I have issues with a lot of things, but claustrophobia isn't one of them. In fact, I consider waking up buried under blankets, a comforter, the poofy green quilt my mom made for me while I was in college, and a pile of spare pillows to be a pretty ideal start to a day. And today, by all indication, was going to start well.

When I woke up I was toasty warm and slightly smothered. It was nice, so I luxuriated for a moment or two before pulling the covers down enough to see my alarm clock. It was five o'five in the morning. The alarm wouldn't go off for another two hours.

Well, actually, it wouldn't go off at all. I don't like alarms, so I reached out from under the covers and turned it off. I've had that clock for five years, and it hasn't gone off once. Remember how I said I have issues with lots of things? Alarms are one of them. Other people might wake up early, look at the clock and think: sweet, ten more minutes, and go back to sleep. I'll look at it and go: dammit, that thing's going to go off in two more hours. Screw it, may as well start my day now.

Seriously, I hate alarms. I've even been known to sit by the microwave so I can hit cancel when it reaches one second, in order to prevent it from beeping at me. Slowly irradiating myself seems a small price to pay.

So anyway, I extricated myself from my bed, leaving it looking like the nest of some large burrowing creature, slipped on my fuzzy slippers and padded over to the bathroom to continue my morning routine. I am a fan of routines. If I know what's going to happen next then I don't have to worry about what's going to happen next. If I do have to worry, then I worry hardcore, and a serious freak out, along with scattered panic attacks and bouts of paranoia, become inevitable. Not pleasant to admit, but what can I say? I think I know myself pretty well. And any surprises, unforeseen issues, or changes in routine go on my 'issues' list.

I live in a studio apartment. It's small, but the rent is cheap and I don't mind small spaces. It's also on the ground floor of a one story building, so I don't have to worry about crashing through the floor into the apartment below or having someone crash through my ceiling because they were too enthusiastic about stomping around to annoy their downstairs neighbor. Of course, since it's a studio apartment on the ground floor I never, ever open the curtains. I have one of those big sliding glass window/door things leading onto the patio. Which is kinda stupid, since my front door is right next to it, but hey, I'm not an architect. I mean, it's totally indefensible and in the event of a zombie apocalypse all of these apartments are going to be the equivalent of canned food, but I guess it's aesthetic or something. I know this falls under 'bouts of paranoia,' but the thought that any random passerby could look in and see the entirety of my home is just creepy.

It's not that I really think someone would want to peep on me, intellectually. I mean, sure, I like to walk around in my pajamas at five in the morning. They're comfy, and they're what I wore to bed. They're also the flannel equivalent of full-body powered battle armor, which is to say: non-sexy. Which is fine, because neither am I. In fact, I'm twiggy enough that from a distance I'm occasionally mistaken for a boy. And I'm okay with that. Sex? Tops my issues list. No thank you.

Really, the curtains thing is just because Dad always told me to be wary of pervy opportunists, and I just have a thing about privacy. I don't even have an account on any of those social networking sites that got so popular while I was in college. Besides, I can't expect a peeper to know there's nothing peep-worthy in my apartment until after the initial peeping, so it's better to just cut that option off preemptively, right?

Anyway, my apartment is divided into two rooms. The main room is split into a kitchen and my bedroom/living space by a small counter and some hanging cabinets. And the second room, which even gets its own door, is my bathroom, just to the right as you enter the kitchen. The bathroom is also small, since that's the theme of my apartment, with just enough space to cram in the necessities of a restroom. There isn't even a tub, just a shower stall -- and yes, I added a few locks to the bathroom door in order to stave off some Hitchcockian dread. I've never even seen that movie, but that particular scene is famous enough to freak me out a little anyway.

I flipped on the light and turned to the mirror over my sink. I'm scrawny, and about average height, I guess. I have blue eyes and blonde hair. I try to keep it short because I don't really know what to do with it when it isn't. It tends to look like I've just woken up even after I've combed the snarls out and been on my feet for hours -- I suspect that close proximity to my thought processes has caused it to soak up a certain level of erraticity. I've given up on getting it to look good. It's just going to do whatever the hell it wants, anyway.

