I took a brief inventory. My nose was bloody, my lip was split, and I was sore all over from the blows. But, everything worked and I wasn’t in the k...nd of pain that says ‘you need a doctor’. “I’m fine,” I said through the terrycloth towel.“Where are your parents?”“They are at home,” I lied. I didn’t want to have more trouble, and I didn’t want to have to explain my family life to a stranger. “I can make it home, I will be fine.”“Okay,” the man said as he turned at a woman’s call. “I need to go,. I never told her any of this, of course. It was becoming an obsession, but one I held in my own mind, and in my own bedroom. I savored every sight and scent and touch of her, but I never let on that they meant more to me than they should.The afternoon when I found out the world was ending, I was at a coffee shop downtown on a lunch break. Like everyone in the place, the sudden breaking coverage of the President’s press conference stunned me. Some people rushed out, others made hurried, frantic. Everyone comes in early so he can say hello.' As he made his way around the cubicles shaking hands with everyone the only people he seemed to spend any time talking to were the managers and team leaders. Being that I was a team leader meant that he would probably want to talk to me. I was a little nervous about talking to him. I was confident that I knew my job but I was afraid that I might say something wrong and make a fool of myself.By the time the four men had worked their way to my cubicle. It was 8:00, more than a little too late for her taste. Their bed was the one closer to the door, so she was also facing the naked bodies of Josh and Akilah, now laying spooned together, Akilah in front of Josh. They looked similarly content to last night, but with a bit less of the glow. Jill swung her legs out of bed and stood up and stretched, then touched her toes, cracking her back in the process.She then padded over on the thin but soft carpet to the drapes, and threw them wide open,.