Here ya go!
Temping by Darien Shields
Bills, junk, junk, bills.
Rachel gave the mail a very sleepy look as she stuffed the bills between her middle and index fingers, the junk between her index and pinkie. Nobody actually communicated by letter anymore, except people with bills and idiots trying to sell you the march catalogue. Someone had to make a machine that just ate all your mail and came up with an amount you had to pay, and a recommendation for what cheap garbage you should try next.
She tucked the few remaining envelopes between her thumb and forefinger and yawned. It was too early for this. It was too early for everything. The sun was barely up. It really said something about your lifestyle when you thought the sun was a lazy bastard.
Still, had to get up early. Bloody commute.
Maybe she could take the day off, soak in the bath until she pruned, and then laze about the house all day in her dressing gown reading cheap detective novels. Then she remembered that she couldn't, because she'd already done that three times this month, and had used up all her sick leave and flexitime. She briefly contemplated dipping into maternity leave, but decided against it; you probably couldn't be pregnant four days a month for a few years.
She strolled into the kitchen and binned the junk post. What wonderful mysteries were in the three remaining letters?
Bills, a leaflet for Joey's World Famous Pizza, and- huh.
So somebody did still communicate by letter.
She put the little signed stamped envelope down on the counter while she fetched a letter opener. It wasn't necessary, but after paying ten pounds for one she was bloody well going to use it. A few seconds of careful knife work later, she found herself holding a little folded sheet of paper. She unfolded it, and read.
Dear Rachel
I am your mummy. I'm sure Ken told you loads about me, but I have been very very busy these past twenty years. We should meet up for lunch and cake sometime, I have lots of old birthday presents to give you.
Anyway, been rushed off my feet with the family business, and decided to take a week off. Can you take over for me for the week? Do not worry, job is V. Easy, just stand near farms and rub up against infertile people.
Have fun!
Lots and lots of love, and hugs, and kisses,
Mummy
(Demeter, Goddess of Fertility)
P.S. Sorry I missed your graduation!
Rachel blinked for a moment, and then just stared through the horrible curly pink writing, through the heart dotted eyes and gigantic loops after every big word.
What. The. Hell.
Was this some sort of practical joke? Her mother was dead. Died during childbirth, her father had told her. Her father was called Ken, so had somebody...? No, it was just too bizarre. She didn't even want to think about the sort of person who had a sense of humour like this. She crumpled the letter up and tossed it into the bin.
Patently ridiculous.
Ugh. No time to indulge in silly letters now, she had to get ready for work. Time for breakfast.
She got herself a glass of orange juice and a bowl of branflakes and began to contemplate what fun she'd be having today in the exciting fast paced world of public banking. Maybe she'd be in luck and someone would have killed themselves and have some interesting inheritance to work out.
Oof. She'd put the dressing gown on too tight this morning. She loosened it as she sat down to breakfast.
Her mind was just beginning to stray back to the bizarre letter when a nice convenient distraction popped up.
"Eww, orange pulp," she muttered. She could've sworn she got the pulp free too... She did. It said right there on the carton... maybe she could sue... of course that would mean she'd have to stop drinking, which was proving difficult. The sweet tastiness of the juice was only slightly offset by the horrid pulpiness of the pulp, and she was thirsty today. She gulped the glass down and refilled it, before taking another swig.
Then she choked.
She almost fell out her chair. She spluttered and grasped at her throat. She had found her feet, but felt as if she'd lose them again soon. She heaved, her whole body spasming to get rid of whatever clogged her precious windpipe.
Hack
Finally with a great rasping cough she fired the blockage out like a bullet. It pinged off the table and landed on the carpet.
She stood wheezing for a moment, leaning on the table for support.
Well, they say one life and death experience before breakfast livens up the day.
When she had quite caught her breath she found the offensive particle.
A seed.
A big, white, orange seed.
She was definitely going to sue for this, she thought, as she looked at the thing between her fingers. She set it down on the table and strode out into the hall to get the phone and the yellow pages. She wasn't sure who she wanted to ring up first- the juice company, a solicitor, or did she want to call up the office and tell them that due to a harrowing near death experience and the ensuing legal battle she couldn't possibly make it in today? That'd probably help her case, come to think of it- emotional distress- got to get things set up e-
Where had the seed gone?
She walked back to the table to find the seed gone, and in its place a small, round... orange.
"What the... hell?" she said, picking up the little fruit.
