The cool breeze flowed up the inside of Taylor’s robe and tickled her loins. She shivered and pulled the robe tighter. She flicked her cigarette butt off the balcony and watched it drop the seven stories to the ground while lighting a second cigarette. She grinned at her victory – she had successfully lit one cigarette before the other hit the ground.

“Come to bed.” Alexis said. She stood in the sliding glass door – the only window in the apartment – hugging herself to keep warm.

Taylor shook her head without looking at Alexis and pointed to the small patio table with an open bottle of whiskey. Alexis rolled her eyes and stepped out onto the cold balcony. She poured herself a shot and capped the bottle. She coughed several times from the alcohol burning the back of her throat. “What the hell is this, paint thinner?”

“Pretty much.” Taylor said. She grabbed the bottle from the table and took a long swig.

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“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” Taylor crawled off of the lumpy futon mattress and clawed her way to the desk phone. The pulled the handset off the receiver by the cord, which caused it to bounce off her head in a painful thud. She rubbed her head and winced while answering the call. “Operations.” Taylor sighed. “No that server is down until Monday. …No, I can’t transfer you to my supervisor; she will be in on Monday. …You can file a complaint with the operations department, when it opens on Monday. …Yes, I know exactly who you are – a salesman who can’t remember their client’s names.” Taylor pulled the receiver off the desk to hang up the call.

Taylor laid on the floor, her eyes closed and her body threatened to fall back asleep. She pulled herself up, sat against the side of the desk, and took a second to look herself and her girlfriend over. Taylor was completely nude save for a pair of chained together ankle cuffs. Alexis was still asleep. The kitty ear headband had fallen off her head, and Nicole had graciously removed the tail plug before she left.

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“What do we actually do all weekend?” Alexis asked, as she spun in her chair. The cage was as loud and inhospitable as it ever was, but Alexis could tune it out better than Taylor did. She had a laptop laid out on the desk, ostensibly so she could do her support job, but no one was going to call in on a weekend.

Taylor sat on the other side of the desk, her forehead resting against the desk. “We try not to go slowly insane waiting for something in the racks to explode.”

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Alexis looked between the phone and her girlfriend. “What the hell were you thinking?”

To Taylor’s surprise, Alexis didn’t sound angry. “I don’t know, I don’t think I was thinking.”

Alexis rolled her eyes and scrolled through the photos that Taylor’s boss had sent her. The phone chirped with another incoming MMS. “She keeps sending more. How many did she take?”

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The hum was incessant and deafening. Taylor hated everything about on-call duty. She hated sleeping in the cage, she hated being tied to the room, and most importantly, she hated that she lost her weekends to it. The only possible upside could be she was totally alone in the building.

Half an hour after the ops team left that day, she turned off the alarm on the emergency exit, and stepped outside for cigarette. “Remind me why I applied to work here?” She sent a text to her girlfriend.

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