After dealing with the inevitable morning tangles I scrubbed my face and brushed my teeth, then went back into the kitchenette for breakfast, which consisted of toaster-pancakes, microwaveable bacon, a raspberry yogurt and scrambled eggs -- because I can never successfully make them over easy. I picked up the manga I've been reading -- that's a graphic novel drawn in the Japanese anime style, for the uninitiated -- off my shelf while I was waiting on the toast and bacon, and I read while I ate. It was a good way to spend one of those extra hours I had from waking up early. Which is why I do this every morning.

I live alone. I would have liked to have had a dog, since there's nothing quite like having a large, loyal canine on hand to reassure a girl that any would-be perverts, burglars, or psychotic shower murderers that come by will get their faces eaten off. But living in such a small apartment wouldn't have been fair to a big dog, and a little one would take way too long with the face-eating to really contribute to my peace of mind. My friend Megan tried to convince me to get a cat, since they're supposed to be independent-yet-companionable, but I realized that would mean I'd basically be coming home every evening and locking myself in a box with a small, furry predator that had no real interest in keeping me alive -- which struck me as a losing proposition.

So, yeah, I live alone. Which means I double-checked that the curtains were sealed and that the front door was locked and dead bolted before I locked myself into the bathroom to brush my teeth again and take my morning shower.

I like long, hot showers. I like to soak up the steamy warmth and I like to feel the spray of water cascading over me. I'm also paranoid and mildly terrified that someone will try to come in while I'm indisposed, so I always take my showers as fast as humanly possible. I blame communal bathrooms in college. And being paranoid. And the fact that...well, most people, when they're growing up, apparently get this talk about the birds and the bees. I got fairly regular lectures about the defenseless fluffy bunny and the roving packs of starving, rabid timber wolves. (Side note: Intellectually I know it's unfair and uncalled for, but my default assumption about the character of any guy I meet is of this slightly deranged, highly aggressive roving carnalvore. And it's worse for the made-up ones I haven't met, who might actually be out there wandering around, looking for someone to savage. But I'm a dog person and when I went to the zoo and actually saw timber wolves for the first time, I thought they were adorable.)

I guess most girls get embarrassed or annoyed when they bring their boyfriends around and their dads make vague comments about their gun collections, but I never had because: A) I've never had a boyfriend. And: B) I've always found Dad's arsenal to be vaguely comforting in its potential to abruptly solve any problem involving home invasion.

It wasn't until I was in college that I really started to realize just how much paranoid-crazy I'd been spoon fed growing up. In retrospect, I think a lot of the things I took to heart were spoken in jest. But I don't know if I think that because it's true, or if I think that because I don't want to think badly of my folks and there's no real denying that some of the things they've told me made me come out a little messed up. Or maybe I've always been screwed up in the head, and that's why I took things seriously that I shouldn't have? I don't know, but it's easier to deal with things if I can just say I'm a little screwy and whatever I'm freaking out about is my own damn fault.

So, yeah, I knew I could take all the time I wanted in the shower. Intellectually. I know a lot of things, 'intellectually,' and that has no real bearing on how I feel about them. After all, two sets of locked doors? Plenty of lead time if someone tries to break in. Unless they smash through the patio window. But then, okay, I'd still have one locked door, so no problem. Unless they brought a crowbar or something to pry it open.... Okay, my overactive imagination doesn't help, either.

So, yeah, I cut the shower as short as humanly possible so I wouldn't give myself a panic attack and ruin the otherwise wonderful start to my day. After drying off and unlocking the bathroom door I poked my head out to make sure no one had managed to sneak in by some way I hadn't accounted for, and then hurriedly got dressed.

I don't have a lot of closet space, but I don't really need it. Back in college my roommate did, so I gave her mine and got in the habit of buying clothes that could be folded and shelved in stacked milk crates. After I graduated, my friend Megan (who was the aforementioned roommate for three and a half years) tried to get me to expand my wardrobe. She failed, but she did convince me to invest in some real shelving. So, tucked under the counter ledge on the living room side of my apartment I have two side-by-side shelving units, each of which makes a three-by-three grid of storage spaces. I keep my clothes folded like I always have, and I get dressed by just going down the row and picking things out.