Rachel was not a stupid woman. She made the connection quickly.
The bloody letter.
This was one of those stupid reality TV pranks, wasn't it? Someone had set her up with a fake letter, fake orange juice, and then swapped the seed for the orange while she wasn't looking, to convince her that she was some sort of ridiculous fertility Goddess.
Oh, she was definitely suing for this.
Rachel lost herself in thoughts about which inane TV company had set her up for this stupid stunt, and how much she'd milk the bastards for when she was through with them. When she came back to reality, it was to notice that the little orange in her hand was not little anymore. It was big, plump, and juicy.
She blinked and put it down.
"Okay," she said, "That's a little bit weirder."
... no.
Couldn't be.
Could it?
She picked up the glass of orange juice and, with a look of cold disbelief, upended it into the sink. Pulpy orange juice poured out, along with a small pile of seeds, and a couple of little oranges.
She turned around very slowly, trying not to think about what had just happened.
Then she saw her branflakes.
Or rather, what had been her branflakes, but was now a collection of foot high wheat stalks sprouting out of her bowl.
Very slowly a smile spread across Rachel's lips.
"Oooooh," she said, "I'm dreaming. Ooh, this is weird. I've never had a dream like this before. I wonder if I can fly?"
She wandered out into the back garden, and found that she could not, in fact, fly. She did find, however, that her weedy turf exploded into life under her bare feet, and turned into a miniature safari in the few seconds it took her to pace back into the house.
"Well, without flying, this dream's just boring," she said to herself, "And I've probably slept in already... I don't want to be late for work. I better wake myself up."
She reached down to pinch herself, and found, to her great surprise, a lot more... pinchable... than she had expected.
"This... this is a dream," she reminded herself, "A very... very weird dream. Oh, God, I hope I don't have a repressed fetish."
She adjusted her dressing gown so that her pinchable bits weren't showing so much. This required dream investigation, but she didn't want anyone seeing her doing it. Even if it was just a dream, there were still dream perverts, and some dream privacy wouldn't have gone amiss.
She just hoped that she could keep the dream embarrassment to a minimum.
Wow.
If this was a dream, and it was all part of her subconscious telling her about some sort of repressed fetish... she had one hell of a fetish. The mother of all fetishes, perhaps, in a very literal way.
Rachel stood naked in front of her mirrored wardrobe. She was very naked, and very pregnant.
Her flat stomach was gone. Well, okay, technically speaking her flat stomach had never existed in the first place. Her soft, ever so slightly poochy stomach was gone. Or at least hidden behind a much bigger, rounder, more pregnant one. It was sort of embarrassing that her abdomen was actually a lot firmer now than it had been before. Er, that is to say her pregnant dream abdomen was a lot firmer than her not pregnant real one which was probably attached to the rest of her sleeping self in bed in the real world.
She was pregnant.
With child.
The weird thing was, that wasn't even the most striking part of her figure. Her bulge was not world class. She wondered if that was part of her repressed fetish- did she want to be pregnant but want giant boobs more? Surely not; if anything she'd always wanted smaller breasts, not... these. If this was a repressed fetish it had been very, very repressed.
Her breasts were, well, world class. Apparently her secret repressed fetish was to grow a body so outlandishly huge that she could never buy a fitting bra again.
Actually, come to think of it, there was a distressing amount of evidence pointing towards this not being a repressed fetish at all.
Her hips had spread outwards, giving her the sort of figure that would have made her a hot figure in the medieval era- kings would just be lining up at her door to get her to sire a few heirs with these babies. But they didn't seem especially fetishistic to her- she didn't dislike them much, nor was she titillated by them. If anything they just seemed pretty silly. She was less pleased with the enormity of her bottom, but similarly nonplussed by the swelling of her thighs.
Of course, the really, really strange part was that... she was still growing. Her body continued to expand in every direction other than up. Her bump was fast gaining on the rest of her, but it looked like the other regions of her body weren't going to give up without a fight.
"Okay, I really need to wake up now..." she said, and pinched her hip. There was a lot of good soft pinching there, and it quite hurt.
Nothing happened.
She pinched herself again.
Nothing happened, except for an annoying twinge of pain.
"Right. Obviously, pinching doesn't wake you up, that only works in movies. Umm... wait, wait, wait... How about..."
She braced herself against her bed to support her rapidly growing weight, and inched her feet together. Then she thumped the backs of her feet off one another three times.
