No Mercy!

OMG, just think about how that's gonna be.

People will be taking the piss out of you left right and centre.

As for me, I'll torment you however and whenever I want, and you'll be powerless to stop it.

I'll be forever cockteasing you, naturally, and plus all this other fun stuff too.

Like, we're in the office one day and ... let me see ... I'd like to make a private phone call, I say, this gorgeous guy I slept with last night, can you put your fingers in your ears please. Unless of course you want to hear me telling him what a great fuck he was. OMG he was too! We went at it like rabbits. You wouldn't believe what we did to each other. It was divine!

Ok, now go collect my skirts from the cleaners, there's a good boy. Here's the ticket. Don't mind paying for it, do you. Cool. Hey, and take them back to my place while you're at it. Grab a cab and leave them with the concierge. I'll text him to expect you. Make sure to tip him.

Don't be too long though, I need you back by lunch-time with the lunch. Sushi here in the room. Bring a lot because a few of the guys are coming. At least six. Well what can I say, I'm popular!

Bring some chairs in too so everyone can sit down. You can dish out the food then piss off somewhere and leave us to it.

No, second thoughts, you can stick around. I'm feeling mean today. Feel like demeaning you in front of all these guys.

Like, you know how I made you feed me when we had sushi before? You found that a bit humiliating, right? Ok, so we'll do that again today, this time with the guys watching.

I'll be perched on my desk, showing my legs off, flirting around with everybody, and you'll be stood in the corner holding a plate with my lunch on it. Whenever I want some I'll shout "yo sushi!" and you scamper over and pop a piece into my mouth. Then back to your corner till the next time.

It will be a real giggle for the guys, seeing that. Bet they'll really get into it. Knowing them, they definitely will. They'll start shouting "yo sushi!" and expecting you to feed them too!

But when they do that, sweetie, you tell them to go to hell. Tell them you serve Mercy and nobody else. Got that? Those exact words are what I want the world and their uncle to hear.

Say it now, in fact.

SAY IT.

****

As Merciana Melendez enters the UNICORP building for her first day at work, her turbo-charged mind flashes forward to how things will pan out here over the next few months.

Certain scenes are spooling out vividly for her:

With the 'boss' completely under her thumb, Mercy turns up when she feels like it, and when she does she lazes around and pleases herself. Mr Dumbar has to do his own filing and typing, or whatever.

It's the least of his worries.

Mercy implements the plan that was detailed in the note that she didn't write. Not in every single detail, but pretty much. David Dumbar comes to realize that hiring Mercy Melendez is the single biggest mistake of his life. She is utterly destroying him.

Apart from that, Mercy just floats around at work having fun. She has herself a ball.

She flirts outrageously with lots of the men on the fifth floor.

She even goes out with one. The cute looking boy who'd whistled at her on interview day, Mercy hooks up with him. It makes the others so fucking jealous! They hated his guts!

The boy has a steady girlfriend, but that doesn't matter once Mercy indicates that he can take her out for a drink.

Mercy tells him to lose the girlfriend if he genuinely wants to go out. She suggests that he do it by text and show it to her to prove it. He does so straightaway. The poor infatuated boy junks his girlfriend of two years like a hot penny for Mercy.

Mercy returns the favour. After a handful of dates in ruinously expensive bars and clubs, boy paying, and tons of flirting and snogging and dancing, plus some heavy canoodling in taxis, she abruptly dumps him.

"Sorry, babe, it's just not working out." She imparts this news as they are hanging out together in the romantically lit 'smooching zone' of a trendy establishment called the Blue Lagoon. Mercy is clad in a tiny red leather dress and has just given the about-to-be 'ex' the snog of his life. The boy's face is a picture.

Mercy causes a massive general stir around the office. She is far and away the most gorgeous girl that these guys have ever seen and she knows it. The incendiary outfits she wears only adds to the commotion. Her impact on the men is oh so obvious. The yearning looks follow her wherever she goes. It is as though she is constantly bathing in a warm pool of male adoration and sexual desire. Mercy loves the feeling. The skirts become a little shorter, her tops ever more revealing, lol.

Most of the guys lust and drool from afar. But if a guy is cute enough, and when she can be bothered, Mercy likes to be a tease. She will grant some flirty attention which is designed purely to inflame and feed his passion. She will lead the boy on wickedly sometimes, whip the poor sap into a near frenzy!

