March 26, 2012 04:54:18 PM
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Jon

:

This is the voodoo doll we made of our boss, Ray. Ray had a way about him. He was always complaining that as a staff, we didn’t work hard enough. “Stop screwing around. Get back to work.” Ray was always ruining our good fun.
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He used to wear rainbow suspenders, was slightly overweight and balding. We factored these physical shortcomings into the doll. We spent hours crafting Voodoo Ray. We would pass the doll from cubicle to cubicle. Sometimes we microwaved it, or threw it at walls, or stuck it in the urinals and sent pictures to each other with witty captions: “Pee Pee Shower.” When the real Ray left the office, one of us would pretend-walk Voodoo Ray across the desks and shout at the others in doll speak – “Stop screwing around. Get back to work.” We loved having fun.
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Then the real Ray’s hands fell off in a commuting accident. After that, we no longer found the eerie handless resemblance ironic. Wendy suggested that perhaps we had caused Ray’s accident with actual voodoo, but she lived alone with an indeterminate number of cats and never pulled any office gags that were memorable. Soon it was considered bad form to mention the doll. Once again, Ray ruined our good fun.
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Ray now travels the country giving seminars to two-handed people about overcoming workplace adversity, or never giving up, or some bullshit. We sometimes talk about how awesome it would be to show up to one of those seminars with the doll. We’ll never actually do it, but we can waste an entire afternoon just reminiscing about Voodoo Ray.

Comments [2]

Carmie from Washington, DC

Jon, loved your story. I submitted a back story too but yours made me laugh out loud! Good job.

Mar. 31 2012 04:46 PM
Brenda Duncan from Colorado

Such interesting details woven into this imaginative, wistful, short story.

Mar. 29 2012 12:44 PM

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