"There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home!"
...
"Dammit! Stupid, stupid Rachel, why would that work? Err, hmm... I really really want to wake up. I think I want to wake up..." she said, frowning and trying her best to concentrate, "Waking up... now!"
She opened her eyes.
She was still a gently swelling enormous pregnant girl.
"Okay, okay," she said, "Well, everyone knows you can't sleep in a dream, soo..."
She threw her bulk into bed.
"I'll just nod off and wake up in the real world!"
And she did.
Unfortunately, the real world just happened to be the same one where she was an enormously pregnant stand-in fertility Goddess. But Rachel would enjoy a few blissful seconds where this was no the case.
Actually, blissful was not a good way to describe them.
Confused, bewildered, annoyed and uncomfortable would be better. She had been woken up by the phone. She groped around in the dark to find the bastard, and put an end to its horrible ringing.
"Ugh, hello?"
"Rachel?"
"Yahuh," she said, and yawned, "Who else would it be?"
"Someone who isn't two hours late for work, lying in bed, and being rude to about the only person in the whooole world who can pull her ass out the fire?"
Rachel woke up some more.
"Crap. Maria? Sorrysorrysorry, I- two hours? Oh you're kidding! My alar-"
She froze mid sentence, as she looked down and realised that her alarm had not broken. Nor was that weird dream a weird dream. She was, in fact, very, very pregnant. A lot more so now than when she had gone back to sleep.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Maria said on the other end of the phone, oblivious to her friend's revelation, "Same difference. Now, you gonna get your butt in here ASAP or what? You're just lucky Martha's only coming in in the afternoon today anyway otherwise your goose would be cooked. Scratch that, your cook would be cremated, identifiable only by dental records. Which, considering it's a goose, it wouldn't have."
"Umm, listen, Maria," Rachel said, still staring in awe at her hugeness, "I'm, uh, actually-" she faked a cough, "I'm actually not feeling too well, I was thinking of-"
"Did you not hear about the goose?! Your goose is ash! It cannot even be identified as your goose, that is how bad your situation is. You don't have any sick days left. Get in here now!"
"What about my maternity leave?" she asked. Well, after all, she was pregnant.
"Ha-ha," Maria said, "Now are you gonna get in here, or what?"
"Hold on a minute, Maria," she said, wedging the phone between her shoulder and her ear. She shuffled over to the side of the bed and was about to get up when she got a look at herself in the mirror.
"God I'm huge!"
She really, really was. Her body had finished its little growth spurt during her sleep and was now a behemoth of fecundity. Her womb had not been willing to settle for second place, and now spread beyond her knees. Her hips had spread to support it like the base of a bloody pyramid, and her breasts had not given up the title of "hugest part of Rachel" without a fight. She looked like a one woman emergency earth repopulation unit; capable of carrying, birthing, and feeding a small army of children.
Oh, and her hair was really long too. That was just weird. The column of red dangled around her obscene buttocks.
"... you're huge?" Maria asked.
Rachel cleared her throat.
"So, um, Maria," she said, getting to her feet. This was far easier than it ought to be, but hey, she was probably breaking plenty of laws of physics today anyway, "Hypothetically speaking," she said, as she waddled towards the door. For a moment she felt the sides of it against her hugeness, and then to her mild surprise they seemed to curve away. Apparently the Universe was very accommodating if you were a Goddess.
"Hypothetically speaking," she repeated, now heading downstairs, "Say I just happened to have been made a Goddess of Fertility for the week, and this meant I was ridiculously huge and couldn't come into work. Hypothetically speaking-"
"You'd get the sack," Maria said.
"B-but- a Goddess, Maria. I mean, like, really a Goddess," Rachel said.
"Yes, a Goddess, Rachel. Frankly I don't know what you're getting at, but you remember when Steve over in Accounting was crowned king of that obscure middle eastern country for a couple of months?"
"Oh, come on, this is totally different," Rachel said, "Goddess! Goddess is much higher than King. And he wasn't even a proper King, it was the middle of nowhere."
"Goddess, King, whatever. Martha still fired him, Rachel. She said, 'I don't care if your Kingdom is on the brink of a civil war and only the return of the true King can fix things. I still need those figures on my desk by Monday, so you can either go save Kaznia or wherever, or you can sit your royal ass down and get back to work!' I remember it well- he left crying. You don't see a King cry every day."
