The Letter

Hello! Welcome! I wish you a wonderful journey!

... ... ...

A stressful day!!

Mr Campbell grabbed his own hair wanting to hold all his problems and strands of rampant thoughts into the control of his fingers! Since the pay cuts made across the company two months ago, the bonuses and promotions had been frozen temporarily for everyone.

His job at the Human Resources Management was limited to joining meetings with other departments every of his workdays to think together of a solution –which everyone mostly agreed to disagree, in other words, wasted time and discussions–, or into creating other ways to encourage his HR personnel staff, and all the employees at operational roles that him and his team supervised. How could they help the team keep up the good work –and their will to continue at this job!– ? A new layoff list was ongoing, however this time some employees had already signed their wish to be dismissed at the next involuntary termination list.

That last list was higher than the number of employees needed to be fired! And that was not good. A majority of the current workers enrolled in it were locals, and everyone knew that, to get the business going without locals at workforce was like skating downhill into an abyss!

He and his team didn’t even need to search closely who to write down anymore, but planning out the training programs with no new resources, changing the compensation planning, and planning out new incentive programs (with a bit of his own salary, otherwise he didn’t know how to do it)… that all and all of that filled his head to the brim!

His HR personnel team was already sorting the payroll needs, back to the traditional times – envelope payment! With the energy taxes higher, that was a solution. But also a regress!

It was the job he needed though. He needed it more than he felt troubled by it. On the messed surface of a desk filled with; pilled papers, and document folders confusedly unorganized, a computer, a mouse, the lamp above illuminating exactly all of that, exactly what Mr Campbell didn’t want to see... he knew with his anger, only, he couldn’t solve it. His fingertips ran through his heated scalp until they stopped stuck on the 3a curled mess of his hair. Reprocessing thoughts heated hotter the blood in his head. If he said ‘go to hell!’ to that company and his superiors, then left, it wouldn’t get him anywhere either.

He was stuck there, like his fingertips; entangled between each lock of problem.

“I need to solve this,” he commanded to himself. Without thinking, he just grabbed the most detached folded paper from under one of the piles, then pulled it out. There was no deep reason he picked it first other than ‘I’ll start with whatever’s out first’, but as he unwrapped it, that piece was odd somehow.

Fully opened, its contents finally were revealed to him:

“When you held my hand that day, I held the hand that let me live again. It was like you were letting me restart my life, giving me the opportunity to breath again...

You don’t know how much I have been suffocated. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t scream, I was shut from inside out. I... I had died inside, Charlie.

You’re pure mint to me. That breath of fresh air like symbol in my heart.

Thank you...”

The more he read, the more his knitted brows from stress straightened back to normal, then into a serious and concentrated gaze. What?

At first he guessed it arrived by chance on his desk. But what letter would call him by his name by chance? Only low possibilities allowed that, right?

His body shivered, as he was astonished. Something happened right before his eyes and he was blinded when it crossed his way!

Mr Campbell looked up through the open door, at the long azure-blue floored hall where some of his colleagues walked from there to somewhere, unaware that their own colleague and manager of human resources, who was sat behind piles of papers, tried to find an unknown someone who left him a message.

Of course, whoever they were, they had walked away and only left the dust of doubts behind them! Damn timids, cowards who couldn’t say things to the face of another person! As a present, they also walked out on a confused Mister Charlie Campbell, to let him spit out alone the uncomfortable and bothering taste of disappearance; which, to him, tasted like sand left behind on a sprint.

… Yes, that happened before.

Nevertheless, whoever it was, they were quick! Mr Campbell couldn’t catch up to them by the time he picked the paper. Uh, the letter. It was as sour as biting a raw lime, and as disappointing as powdering it with sugar,–as if it would lessen the distaste,– that he lost from sight this someone he was so important to!

“Wanker!” He slammed the table softly. To not break it. And to not pay for its repair therefore.

But traces of a new purpose awoke into life in his mind, despite its mixed up bitterness that he gulped into his chest.

He needed to find that person.

What had he done so good to receive such graceful letter?

“Who are you?” he glanced at the letter than back to the open door.