kopfschmerz

another time, I will be in tune with what other people want...

PC personalities

My laptop, at home, gateway to pleasing alternate realities and potentially to peer plaudits, to family and far-flung friends disappoints me infrequently.
It isn't the fault of my work pc, but it houses some personalities that actively irritate me, that little orange git still knows no better than to e-mail me with his ridiculous self justifications.  If only, if only a hat-pin would work, but I know his skin is so thick that there is no room in his body for bones, organs.

Character study: I

People recognise my face but they don't recognise me.
If they see me walking through town, they notice me, but they are not sure why I look familiar and they are puzzled; puzzled is good.
In the office they don't notice me at all.
They don't know how intimate I am with their secrets, they leave screens on displaying their messages to the world; if no-one is in the office I can touch their things.
They speak in front of me, pausing & glancing up when I enter the room, then resuming the conversations as if it is safe for me to know things; work things or things they are telling their friends.

I scheme, scheme and dream of the day when the sirens will shriek here; the red and blue lights of ambulances and police cars will strobe, and I wonder who will notice me then.

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Character Study: Hendrik

Hendrik stood at the window of his office waiting for Loukas to get to some sort of point where a response was required from him, thinking "God but Claire had looked hot today"; it was the hair blowing across her mouth that got him going, remembering her spitting it out unaffectedly when it got in the way, and afterwards he'd played with it, twisting it in his hands. 
Natalie had twiddled with her hair in the meeting today, but with Natalie you always got the sense she was holding out for something, Claire was so straight forward and smutty, way more fun.
"Oh shit," Hendrik thought, "I really shouldn't be thinking about her, them, whatever, what was that saying, yeah, why eat a burger when you have steak at home," and although his wife had felt like prime steak at one time, cold meat in bed each night just didn't do it for him.
Hendrik tried to concentrate on what Loukas was saying to keep his brain from tingling and feeding the swell of his burgeoning erection with every pulsing heartbeat, tried to keep his awareness away from the tightening space around his groin as his train of thoughts followed the natural progression; he was being told something about offices being disturbed, things being moved or going missing, the need to be vigilant, but it wasn't really helping...
After a while, when Loukas had gone, he wondered if he should he call Claire, but guessed it would be like the last time he'd tried to rekindle the passion; weirdly it was she who had decided enough was enough and they should quit before one or other of them got bored or too attached, even more weird that she had stuck to it despite the odd determined campaign on his side.
What the hell, he turned his attention back to the flirtatious chat messaging, although it wasn't Claire, he liked the uncritical admiration, maybe another short distracting fling was what he needed right now?

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Character Study: Alison

Alison looked at the screen in front of her like it was an idol, linking her with the god of inter-company communication.
Forfuckssake another fucking e-mail from that cow in the Paris office, bitch, thinking she can do things better as per fucking usual, well I wish I could just reply and dump the whole thing in her lap and see how she fucking likes it but then I would only be put on the spot for not being supportive or not communicating effectively or some other fucking diversity shit, my head hurts, I'm so tired, I don't know where to start now, hope I'm not getting another fucking migraine, hold on, what was I doing, can I just stop?
Sucked into the screen again, more mails, another company missive, some bright spark in the advanced products division won a lovely award for, well, for being lovely is all she can tell from the purple prose and vague corporate bullshit, she needed to get with Claire and get the backstory... 
"The only award I would win would be Most likely to go postal," she thought, then blushed as coincidentally the post guy came through the office to pick up the outgoing mail.
She started writing an e-mail back to Amelie, it would take time and craft, but she would make a beautiful blend of truth, semi-truth and subtle insinuation that would definitely shove the ball right back at her; and then she could concentrate again on the flirtatious chat messaging she'd recently started. 
Naughty but nice, maybe naughty but stupid; certainly reckless but either way she felt the corners of her mouth lift as his words arrived, her mind engaged on something pleasant for a change.

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Character Study: Natalie

Natalie twirled her dark glossy hair around in her left hand again, leaned forward with her head to one side and frowned slightly to look as if she was really concentrating hard, her little white teeth biting into her full bottom lip as she scribbled something in her notebook to reinforce the impression.
It wasn't actually like following this presentation was all that difficult, if she put her mind to it; Hendrik was showing the Sales Director, Josef, the new filtration system concept and if she concentrated on it, it all kind of followed a logic and made sense; but she was instead thinking about Hendrik, and how he hadn't really seemed to notice her all that much since Brussels last summer, six months ago.
He would have been a good catch, even though he was technically already caught at that time, well people got divorced all the time, it wasn't like he'd got kids or anything; maybe he was one of those who just enjoyed the chase, something they had in common, although mostly men never really knew that they had been chased and drawn in, their steps mapped out before they made them in an elaborate dance. 
The music was her body and her brain, both lively and kittenish, the dance steps were accidents, encounters, snares; a glance and blush, perhaps a clumsy collision in the kitchen spilling her drink on her (cold drinks and black tops only, that one), maybe a drink after work offered by way of apology, and on and on as they gave her gifts, adoration, weekends away, but not so far the final prize of a wedding ring to pledge their life and money. 
And if that was not forthcoming, well, life was a game to be played in subtle variations, and if that dance grew dull, if the offerings and presents faded, it was only a matter of time until the next more powerful man beckoned, and onward and upward as the band struck up a slightly different tune.
Josef's hand brushed hers as they both bent down to retrieve the pen she'd accidentally dropped, she gazed upward at him as if in admiration, mouthed "Thank you," and bent back over her notebook, blushing prettily; at the next pause she would ask him if he could please help her, she hadn't made a note of the critical tolerances of the internal diameter in all the confusion...