Rachel sighed. Maria was right. Martha was such a ball buster. Rachel didn't even have balls to bust, but Martha was still capable of ball busting them. That was just how much of a complete and utter ball buster she was.
She'd have to keep the Goddess thing under the rug. If Martha found out she was being a Goddess on her time, it'd be the end of her career.
"Fine, fine," she said, "I'll be in in an hour."
Oh, great. And on top of everything else, now her kitchen was full of orange trees.
"You're sure about the hospital, love?"
Rachel frowned. She was very sure about the hospital, and very sure she didn't like being called "love".
"Very," she said, "Just here will be fine," she said, nodding towards the pavement.
The driver shrugged, and pulled the car over. There was a long awkward pause as they both tried, in their heads, to figure out how Rachel was going to get out of the car. Eventually, when it became evident that the driver had no better idea of how to get her out than she did, she started squeezing herself out. It wasn't much like getting out of a car normally- it was more like taking off a slightly baggy sweater. The taxi driver was so bewildered by the sight of her doing so, and then waddling off afterwards, that he completely forgot to charge her.
That was at least one thing going her way.
Unfortunately there were at least half a dozen things that were not going her way. Particularly, there was her skirt, her shirt, her jacket, her shoes, her tights and her underwear. Somehow she'd managed to fit these things onto her body, but it'd probably be an exaggeration to say that she was "wearing" them. Her white shirt was lashed around her chest, a few buttons standing between a crevasse of cleavage and the great plain of her nude bump. Her tie was lost somewhere between the obscene melons. The jacket was closed narrowly over the shirt, but to little effect. Her skirt had turned from knee-length to mini in an effort to cover her bottom, and her stockings were seconds away from exploding under the pressure of her thighs. Her shoes were boots. They had been the only shoes thick enough to stop grass from growing under her feet when she walked around outside.
This was all quite impossible. There was really no way you could make normal person clothes fit on a body like hers- especially not like this. But... it seemed to be one more weird rule of the day that things would curve ever so slightly to accommodate her. The bloody things just stopped short of actually growing to cover her properly. Oh well.
Now was the time for sneaking.
"... I really need to pee."
Rachel realised that these were not the words of any great masters of stealth, but couldn't really help it. Stupid delicious pulpy orange juice.
Now was not the time for sneaking, it was the time for peeing.
She bit her lip. Peeing could not be achieved without first entering the office. Entering the office needed to be achieved with the aid of sneaking. Sneaking was physically impossible while rotund, and especially impossible when the crippling need to pee had spread across your whole body.
This called for help. She fetched her mobile phone.
"Come on... pick up... pick up..."
"Why are you calling me on my mobile?"
Ah, good old Maria. Good old pissed off angry Maria.
"Are you coming in or not?" Maria asked in a whisper, "If you're getting yourself fired, you are totally not my friend anymore, 'cause I'll have to do all your accounts once they kick you out. Are you gonna get fired just to spite me? Is that your plan?"
"Shhhh," Rachel said, "Mariiiaaaa, I need your help. I'm outside, I just, umm... I really need to pee."
There was a pause, "... well, so what? Get in and use the toilets here, they're pretty clean."
"No, see..." she said, and then sighed, "You know what I said earlier about being a Fertility Goddess?"
"Ahuh. And you remember what I said about King Steve?"
"Yeah, yeah, well it's totally true, and I can't let Martha know, so I need to be sneaky. But it's hard because I'm full of babies, nature, divine power, and pee."
"I'm hanging up now. This is me hanging up. You've forced me to do this," Maria said.
"Nonono, wait! Okay, look, Maria, just, just bear with me. I will... I will give you my entire DVD collection if you let me through the fire exit, okay?" Rachel said. What was she saying?! She couldn't give her the Poirot and the Miss Marple!
"... but your DVD collection sucks," Maria said slowly. She seemed to be genuinely weighing up the possibilities.
"I'll buy some new, better DVDs then, okay?" Rachel said.
"Well, okay, I suppose I can let you in... but you better not welsh on this."
"Just get down here and let me in before my womb or my bladder explodes."
She hung up, and waddled slowly around to the back of the building, hoping that all the people staring at her hugeness were just customers, and nobody who actually worked in the office. She smiled and waved at them to assure them that she was okay, just bein' really pregnant, no need for any fuss or special attention. She reached the fire exit and waited. She spent the time trying to figure out what she was going to tell Maria about her little 'condition', but eventually figured that it spoke pretty much for itself.
