[Alpha Draft] CH9 Extra Ending Scene

Hey folks, this new scene is how I initially wanted to end this chapter. I still plan on going back and reviewing the entire thing based on your comments and a few areas I wanted to tighten it up. Plus, lots of editing for grammar, typos, etc.

This scene really sets the stage for where we are going in Arc 2:

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Everything seemed perfect at their house in Middleton. They couldn’t have asked for a better day, the sun was shining and the weather was perfect. The girls were playing the backyard and Dan was having a beer sitting on the back porch while Sarah had a glass of red in her hands and her feet propped on his lap.

He felt a sense of calm and fullfillment that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Eventhing seemed perfect. Then he started to hear a faint buzzing. Dan dreamily looked around to figure out where the sound was coming from.

He stood up and walked onto his back lawn. The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. He sheiled his eyes and looked up in the sky. The sun wasn’t shining so brightly anymore, it was completely concealed by dark thunder clouds.

Dan turned back to Sarah but the porch was empty. Her empty wine glass sitting alone on the ground next to where they were sitting. Dan turned, looking around the yard, his daughters were no where to be seen.

Confused, Dan started to walk back inside, each step feeling heavier than the previous one. He opened the back door and walked into his kitchen. Long shadows seems to creep from every corner of the room, drowning out the light coming in through the windows.

The buzzing was lounder in here. He moved through the house, the buzzing getting louder and louder. As he walked toward the stairs the shadows seemed to follow him. He could have sword they were stretching out towards him when he wasn’t looking.

As Dan ascended the stairs the buzzing seemed to intensify. Through the noise he hear something else. Something famaliar. He tried to focus on what it was. It sounded like a woman screaming. No, not screaming exaclty.

A woman in the throes of pleasure, begging for me.

Dan reached the landing and started towards their bedroom. The buzzing and the woman’s noises were growing louder. It sounded like Sarah behind the door. Sarah was moaning.

The buzzing was starting to hurt Dan’s ears. He needed to open the door and see what was on the other side.

He grabbed the door knob and turned it.

Bright light shone into Dan’s eyes. He blinked and raised his head looking around.

“Dan, get that,” Sarah purred with her eyes still closed. They were laying in his small bed in his apartment in Chicago.

Dan blinked again and got his bearings. His phone was buzzing incessantly. He tried to shove down the memories of the night before and how twisted things had become. He focused on his phone.

Dan reached out to his end table and grabbed his phone, disconnecting the charger. He silenced it and looked at the number that was calling him. It was work.

He answered the phone with a groggy, “Hello?”

An automated message played. Some company wide announcement. It asked him to log onto a Zoom call at 9:15am.

“Fuck off,” Dan said as he hung up and put his head back down on his pillow. He really wanted to see what was behind that door in his dream.

Sighing, he held the phone up to his face and checked the time. It was 9:10am. Walt and the rest of the team really shouldn’t be asking them to jump on a call on the weekend. They’d really been pushing what was acceptable lately.

Dan sat up and looked over at Sarah’s form. God, she was sexy. He shuddered as he thought back to Lester plastering Sarah with his cum last night.

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Dan swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He grabbed his laptop out of his bag, along with his set or Airpods and walked out into the hallway. He made sure to close the door behind him.

He walked into the living room and froze. He had planned to sit on the couch to take the call but it just dawned on him that he really didn’t want to sit there. Not yet.

Dan made his way into the kitchen and started to brew a coffee as his laptop turned on. Within a few minutes he was seated and logged into Zoom. He was sitting in the meeting lobby until 9:20am when the meeting finally started. Dan glanced at the attendee list, it looked like the entire company was here.

Dan expected to see Walt as he usually ran the company-wide meetings. His spider-sense started to tingle as he recongized the head of HR as one of the four windows given the spotlight.

“Thank you all for coming on short notice and on the weekend it is appreciate,” the woman said. “The senior leadership teams wants to start this off by saying what an amazing job you all have been doing this year and that we couldn’t be prouder. We know you are all loyal and dedicated to the company and would bend over backwards to help it succeed. That is what why we know you are going to help us achieve the immediate goals in front of us right now.”

Dan tenatively sipped his coffee. He thumbed his cellphone and started to scroll through his work email.

The woman continued, “As we look at our business we realized we have opportunities for to position our company better and be much stronger going into the future. But it will take all of us to put our heads down, do the work and make sacrifices to create this better future together.”

Dan clicked on an email from the previous night from Walt. It was to several senior members of the team but he had included Dan on it as well. The timestamp was around the same time that Lester had begun defilling his wife on the couch.

Walt and the other directors had failed to appease Byron and the Lincoln Group. It sounded like they thought Byron was taking them for a ride, trying to get them to pay for expensive drinks and there was a bit of an argument. This coupled with what had transparied with Jesse seemed to his a breaking point.

The Lincoln Group had dropped Dan’s company and planned to withold their outstanding payments. The company’s cash cow was gone.

“Thats why starting Monday we are going to understake a new compensation policy, company wide,” the woman continued. “Going forward, in order to position us to be nimble and adapatble to market changes, we are going to examine new ways to find efficncies and streamline our operations. As part of this, we will be recalibrating everyone’s monthly compensation by a reduced forty percent. We know you are all willing to make this change to help put us in the best position going forward as we build towards our goals together. If you have any questions about this, please speak to your manager or an HR team member this coming week.”

Forty percent. Dan sat back shocked. They were going to cut his wage by forty percent. He started to do the math in his head, trying to figure out their mortgage payments, rent, groceries and other expenses. Things were already way too tight.

“Thank you all for logging in, I speak on behalf of the entire management team when I say, I hope you all have a great weekend and we’ll see you on Monday.”

Forty percent pay cut. It wasn’t going to be enough for them to survive.