Submission

I don't know if it's possible to express dismay and relief at one and the same time but if it is, I just did. He'd demanded two-hundred! last time it had been fifteen-hundred and I'd struggled.

"I can't do it," I told him weakly. "It's too soon after that fifteen-hundred." The face opposite gave no hint to his thoughts. His eyebrow lifted, he transferred a cherry from the cut glass dish in front of him into his mouth, flicked the stalk onto the table, waited a moment savouring the taste of the fruit and the tension he had created, then dropped the cherry stone into the glass bowl. It landed with a clinggggg that sounded like the last bell in a boxing match. "We've all got problems," he said pitilessly. "That one's yours! And…I want it by Friday."

Panic-stricken thoughts shrieked through my mind, how the hell can I find two-hundred by Friday? With an infuriating smirk, he made every word count, "I have Mark's two-hundred already," he said smugly. I fought to control my rage. "The others will give in without a fight too." I thought helplessly. "Well I bloody-well won't!" But like all the others ….I did!