It's a system I like. I can tell at a glance if I'm running low on something like t-shirts (row two, column three) or sweaters (row one, column six) and I figure I'll be one up on everyone else when the robots enslave humanity and we're all getting dressed off of assembly lines.

My pajamas went into a hamper at the end of the shelves and I picked out some knit socks, plain panties and my pastel blue bra (I'm sufficiently under-endowed that I don't really need bras. I always wear them anyway, though, because the padded ones make it look like I do), a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved blouse and my blue button-up sweater to wear. New Year's was only a couple days away, and it was still pretty chilly out.

Then, since I didn't really have to dress to impress at work, I added my comfiest sneakers to the mix, grabbed my purse and a chocolate bar from the stash I keep in a drawer by the bed, threw on my jacket and looked around the apartment to see if I was forgetting anything.

Not really, it seemed. The promise of waking up buried under my covers had come true; it had been the perfect start to a perfect day. I really should have stayed in the shower longer and just ate the inevitable panic attack, though. Because now all I could think was: Whatever the demon Murphy is going to unleash after this lead up is going to be frikken huge.

So, suitably anxious and slightly queasy, I picked out another manga to read and went out to the parking lot to wait on my ride into work.

I am not bothered by small or enclosed spaces. The same cannot be said of large open ones, so the parking lot is not really the sort of place you'd probably expect to find me waiting on someone. And, logically speaking, I do know I can just wait inside my nice, cozy apartment for Megan to call and let me know she's waiting outside.

The issue there is that waiting inside would mean I was turning my best friend and a cellphone into a kind of horrifying, semi-irregular alarm. And I hate alarms. It's a good thing I'm not a spy, because if I got caught by enemy agents they could break me by tying me to a chair, winding up an egg timer and telling me that if I didn't give them the launch codes in the next five minutes they were going to let it ring at me. On the other hand, if we only had fifteen seconds before the nukes went off you can be damn sure I'd stop that timer from hitting zero. Probably by cutting the wrong wire and killing us all, because what do I know about defusing nuclear bombs? In conclusion, it's a really good thing I'm not a spy, and I'm not about to let my best friend stand in for a nuclear explosion just because I'm too afraid to wait for her in the parking lot.

I live in the last unit of a row of studio apartments, all lined up side-by-side and facing the parking lot. This is nice because it means I'm pretty isolated. Also, they're small, cheap places not horribly far from campus -- which means that most of the tenants are transient students. Right now no one is living in the studio next to mine, and on breaks it's almost like no one else lives here at all.

On the other hand, once you attach the word "transient" to someone they become about twelve times more terrifying. My previous neighbor used to jog around our parking lot in the mornings. I was pretty sure it was just a matter of time before he finished scoping out the community and I wound up being forced into the back of a windowless van and auctioned off to Canadian white slave traders some morning. I'd probably have ended up staked out in the woods as bait for some sort of flesh-eating half moose/half unicorn monster that roams the wilds of Canada. The chupacabracorn: devourer of ****** lumberjacks.

I'd gotten in the habit of reading while I wait on Megan back when that guy was still a daily trial. Distracting myself with fiction is a coping mechanism. I've always used stories to distract myself and others from my unreasonable anxiety issues. I prefer it when I'm using someone else's stories, though, because then it's just me being lost in a book. But if I'm relying on my own fiction, it usually means I'm interacting with someone else and I've just been put in a spot where I can either explain that there is something seriously wrong with me, or start making shit up.

The worst part about it? The more anxious I get, the more my verbal filters shut down. And it's not like Tourette's, where I'd just start spouting profanity and be asked to leave. No, it's more like...anything I think? It gets said. And no one tells me to shut up or go away because they're too busy listening to the train wreck that is my mental process.