Adam in accounts, for example, he really gets the 'treatment'. Mercy keeps him dangling on a string the whole time. Adam is always thinking that he might get lucky but he never quite does.

She has several others on a string too. Mercy cunningly and maliciously plays them off against each other. She delights in having them competing for her favours, and the boys oblige. They fight like dogs over Mercy.

It royally pisses off the girls at the office, of course, seeing the boys they liked flock adoringly around the gorgeous newcomer.

There's a distinct absence of female pulchritude on the fifth floor. It's a mixture of the ordinary and the unfortunate. Mercy Melendez stands out like a blazing beacon and the envy and resentment of the other girls is palpable.

Mercy relishes this. She loves to lord it over girls who aren't pretty. She singles one out for persecution, just as a fun thing to do.

Mercy selects the ugliest girl on the floor, a disgustingly obese blob in accounts called Gloria Gubbins, who Mercy has sussed is also timid and slow-witted, is almost devoid of personality or self-confidence, and she sets about tormenting her.

Adam sits with Gloria, the two of them share a table. Adam is only medium-to-cute to Mercy's eyes, but an abomination like Gloria Gubbins was bound to secretly fancy him something rotten, she reckons.

Perfect!

Mercy makes a habit of going over there in her slinkiest dinkiest miniskirt and perching cross-legged on the desk between them. "Hi guys," she will grin, and then proceed to flirt madly with a drooling Adam. She gets quite steamy with the boy. For example, slipping a shoe off, resting her foot on his chair-rest, letting him massage it while they are chatting. Adam can barely believe his luck and is soon in love.

It's all conducted right next to the poor excluded fatty, Mercy's calculating intention being to taunt said fatty with how fab life is for a girl who's slim and gorgeous and popular. Really rub her nose in it.

It works a dream. Having Mercy there fooling around with Adam makes Gloria feel like shit. The gooseberry stares at her screen, pretending furiously to be concentrating on something, but it's obvious that she's stewing, lol.

Mercy plays with this gratifying situation. She turns to Gloria every so often and tosses her a patronizing crumb of conversation, forces her to contribute a little, makes the scenario a three-way for a short time, before returning to the main business of prickteasing Adam. This semi-inclusion makes it worse for Gloria, of course. She hates it when Mercy comes over.

Especially when Mercy works in snide remarks about her, bitchy little cracks about her weight, her appearance, what she's wearing. Adam chuckles sycophantically at the comments. Mercy is being cruel and heartless, and Gloria is clearly upset by it, but he laughs because this is Mercy Melendez and like every other guy on the fifth floor he fantasizes about being between her legs. Adam has hope too. He thinks he's her favourite! He makes Mercy giggle with his own nasty digs to and about Gloria. Adam tries hard to come up with good ones. Anything to amuse the gorgeous Mercy Melendez.

Mercy now casts her spell over others in the vicinity.

Accounts is a compact little group, there's three other guys and two other girls who work there, and when she visits, Mercy likes to interact with all of them. She jokes and gossips with the girls, being nice as pie to them, and she flirts with the men. Not the way she does with Adam, but a little. And a 'little' from her is enough to get them bubbling, as she well knows.

Mercy has soon turned them all into fans.

Which means that when they cotton on to how Mercy is always teasing and tormenting Gloria, they don't defend the poor girl. Quite the opposite, they join with Mercy and start teasing Gloria too. They rip the piss out of her something chronic. Even the girls get involved, thankful that Mercy is targeting Gloria and not them. The unfortunate Gloria Gubbins thus becomes the butt of all her colleagues.

It's not so terrible when Mercy isn't there, not great but just about tolerable, but when Mercy comes over the atmosphere changes instantly and it's open season on Gloria.

Mercy gets Adam to text her when Gloria is away from her desk. When she receives one, if she is free and feels like doing it, she immediately goes over to accounts and sits in Gloria's seat and starts holding forth with everyone. When Gloria comes back, looking to reclaim her place, Mercy winks at people and keeps talking away as if Gloria doesn't exist. Gloria makes these kind of pathetic little signs and noises that she needs her chair back, but in vain. Mercy makes her stand there like a lemon for ages before she deigns to notice. "Oh, sorry Gloria," she drawls eventually, gurning around at everybody, before getting up and leaving.

