mirror maze swallowed them first. Glass walls multiplied James and Manello endlessly. Behind them, the disgruntled five stumbled in, their curses echoing. One crashed straight into a panel, dazed, sliding down like a puppet cut loose. Another swung his fist at a reflection, shattering glass that cut him across the cheek.
“Keep moving,” Manello urged, tugging James forward.
The tilted room came next, its floor lurching violently to the side. James barely kept his footing. Behind, the pursuers slipped like rag dolls. One lost balance and tumbled into the wall, head cracking with a hollow thud. Another screamed as he slid across the floor into a support beam.
The uneven walkway groaned underfoot, boards buckling, rails shaking. Manello moved with the calm of a fighter, steady and fierce, her hand always ready to steady James. The remaining enemies staggered, tripping, cursing, eyes wild with hatred.
Finally, the narrowing passage. James had to crouch, then crawl. Claustrophobia clawed at him since the walls seemed to close like jaws. Manello’s voice guided him forward: “Breathe. Own it. Keep going.”
Behind, the last two of the five shoved each other in panic. The walls pressed harder. Their shouts turned to wheezes, then to silence, one by one.
James shot down the final slide with Elaine Manello staying behind.
Seconds later, the five former employees tumbled after him, unconscious, falling in a twisted pile. Carnival lights flashed. Somewhere, music blared.
By the time Elaine Manello came out like a wizard from behind the curtain, having forgone the slide to take the stairs down, people had gathered at the exit, murmuring, pointing at the heap of bodies. No one could say what had happened, only that the five were down. Only James was keeping a straight face.
Ms. Manello brushed herself off, then leaned close, her lips near his ear. “You see now? You don’t run from the house. You run through it. That’s why I wanted you here.”
Her hand rested against his chest, and her eyes smoldered with a promise. James’ heart pounded: not only from fear, but from the pull she exerted.
“I’ll fight,” he whispered, “but not by giving in.”
She smiled, a knowing smile, half challenge, half hunger. “That’s why you’re different. That’s why I want you.”
The carnival lights flickered, and for a moment, James wasn’t sure if he was still in the funhouse or if the office itself had always been one.
Chapter 5 The Slip
James Walker had wanted nothing more than to keep his head down, shuffle papers, and make it through the day. But his promotion to Training Manager had put him in the spotlight and stability was the one thing Elaine Manello had never offered.
When she touched his shoulder, he clung to her as if she were the last real thing in a dissolving world. “Mommy,” he even whispered once, before shame caught him. Elaine only smiled knowingly.
Her plan was simple: build him into a leader by forcing him to face the very people who socialized more than worked. But James wasn’t ready. She saw it in the way his fingers trembled over the briefing notes. So she chose the other path. Seduction first. Domination before duty.
He never remembered picking up the glass. The GHB powder had already dissolved into the wine, carrying him to that dangerous edge between submission and oblivion. Her tongue in his ear, her body pressed against him, her voice dripping like honeyed venom: “Relax, James. Let go.”
The carnival lights came again. Red and gold, brighter than pain. He tried to insist he was still in the office, still sane, but his body disobeyed. Elaine’s whispers became a chorus, overlapping with the voices of coworkers who had bullied him for years, now grotesque cheerleaders with lightbulb eyes.
He slammed his fists against mirrored walls, but the glass only swallowed him deeper. His reflection smirked: The rules don’t work here.
Down the tilted room he tumbled, gravity his enemy, Elaine’s joyful cries, his compass. One moment, her breast grazed his cheek; the next, he was sliding into blackness, coworkers chanting his name in mockery.
When James woke, it was not relief but another layer of nightmare. Elaine’s cheek was against his, warm, intimate.
“Elaine!” he called, though his voice cracked with a child’s desperation.
“You’re doing fine, James,” her voice came back, infinite and echoing. “Don’t be afraid of the angles.”
He thought of his code book, all the things that once gave order to his world. They had no weight here. The only weight was Elaine’s hand, pressing him forward, urging him to step into the slide, into the impossible carnival that was his desire.
Chap 7 The Labyrinth
James wasn’t sure how he'd got there, but when his eyes opened, he was at his desk. His inbox glared back at him, overflowing with unanswered emails. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do next until Trevor came partially into his office and leaned against his door frame, a crooked smirk on his face.
“You fell asleep again, boss. Must’ve been a hell of a night.”
James rubbed his eyes. When he looked up, Trevor’s grin warped, his face multiplying into masks: two, then five, then dozens, all laughing. James blinked hard, heart pounding and looked again. Trevor was just Trevor again, sipping coffee, shaking his head.