I mean, I might start a conversation by asking what's on the number three special. But then I realize that I'm dealing with an actual person, with hopes and desires and opinions and unknown motives, and I've just asked them to do some extra work in order to answer my inane question, and then I'm all flustered and I've probably pointed out that anyone who orders something with that much bacon on it is probably a cannibal because if Circe turned Odysseus' men into swine, she'd probably done it to others, and some of them had probably just been left as pigs, because it's not like she constantly had guests and how many pork meals can one goddess eat? So some of those probably made it into the general pork population, and I figured you probably had a good three percent chance of eating one of their descendants every time you had a pork product...and that really is a lot of bacon on the number three, but if you think I'm crazy then how do you explain the fact that cannibals always say people taste like pork and swine flu is contagious among humans?

And at that point I'd be a little wild-eyed because I know I'm talking crazy, and a little out of breath because that's a lot to blurt out without pausing for periods. Also, I'll have ordered the number three with extra bacon, and everyone will stare while they try to figure out if I'm really a psycho cannibal, or if I just play one in real life. Except for my friend Megan, of course. She'll just demurely eat her salad, oblivious to the stares and not making a scene at all. But I'll still have everyone's attention because I tend to chomp noisily when I'm enjoying a meal, and apparently I want everyone in the restaurant to know that I think people taste great.

....

So, yeah. That's why I don't like to go out much. Because people are either judgmental cannibals or vegan, and there's no way to tell without waving your pinky in front of their faces and seeing who bites. I'd much rather distract myself from the possibility of falling off the earth with a good book than have to notice whether or not there are other people around.

Anyway, I was halfway through my book -- and craving bacon for some reason -- when Megan's car pulled up. It was a small, blue, four-door Chevy and that description pretty much exhausted my knowledge of cars. I tucked my manga into my purse and got in on the front seat passenger side.

"Morning, Abby," Megan said in greeting as I buckled myself in. That's one of the things I love about her. Megan is aware that "good" and "morning" are oxymoronic in conjunction -- even if her bright-eyed, chipper smile implied that perhaps they didn't form a contradiction in terms when applied to her own life.

"Morning," I answered back as I settled in. Cars are one of the things I have issues with -- especially when I'm the one driving. I have my license because dad insisted it was a necessity of life, but when he was teaching me to drive he impressed on me the ease with which one could lose control of a vehicle and kill everyone around them and everyone riding with them and be forced to live for decades in a hospital, paralyzed from a severed spine and guilt. I never quite got over that. But it doesn't bother me so much if someone else is driving. If I'm not behind the wheel and not distracting the driver, then any cataclysmic accident won't be my fault. Maybe it's a little weird, but being unable to affect the outcome of a trip is just about the only way I can stand to be in a car for an extended period. Now, my fear of strangers and being sold to slavers does prevent me from availing myself to public transportation or cab services, but fortunately for me Megan has no problem with driving. I carpool to and from work with her every day, and she usually gives me a ride to anywhere else I need to be but can't walk to.

Megan is an awesome friend. My best friend.

She's also a total Mary Sue. She's smart; I always had to crib her notes in college. She's fun and sociable; she was always inviting me out to parties she'd been invited to, and still does. She's even independently wealthy, thanks to an inheritance from her dowager aunt or something. She doesn't really talk about her family, so I guess there's some kind of tension there, but that's not a character trait so it totally doesn't count against her Mary Sue status.

In fact, as far as I can tell her only flaws are a questionable taste in friends -- because let's face it, I'm not really a great one -- and the fact that if she's tipsy enough she'll make out with anyone. Seriously, last year at the post-New Year Eve's office party I caught her necking in the bathroom with our boss, Mr. Salvatore. Now, I will admit that Mr. Salvatore is a sickeningly handsome man, but he's also our boss -- which freaks me out a lot -- and he knows he's handsome -- which freaks me out more -- and I'm pretty sure he's a vampire. Anyway, after I saved Megan from the hickey of undeath (I happened to know she'd gone into the bathroom to check her blood sugar level, not to be turned into the thrall of the soulless undead) she tried to make out with me. But I gave her some chocolate and she bounced back from her sugar crash and I drove us home, and then my nerves were so shot that I just stayed at her place and sat up all night reading through her library while she slept off the mixed drinks, and all was well.