Then Mercy says to drop the texts. She has a better plan. What happens now is that Mercy marches over and simply orders Gloria to vacate so that she can sit down and chew the fat with all her lovely new friends in accounts. Gloria cravenly complies. She gets up and allows Mercy to commandeer her chair and desk space. She then hovers pitifully behind Mercy while Mercy chats away to people. Gloria's reputation amongst her colleagues, already low, takes a further dive with this. They find it astonishing at first, hadn't realized quite what a sad character she was, and then they find it deeply funny.

Mercy starts referring to Gloria as FUG, short for 'Fat Ugly Gloria', when she's over in accounts. It gets a big laugh and catches on. Gloria never knows for certain what it stands for, nobody tells her and she's too afraid to ask, but she fears that she does and her guess is spot on. It morphs into 'Fuggy'. Mercy takes to calling her this to her face and so the others follow suit. Mercy then gleefully spreads the name around the whole of the fifth floor. Coming from the queen bee, the moniker sticks and is taken up generally. 'Gloria' is now history. She is Fuggy. That is her official name on the fifth floor. It even becomes known on other floors too.

The people in accounts regale the loudly giggling Mercy with a steam of 'Fuggy' jokes, material that's been worked on for her benefit. They are keen to please her. Mercy likes tormenting the fattie and they like Mercy coming over. The sick banter flows freely whenever she visits. People joust to tell the best Fuggy joke, competing to see who can make Mercy laugh the most. Employees from other areas are known to wander over and listen, for a cheap thrill, when all this is going on. Life is getting worse and worse for Gloria Gubbins. Mercy has turned the poor girl into an object of ridicule for the entire office.

And OMG it was so easy to do, thinks Mercy. The stupid girl truly is a horror show and, no doubt because of that, painfully introverted. The fabled 'jolly fat giant' Gloria Gubbins is not. She has zero friends in the office. She is also one of those inadequate types who are utterly incapable of standing up for themselves. She doesn't have 'learning difficulties' but it is almost like she did. Gloria's isolation and defencelessness empowers Mercy. So does the fact that Mercy herself has accumulated so many ardent admirers around the office. She knows she can victimize Gloria however she wants to. There would be no repercussions. Mercy is impregnable.

The Fuggy thing really snowballs. The abject girl actually ends up answering to it, something Mercy finds particularly hilarious and has lots of sport with. She casually tortures poor Gloria by calling out "Oh Fuggy?" in a sing-song needling voice as she's approaching, forcing Gloria to look up, whereby Mercy will chuckle in derision and say "Nothing!" or "Just checking!" or the like, triggering appreciative snickering all round. Mercy might then turn around and walk away, mission accomplished, or she might hang around for a short while, simply to laugh at her victim. She will stand there, gazing at Gloria, saying nothing, just laughing at the poor thing. This has the others chortling too, of course. Everyone stares at Fuggy and has a good old belly laugh. Depending on her mood, Mercy might stick around for longer. In which case she will snap her fingers imperiously, which means "Right, Fuggy, you know the drill. Up you get," and will settle down to chat and tyrannize the poor creature some more.

Tyranny is definitely the right word for what Mercy is inflicting on poor Gloria Gubbins. For example, she will kick off by asking if anybody has any new Fuggy jokes they'd like to try out. There are always a few, the men usually, although the girls do come out with a cracker now and again. Mercy doesn't bother doing her own Fuggy jokes, she can't be bothered, but she is very happy to let them be performed for her. Mercy likes to swivel in her seat and observe the dumb suffering target while the horrid jokes are being told. She likes to study Gloria's reactions.

After that, she might playfully titillate the men by chatting about how Simon, or whoever, had taken her to a really buzzing club the night before, and how she'd worn a sexy new dress, this 'to die for' little purple number, that she reckons looked great on her. She'll go into great detail, tell them about the club, the music, what she had to drink, just exactly how skimpy and revealing this dress of hers was, how loads of cute boys were checking her out all night but she was with Simon so, you know, quelle dommage and all that. She will break off every now and again and turn to Gloria, grin bitchily, ask her if she knows the club, ask if she's bought any hot new outfits lately, what does Fuggy do when she's out on the town with a hunky boy and swarms of other dishy guys try to hit on her, stuff like that, which always leads to much guffawing from everyone. People start to chip in and the general conversation proceeds along the lines that Mercy has established. It's different each time but it tends to have the same theme, how Mercy Melendez is an utter peach of a girl, whereas Fuggy Gubbins is a piece of lard.