Then, minutes later, the door creaked open by a fraction.
"Rachel?"
"Here, here!" Rachel said, lumbering towards the door. Before Maria could carefully open it inch by inch to admit her, she barged past, bumping the thing wide open with a barge from her stomach.
"Bu- th- wh- th- fu- ho- whaaaa?"
Maria's face was a picture. And not just any one either, one of those fancy existential ones with two noses and five expressions. Her features transformed from shock, to horror, to curiosity, to disbelief, to brief brilliant bursts of hilarity, to looks of utter woe, and then back through the whole cycle again. Rachel found, to her own surprise, that she herself was grinning. There was just something amusing about surprising someone with what you had very clearly explained to them already.
Finally Maria seized control of her face and settled upon an expression of mixed disbelief and disapproval.
"What the hell?"
"Oh, come on," Rachel said, "I told you already, didn't I? I'm a Goddess of Fertility. Apparently my mom is one, usually, but she took the week off to have a holiday, and I'm to do it instead while she's off. Did you think I was joking?"
She had completely forgotten her own disbelief at her condition some hours earlier.
"Rachel!" Maria said, as her friend began waddling up the stairs, "We've got to tell someone about this! This is-"
"King Steve?" Rachel said.
Maria paused.
"Yeah, okay, you're right. We've got to tell no-one about this," she said.
"That's why you've got to help me hide and be sneaky and things. Right after I've had a wee."
Maria opened her mouth to protest, and then shut it. When a Goddess wanted a wee, she had a wee.
Sneaking into the bathroom was a cakewalk.
That is to say, it was about as easy as walking in cake. Which is not nearly as easy as people seem to think, Rachel mused, as she waddled around the ladies' room. Cake really isn't designed to take someone's weight, unless you have some really reinforced icing. You'd end up with more of a cakewade than anything else.
"Boy I could go for some cake right now..."
No! No cakes! Work to be done. Bellies to be hidden.
Details shall not be given as to how Rachel maneuvered her massive body into the cubicle, nor how the toilet successfully took her tremendous weight. It will, however, be mentioned that several minutes after she left, the entire cubicle was covered in long grass that would puzzle the building's janitor for many years to come.
Sneaking to her desk was going to be trickier.
"How do we hide this?!" Maria said. 'This' was 90% of Rachel. The 10% that made up her head, feet, and hands, would have been quite easy to hide, had it not been attached to the rest of her. Bull in a china shop wouldn't quite cover it now. Perhaps bull whale in a china shop.
"Well, it's really just the belly I need to hide..." Rachel said, patting herself down.
"... are you shitting me? Your boobs are bigger than my head!"
"Oh, anyone could say that," Rachel said, waving her comments away, "You have a tiny head. I think Susan over in Accounts has boobs as big as your head too."
Maria rolled her eyes, "They're bigger than your head too."
Rachel touched her head with both hands and mentally tried to measure it.
"Nevermind," Maria said, "I guess if we hide the belly you can just tell everyone you had a massive boob job."
"Or that their heads have grown huge on noxious head bloat gas," Rachel suggested.
"Right, or that. Probably the first one, though," Maria said.
"Okay, okay. Think. If I can get to my desk I can stuff most of me under it, I think," Rachel said, "So I just need you to distract everyone in the entire office long enough for me to get there."
"Only about fifty people," Maria said sarcastically, "How hard could it be?"
"Exactly."
Maria found herself marching out into the office, leaving Rachel hiding in the fire escape. Somehow, somehow, she was going to have to do this. Rachel was going to owe her so much for this. Her whole DVD collection and her DVD player, for starters.
"Oooh, um, would you look at that?" she said, pointing out the window.
"... what?" the girl next to her said, looking where she was pointing. She was the only one in the office who seemed to have noticed at all.
"That... that thing out there that... that's not what you'd expect to see out a window. Wow! Look, now it's become even more unexpected than before, and yet, still so utterly bizarre and incomprehensible that I couldn't possibly put it into words and you're totally going to just have to go and take a goddam look at it."
The girl gave her a confused look, and went back to typing something on her computer.
Okay, fine, so that's how it was going to be.
Hmmm. There was the fire alarm. No, that was more trouble than it was worth- Rachel was on the fire escape after all. And besides, half the department would probably just mill about until they saw actual flames. What got these lazy arseholes moving? She could take her top off. No, that would be too much trouble. Probably as much as Rachel would get anyway, really. She was an enormous Goddess, but at least she didn't have her tits out.
