Brenda

THIS STORY IS NOT SUITABLE FOR READERS UNDER 12

For the story so far, click here

The following evening was Velma’s night off, which was good because she’d taken a casual job – just one shift – as a waitress called Brenda. The neighbouring town’s Grand Hotel was hosting Invigo Bio Tech‘s Annual Gala and they needed a handful of temps to supplement their regular staff.

Invigo Bio Tech Ltd was a contract testing laboratory whose clients included pharmaceutical companies, pesticide companies, detergent companies and numerous other types of chemical companies. Their slogan was “Delivering scientific excellence and an outstanding customer experience that helps you secure the potential of life enhancing research and products globally”. And global it was. As well as their laboratories in the UK, they owned labs in the USA, Asia and Australia. And the main speaker at this Gala event was going to announce their success in making yet another acquisition. Invigo Bio Tech was a monster. In more ways than one.

Velma was well aware what this company did. She knew how much misery and agony it visited upon a myriad of aquatic, avian and terrestrial species, large and small. A twisted form of science was its tool, used not in the pursuit of truth, but of money.

She also knew that she couldn’t shut it down. But she could aggravate it. Just a bit. And that’s what she intended to do.

Invigo’s big boss, the CEO, Chief or whatever you want to call him, was to be the keynote speaker and Velma had her eyes on him. Mr Bernard Viyal CBE couldn’t get a moment to himself that night. There was never a second when someone wasn’t trying to bend his ear about something and he was starting to get a bit of a headache. Unable to feign any more interest in the monotonous ramblings of his Chief Financial Officer, he looked at his watch. It was 7.45 and he needed to be on stage at 8.30 for his speech.

“Er, yeah, thanks Mel,” he interrupted the CFO, “we’ll definitely look into that but, if you’ll excuse me -” He left the throng and headed for the elevators.

Velma was careful not to follow too closely, but she saw that he went to the top floor. The Presidential Suite. His room for the night. She put down the tray of drinks she’d been carrying and headed for the stairs. As soon as she closed the door on the party, she ducked behind the archway entrance to main reception, became the mist and moved towards the staircase.

“What is that – smoke?” asked an attendee with concern.

“Dry ice I think,” her colleague responded, “excuse me,” he touched the arm of a passing member of staff, “is that dry ice? Is there supposed to be dry ice at this thing?”

The concierge was extremely alarmed, “er, no, no there isn’t. Excuse me,” and he dashed for the front office.

Velma moved swiftly up the stairs and out of sight before anyone sounded the alarm. By the time the general manager was on the scene there was no sign of ‘smoke’ and it was concluded someone had played a prank. They had been expecting disruptions of one kind or another, given the company’s unpopularity in certain circles.

Note to self, Velma thought, mist in the outdoors only. She still had a lot of stairs to climb and she’d have to do it on foot. Just pretend to be normal, she told herself. 

*

Come back tomorrow for the conclusion of chapter 4, unless you’d rather read it now 😀

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Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating funny, exciting and sometimes a little bit dark vegan fiction since 2012