Performance Improvement Plan - Chapter 7

Hey there, everyone! Wanted to apologize briefly for being a bit less active these past two weeks or so. Combination of being busy with real-life responsibilities and, frankly, The News last week did not inspire much motivation or creativity on my part.

But, y'know, hey! There's a very real possibility that pornography is gonna be fuckin' illegal by this time next year, so I better write while the writing's good! Fingers crossed I'll be able to dedicate a little more time than usual to writing this week, to make up for things being a bit slow around here lately.

That said, here's the chapter!

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Click.

“Carol?”

“Yes, Ms. Granger?”

“Could you have Ted Murphy brought up to see me?”

“Yes, Ms. Granger.”

***

Joyce gasped, blood rushing to her face as she worked her hips up and down, feeling the full length of Teddy’s cock deep inside her. She smiled down at the man sprawled out on her bed beneath her, letting her eyes wander across the lines of his taut, tight little body, squeezing him appreciatively with her thighs as she rose up and lowered herself again, her little pouch of belly fat resting against his toned abdomen.

“That’s it baby, that’s it, just lay back and enjoy.” He tried to respond, but the only sound out of him was a strange croaking whine as she continued to fuck him, the eyes of a few dozen smiling plushies observing from her bedroom’s shelves.

“Hold on baby, hold on. Don’t go yet,” she said between clipped, gasping breaths, her bed squeaking a little as she increased her tempo. “I’m not… quite there yet. Wait for me, wait for me…. Oh, oh!” Teddy moaned as he failed to follow her instructions, his body convulsing beneath her. Joyce picked up the pace, rising up and nearly slamming herself back down over and over, desperate to reach a climax before he went soft on her.

She let out a soft, trailing whine, throwing her head back and smiling in contentment as she achieved her goal. She remained posed like that, straddling her boss on her knees, sweat glistening on her heaving breasts.

“Um… I’m sorry…” Ted muttered. Joyce threw her head forward, blond hair flipping down in front of her face. Through it, she could see that Teddy genuinely looked upset.

Poor thing. He always felt bad when he didn’t do as she told him.

Joyce rose up, Teddy’s spent cock sliding out of her as she shifted to lie down next to him, spooning him tightly. She’d never been with a guy as small as him before, and still got a thrill out of how easy it was to wrap her arms around him.

“Don’t feel bad, sweetie. It’s okay, I got there in the end. Everything’s okay.” She softly shushed into his ear while she stroked his hair. “I’ll take it as a compliment. Can’t exactly blame you for struggling to hold it in when you’re dealing with all of this.” Joyce slapped her bare ass, sending a ripple across her body. Teddy blushed and cuddled closer to her.

“Besides,” she continued, her finger gently playing with his nipple. “If you have a hard time with stamina, that just means we need to do this more often.”

He shivered, he actually fucking shivered, and Joyce couldn’t suppress a little squeal. “You’re so cute!” She hugged him tightly, nuzzling her cheek against his. “My Teddy Bear…”

“Joyce, um… you’re hurting me…”

“Oh! Oh no! I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, baby. It’s just easy to forget sometimes how… delicate you are.” She loosened her grip, holding him securely without squeezing.

“Would you like me to kiss it better?”

***

“He’s going to fire me. He’s gonna do it.” 

Francesca gently rubbed Beth’s back as she buried her head under her arms, pressing her forehead into the breakroom table.

“Beth, I don’t think he’s going to fire you.” 

Back in the late days of summer, Beth had finally been starting to come out of her shell more and more. She was visibly more relaxed and less nervous, though she’d never stopped being wary of Ted, even as he continued to shrink; he was the second-shortest person in the office now, behind only Beth herself. But as summer gave way to fall, Beth’s anxieties began to slowly ratchet up once more.

“He basically already has fired me. He barely assigns me any work anymore! I just… Mmm, fuck. I just had to make that stupid little jab about how my work was too good for him! He’s given me fewer and fewer assignments ever since!”

“Beth, sweetie,” Joyce butted in from the coffee counter. “I don’t think he’s avoiding giving you work because he’s unhappy with you. If anything… I think he’s trying to make up for overloading you in the first half of the year.”

“How would you know?!” Beth shot back. “It’s not like you talk to him ever.”

Francesca glared at Joyce judgmentally, and she responded by aggressively shrugging at her. Francesca was still the only one who knew full well that Joyce was talking to Ted. A lot.

