Chapter One

Lucas was an axe juggler. He was also damn good at spitting fire when the occasion was truly warranted. He had all his fingers and aside from some infrequent heartburn suffered no ill affects from the fire spitting. This was surprising because he used the real stuff. He had axes that you could shave with and gargled straight gasoline. When he walked into a room twirling his axe's and belching fire the way a dragon does, people usually stopped and listened. They may even have wet themselves in awe before prostrating themselves before him.

He probably should be listening to the drone of the words around him. And he was sure he would fail if there was a pop quiz at the end of the meeting.

"And here we will design the program to cross reference the..." the woman gestured towards the whiteboard. Her face was thick matching the frame that stretched the silk of her blouse. Her skin, the colour of bologna, shone with a flash of perspiration. Her face almost porcine, was topped by a helmet of tight black curls that was remarkable for a white person.

Lucas stole a couple quick glances around the room. Everyone else was enraptured. The collective heads bopping in time with the laser pointer that targeted poor defenseless images on the PowerPoint presentation. Sheep, he thought to himself. Cindy was the presenter, the head of the product design department and head shepherd extraordinaire. Her will was law. And the group collectively saw no reason to dispute that.

"Why do they make the same mistakes over and over again? Why don't they ever think outside of the damn box?" Lucas thought to himself.

Mercifully it was over. The ambitious many took this opportunity to ask pseudo-intelligent questions. The type of inquiries that would earn them the cherished "Great question" reply.

He used the post meeting brown nosing section of the discussion to make his escape to his desk in the back section of a row of cubicles. Lucas collapsed onto his chair and looked at the list of 20 emails that were collecting cyber-dust in his Inbox. In his mind he was still squirting flames through clenched teeth like tobacco juice in an old West saloon. He was balancing 5 axe's in the air as his hands flew with blazing speed. His imagination was almost the only thing that let him make it through the day. There was only one other thing that would let him survive the 15 more minutes until he could leave and head home.

Lucas leaned back in his chair. He wheeled back about 8 inches from his desk and in an epiphany everything came into focus. He had the perfect view out the window. It was similar to prisoners seeing daylight. He could see the blue of the sky and the grey of the building across the way.

It was probably a little depraved, but he liked to look at her. It was far away, but he liked to watch her move. There was a grace about her. Every step was efficient, but with such femininity that she reminded him of a ballerina flying through the air. Her form seemed lithe and streamlined. She looked classy even from afar. She was always ready to smile, her hair a black wave against her creamy skin. She looked beautiful.

He watched her for a couple minutes keeping an ear cocked for anyone coming by. By the grace of goodness, the grace he had long thought abandoned him; he was left to his voyeurism for the rest of the day. Maybe today was a good day to casually bump into her. There was a coffee shop on the outside of the building she was in.

He could find a good reason to walk through the lobby of her building as he went to grab a cup of coffee before the ride home. It was really kind of sad that after months of planning, this was the best plan that he was able to come up with. He had never seen her leave before him.

She was always still plugging away when he left in the afternoons and ears deep when he got in, in the mornings. She seemed driven and determined. He could break her of that habit. She was probably married. But would she work late if she was? Was she a secretary? It appeared that she was working in her own office, and would a secretary religiously work late and come in early?

It was amazing. He didn't know what to do. She was packing up. She was grapping her briefcase and taking off the light. Lucas panicked. He pushed the "On" button on the PC, holding it until it did a hot shutdown. He grabbed his suit jacket and raced to the elevator.