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Clerical Error
On Saturday, the 7th of June 2025 | 1 299 words
The keys of the typewriter clicked and clacked as Stacey printed words onto the piece of paper that was loaded into the machine.
Bling! Another line done. Pressing its silver lever she moved the carriage back to the right, and the paper rolled around the platen to the next line.
"Hey there Stace." Francis hollered from the door.
Stacey jumped in her chair. "Gosh Francis, ya' scared the bejewels out of me!"
"Oh I didn't mean to," Francis said with a laugh, "just wanted to check in on you. How's it going in here?"
Stacey rolled around in her chair to face Francis. She crossed her legs and rested her hands in her lap, the fabric of her skirt was soft.
"It's going swell, Francis. I've just been typing up those quarterly reports on my click-clacker here." She managed a faint smile.
"That's great Stace, that's great."
The silence was, without a doubt, awkward. Francis leaned on the doorframe and sipped from his mug. It was enamel green with the text '#1 dad' written on it in white. Whatever was inside the mug left Francis' teeth coated with a black grease, as he flashed a toothy smile at Stacey.
"So uh," Stacey dared, "was there something else ya' needed Francis, or...?" She let her sentence trail off, the conjunction dangling in the air like a lifeline.
Francis sipped from his mug.
"Well, Stace, I don't mean to be a hard-ass, but I kind of need those reports pronto." He grimaced.
"I thought that I had until Friday to finish writing them up."
"Yeah about that," he sighed, "the Big Man upstairs really needs them today. That big hubbub is this Friday, and you know that no-one is going to give one hoot about the quarterlies once all the partying gets underway."
Stacey stared into Francis' soul, her mouth drawn into a line of frustration. Francis' soul shone with a silvery light, which meant that it was pure. He was still an asshole for doing this.
"Okay," Stacey wriggled her nose, "but Friday's three days away. Why do you need the reports today?"
"I don't need them Stace," Francis said with a weaselly smile, "it's the Big Man. The Big G. The Boss. You know how He is."
Stacey closed her eyes and thought that she should have applied at Olympus instead.
"Fine." She grunted after a minute. "Fine, I'll get them done today."
"Ah, you're a real sweetheart Stace," Francis said with a wink. "I'll expect them on my desk in an hour."
"Wait, an hour!? That's not--"
As quickly as he had appeared, Francis was gone from Stacey's doorway and she was all alone again. The walls of her office loomed tall and mighty over her, the white marble encasing her in a tomb of relentless labour. She rolled around in her chair and turned her back to the door; on the opposite wall was a window, which glowed with a blinding white light.
How in the #@!? am I going to finish everything in an hour? Stacey thought. She turned to look at her desk. On the left of her typewriter was a stack of handwritten quarterly reports from all the angels in all of Heaven and Earth, that stacked up nearly to the ceiling. On the right of her typewriter were the reports that she had retyped on her typewriter, and the stack was laughably small.
"This is stupid." Stacey bemoaned out loud.
She snapped her fingers. In an instant the raw handwritten reports started flying into her typewriter and out again, after being automagically re-typed. Sure, she was supposed to proofread each one to correct any errors, but the task before her seemed insurmountable. Besides, she thought, what's the worst that could happen?
///
An hour later to the minute the sky-high stack of reports stood tall on Francis' desk. The look on the middle-manager face beamed with unbridled joy, and relief.
"Wowzers Stace!" He said with a laugh. "You really got busy with it, huh?"
Stacey smiled and nodded.
"Well, it needed to be done, so..."
Francis took a deep breath in and when he released it a powerful wind spread out all the reports in front of him, forming an impenetrable wall of paper. A thousand additional eyes burst out of Francis' skull, some at the end of fleshy stalks.
"I'll read through these lickety-split," Francis explained, "you go ahead and take the rest of the day off Stace. You've earned it."
"Thanks Francis." She smiled. "Happy reading!"
Stacey couldn't wait to get out of the office, and before she knew it, she was closing herself into her domicile back on Earth. The commute to her office took no time at all. She threw her briefcase by the coatrack, kicked off her shoes, and marched into the living room. After collapsing onto her sofa, she was out like a light.
When Stacey woke from her nap, the amber glow of early evening flooded into her apartment from the windows. She rubbed her groggy eyes and stood up on the sofa, checking the time from her phone. She had slept for two hours.
She reached for the remote and clicked on the TV, but was distracted by a loud noise from outside. Stacey clambered up onto her feet and walked to the large sliding door that lead onto her modest balcony.
The sky was on fire. Literally.
"What the fuck?" She gasped.
Stacey slid open her balcony door, but nearly collapsed from a coughing fit, as the smell of charcoal and rotting flesh assaulted her airways.
"What... the... fuck?!" She coughed and stepped onto her balcony.
The sky burned. The clouds were on fire. On the horizon she could see the downtown skyline, and in the middle of it stood a titanic cross made out of light. A deafening choral cord rang out from somewhere, and the windows of her building, as well as the cars in the parking lot, shattered into tiny pieces.
A massive sphere of light flew overhead, surrounded by golden rings, and silver wings, and eyes. Thousands of eyes.
"HEY THERE STACE." A voice boomed like thunder.
"W-What? Me?" Stacey looked up at the being of light.
"BE NOT AFRAID. IT'S ME."
"F-Francis?!"
"THAT'S RIGHT. FUNNY RUNNING INTO YOU HERE."
Stacey stared mouth agape at Francis' true form. She knew what 'they' really looked like, but at the office 'they' only ever appeared in Human form.
"What the hell is going on, Francis!?" She demanded.
"HELL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT STACE."
A piece of paper appeared in front of Francis and floated down towards Stacey. As it got to her level, she snagged it out of the air. It was one page out of an angel's quarterly report, reporting that one hundred percent of people in her city were sinners of the worst calibre.
"Wait, this can't be..."
"THAT'S RIGHT STACE. SINNERS, THE LOT OF THEM. SO WE ARE CLEANSING THIS ENTIRE REGION."
"N-No, you... You can't. This can't be right!"
"SURE IT CAN. AFTER ALL, YOU CHECKED ALL THE REPORTS AND RETYPED THEM."
Stacey felt the freezing cold of realization set in.
"No, Francis, you don't understand."
"OH IT'S A GOOD THING THAT I RAN INTO YOU STACE."
"Francis, wait, listen to me!"
"I'M SORRY TO HAVE TO SAY THIS, BUT NATURALLY, YOU'RE FIRED. WE CAN'T HAVE A SINNER WORKING AT OUR OFFICE."
Stacey tried to argue, but no words came out of her mouth. She looked down and saw the fibres of her being becoming undone. She watched threads of skin, and blood-vessels, and bones, unravelling before her very eyes, until she no longer had eyes to see with.
Hopefully, she thought with her last moments, they need typists in purgatory.
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