But honestly, I'm not even sure that Megan's promiscuity actually is a "character flaw." I mean, I know some people can be total asshats about women who are comfortable with engaging in some casual fun. But I think that I'd just be jealous of her if I weren't so freaked out by the idea of doing anything even remotely sexual. I don't even star in my own fantasies. Most of my romantic escapades have been lived vicariously through erotica, dirty doujinshi, and getting Megan to dish about her own dalliances, which she's always been perfectly at ease doing. She doesn't even make fun of me when I ask for the details. Have I mentioned she is an absolutely awesome friend?

I glanced over at her. She gave me a smile and then stopped paying attention to me at all as she checked her mirrors and put the car into gear. I should probably mention that she's beautiful, in case that hasn't already become obvious. It's not the kind you see on fashion magazine covers -- I'm the twiggy one between us. It's a classical beauty. It would have saved Troy a lot of trouble if Megan had been standing next to Helen when Paris came to Sparta.

Megan's a little shorter than me (but no one can tell because she always wears something with a heel and I always wear flats), voluptuous and fair-skinned. She has long, wavy black hair and bright green eyes. She both knows how to apply makeup well and takes the time to put that knowledge to use. And she's the calmest person I know; whenever I see her she has this serene, happy expression -- unless something really bad has happened. Or if she's sugar crashing -- then she gets a little loopy.

Oh, yeah: sugar crashes. Megan's hypoglycemic. Her body doesn't process sugar quite right, and sometimes that acts up. That candy bar I grabbed on my way out of the apartment? As far as I'm concerned it's hers. She does a really good job of regulating her blood sugar, but I try to keep some candy on hand anyway, just in case. I mean...I'm not a very good friend. I'm self-involved, constantly anxious and more than a little neurotic -- and she's constantly doing me favors like driving me to work and helping me cope with crowds and strangers and social obligations like talking to a cashier. But I always have chocolate on hand if she needs it, and if I ever catch anyone trying to give her shit or take advantage of her Mary Sue-ness I will be all over them like a skinny, neurotic, blonde pit bull.

After we'd gotten out of the apartment complex and onto the road, Megan spared me a glance. "Are you okay?" Megan asked. "You're looking more frazzled than usual."

"Someday I am going to get laid just so I never have to worry about chupacabracorns again," I muttered.

"I thought that guy moved out," Megan replied. That's another one of the things I love about her. When I say crazy random shit she doesn't bat an eye -- and half the time she even gets it.

I shrugged, and Megan reached over to tousle my hair. Casual physical contact is one of my freakout things, but Megan is a special case. I'll put up with it for her.

"If it'll help, I can probably hook you up with someone from the club," Megan offered. "They're having a New Year's Eve party tomorrow; I could give you a ride."

I just about choked on my heart as it tried to escape through my esophagus. The downside to Megan's unflappability is that I can never quite tell if she's joking. And as much as she helps me cope with my anxieties on a day-to-day basis, she's also pretty insistent on getting me to stretch my boundaries. She's a social person, and she's always inviting me out. Especially around New Year's, with its mandatory midnight makeout sessions, and Christmas -- with its barely more chaste mistletoe. Because let's face it: for me, that's one hell of a boundary.

"I'll think about it," I managed to say. "Going out," I hastened to add. "Not the other part." Which was, of course, a lie. Club Luminescence was Megan's hangout of choice these days. I'd been there a grand total of once, and I'd spent the evening latched to Megan's side in order to discourage this goth-punk guy who kept staring at me like he wanted to get me alone somewhere and murder my comfort zone. So then again, maybe it was true. I'm sure that at some point, while I was safe in my bed, I would wonder what would have happened if I'd opted to go out instead. And I was very good at imagining ways to violate comfort zones.

"Alright," she said. And I think she knew what I meant, because she immediately asked about another one. "How about the work party? If you don't want to come out to the club, I could swing by and pick you up for that one."

