Worth Nothing – #Friday Fictioneers

Varad,

claire-sheldon

Image credit: Claire Sheldon

Mrs. W.D.Delemas was a meticulous old woman. Her tiny table in the corner of our office was immaculate. Pens and pencils were stacked neatly in a cup. If you needed an eraser or a marker, she was the one you asked. She maintained our expense bills and she was absolutely honest. Mr. Desai, our boss, cited her as an example. Her only bizarre trait was that she kept a cup of straightened paper clips. No one knew or bothered why.

Mrs. Delemas died this Sunday. Mr. Desai told me to dispose her stuff. I’ll get to it, once I prepare his fudged expense claims.

NOTE: This piece of fiction is in response to Friday Fictioneers challenge hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.

Find other awesome entries for this week’s challenge here.

Word Count: 103

Published by Varad

Self-published author/ Social media neanderthal.

54 Comments

  2. We all have our little quirks. I’m not sure he knows how the expense report was being fudged (they make us supply receipts, but I suppose they can be altered). A nice mystery here.

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  4. Oh dear. I hope she died a natural death and the boss doesn’t have anything to do with it. I love all these little hints at what could, or could not have happened.

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  6. Those straightened paperclips give rise to all sorts of questions and possibilities. Did she straighten them to soothe her stress, or anger? Did she want her boss dead and imagined laying out his body ready for burial? Did she know he was crooked and wanted him to go straight? Or had she stumbled upon his fiddled expenses and threatened to report him to the authorities, so he’d arranged her death?
    The sign of a good story is that it gets the reader thinking. You have definitely succeeded on that front 🙂

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    1. Thanks for the very kind words. There are quite a few possibilities here. I may continue this as a part of a different challenge or as a standalone piece. Cheers, Varad

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  9. Oooooo poor Mrs Delemas might have to come back and haunt her boss.
    So was she as good as seemed or is her boss letting loose now she is gone?

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  10. Sounds like now she’s gone there will be quite a bit of fiddling going on. I do hope that Mrs Delamas died of natural causes…

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    1. Thanks a lot, Rochelle. I sincerely believe in leaving the interpretations open to the readers. Afterall, it’s all in the eye of the beholder, right?

      Cheers, Varad

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