Ahah!
Maria snapped her fingers, and strode off to the break-room. Then, leaning out the door and trying to watch the office while not actually looking like she was watching the office, she said in the loudest possible voice;
"Wow! Cream eclairs! Who left these here?"
Several heads popped up from desks around the office.
"Well, I guess they're for just anyone to take, but, oh no, there are only six... I wonder if I should..."
Before she could continue, she was shoved aside by a man who descended upon the break room like a feral animal. Others were beginning to walk towards it- the stampede was forming- but they didn't quite have the same animal drive as the first man.
"Where are they?" the man said.
Maria winced. She thought the man's name was Josh, and she was beginning to dislike him with a passion.
"Umm, they're in there," she said, "Just check the cupboards too."
Josh needed no further incentive, and began checking cupboard after cupboard.
The stampede had arrived now, and Maria hopped aside as they charged into the tiny break-room. There was a long moment of fuss and confusion, before someone's voice rose up above the others and said;
"Hey! There aren't any eclairs here!"
"Josh ate them all!" Maria shouted.
The crowd became vicious.
Maria slipped back into the office while the others discussed whether they should have Josh hung drawn and quartered, or spit roast for his offence. She was not surprised to see Rachel, now the only person in the office, stuffed under her desk. The column of her office chair had collapsed, turning it more into a stool than anything else. This at least allowed her squeeze her belly under her desk. She was, however, looking at her computer screen from behind a chasm of breast.
"Thanks," she said, as Maria took her seat behind her, "I think we're safe now."
"You," Maria said, "You're safe. I'm not in danger here at all."
"If they get me, I'm telling them you're my divine handmaiden," Rachel said.
"Oh, come on!"
"Fair's fair. It's not like I asked mummy to make a Goddess out of me."
"You know, I thought you didn't have a mother," Maria said, "I thought she died."
"Yeah. I need to call dad after work and have a heart to heart. Or possibly a foot to ass, depending on how it goes," Rachel said, "Still," she said, "I do have to give him some props. He got it on with a Goddess. That's pretty impressive."
"Just remember she was a Goddess that looked like you," Maria said, pointing under the desk.
Rachel shrugged. She wasn't feeling half as ugly as she thought she would, come to think of it. But there was no time to contemplate her body shape right now- the world of banking couldn't possibly survive another minute without her elite skills!
She sighed, and got to work.
It was a very strange day.
Everyone in the office agreed.
Of the many strange things that happened, actually, the staff would probably have rated Rachel's boob job as pretty low on the list. After returning from roasting Josh alive, several of the staff had noticed her new assets.
"Oh, hi Sandy," Rachel had said, "I'm, uh, trying a new aqua padded bra. The support's great, but it makes me look like a stripper, huh? Yeah. So, see you later!"
But it was really a minor oddity compared to everything else. The rest of the staff agreed- when Rachel was out of earshot- that they weren't entirely surprised by her surgery, and that it seemed like the sort of thing they could picture her doing.
No, the real weird stuff started with the office plants. No-one could identify the large, vibrant flowers that had appeared on them- apparently overnight. There were suspicions that they might be new plants shipped in by management while they weren't looking. This, in turn, lead to suspicions that a pay cut was on the way, as the plants were doubtless part of some scheme to soften the eventual blow.
Things got really confusing when people noticed all the fruit on them too.
"That's weird," Harold said some hours later, examining one of the large, shining red fruits dangling from the plant, "I didn't think you got apples from rubber tree plants."
"That's nothing," Sandra said, prodding the plant with one finger, "I'm pretty sure these were made of plastic yesterday."
"P-probably plastic fruit," Rachel called from her desk.
The pair looked over to see Rachel peering over her cleavage.
"Err, you know? Plastic plants, plastic fruits. The janitors stick them on to make you think they're real plants, but they're really not."
Looks were exchanged, and then shrugs.
"They looked fake to me anyway," Sandra said.
And then there was Bernard.
Bernard was the affectionate name given by the office (although no-one was quite sure who in the office had assigned the name) to a mug in the break-room. Or rather, to the contents of a mug in the break-room. Much like the name, no-one was quite sure of Bernard's exact history or origin either, but this was known. At some point in the past- possibly the Cretaceous era- a mug had been left in the break-room without being emptied or cleaned. What the mug contained no man alive knows- some say coffee, others tea, others the primordial soup from which all life on earth evolved. What it would come to contain, however, was Bernard.