"Uh..." I said. Work had an annual New Year 's Eve party. It always ran very, very late so that people who celebrated earlier with friends and family could still stop by. Our boss, Mr. Salvatore, even arranged to cover all cab fares to and from -- not that I could ever get in a cab. But that made me think that maybe I should go. Mr. Salvatore had gone on sabbatical after last year's party, and we hadn't seen him since. But without Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome Vampire around, Megan's only options for shenanigans this year would be Jimmy or Carl, the two men who lived in the basement and ran the printers. A rescue or preventative action would be necessary in either case: Jimmy was a scrawny guy who embraced the label "nerd," and Carl was a stocky, balding man twice Megan's age, whom I've always kind of suspected of wanting to embrace Jimmy. I mean, basements are dark by definition and the big printers are loud. Who the hell knows what they really get up to down there?

Anyway, I couldn't really think of either of them with Megan without blushing a lot and getting waaay too explicit in a bad slash-fic sort of a way, and....

"Are you sure you're okay?" Megan asked again. "You look a little flushed."

And that put me in one of those awkward social situations I hate so much: I could either explain to my best friend that she -- by merit of being a strong, well-adjusted, social and sexual individual who doesn't spaz out over everything -- starred in more of my mentalrotica than I did, or I could change the topic. I've tried filling in for her, but it just doesn't work. If you put me in a short skirt and a corset top and strap me down in a deep dark basement, pretty soon make-believe Jimmy and make-believe Carl lose interest. Then Carl takes Jimmy aside in a fatherly manner and teaches him to "catch" in a way that totally isn't, and I miss out on all of it because make-believe me is still tied up in a basement. But replace me with Megan and there'll be soft flesh and hard cocks and moaning and grunts and sweat and cries of pleasure and about four times as many orgasms -- not counting my own when I'm home, alone, in private, and not sitting next to the person I'm imagining being tag-teamed while the industrial scanner she's bent over makes a flip-book record. Assuming I haven't forgotten by then, or been distracted by something...which is probably the more likely scenario.

"I'll go to the work party," I said, blindly groping for a total non-sequitur. "If you're sure you can pick me up?"

"Of course," Megan agreed cheerfully.

"Thanks," I said -- and turned my gaze out the window in order to turn my face away from her. Fortunately, I had achieved terminal self-embarrassment, and all mental images -- as well as my blush -- were replaced with the recurring internal cadence of: please don't let her be psychic, please don't let her be psychic.

We didn't really talk for the rest of the way into work.

Megan and I work in publishing. It's not a large publishing house, but it seems to do a fair amount of business: mostly small-press fiction and cookbooks. But a while ago one of the major importers of Japanese manga went out of business, and that's when Megan and I got hired. Our boss, Mr. Salvatore, saw a great big hole open up in the market, and decided to try and fill as much of it as he could.

In college Megan and I worked in a scanslation ring. That's a group of people who translate foreign comics that aren't licensed locally. We did it as a hobby, and because I'm addicted to books with pictures. Mr. Salvatore got our names through the anime club at college, and we've been working for him since graduation, along with another of our friends: Fumiko.

Our work takes up the first two units of a strip of single-story offices. We share the parking lot with all the others, but it's still usually pretty empty. Today, however, there were two notable additions. Mr. Salvatore's fancy little sports car with its tinted windows, and a massive Hummer that was parked next to it.

"He's back," I groused. After the incident at last year's New Year's party, Mr. Salvatore had disappeared on sabbatical. I'd been just as happy: I like my job, but Mr. Salvatore creeps me out.

"Yep," Megan agreed cheerfully as she pulled into a free spot next to the Hummer.

"You knew!" I accused.

Megan laughed. She knows how I feel about Mr. Salvatore. "He's not a vampire, Abby," Megan said. "And this way you haven't been getting all wound up about it the whole drive over."

I frowned. "Alright," I conceded. "But how did you know?"

Megan grinned and fished out her smart phone. "I get work emails forwarded," she said. "You really need to upgrade. He got in a little past midnight and scheduled an all-hands meeting for this morning."