Mercy just loves visiting accounts. Sometimes she'll hang out there for an hour or more, wallowing in the compliments on her stunning looks, enjoying the insults being heaped on her poor torture-toy. The toy never fights back. It can't. Because Gloria Gubbins knows that Mercy Melendez is so immeasurably superior to her in every conceivable way. Not only is she devastatingly beautiful and sexy, she is vivacious and smart and funny too. Mercy has star quality. Charisma. Everything about Mercy Melendez intimidates Gloria into total submission.

It has become a standard and accepted part of fifth floor life, how Mercy Melendez "the hot bitch who tortures old Dumbar" also has "poor Fuggy Gubbins in accounts" on a spit and is slowly sadistically roasting her. Everyone sniggers about it.

Well not quite everyone. Fuggy doesn't. She just lowers her head and tries to hide her distress when Mercy is tormenting her. Occasionally she can't and she has to lumber off to the toilets for a cry. Mercy adores it when this happens. The more Gloria shows her anguish at being horribly bullied, the more Mercy loves meting it out. She is evil and relentless.

Gloria exists in a state of constant hyper-stress. Either Mercy has come over already to ridicule and tease and insult her, plus probably roped in lots of others to join the party, or she hasn't yet and Gloria is sat at her desk consumed by the awful anticipation of the next visit.

Every time Mercy emerges from her office, Gloria looks across and hopes and prays that her tormentress will be headed elsewhere. The relief when this happens is almost as great as the lurching dread she feels in the pit of her stomach when she sees that Mercy is coming her way. The relief never lasts long. A few seconds at most. She knows that it won't be too long before Mercy fancies another little trip to accounts. Gloria's only hope is that Mercy gets bored with it, but there's no sign of that whatsoever.

There is no respite for the increasingly traumatized girl. Her life at work has become one of wall-to-wall misery. She is close to clinical depression. All because of Mercy Melendez. Gloria finds it hard to sleep at nights. Finds it hard to eat. She struggles to force herself to come in each day. She definitely wouldn't if she didn't need the money. Trouble is, she does, and she knows she couldn't get another job in a hurry. Not looking the way she does. So she's stuck with this. Poor Gloria Gubbins is being cold-bloodedly ruined by the beautiful and wicked Mercy Melendez, but she's trapped. All she can do is spend more and more time weeping in the toilets.

Mercy intuits most of this. She knows that Gloria both hates her and is terrified and in awe of her. She is deliciously aware that the poor girl probably cannot now think of anything except Mercy's constant, brutal bullying. Mercy is systematically stripping Gloria of the little self-esteem she has. She is turning Gloria into something less than human. That is her intention. And Mercy is doing it simply because she can. She'd never get away with this shit if she wasn't so beautiful and sexy. It's a deeply pleasant and satisfying thought. What power! What an ego trip! What a buzz!

She plays capricious little games with Gloria, like the cat with a captive mouse.

Mercy will sometimes hit the floor and sashay towards accounts, Gloria sitting there quaking in trepidation, but then stop abruptly and turn around and go back to her room. Or she might deviate and go somewhere else. Or pull the double bluff even, whereby she makes like she's coming, seems to change her mind, then switches again and decides to visit after all! LOL. It destroys Gloria, when Mercy does this one.

Occasionally Mercy plomps herself on Gloria's desk and talks quietly and privately just to her. Gloria will be cowering in her seat and Mercy will perch on the desk and talk down to her. Literally and metaphorically. Maybe she just rags her a little about this and that. Her weight problem, her bad skin, the shapeless sack that she's wearing that day, whatever. Perhaps Mercy tells Gloria about some things in her own wardrobe, expensive designer items that her various boyfriends have been delighted to purchase for her because Mercy looks so ravishing in them. Bet you'd love to be able to wear stuff like that, Fuggy, wouldn't you, she'll say, just savouring being a mean and sarcastic bitch, loving how she can indulge herself in it whenever she wants.

One memorable afternoon she steals the chair and has Gloria squat down on the floor alongside her. Mercy then lazily stretches her legs out and rests them on poor Gloria while she teases her, and chats to various people who happen to be passing by. It causes plenty of ribald comment: