Spiderweb - 140 Mysterious

She entered the elevator and began her descent to the first floor where her secretary would most certainly be pacing back and forth in nervousness. She was late to the meeting after all with a company widely known to the world. It was a meeting she had mostly been looking forward to but like every other event that happened in the asylum, she didn’t have a strong regard for it.

She went because it was needed for the asylum, not because it was needed for herself or her, ‘family.’ could she even call them that? It’s been long since they stopped being ‘family’ but rather strangers with a bond that ran through their blood.

The term family could only be used on a group of people in a family line that experiences a close bonding and therefore use that to carry on when they faced difficulties, together.

The more she thought about it, the less suited her ‘family’ was to be a family. There was not even a bond or facing the events that came their way together. They faced their events separately, all equally capable of going their own way and knowing the way to react to any unexpected situation that might come their way.

At the very least they were strangers from the same bloodline that were bound to a place together.

‘Yea…’ Mrs. Cloud thought to herself as she settled on that definition. ‘That makes a lot more sense.’

The elevator doors pulled open and she stepped out of them carefully, making sure not to make any sound as she got out. There was no need for her to do that anyway. Her steps were always quiet. They were always hushed and quick stable steps that got her to exactly where she needed to be in record time.

It was something she had learned to do over the years.

Mrs. Cloud looked up and locked eyes directly with her secretary who towered over her with a very upset expression.

“How many minutes?” Mrs. Cloud asked.

“20 minutes,” Her secretary replied.

“Well gosh isn’t that a lot of time?” Mrs. Cloud smiled. She walked down the hallway and towards the wide, big doors at the end of the hallway.

Her bodyguards walked closely behind her, guarding her against anything that might just run out of the corner and impale her with a sharp object on their quest out of the asylum. It wasn’t an overreaction on their part. It had happened before.

A dashing patient with a sharp knife in their hand ran out the moment that she had stepped into the hallways on her way out the door. They had run towards her and strongly impaled her with the knife, early hitting her vital point.

The person was allowed to escape. Afterall, they wouldn’t live if they made it out of their assigned buildings.

Not only was the asylum in the middle of a heath, it was the dead of winter.

It had been unfortunate. Yes, very unfortunate to the family of the patient and the asylum when on the next day on her drive out of the asylum to a meeting in the city, they found the body.

It was lying limply on the side of the road like roadkill. Skin blue eyes wide open staring at the sky and hands frozen shut into a fist.

She remembered chuckling that day when she found the body. She also remembered the strange stares her bodyguard and secretary had given her when she did. She ordered them to lift up the body and hefted it up into the trunk of the car. A thought had run through her mind as she watched the limp body being placed in the trunk and chuckled again.

‘Now you wish you never left that hell, don’t you?” she smiled mockingly.

The car had made a U-turn and returned home.

News of the event had spread throughout the entire asylum a few minutes after they returned. They were no more dashing patients with knives in their hands.

“Mrs. Cloud, where were you?” the secretary asked.

Mrs. Cloud continued to the big doors, not a falter in her steps. She had expected that question after all.

“To what business to you does my location relate?” she retorted.

“What?” the secretary asked again.

“Ah.. sorry. I was supposed to simplify the sentence,” Mrs. Cloud smiled. “I meant to say, why would you need to know of my location?”

The secretary paused for a moment, questioning her entire existence.

“Is that not the purpose of my job?” she asked.

“Since when were you a security guard? More likely, since when did you get hired at the FBI?” Mrs. Cloud returned.

“What?” the secretary muttered.

“The FBI,” Mrs. Cloud replied, finally reaching the big doors at the end of the hallway. “Those are the only people that I really know of that love to poke their noses in my business. Them and someone else whose name will not be mentioned.”

The secretary was a bit taken aback by Mrs. Cloud’s comment. He didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in her at all. She was casually dismissing a question that it had taken the secretary months to even bring it to her tongue, let alone say it aloud.

“Timekeeping it part of my job, madam,” The secretary replied, “I need to know the location of the person at all times because I need to help them get to their destination on time and ready for any meeting that they had that day.”

“Then time keep,” Mrs. Cloud replied as she looked up at the big doors.

They were locked. They were always locked after the stabbing incident.

“I should know of your positions then?” the secretary asked, her eyes shining brightly. She felt like she had leveled up in closeness with her madam. She had always wanted to have a close bond with the one she worked for.

“No. You can still time keep without having to know of my location,” Mrs. Cloud replied, to which the secretary’s eyes fell in disappointment.

She stood back and watched as Mr. Cloud opened the doors with a little silver key in her hand that she had pulled out the bun in her hair.

She continued to watch for a moment before gathering up the courage to ask more. “Why exactly are you so silent about your business, ma’am?”

Mrs. Cloud paused as she pulled open the big doors. She turned to her secretary and smiled. “Have you ever thought about the reasons why someone might want to keep their presence or location hidden from another?”

The secretary stared back at her blankly. “To hide from someone?”

Mrs. Cloud let out a sigh. “Hm, that can be one of the reasons why. Maybe I should restate my question.” She turned around and glanced at her secretary for a moment before turning back to the door. “Have you thought about why I would want to keep my privacy?”

The secretary was about to speak before she realized she had nothing to say.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about it, it was that she hadn’t thought of it from the perspective of the person she worked with.

Mrs. Cloud turned to look at her secretary, a smile forming on her face. “Oh don’t tell me you were trying to tell me about sharing information with you when you can’t even understand why it’s hidden in the first place? With what right do you think you deserve to know what I’m doing then?”

The secretary looked away with a flushed expression on their face.

Mrs. Cloud stared down at her for a moment before smiling as she began her way out of the building. “My privacy is my safe haven.”

The secretary turned to face Mrs. Cloud.

“Think of it less like withholding information but keeping yourself from people and more like what’s keeping you afloat,” Mrs. Cloud muttered as the cold wind slashed at her porcelain skin.

The secretary stared up at Mrs. Cloud blankly, trying to comprehend what she had said. For some reason, her tone sounded off. It didn’t fluctuate. It never did, but it sounded a bit off on her tongue. Like something sentimental had been said on a stoic face.

There was something that always seemed unsaid on her face. Like she was always withholding come information, expressions, emotions behind her cold words, and other times it was like she was born to be a rock. Her smiles were pure and kind but they never meant what they came across as. She was intense and extremely frightening most of the time she wasn’t trying to do anything. The secretary narrowed her eyes. It had been her first time working with such a rigid person.

She was mysterious.

Mrs. Cloud caught her gaze and turned back to face the front of her. Her eyes traveled up to the sky and she smiled at the clouds. “Isn’t such a cold wind for an autumn day?”