The Speech Writer Pt. 4

Pearl stared blankly at the dark screen before her. In red text demanding for attention at the very top of the screen was the word ERROR! blinking in and out of her sight. The screen was constantly changing their glitching colours around the edges. A light dull headache that instantly made Pearl's mind feel slow and everything turn fuzzy started pulsing at the bottom of her head. 

"NO!" She yelled out as everyone turned to look at her, their faces full of judgement and confusion. "Look away minnows!" Pearl added out of embaressment. Admittedly thier faces were blinking in and out of being minnows and humans. 'Suits them' Pearl thought bitterly. If minnowes wern't judgy and confused, what were they? "I must go to the bathroom" she stated abrubtly, standing up. She walked to the bathroom, but she didn't have full control of her limbs. It felt like someone else was propelling her. Most likely the fit of madness she just expirianced. Or was still expiriencing.

Pearl sat under the sinks, holding her knees to her chest and slightly rocking back and forth. She starts humming a simple melody until she sees a coral reef around her, filled with beautiful fish and colourful coral. It looks just like the aquarium she used to visit on Mars as a child. She was always afraid of the shark that swam around the massive tank, always fearing it's menacing swim pattern would slide into her view of the pretty fish. That's how she viewed it anyways, with her little child-like imagination. All the fish had a different swimming pattern. The jellyfish swam like clouds, the crabs swam like on a trampoliene, the angel fish were graceful, the clownfish jerky and clumbsy. The shark had a swim ike none other. It swished it's tail leaving not a trace behind, it's sharp upper fin slicing through the water on top. It made no noise. It made her think of the queen's assasins. 

Slowly Pearl's mind cleared leaving one last image of the assasin shark, it's jaws wide open, ready to attack. As the vision faded so did her headache with that she was granted her sanity, and logic. Remembering the computor Pearl left for all to to see she rushed back to it, breathing a sigh of relief that nobody seemed to be making a fuss about the blue text blinking in the middle of her screen. Blue like a shark, blue like Manyo's hair, blue like the aquairum.

"I have hacked your computor, so don't try to exit this and ignore it. The oly way it will go away is for you to click the agree button below this text. Bwahahaha, I am so good at making evil plans" Pearl stopped at that last sentance, wondering why someone would boast about their own evilness over text. "Aside from acknowledging my brilliance you must do something. I want to be the Speech Writer. That means you giving up your position and accepting another job offer. Maybe Queen's assasin. HA! You have no brains for that." Pearl definitly thought that was Manyo's stuck up personality showing through. Maybe she could report him. "If you don't give up your position within the next 96 hours, you will pay. You will pay with your secrets. I know about the words at the beginning of your little speeches. You want to take the tyrant queen down. I know how to spill secrets, and I'll get the position either way. Whether you want me to or not. -M"

Pearl sat at her desk in shock, and the headache was beginning to pulse again.  She quickly scrawled the message on a piece of paper before hitting accept. Anything to get her secret off of that screen. Pearl quickly signed out of her work early, she had finished the speech after all. She was done work. Pearl tried to convince herself to not feel guilty, but why did she? Then she realised what she was standing in front of. The achingly beautiful statue depicting the horrible queen. 'I hate you!' She thought at the statue, the eyes staring into her soul. She felt like she couldn't hide anything, that this dumb, stupid, malicious statue could see right through her. Pearl walked away from it faster than she usually did.

After walking a long time, the sun started to go down turning the marshian landscape around her a dark maroon. She was almost at the edge of the cyber-dome of her sector and she suddenly recognised the landscape outside as the one by her favourite place to go as a child, the aquarium.

As Pearl entered inside the place, the soft comforting colour of the sea washed over her, calming her, making her forget about the message that was, undoubtedly, Manyo's. She wandered in, looking at the bright fish excitedly swimming all around her in the glass tank. They surrounded the hallway that she was walking in. She went to sit down, but instead of her favourite bench being empty, as it was when she was a kid, in it sat her best friend whom Pearl hadn't seen since she left for her job in Frillisia as the Queen's Asistant. "Mara?" she tentatively asked, hoping it was her. Mara turned, her blonde hair cut just above her shoulders rather than falling elegantly down her back like it used to. Her face light's up and it is her, 100%, without a doubt. Mara  ran over towards Pearl, giving her a great bear hug, while Pearl awkwardly tried to hug her back while the air was being squeezed out of her lungs. At least some things hadn't changed. 

The friends pulled apart, both of them smiling. "I thought you were supposed to be in Frillisia"

"I took time off, just recently, the flu? You must have wrote about it in one of your little speeches here or there-"

"Little speeches?" Pearl asks, cutting her friend off

"Yeah, ones for just certain sectors" Mara answers, seeming annoyed. Pearl gives her a questioning look "It's what it's called in the 'Big City'. 

Mara says it like they always used to, preading her arms wide, doing jazz hands, smiling and raising her eyebrows up and down, but it doesn't seem sincere.

"Girl are you ok?" Pearl asks, concerned for her friend. 

"I'm tired. Anyways, that flu going around that nobody's supposed to know about?" She askes.

"Yeah, I know about it, I wrote a speech about it."

"Yeah, they were trying to keepit quiet, but they just got their first case in the Capitol of Mars. Cource I got the hell outta there before I was stuck or got it."

Pearl smiled, she smiled wide because her BFF was home, but inside she wasn't smiling. She might lose her job, she might get killed, and worse, the deadly disease could spread to different sectors, and there was no cure. Why did things always have to fall apart just as they were coming together?