Written by: Rachel Marsh
Narrated by: Flora Montgomery
Tags: Humour Sci Fi Supernatural
Sasha had been dead for eleven years, three months and four days. This death is not an uncommon one, and each year millions of British experience a similar fatality –the office experience. Sasha finds herself in Hades with the cubical people who run in packs, and she befriends the modern Sisyphus doomed to photo copy a corporate responsibility manual, only to find at the end of the day it was the wrong document. Will Sasha continue to cope with being dead?
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Details
Through The Cracks In Cubicle Walls was added to Shortbread stories on Tuesday 9th June 2009, and has been accessed 1025 times. It's been read online 83 times. It's been downloaded as a PDF 35 times. It's been downloaded as an MP3 12 times. 5 members have added Through The Cracks In Cubicle Walls to their favourites. 5 members have added Rachel Marsh to their favourites.
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Reviews
| Editor's Pick › Like Rachel, I’m an expat here in Scotland, and I know the power of a good life upheaval. Maybe that’s why this line resonated so powerfully with me: ‘Death is always more comfortable than change.’ Rachel’s distanced, scientific narrator belies the passion undergirding this whole story, which is really a screed at heart. But a very funny screed. Fans of the movie ‘Office Space’ will recognize the setup, a faceless series of temporary walls forming cells to contain the office drones, while self-important middle-managers rule their little purgatory with bureaucratic zeal. But the real power here is in the fact that the protagonist, Sasha, is complicit in her own demise. The scene in the HR director’s office is heartbreaking, but I won’t give any spoilers here…
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Comments
The Art of the cubical observation... › I love how in this story you create your own mythology, so that Sascha can comfortably stand along side images of Lazerus and Persephone. The cubical people are a very frightening idea, an image you present well with devestating humour (if you get me) an ergonmic mouse amoung zealous office workers in Hades, funny and heart breaking. I love it. I also like your image when Sascha is packing her belongings for the movement to the 34th floor, a box is used with listed dimensions; like her mausoleum; very effective. A deceased life, a very interesting and intruiging story. I hope to see more.
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My sort of writing › I really enjoyed this (altho' not quite on Connoisseur's cultural level!) and identify completely with your style of writing. As a new member of Shortbread, I am struck by the need to have great titles to attract my reading, and this is one. Would like to see more of your writing.
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Quite Brilliant! › Just wanted to say I loved this! A very imaginative piece of writing and I could relate to it a LOT! Hope to hear more from you!
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| Thanks › I just want to say thanks to Erica for picking this out. I am so very chuffed that she likes it, and it's even more exciting that people get my humour. (Usually I'm just given a placating half smile.) Also thanks to Connoisseur who picked up on quite a few things I didn't think anyone would get. Wow. And finally, Eliza, that's a good point you have about where to start. It was originally a much longer piece, and now that it's been whittled down to a short story, the pace is different. Anyway, thanks everyone.
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Connoisseur › It's great how you wove Greek mythology into this piece. I also detect a hint of Dante's Inferno. Longface is Geryon, helping Sasha with her descent further into corporate hell, condemned there by CEO Minos. Very Marxist too; Sasha and her coworkers were a picture of alienated labor. I half expected her to go on a killing spree as in the classic tale of alienated labor, American Psycho. Interesting read.
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suggestion for an edit? › Hello, Rachel. Having enjoyed this, can I make a suggestion of a cut I think you might like to consider, for future ref of course. Consider starting the story at "On this particular day, a day like any other ..." I know that seems like a sudden dive right into the middle but I do believe what you're saying in the story would remain every bit as clear, possibly even more so. Just a thought, of course, but that's the point at which I started to engage with the writing so I thought I'd share that with you. So often, don't you find, the way we write our way into a story is like the essential booster rocket that gets a ship into orbit but which then, also essentially, must be jettisoned once we're aloft. How ungrateful the booster must think us, but its job is done and without it there would have been no story so perhaps not. Anyway, give it some thought and see what you think. With my best regards and encouraging thumbs up, Eliza
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