“Have you thought about just asking him to give you more assignments? I mean, he’s the one doing all of that work, I think Joyce is right that he thinks he’s doing you a favor.”

“I can’t. If I talk to him for too long I start to feel the urge to blow up at him, like I did after the whole, you know… the thing, with the wall. I’ll only make it worse if I talk to him.” Beth raised her head up off the table an inch or two and then slammed it back down. “Ughhhh. For like… a few weeks there, I really thought I’d finally figured it out. But no, Laura was right. He’s just been biding his time so he can fire me during my performance review, so it doesn’t look like retaliation for reporting him.”

“I missed what you just said I’m right about,” Laura said as she strolled into the breakroom. “But I’m sure that I was.”

“Beth thinks that Te—...” Francesca stopped herself from finishing that sentence. Ever since Laura’s own fit of anger a few months back, she was honestly a little skittish to even say their boss’ name in front of her. “Beth thinks she’s gonna get fired.”

“Beth. Look at me.” Laura walked up next to her and stood with arms folded, waiting for the more junior woman to pick up her head and meet her eyes. “You’re not going to get fired. You could stay home for the rest of the year and you still wouldn’t get fired, because our darling manager knows full well that if he touches a hair on your head they will be cleaning his entrails up off the floor when I’m done with him.”

Laura seemed half-annoyed, half-concerned when her pledge of support only elicited a groan of anxiety, Beth dropping her head back onto the table. Behind Laura, Joyce had a look of clear offense at the threat and opened her mouth to say something… until she noticed Francesca staring daggers at her. Crisis averted, Francesca turned her attention back to Beth. 

The problem wasn’t Ted. He’d grown quieter since the summer, a little less friendly, a little less eager to do everyone favors. Joyce had explained to Francesca that it seemed like he was getting a little more nervous and timid all the time, that he did still want to do things for the team, but found himself growing anxious around them. He was even anxious around her, and needed a lot of reassurance and affection or he’d turn into a nervous wreck.

“And you’re into that, huh?” Francesca had asked.

“Turns out? Yes. Absolutely. It’s fucking hot that he’s so needy.”

Francesca shook the conversation out of her mind and refocused on the present issue. The problem wasn’t Ted. It was Beth. She was an anxious mess. She was shy even when she’d first started here last year, and those first few months had put some cracks in her foundation that she was carrying around even now. She could probably use some professional help, and…

Well. There was that therapist Ted was seeing. The one Francesca had looked into.

Francesca let it drop for now—she didn’t really want to discuss this in front of Laura, and especially not Joyce. But as soon as 5 PM rolled around, Francesca stood up from her desk and leaned over the cubicle wall that she shared with her friend.

“Hey, Beth. You wanna grab a drink with me real quick?”

“Uh. I mean… it’s Tuesday…”

Francesca rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say let’s go get hammered, just a drink after work.”

“I don’t, um, I’m not sure…”

Francesca huffed slightly. “Okay. Lemme start over. I would like to talk to you about something, and I would rather talk to you about it one-on-one at a bar instead of here at the office.”

“Oh… Oh!”

“Wait.” Joyce suddenly shot up from her own desk on the other side of Francesca’s desk. “You’re not gonna tell her about—”

“No, I’m not going to tell her about that.”

“Tell who about what?” Laura asked as she approached.

“Shi—Uh! Nothing!” Joyce burst out of her cubicle, nearly falling flat on her face as she hurried out of the office.

Laura watched her scurry off, nonplussed. “You know what’s going on with her?”

Francesca shook her head. “Laura, I promise you, you absolutely do not want to know.”

Laura shrugged, satisfied, and sauntered off, leaving Francesca alone with Beth again.

“So, come get a drink with me?”

“Um. Yeah, sure.” Beth rose to her feet and followed Francesca out. Francesca turned for a brief moment to look back at Ted, still plugging away in his office. Joyce usually went and got them something to eat before circling back to pick him up, well after Laura was out of the building.

“I don’t wanna pry, but… have you ever, like, talked to someone?” Francesca asked Beth about a half hour later, in a dark corner of their usual Friday night haunt. “You know, about your… anxiety?”

“Talk to someone? What, you mean like, a psychologist?”

“It might be beneficial, help you get ahold of your nerves, you know?”