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Character Study: Claire

As she sees Melissa pass the office door, Claire grabs her jacket, twirls it flamboyantly around and behind her, toreador style, then slots her arms into the sleeves in a fluid practised move and pats the pocket to make sure the packet is still in there. 
A chilly day, they are alone standing by the ashtray at the "bus stop", Claire's auburn hair is brought to life by the weak winter sunshine, several of the strands blown in the wind warm to red while she vigorously drags on the cigarette, then exhales extravagantly, smoke tendrilling out of her nose.
Claire's earthy brown eyes seem testament to her frank open nature, Melissa thinks, you kind of want to confide in her and of course Claire is always up to date with all the latest goings on; she is talking about Natalie now, relating some no doubt exaggerated tale, but her gossip's instinct stops her talking just moments before someone else comes from the old office block around the corner.
Hendrik walks past them, raises an eyebrow and grins at Claire; even though she is standing more or less still, she still seems so full of life that he hardly notices Melissa, he wanted to walk straight past, but the old impulses kick in and before he turns into the main building he makes a "Call me?" gesture to her behind Melissa's back; he thinks he sees a sparkle in her eyes, a cock of the head but she makes no overt response.
When he is out of earshot Claire nods in his direction and continues, "Natalie's been there an' all, you know, at the last regional meeting in Brussels for sure." 
Noticing Melissa's faint blush, she can't help but tease, saying disingenuously "Well, I would too given half the chance, I mean, did you look at that arse?" and she shakes her head to dislodge the vivid but fleeting memories; holds the door open and ushers a flushed Melissa back into the building.

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Character study: Loukas

Loukas tried to be meticulous in everything he did, it wasn't a need to be flashy or anything, he just liked to have exactly the right tools for the job. 
He needed to have the latest Blackberry Smartphone, the smooth contoured designer ergonomic office chair, the Mont Blanc Meisterstruck; they were his precision instruments, not status symbols as Claire had tried to suggest. 
She had insinuated it was something to do with his size, but this couldn't be true as he was only a little short, only ten or so centimetres below the average male height.
He suspected other people thought him finicky as they didn't understand properly, for example he chewed every mouthful 30 times like he'd been told to as a child; but now he also knew it helped maintain a healthy gastro-intestinal tract and, having enlightened them, it was surprising that his colleagues still didn't take similar care. 
The discussion he'd had yesterday, after Alison had excused herself again from the table before he'd finished eating, saying "Life's too short"; he'd carefully pointed out for her where she was going wrong, but she just didn't want to know.
What was wrong with other people that they didn't listen to reason; that even though he explained things to them several times, still they didn't understand?

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Character study: Melissa

It wasn't only Melissa's physical appearance that made Alison itch to hit her, her fingers twitching in anticipation of curling into a fist. 
When Alison thought about it, some of Melissa's individual features weren't that bad, pale blonde hair, button nose, but her pale skin really did look like it had the consistency of lard; like you could poke a finger into it and leave a dent, greasily glistening at the edges.
No, it was the permanent air of martyrdom that really annoyed Alison, it was like everything was just too much trouble for her; how on earth can you deal with employees like that?
Melissa had pushed the pile of paperwork away from her again, sighing in a little-girl breathy way that she must think cute or something; and the height of the pile had not noticeably changed since the last time she'd done so.
Alison glanced at the clock, right on cue, almost exactly thirty minutes after her last fag break, Melissa said "Oh, I'm going cross-eyed looking at these invoices, I need a cigarette."
And she was; Alison hadn't really noticed Melissa's eyes until now, and now she wondered if each time Melissa made the same excuse, her eyes shifted that little bit more out of line until now it was discernable?

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Writing Challenge: Character studies

Lying in bed this morning, bemoaning my lack of inspiration to myself, I actually came up with an idea!  During the week, I tend not to write very much as my head is full of work; it takes me a few hours of non-work time to "come down" from the all the things buzzing round my head during the day.  Often the first day of the weekend is spent in a stupor, facebooking, reading, watching dvd's.  By the end of that day I am at least thinking about trying to write, and about what I would like to try out - realistic characters seem to evade me. 

And Lo! on the second day, especially after the longed for lie-in, my brain finally managed to link the two topics - as I made the logical leap from "write about what you know," through to "but I only know about work?"  I have been working in factory and office environments for a bit over fifteen years, so I should be able to come up with a few composite character sketches of people in a work environment.  I want to do something that both describes a person but also illustrates that persons character through an incident/piece of action. 

I aim to publish one character sketch per day for the following week, a target for myself which is a bit of a stretch - I have two written this morning, have a reasonable idea for another, and a fourth is only a name.  I'll be posting the characters here and on http://sixsentences.ning.com/ and I hope to do something different temporarily with the voting boxes to get some feedback on the characters!

Looking forward to it, mostly!

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