Spirit-Sensitive | BxB

11: sleep

"Cross! Good to see you! You had us real worried for a minute there."

Michael's boss greeted him loudly when he made his way into his office early on a Friday morning. He'd made a point to arrive early just to prove that he was, in fact, alright. He nodded.

"Yes, well. It was only a slight fever." A blatant lie, of course, but what else was he supposed to tell his boss? That he had sustained ghost-hunting injuries? "I just don't like to take chances with such things."

"Fine by me. Last thing I need is for an employee to get the whole office sick." Mr. Anderson removed his glasses and polished them with a little wipe. Michael sat down in the chair across from his desk. The older man registered his serious expression and perked up, if a bit nervously. "What can I do for you?"

Michael cleared his throat. He was confident that he could get what he wanted. He just didn't like having to ask. Or having to reveal his hand.

"Well, sir, I wanted to talk to you about my weekend scheduling. I had a bit of a... personal investigative project in mind."

"A what now?"

Michael spent the next ten minutes explaining, in the most vague possible terms, his intentions. He wanted a guarantee that he would be free from work on the weekends and that he could investigate at his own pace so long as it did not interfere with his usual tasks. Mr. Anderson seemed intrigued, but also hesitant, and he stroked his stubbly chin in thought as he nodded along.

"...I don't know," he said when he was finished listening. "Sounds interesting, definitely, but I don't know how relevant it is to us. It's not even a case from Adams county, much less from Casperville. We're a local paper. People wanna read about local news."

The Casperville Review was, technically, a local paper that served their town and a few surroundings ones. But their town was mostly uninteresting and not very large, even if it had been a livelier place in a time long past. Surely no one expected the paper to cater all that directly to them. It would likely go out of business if it did. Michael wasn't about to argue with his boss about the basics of his own job, though.

"Maybe not," Michael agreed, "but the Guzman disappearance was big news and turned up in papers in several surrounding counties, including ours. If solved, the investigative results would be of interest to the entire state. When was the last time this paper had a hard-hitting exclusive?"

Mr. Anderson seemed to like that idea. Michael could see thoughts of money in his head for a moment, almost as if dollar bill signs were floating around his skull like in some kind of cartoon, but his expression settled after a second and then he looked like his usual gruff self again.

"I still don't know. I don't want my employees going rogue, you know? Thinking they can do whatever they want."

He said that with an air of condescension and smirked. Michael leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. That statement tested his patience quite a bit. He could only interpret it as a threat, as a challenge. He forced a smile so polite, so blatantly fake, that it could only be interpreted as passive-aggressive.

"Going rogue, you say? If that's the case, and you really feel that I am not loyal enough to you and your paper, I don't mind, say, seeking employment elsewhere so as not to offend you." Mr. Anderson flinched. "Somewhere where, say, my boss understands how to operate the most basic of technology. Where I am compensated for the extra hours I put in from home, or given credit for writing articles for other reporters, or perhaps even compensated for having to learn graphic design and photography— which, I'll remind you, are NOT in my job description— because certain people can't loosen their corporate pursestrings enough to—"