“Yes. But I don’t remember much of it,” James said.
“But the parts you remember were good?”
Yes," James said but it was the wrong answer. It gave him away as a pushover and Trevor would tell the others. They’d be waiting for him at the meeting, the one where he had to stand in front of his haters and calm them.
Elaine prepared him for it, and then she stood in the back corner, with her navy blazer and the dramatic movement of her arms. The script she given him lay on the lecturn in front of him, but it was her presence that mattered.
“Don’t lose yourself, James. The labyrinth feeds on confusion,” she’d said earlier and leaned in.
He repeated the lines, voice trembling, while his right hand tapped softly on the lecturn, with Manello cueing his tone and rhythm from the back. To the others, he was speaking with newfound confidence. To James, it felt like Elaine was speaking through him.
But was she protecting him or binding him tighter?
Earlier he’d clearly been delusional when he’d stumbled into her office, the code book clutched to his chest like a talisman.
“What did you do to me?” he demanded. His voice cracked. “The pill, the night. You made me -” The words fell apart before he'd finished.
Elaine rose from behind her desk with practiced calm. For a breath, she was only his manager: steady and professional.
“I only showed you what was already there,” she said softly. “You built this labyrinth yourself. I just turned on the lights.”
James pressed his palms to his temples, trying to block her out. When he opened his eyes, the code book was gone. In its place sat a hardback copy of Wuthering Heights, its spine cracked open to a page underlined in red: Give in to Love.
Elaine - seducer, teacher, tormentor - was the only one who seemed to know the way out. If there was a way out. Elaine’s guiding him from the back of the room was needed. The haters sat shoulder to shoulder, arms crossed, eyes narrowing. Elaine was behind him, unseen but ever-present.
“Give in to Love,” James said, the phrase catching in his throat. “Love is not weakness - it is strength. It binds us together, even when we disagree.”
He continued in that direction and for a moment, James thought he had done it, that with Elaine’s coaching, he'd calmed them.
"The Love approach is a teaching way. To teach the value of making my time productive, with accurate results," he said, reminding him that Accurate was the name of their company. "I just spent time going through my inbox. A lot of what I got were good guesses, which were not good enough. When we find them, we'll distribute a code book to you all. Until then, I've been given a book about life in aristicratic England: Wuthering Heights. I'll try to read that tonight but that's because I think I know why I was given it as a gift."
When someome shouted out "why?" He replied: "because I know the code book by heart." He finished up with Manello's words about support and training. Then when he left the meeting, Trevor was waiting, arms folded, eyes cold.
“You did good in there, boss,” Trevor said. The others closed in, familiar faces who thought they knew his weaknesses. They surrounded him. By the time James realized what was happening, his wrists were bound with a plastic twist tie, and they were leading him: not to a desk, not to an office, but into the underbelly of the building.
The basement was a forgotten place and mostly used for storage of office supplies. They tied him to a chair, their voices jeering, circling him. “The big manager,” one sneered. “You love managing,” another said. Their words became sharper, uglier. James’s chest tightened as they promised him “a night to remember,” their version of team-building. A night of fear.
"I didn't ask for any of this," James said. "I was fine, working alone in the corner. I was thankful when she said she recognized a talent in me and wanted to give me a boost. I'm willing to do what she asks."
"With nothing going on, why wouldn't you?" someone else asked. Their laughter echoed in the dark. James’s own fear pressed in with his wrists tied. He thought of Elaine, of her whispers, of the bitter pill she had once slipped past his lips.
"I just took the opportunity when it came along. I thought my work might get me noticed."
His head bowed as he thought he might be abandoned here, broken for good.
Then the door creaked and silence dropped like a blade.
Elaine stepped into the dim light, her navy blazer crisp, her heels striking against the concrete. She moved without hesitation, brushing past Trevor and the others as though they were children caught misbehaving.
Her eyes met James’s, and she crouched beside him. With deliberate care, she cut the tie on his wrists which fell away letting him stretch out.
“This is part of it,” she murmured, her lips close to his ear. “The conditioning. The trials. A good manager must survive fear to command respect.”
James’s heart pounded. He wanted to shout, to accuse her, to demand answers. But all he could do was sit there, trembling, while Elaine straightened, her hand brushing his shoulder like a blessing.
To the others, she said only: “Enough for tonight.”
And they backed off, obedient to their real boss.
James rose unsteadily, wrists raw, knees shaking. The basement door closed behind them, but the lesson lingered: his survival was not his own doing. Elaine had wanted him to know that she could not decide if she had saved him or tightened the final knot of her control.