Beth laughed a little. “Yeah, I mean, I dunno, maybe. But. I, I really don’t think it would work for me. I mean… You’re my friend, I talk to you almost every day, and I’m still a little anxious sitting here talking to you. I don’t, um. I don’t think I’d be able to spill my guts to a stranger.”

Francesca nodded, bottom lip protruding as she considered her next words.

“Um. Was that all you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Do you remember back in the summer? After that HR thing with Ted, how they made him go to that anger management counseling?”

“Y-yeah, I remember. One session, after he basically threatened me.”

“Do you know he’s still doing that? He goes there every Saturday, like clockwork.”

“...What? Really? How do you—”

“I asked him about it. Back in September, I bumped into him at the gym, and I was curious. I mean, you must be too, right? He’s like a completely different person, and that’s before you factor in the fact that he’s shorter now. Which, by the way, don’t you think it’s kind of fucking weird that none of us seem too concerned that our boss is shrinking? It’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me and the most thought any of us gives it is an ‘oh, huh.’”

“Yeah… Yeah, I guess you’re right. But, what does that have to do with Ted’s anger management therapy?”

“I looked up the doctor they sent him to. Her name’s Joanna Becker. And when you Google her, you get this.”

Francesca slid her phone across the table to Beth. The screen displayed a news story: NEW HEAD OF PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT DISMISSED AFTER DISASTROUS LECTURE.

“That’s from a student newspaper from 2004. Dr. Becker gave a lecture to other doctors of psychology from all around the country that she had discovered hypnosis. Like, real hypnosis, and she ended up getting booed off the stage. The university even threatened to revoke her degree until she apologized publicly for promoting fake science. And even then, they fired her afterward.”

“O…kay. So they sent Ted to a crank?”

Francesca tapped the table with her finger a few times. She hadn’t said any of this out loud before, and she was starting to realize just how crazy it sounded.

“I’m not so sure they did.”

“...What?”

“Think about it. Have you ever heard of someone doing such a hard 180 in their personality, in so little time, just because they talked to a counselor once a week? I mean, therapy helps people, I’m not trying to say anything bad about it… but isn’t the amount of change we’ve seen in Ted kind of… suspicious?”

“I… uh.” Beth shook her head. “I mean… what are you trying to say? That she hypnotized him into being nicer? That’s… that’s crazy.”

“Mm-hm. I thought so too.” Francesca retrieved her phone, flipped to a different tab in her browser, and handed it back to Beth. “And then I found this second story, from 2015.”

Dr. Becker, known for her infamous 2004 lecture in which she attempted to defend the veracity of hypnosis, has returned to America after nearly an entire decade studying the psychological effects of meditation with Himalayan monks. Her new claims are no less bombastic than those she made ten years ago. To the contrary, she has returned with an even more audacious “finding:” that through the principle of “mind over matter,” a sufficiently well-trained individual can actually manipulate reality with their thoughts, altering the physical properties of the human body and the world in which it is situated. The psychological community was hopeful that Dr. Becker’s fanciful interest in hypnotism might serve as a springboard into more legitimate research into meditation, but it would seem that her time abroad has only pushed her to further fringes of pseudoscience. No psychological professionals responded to requests for comment, except for one who wished to remain anonymous, quipping that Dr. Becker is better-suited as a subject of psychological study, rather than as a practitioner.

Beth read the article in silence, brow furrowed.

“What if they’re wrong?” Francesca asked. “What if she isn’t crazy? What if… what if she really can change people?”

“Francesca, that… no. That can’t possibly be true.”

“Give me another explanation for why Ted is a foot shorter than he used to be. Give me a single idea that sounds less ridiculous than this.”

“I mean! I mean, wh-what… Ted getting shot with a raygun from space sounds less ridiculous than this! This doesn’t make any sense at all. If I grabbed a story out of our slush pile and it was about this, I’d throw it away for being too unbelievable!”

“Beth. You’re worried about your performance review next month. Why don’t you go see her?”

“What?”

“She’s a therapist, you have anxiety. What if she could help you as much as she’s… well, ‘helped’ Ted?”

“She’s not hypnotizing Ted into shrinking! That’s not possible!”

***

Beth was pacing back and forth around her kitchen, weaving around the boxes she still had stacked up everywhere. She’d moved here only briefly before starting her job at Marabou, and with how hectic her life had been, she’d never found the time to fully finish unpacking. She had more free time these days, but the boxes had sat out for so long that she’d become partially blind to them. She didn’t even need to look where she was going as she went back and forth across the small tiled floor, her phone in one hand, the number Francesca had given her in the other.

