Maddison Winchester: Journal 4 {Supernatural}

16 It's a Terrible Life: Part 3

The next morning, I got myself ready, gave my mom another bottle of alcohol, and then left for the Sandover building.

When I walked up to the building, there were police cars and an ambulance outside. EMTs wheeled a body bag out on a stretcher and loaded it into the ambulance.

I walked into the building and up to Olivia's desk. "Uh, hey. What's going on?"

"Oh, Maddison. Hi," she said solemnly. "We lost someone. You might've actually met him yesterday. Poor Paul."

"Oh, no. What happened?" I asked.

She shook her head. "They think he had a nervous breakdown." She leaned forward and whispered, "He rigged a microwave and stuck his head in it."

I widened my eyes. "Oh, god. That's— That's awful. The place isn't shut down?"

She shook her head. "No, work must go on." She turned to her computer and started typing. "Let's see who you're with today."

"Oh... okay," I said, feeling off about staying after what she had just told me.

"Oh, fancy. Looks like you're with Dean Smith today," she said, "I'll take you."

Again, we rode the elevator up, but this time we went up a couple more levels. When we stepped out, the floor was filled with large glass offices. She walked me down and into one of them, where we found the man from the elevator, sitting at a desk, typing on his computer. It must've just been a strange coincidence that his name was Dean... right?

Olivia walked up to his desk. "Hi, Mr. Smith."

"Oh, please, call me Dean." He smiled.

She smiled. "Well, this is Maddison, she will be interning with you today."

Dean smiled brightly at me. "Yeah, I think we met in the elevator yesterday. You'll have more fun today."

Olivia smiled. "Thanks, Mr. Smi— I mean Dean."

He nodded at her, and then she walked out. He stood up and moved one of his visitor chairs behind his desk, next to his chair, and then sat back down. "Here you go." He gestured for me to sit next to him.

I sat down next to him and could see that he was looking at a file about Paul on his computer.

I skimmed some of the information. "Oh my god, his retirement party was in only two weeks? That's so sad."

"Oh, oops." He clicked off of it quickly. "Sorry about that."

I laughed nervously. "No, it's fine. I probably shouldn't have been looking."

"You were on the tech floor yesterday, right?" Dean asked.

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Did you meet him?" he asked.

I nodded. "Yeah, he seemed... very stressed out." I shrugged. "But I don't know if that was how he always was or not."

A moment later, there was a knock on the door, and we looked up to see Ian walking in. He looked different, his hair was combed back, he was nervous and fidgety. The most significant thing was that he was wearing the pale yellow polo that everyone in the Tech Support area was wearing. It was only strange because the day before, he was wearing a casual t-shirt and an unbuttoned button-up. He seemed like the type of guy who didn't really care what other people thought, so I didn't know what had changed.

"Hi. Ian, is it?" Dean gestured for him to walk in more. "Yeah, come on in. Yesterday you filled out a 445-T and no problem, just a few errors when we did your switch over to Vista. So I'm sure you're used to filling out the dash-Rs, am I right?"