Day One Hundred and Forty-six: [UNFINISHED]

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”
-Mary Sarton

The office party had been going in full swing for about an hour, and Dorian Gale was moments away from bursting into song. To do so, he knew, would mean annihilation – the utter unmaking of everything he had been prior to that moment. But he could feel it within him. Right now, Cecily Beaudin was up on the stage, staring intently at the karaoke machine and singing an off-key version of a Mariah Carey song. Prior to that, there had been a team that massacred Bon Jovi, and one passable attempt at Neil Diamond.

Every singer made Dorian’s palms itch and his jaw clench, and he knew that soon there would be nothing for it but to get on stage and show these people how it was done.

But could he really?

Dorian was the head of human resources at the Windmoore imprint of Lamarck Publishing, and he had done everything in his power since assuming the role of chief of HR to be nothing but business. He was determined to let his subordinates be touchy and/or feely as their needs required, but he would be the rock upon which the waves of disorder crashed. He had seen how the employees exploited the sympathies of previous HR chiefs, using lies and deception and manipulation to get what they wanted. Sick days forgiven, more vacation time, those were the little things. Mediating arbitrary disputes between co-workers, about who was making too much noise or who was stealing whose food from the break room. There was nothing too small or petty or pathetic that they wouldn’t create some grand drama to lay at the feet of the director of human resources.

Sooner or later, the employees always won. There were just too many of them. They ganged up on Dorian’s predecessors and wore them down until the good men they had been were reduced to spineless shells of humanity.

Not Dorian, though.

Officiousness was his watchword.

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STORY SUSPENDED BY AUTHOR
REASON: This just isn't happening. I have a character who could be interesting, but he's just sitting there like a gutted fish. Maybe he needs more time to grow. Or ferment. Or whatever.