This was crazy. Crazy! Hypnotism isn’t real. You can’t fix someone’s mental health issues by just waving a pocket watch in front of their face. Therapy was a long, involved process, one that required far more time and mental energy than Beth had available, and you couldn’t leapfrog it by having someone make you stare at a spinning wheel and tell you to be less of a basket case. It just wasn’t possible.

…Then again, shrinking wasn’t possible either, and Ted had unquestionably shrunk. He was basically the same size as Beth now, and Francesca had a point: it was weird that none of them had been freaking out about that more. Least of all Ted.

Suppose… Suppose Francesca was right. Suppose this woman, this Dr. Becker, had some kind of… power. What if she really could help Beth? Make her less anxious. More confident. Maybe she could even…

Beth stopped herself from completing the thought, feeling embarrassed, then felt stupid for feeling embarrassed in the privacy of her own home. She punched the air in awkward, stilted motions.

Gah! Why can’t you ever just be normal! You can’t even feel your feelings when  you’re alone! Just, just… Ugh!”

She looked down at the number in her hand, breaths getting heavier. With a sharp intake of air, she opened up her phone, dialed and hit send as fast as she could.

“U-um, hel—... Sorry, uh, excuse me. Hello, this is. This is Bethany Granger, a-and… if you could call me back when y-you… wh-when you… when you get this message, um. Sorry. Um. I’d like to make an appointment.”

***

Jody scribbled idly in her notepad, procrastinating.

When she’d gotten a call from Beth Granger, she’d recognized the name right away. One of Ted’s employees. She might not even really be interested in an appointment, but to ask questions about Ted; she could only change a person’s mind and body so much before people started to get curious, after all. The smart move would’ve been to never call her back. Maybe even have the office phone number changed. If someone figured out what she was doing to Ted… she might be able to avoid prison, if only because no one had written any laws about breaking a person’s mind through hypnosis. But she’d probably be liable to the tune of millions, and her license to practice psychology couldn’t survive another hit. Getting caught would mean the end of her career, the end of her life as she knew it, which meant that even incidental contact with someone who knew Ted was simply too high of a risk.

But… she just couldn’t bring herself to ignore Beth’s message. She’d originally gotten into this line of work to help people, after all, and the poor woman’s message was dripping with anxiety. Jody just didn’t buy that she was posing as a prospective patient in order to sniff around about Ted. Despite her better judgment, Jody had called her back after a week of deliberating, and sent her some intake paperwork. Everything about it painted the picture of a woman who was earnestly asking her for help. How could she say no?

And yet, Beth had been sitting out in her waiting room for 20 minutes now, and Jody was still working up the nerve to call her in.

At last, she dropped her pen, clapping her hands together before hitting “record” on her computer and then the button on her intercom. “Kelly? You can go ahead and send her in.”

Jody was briefly surprised as Beth entered her door. She hadn’t quite expected someone so… beautiful. Fair skin, delicate features, piercing blue eyes, all framed by a rich, wavy bob of brunette hair. 

Her moment of surprise passed, and then she noticed something else about the petite young woman in her doorway. She was visibly terrified. Jody quickly offered a reassuring smile. 

“Beth, hello! Please, come in, come in.” Jody rose from her desk to greet her.

“Um… Okay. Uh, should I just…?” Beth took a few tentative steps into the office, eyeing the sofa and chairs.

“Anywhere you’d like,” Jody responded warmly. “You can even sit at my desk, if you’d like to.”

“Oh! No, no, I would never!” The mere thought of it seemed to drive Beth into a state of full-on panic. “Uh, sorry, um, I… Sorry.”

Jody felt a pang of guilt as she realized her mistake. “It’s alright. It’s alright. Why don’t you take a seat on the couch here.” She figured some direction might give Beth something to cling to.

“Okay. Sorry.”

There was no doubt to be had. Beth wasn’t faking, wasn’t trying to find dirt on Jody. She was just someone who suffered from a case of acute anxiety.

Although… in the back of her mind, Jody couldn’t help but still wonder why she’d come to her over any other therapist.

“So, why don’t you tell me a little bit about why you’re here?”

“Oh. Uh… Well. I don’t, really know, I guess.”