I sniffed. It was an old argument. Megan liked to keep up with the newest tech, and I liked what I knew. So I liked my flip phone. Plus, given the rate at which technology goes out of date, my phone was probably old enough to have achieved legendary status. I was carrying around the Hrunting of communications devices! Although, come to think of it, Hrunting did break in Beowulf's time of greatest need. So maybe Megan had a point. But, whatever. Besides....

"Past midnight?" I asked as I got out of Megan's car and started toward our office's entrance. "Vampire."

"Oh, sure," Megan said. "You know, it'll take more than the occasional late arrival to convince me."

"Occasional?" I protested. "Have we had a single video conference in the last year that wasn't after hours? And for that matter, why is it that he's always just a photo of a sunset on those calls, instead of streaming video?"

"Gee, I don't know," Megan said teasingly. "Maybe it's because he's been in a different time zone. And perhaps he hasn't had a webcam available." She stuck her tongue out at me playfully. She's never perturbed when I go off to crazy-ville. In fact, I think she enjoys debunking my theories because it forces me to come up with crazier ones.

"Yeah, right," I said. "Or maybe he just can't be filmed. He probably never left the city, and that 'sabbatical' is just a cover story for some kind of vampire politics thing."

"You know," Megan countered, "I just use a picture of a kitten when we conference call. Maybe I'm a vampire."

I stopped and stared at Megan. She stopped and looked back at me. Her poker face was in place -- I recognized it because I've seen her use it on guys when they're trying to tell if their flirting is getting them anywhere.

"Don't be silly," I said. "I've seen your home setup. You just don't have a web camera." Then, having completely undermined her argument (and therefore, conversely, proven mine) I turned and marched into the office. Megan followed.

Our department -- the imported manga department -- consists of one office, two desks, and three people.

Fumiko was a Japanese/American student who had majored in business and been part of our scanslation ring. Her job was to get us licenses and other clients -- we do a small amount of print-on-demand work for independent Japanese artists who like the idea of their work being available in the American market. She also did a lot of the rough translating. Fumiko worked from home.

Megan worked at the secretarial desk outside our office. She claims she picked that spot because it's nice and open, and it gives her the opportunity to make googly eyes at the mailman, but that's just an excuse. I'm pretty sure she did it so I'd have the office to myself and could hide out if I needed to. I support this theory with the facts that 1) Megan is an awesome friend, 2) she's used the position to act as a buffer between me and coworkers and 3) our mailman is a woman. Megan's job is to do all the image manipulation required in translating a manga: she takes scans of the manga and clears out the text bubbles, then picks appropriate fonts and fills them back in with my translations.

That's my job: I clean up the translations. English is Fumiko's second language, so she does the rough translations and helps me with any really strange kanji that come up, but I make sure the final English translation reads well in addition to conveying the intended message. It still surprises me that something which started out as a hobby in college has become my full time job. I keep expecting to be told it was a mistake and we've all been fired -- but it hasn't happened yet. Not even when Mr. Salvatore went on his surprise sabbatical.

I left Megan at her desk and went through to mine. Sure enough, there was an email waiting for me when I my computer finished booting up. It was time stamped for 12:13 last night, and asked all team leaders and available employees to attend a state-of-the-company meeting in the break room at nine.

Technically, Megan was our team lead by merit of working at the office and being sociable. But the invite was to all available employees, so I figured she'd drag me along, too. Besides, I had no intention of trying to skip.

Being stuck in a crowded room was just about the opposite of my idea of fun -- but I had a healthy suspicion that whatever Murphy had been leading up to this morning was going to be revealed at the meeting. And the longer I had to go without finding out, the bigger a nervous wreck I'd become.

So I sighed and accepted the meeting invite. Then I opened the folder for my most recent project and tried to distract myself by polishing the translation of a manga that involved aliens and mummies and robots and girls in ball gowns with corsets so tight their boobs threatened to burst off the page and out of my screen.

Actually, as distractions go, it worked pretty well.