Angry Woman

Today’s post is based on a writing prompt I shared in a previous Daily Drafts & Dialogues post. Keep reading to see what I wrote, and to access more writing prompts.

What I wrote below is based on the following writing prompt: Write a scene in which a woman becomes enraged. Write the scene from her perspective. 

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She sat there completely motionless, silently seething, as he stood in front of the conference room steadily clicking from one slide to the next. 

He spoke loudly and proudly about each slide she had carefully designed, as if he was the one who had spent endless hours for the past two weeks painstakingly weaving their content together. As if he was the one who had missed his daughter's ballet recital and mother's doctor appointments, and skipped his best friend's baby shower, all in order to get the data on two of the 50 slides just right. As if he was the one who had stayed up well past midnight to talk to stakeholders on the other side of the globe more than twice about mundane things like a logo's color scheme and who was going to dominate each event in the next Olympics. As if… 

Oh, hell. Who was she kidding? She had seen this coming all along… hadn't she? If she was really being honest with herself?  

After the first week on the job, she had seen the warning signs, hadn't she? 

But she had chosen to ignore them. Because that's what she, and every other woman alive, had been conditioned to do when they were a new hire, no matter their experience or skills. The desire to be liked somehow always ended up trumping other important concerns and red flags. 

Had she really expected anything to be different this time? For him to be different this time? 

No. Of course not. Not really.

Ever since she started working for the man less than a year ago, he had shamelessly taken credit for most of her work without so much as a thank you or nod of recognition, especially in front of others. In fact, she swore after the time he unabashedly stole her sales strategy for their latest product that he even expected to take credit for her work ad infinitum, if she let him.

Well, not anymore. 

In that exact moment, she decided to change the course they were on permanently. No matter what she had to say or do. No matter what it took. 

Whether it was her sleep deprivation finally kicking in, the fact that her coffee had turned cold and she had just realized her top was on inside out, or that her bottled up rage was starting to surface from deep within her gut, she decided that she was done. Forever. She was done being his pushover, his lackey, his underpaid… was there even a title for what her current role had morphed into, which was certainly not what she had been hired to do? Probably nothing she'd want to willingly advertize on her résumé, that's for sure. 

“So, Sam, sorry to interrupt but can you please remind us of how you arrived at the data on that last slide? I’m sure everyone here would love to know the details.” Her voice was sweet and dripping with disdain, and only he noticed. 

“Sure,” he said with an artificial smile, “but I'm sure we can cover that at the end.” Then he continued on with the next slide. 

Just like that, he had dismissed her yet again, like she was the extraneous one in the room.

Her cheeks began to feel hot, her throat was closing up, and her clenched palms were starting to ache as her nails dug into them.

“What about the images on this slide?” She interrupted him again a few slides later, desperately needing an outlet for her boiling energy. “They're so intricate and well designed. Who is responsible for creating them?” Her voice sounded clipped and forced, as if a pressure valve inside of her was being slowly released.

“You sure have a lot of questions today, don't you, Dee?” He laughed a hearty laugh as he literally looked down on her where she sat at the center of the table. Then he directed his laughter toward the rest of the room so that they could join in his derision of her too, before adding, “How about we leave the less relevant questions about how pretty the pictures are for some other time?”

And that, that was the precise moment all the rage contained inside her whole body spewed forth. 

She stood up and…

[Write what happens next and share what you come up with in a subscriber chat thread below.] 

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© All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton and Creighton’s Compositions LLC. The above work is a piece of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Today’s Writing Prompt