Chap 8 Tightening
The night after Elaine freed him, James tried to pretend life had snapped back into something ordinary. He stayed late at the office, answered half his glutted inbox, and told himself he was still in control. But when he finally got into his car, the streets looked unfamiliar, stretched too long beneath the glow of sodium lamps.
That was when the headlights appeared in his rearview.
At first, he thought nothing of it, just another anxious commuter. But the car crept closer. Too close. Its beams filled his mirrors, blinding him. When James sped up, it matched him. When he slowed, it slowed. The pressure of this intimidation clenched around his chest like a fist.
He turned off the main road, tires crunching onto an old service trail he hadn’t driven in years. Trees loomed on either side, their branches skeletal against the night sky. The headlights stayed with him, bouncing, jolting, relentless.
James pressed the pedal harder. Gravel spat beneath the wheels. The woods road narrowed, twisting, bending, the world flashing in bursts of dark green. Every bump jolted him as his heart hammered in rhythm with the rattle of bumps.
Then, ahead of him: Another set of headlights, blinding bright, blocking the road.
He slammed the brakes. His tires skidded sideways into the ditch, throwing him against the steering wheel. Before he could recover, doors opened. Shadows emerged. Figures in dark coats, faces blurred by glare.
Hands yanked his door open. He kicked, shouted, but there were too many of them. They dragged him, with his feet scraping dirt and gravel. The first car idled behind them, its beams sealing off any hope of retreat.
They shoved him forward into the wash of light until he had to close his eyes against it. When he anners fluttered overhead. Painted boards leaned in crooked rows. Calliope music shrieked faintly from somewhere unseen.
“The circus,” one of them muttered, his voice oily with amusement. “Welcome back, Walker.”
James’s breath tore ragged from his throat. There were tents and rides. The Ferris wheel loomed above the treeline where no Ferris wheel could be. A rollercoaster’s silhouette cut across the moon. The faces around him sharpened into grins, masks, jeers: the same ones from his office, from the meeting, from his nightmares.
They hated him. Truly, deeply, he understood as they pushed him through the striped curtain of a tent that hadn’t been there moments ago, James knew: this wasn’t just the labyrinth anymore. This was the circus of his nightmares, built from their malice, sustained by his fear.
Chapter 9 Rescue
They dragged him across the sawdust floor of the big top, his shoes leaving streaks through dirt and candy wrappers. The tent lights swung overhead, too bright, too hot, making the shadows stretch and leap like demons.
“Step right up!” Trevor’s voice bellowed, echoing through a megaphone he hadn’t been holding a moment before. “Ladies and gentlemen, behold the great Training Manager!”
The circus crowd roared with appreciation that didn't seem right. They were faces James knew from the office, warped now into grotesque caricatures. His haters had become carnival barkers, clowns, hecklers.
A pie hit him square in the chest. Another splattered across his face. Laughter erupted. The ring around him tightened, a swirl of jeers and mocking applause.
“Speech! Speech!” they chanted, their voices overlapping like a chant at some terrible rite.
James tried to speak, but the words didn't make it from his throat. His mouth filled with the taste of chalk and sugar. Someone clamped a dunce cap on his head. The Ferris wheel groaned in the distance like some giant monster.
Through the blur, he saw her.
Elaine Manello.
She stood just outside the ring, not in her blazer now but in a tailored coat striped black and navy, her hair loose around her shoulders. Her eyes caught his across the chaos, steady, appraising.
At last she stepped into the circle, heels sinking into the sawdust. The bullies fell back, their grins slackening into something almost deferential. She approached James slowly, deliberately, until her perfume drowned out the stench of popcorn and sweat.
She leaned close, her lips at his ear, her voice velvet over steel.
“This is what it takes, James. To lead, you must know fear. Only then will you rise above it.”
“They hate me,” he croaked.
“They hate everyone,” Elaine whispered, brushing the dunce cap from his head. “They wish they were the ones who'd rise.”
The crowd jeered again, louder, as if daring him to fight, to prove her wrong. Elaine straightened, her gaze sweeping across them like a conductor raising her baton.
“This is your training,” she declared. “Endure this, James. Endure it all. And then make them obey.”
The crowd howled. A spotlight swung, blinding him, and he felt the ropes tighten once more. James’s knees buckled, but Elaine’s hand steadied his chin, forcing his eyes forward.
“Don’t close your eyes,” she murmured. “Not here. Not now. This is where managers are made.”
Her smile was serene, cruel, and proud all at once.
And James, covered in pie, drenched in sweat and humiliation, realized she would never let him escape because to Elaine Manello, the circus wasn’t punishment. It was fun.