It was normal for people with Beth’s degree of anxiety to respond noncommittally like that, even if they knew the answer to the question posed. Jody just smiled reassuringly, waiting patiently for her to come out of her shell.

…And when that didn’t happen, she started trying to coax her a bit.

“How about we start here: what were you thinking about when you called to make this appointment?”

Beth shifted awkwardly in her seat, her petite frame pulling itself inward as she found a spot on the floor to fixate on. “I guess, I was mostly just trying to… I was just focused on making sure I said the right things. I’m not very good on the phone, I trip over my words a lot and… So, I was just trying to avoid that.”

***

Beth cringed inwardly, screwing her eyes shut and trying to make herself disappear.

She knew full well that’s not what the doctor meant, but her brain was an absolute mess, scrambled by the pressure of being here.

“What about before that?” Dr. Becker asked. Her tone was so patient, so sweet… it just made Beth feel guilty. I’m a… I’m a fucking grown-up. I shouldn’t need to be treated with kid gloves like this. “What were you thinking about that made you decide to make the call in the first place?”

“Oh! Sure. Right, sorry.” Beth made the calculation that pretending as if she didn’t understand the question was less embarrassing than acknowledging that she’d answered it wrong anyway.

“It’s okay!” The doctor leaned back in her seat, patiently waiting for Beth to continue.

“Well, uh… It was actually my, my friend, well, my work friend, Francesca, she was the one that, that thought I should… talk to somebody, I guess. Well. Not, um. Not somebody. She thought I should talk to you.”

Beth couldn’t quite read the expression that played out across Dr. Becker’s face, a brief flash of… something, before she snapped back into the same warm, professional smile she’d been wearing since Beth stepped in.

Oh God, did I say something wrong?

“Why me, specifically?”

“Well, um. I mean… we’ve all noticed what’s been happening with, um. With Ted—Mr. Murphy, ever since he started seeing you. Even before the… you know, his…” Beth couldn’t quite make herself say the word shrinking, not quite ready to accept the possibility that the woman before her was the one responsible for that. “We noticed that things were different right after his first appointment with you.” That wasn’t exactly true, but the pattern was obvious in retrospect, once Francesca had pointed it out.

Beth’s heart started to pound in her chest as the doctor’s face fell a little more with each word, but she remained silent, and Beth started feeling desperate to fill the air. “I, um… I have my first annual performance review coming up, and… And Francesca thought… well. I’m not, very confident, uh… I guess that’s pretty easy to tell. So Francesca thought that maybe… maybe whatever it is that you’re doing to Ted—”

“I can’t discuss another patient’s treatment, Beth.” Dr. Becker’s tone was shockingly severe, and Beth had to fight the urge to scramble for the door.

“No! I know, I’m sorry!” Beth was starting to hyperventilate.

Why was she here? Even if she agreed that she could use some help with her anxiety, why come here, specifically? What was the point?

…Because, despite her protests, she believed that this woman could do miraculous things. She’d believed that the moment Francesca had shown her those news articles, and her conscious mind was only just now catching up to her gut.

“Um… But… We just thought that, whatever it is that you’re doing to him… maybe you could do the opposite to me?”

The air was heavy with tension as Dr. Becker just stared at Beth, her expression neutral. Beth focused 100% of her energy in staying still, keeping her eyes fixated on the doctor despite how strongly she wanted to turn away, to apologize and leave.

Dr. Becker suddenly rose up out of her seat, and Beth reflexively flinched away as she circled around to her desk and clicked something with her mouse.

“The recording is off now,” Dr. Becker said. “Just you and me. No record of this conversation. What exactly is it that you think I’m ‘doing’ to Ted?”

“You’re hypnotizing him,” Beth blurted out. “You’re making him weaker-willed or something. And somehow that’s making him shorter, too.”

“And so, when you say that what you want is the opposite…?”

“I want to be more confident, and, and, assertive.” Beth had known she’d ask for that from the moment she made the phone call.

She didn’t know that she would say the rest. “And I want to be taller, too. Tall enough that people don’t feel like they can push me around.”

Dr. Becker stared at her, arms crossed, tapping a finger against her mouth as she thought. Beth’s anxiety was screaming at her at this point, every nerve in her body telling her to run away.

She swallowed and clenched her teeth, waiting patiently until the doctor finally opened her mouth and offered her a one-word reply.

“Okay.”