Bernard was a mold.
His growth and evolution had so fascinated certain members of the office that they had decided not to destroy Bernard, but protect him and allow him to grow, in hopes of seeing what brave new life form might emerge from the mug in time. About twice a week at least one woman in the office would demand Bernard's destruction, and the office's men would all rally to Bernard's defence. And that is to say nothing of the health and safety inspections.
Today, however, a rather unfortunate employee had opened a cupboard to find that Bernard had gone from being a thick crust of green and white mold festering in the bottom of a mug, to a gargantuan mushroom swelling out of his mug, with a basketball sized red cap covered in large yellow pustules of spores. Several baby Bernards had already sprouted in just about every other mug in the cupboard.
A fight had broken out about whether to burn Bernard or contact the Guinness Book of Records. In the end Bernard had been locked in the break-room. No comment was made about the yellow dust cloud that began to creep out from under the door several minutes later. This was quite annoying since they had also found that the ground coffee extract had at some point been replaced with premium roast coffee beans, but they too were now sealed away with Bernard.
"You think you could maybe keep a lid on it?" Maria asked in a whisper, sometime later.
"What d'you mean?" Rachel said, emerging from the list of accounts she had been working on.
"The Goddess stuff. The office is gonna be a forest before the week's out at this rate," Maria said.
Rachel rubbed her chin and looked thoughtfully from the burgeoning rubber tree plants to the Bernard spores near the break-room. "Oh, gee, d'you think I did that?" she asked.
"Hmm, I don't know, maybe it was Sandra, I think she did some part time work as a Goddess of Fertility a while back."
"Really?"
"No! Not really! Of course it's you you big fat Goddess!" Maria said in an angry whisper.
"Er, sorry. I didn't mean to it just... Fertility just sort of leaks out of me. I can't help it," Rachel said.
Something occurred to Rachel. She tried not to look.
"Well, we're going to need to do something about it before the week's out..." Maria said, sighing and looking around, "Maybe we can get rid of the office plants."
Rachel nodded.
Maria shrugged and wheeled back to her desk.
Rachel peered after her. She couldn't quite see, though...
"Oh," Maria said, swiveling the chair around, "It's almost lunch time, actually," she said, looking at her watch, "You want to head to the café, or get some fast food? I know it's not healthy but I'm really feeling starved today. Must be all this running up and down fire escapes."
"Ahuh," Rachel said, trying not to look, but doing so all the same. It was there. "Well, uh, you know, I'm pretty hungry but... I better not," she said, gesturing to the rest of her hidden under the desk, "Not to mention if I went to Burger King the fries would probably turn into potato plants and the burgers would get covered in sesame bushes. Could you be a saint and go get me something?"
"Sure," Maria said, standing up, "Burgers good?"
"Yeah," Rachel said, and nodded.
She watched Maria leave the office, and tried not to think about the unmistakable bulge beneath her friend's shirt.
Oh dear. She was going to be in sooo much trouble when Maria noticed.
Rachel had, a few times, seen a shirt emblazoned with the words "Jesus is coming, quick, look busy!" Unfortunately, the comedy value was somewhat lost on her after working for Martha. If Martha was coming Jesus would try to look busy.
"Sandy! Figures!"
Heads turned towards the entrance to the office as Martha strode into view.
"What are you all looking at? I'm not paying you people to watch me, this isn't a song and dance number!" Martha shouted. Everyone stalwartly looked back at what they were doing. "I'm expecting three seconds overtime from all of you tonight for that little deviation," she said. A stifled groan didn't so much 'go up' as 'go down' from the office. "Just be glad I'm not keeping track of all the slacking off you did when I wasn't here. Sandy!"
"I-it's Sandra, ma'am," Sandra said, scurrying across to the irate manager.
"Well then you'd better get a Deed Poll, hadn't you Sandy?"
Sandra blinked, paused for a moment, and then nodded, "Y-yes, ma'-"
"And it's sir, not ma'am. God, you'd think you'd never heard of suffragettes," Martha said, swiping a sheet of paper from Sandra and poring over the figures, "Tom?"
"Yes, sir?" a man said, standing on the opposite side of the office.
"You're fired," Martha said, without looking up from the figures.
