I worked as an investor but I wasn't an investor. I never invested anything but my time. Our offices were on the "Investment" floor, second from the top, but I'm not sure what anyone did but myself. Like I said I wasn't an investor. It was my job to find the missing files and find out what files were missing. This way we could decide where our time was best spent to regain all of the old information, which included finances. After a natural disaster, the company had lost a heavy amount of their records. Some were backed up, others were too confidential, or deemed unnecessary. Some weren't transferred in time and some were saved or transferred in the wrong location. It was a fuckin' cluster. I had moved my way all the way up sixty-five stories in this building and wasn't about to stop now.
There were three other men, one woman, and myself, in the office. While we were supposed to control the individual investments the direction of the company was set in the Board Room. None of us five had ever set foot inside the board room. We’d all wanted to but wouldn’t risk sticking our lives on the line for a peek at the secrecy. It was a good job, yes but it had its setbacks. Four of them to be specific. They all had names but for their sake, I will just use numbers.
If I was to number five the least painful person to have in my daily space, he would be number four. Four, he was a bore. That’s not why he got the number, but since we’re here. He was the most annoying constant drone of things that were just set to irritate you. A chubby well suited but poorly dressed man trying to manage everybody’s time. He was like the one song you can’t stop hearing that’s overplayed, that you never liked, from the band you hate. He was that. He was the kind of thing that was nightmarish but not scary, like being sticky and having to put a leather jacket on over it. He was the smart kid that asked the stupidest questions over and over. He was just a pain to be around every day. He was noting excruciating but was far from enjoyable. He was the equivalent to having a mild to medium hangover all day. The worst part about him was he was the one I saw the most. He was there every god damn day. Four was the kind of thing you laughed at first but the longer he stuck around the more irritated you got until the point where you became so accustomed to the pain in the ass he was you didn’t notice. It was an everyday headache that normally would have topped an office but here he didn’t stand a chance of getting out of the four spot. The only problem with this habitual pain was it often directed the anger you felt for him to others outside the office. You did your best to work on it and thought you had a pretty good grasp, but there were always those times. Those times like when two or three came around.
Three was a large step above four for the annoyance he was. Three was an anguish. Three was good looking. So good looking, it often caught you by surprise. With a smile like that, how could it inflict the points of pressure as he did? More importantly, how did he know exactly where to hit. You saw four every day but three you only saw a few times a week. Granted you could see him every day for a week or longer straight it was unlikely. This well dressed, sharp, acute, and keen man would ruin your day in no less than half an hour. He would come over and without any warning just begin to chew your ass. He’d chew so hard you constantly thought a nail gun to the temple was a well equipped equivalent. Three loved to break things. He also loved to pull the power chord for your desktop. He loved to just wipe out whatever you were working on so he could watch you start again from scratch. He could be destructive and pay no penalties because he was two tiers higher than you, but Three wasn’t your boss, he wasn’t your friend, he was just the guy you saw the second most of, and yes he was an asshole.
If Three was anguish and four was annoyance, Two was agony. She was the only female in the office. She was a female but the office didn’t seem to care. She would have been considered beautiful if you didn’t see red hot hell every time you saw her perfectly sculpted cheekbones. She would wear only red lipstick and black suit dresses. She would often come over with Four for spurts of time, or even Three, just to see how she could be on my nerves harder the next time. She never really aimed for my nerves. She aimed for the whole nervous system. She multiple times had actually swung at the base of your skull. Right, where the occipital lobes meet C1, was her primary target. Violence in the office was hot if it wasn't so real. She knew it was a soft spot and she would antagonize that and then immediately come in for the kill. She was hard to deal with. They all were, but she would give vivid descriptions while harassing you. Like the red hot iron drill, she planned to put through the base of your skull projecting into the cranial cavity while she put a heavily weighted red hot iron to the base of your skull. She seemed to be set on this one. She even found little things to burn you with as you stay stuck frozen in your seat. Technically your boss, you still would have liked to see what BDSM shit she was into outside the office. Well you would have if it wasn't your only time to heal and not be abused. Unable to move she would take full advantage. As soon as her soft fingertips struck the back of your neck life would standstill. Mostly because of what you knew what was coming and it would be worse if you moved, but sometimes because you had her mistaken for number one.
One was a fine fellow. At least you thought it was a fellow. Nobody had ever seen one. One was quite the trader that never made any. He was the Epstein of our firm. Somehow connected enough to never do any real work yet he was in control of more than I thought possible outside the Boardroom. Hell, he could have been in the boardroom for all we know, but it never sounded like it. The screaming coming from the boardroom often took place while one was in our presence. One had this weird way of creeping up on you. Before there was any sight of him or touch, you could feel One behind your eyes. Like a small Sisyphus pushing the posterior portion of your eyeball. The dull pressure grew rapidly until you felt the touch. Sometimes sneaky enough that it could have passed as number Two. He could have until the pain started. There’s a mist in front of you. There’s something in the air as your eyes start to feel it. The pressure is building into excruciating pain. Your head feels as if it has been filled with molten lava and shot through the eye sockets with iron stakes frozen at absolute zero. Your eyes twitch uncontrollably as your vision blurs. Time passes at an uncharted pace. No telling if it’s hastened or trickled its rate of passage. You never have any marks or have and foreign substances that show up on a blood test, yet you're sure he's using something. You’re never sure what happens during this time. You’re not sure what One looks like. The only thing you’re sure about is how distorted reality is from the sheer pain. Only every time he’s around you’re positive you’d be more comfortable not being. Not being in the office. Not being there. Not being in existence.
You always had to hear Four’s complaints about how we were abused in the office. You always had to hear him talk endlessly about his theories behind One’s little games he played. The folder of weakness he had on all in the room. Four thought One drugged us. Four thought it was more than meets the eyes. Four thought a lot of crazy things about One, and you thought Four was right. The point of everybody else was to knock off other investors so they could take more of the profit they knew we were always going to have. They all got this high on the ladder, they could climb higher. Always going to have room to grow as long as the Boardroom kept producing. Profit as long as we had the right Structure in our trades. Profit was seen as production. Profit that was so desired one would do his worst. Profit was the worst.