"Y-yes, sir," Tom said. He stood over his desk for a moment, before running crying towards the lifts. Martha tapped her lips and continued to look at the figures as the crying echoed from further and further down the building.
"Hmm. Oh, wait, I meant Tom in Accounting, didn't I?" Martha said to herself.
"Possibly, sir," Sandra said, "Should I go and get Tom back?"
"No," Martha said, "He's a crier. Nobody needs a crier. Go and tell Tom in Accounting, though. If he doesn't cry when you say it, he gets to stay."
Sandra nodded, and scurried away quickly.
Who do Gods pray to? This problem was praying on Rachel's mind. She really, really needed someone to pray to now, someone to protect her from Martha's icy cold gaze, but usually that would be, well, Gods, wouldn't it? Or Goddesses? And now she was one. It just didn't seem right to pray to someone if you were on approximately even footing with them. Heck, she was probably related to most Gods, if her mother was one. You couldn't very well pray to your Uncle or your Grandfather, now, could you?
Maybe she could pray to herself?
No, actually, it probably didn't fall under her domain- she was a fertility Goddess. She was looking for something more along the lines of a God of War or a Goddess of Inconspicuousness. Maybe there was a Goddess of Flat Chests she could pray to? Maybe she was related to one! No, wait. There was no way her divine genes could be even remotely related to a flat chested woman.
"What are these?"
Rachel looked up, and into a pair of eyes that could freeze the sun.
"Th-these, sir?"
"These," Martha said, producing one long, white digit, and placing it several inches within Rachel's chest.
Rachel bit her lip.
"Breasts... sir?"
Martha just looked at her.
"My breasts, sir," Rachel said.
Martha said nothing. She didn't even blink.
"My very, very big... very silly... breast... sir," Rachel went on. And then, because Martha didn't seem in any hurry to reply, she began to burble. "Well, um, you see, miss- sir, the thing is, I, uh, well, I had different breasts- well the same breasts- but not the same- I mean, these, but not like this, and well, I was, um, I was stung, that is, stung by a- err- a bee. In the boob, miss- sir- madam- and then, well, I had been stung, so, what I thought was, I'd put on some sort of er, cream, that would... as it were. But then more of them- that is bees- came, and were attracted by the cream- that was on my boobs- which is to say breasts, sir, and started stinging all over until they um, swelled up like this... sir."
...
Realising how patently stupid this story was, Rachel decided to veer away from it as quickly as possible.
"And then I got hospitalised for the stings, and I had to have surgery, on my breasts, sir, and I said, well, while you're doing it, you might as well give me a boob job! And, eheh, well, here we are... sir."
Yes. That was solid. There was no getting through that story now. Completely impregnable. So, rather the opposite of her, then.
"I see," Martha said, in the tone of voice that made it very clear that she did see, but you, on the other hand, might not.
Martha's eyes probed around Rachel's desk, in search of something. When they did not find it, they returned to Rachel.
"What," she said, "Is your name?"
Rachel froze in the realisation that Martha had absolutely no idea who she was. Had she been staring at her for the past five minutes just trying to remember her name? Was that it? Well she bloody well wasn't going to tell her now.
"Josh, sir," she said.
"... Josh?"
"Yes, sir. My parents were hippies," Rachel said, "Which is why I felt the need to overcompensate with my ridiculous chest, sir."
"I see," Martha said again.
Phew! Dodged a bullet there.
"See me in my office, Josh," Martha said.
"Yes, sir," Rachel (or Josh, if you like), said.
And with that, Martha stalked off to terrorise someone else.
Rachel looked around to see Maria staring at her in disbelief. Thankfully the sheer horror of Martha's presence had distracted Maria from the now modest belly pressed against the hem of her skirt.
"Josh," she whispered, "You're Josh?!"
"Well I wasn't going to give her my name, was I?!" Rachel said, "She can fire Josh now. He won't mind. I'll send him a gift basket."
Maria groaned. "And how exactly do you plan to see her in her office? Without showing off to everyone your new found divinity?"
"Ahah," Rachel said, grinning, "Well, she didn't say to see her now."
"... I think she implied it."
"Well, she didn't say it."
"When do you plan to go and see her?" Maria said.
"Err, when you said she implied it, do you think she implied this week?"
Maria glared back.
"Right, right. Well... I'll just wait until everyone's left, then. Martha always does overtime," she said with a shrug.
"And how are you going to stop Martha from seeing all your added extras?" Maria asked.
"... Shit."
