Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Writing Prompt: Portuguese Dragons

A strange occurrence in downtown Lisbon last Friday had employees of a local electronics company assembling a human ladder to verify strange reports of a dragon in the area.
“When I got to work, the whole building was wrapped up in a tarp, like it was under construction!” declared Izabel Almieda, 36, a secretary at Radiolux, Lda. “I’ve worked here for seven years! Everything was just fine yesterday!” Almieda waited for several other employees to join her, and they stood on the street for an hour or two just watching the building. “Didn’t seem like there was anything wrong with it,” she added.
The office manger, Bernardo de Santiago, 45, arrived to find six people not working and immediately leaped into action. “I didn’t know what it was about any more than they did,” he explained as he sent a project manager and a production engineer hunting around the building for a ladder. “We had to see what was inside before I put in a call to the CEO, none of us could understand why we hadn’t been notified about anything [regarding the shut-down building].”
“My office is just down the hall from the maintenance room,” said Rosario Pereira, a production assistant. “They weren’t going to find a ladder outside, and I told Senhor de Santiago he was wasting his time.”
It turned out that Pereira was right, but de Santiago wasn’t just going to give up. He organized the assembled employees into a human ladder, and sent Almieda to the top to peek into a second story window. “Everything was burned inside,” Almieda reported, “like there was a fire. But Maria [Silva], who’s a secretary like me, lives just down the street, and she told me she hadn’t heard anything or seen anything last night.”
At around eleven thirty, a representative of the fire department arrived to explain the situation. “A dragon!” Pereira exclaimed. “Rubbish! Where’s the proof?” de Santiago was forced to give his employees the rest of the day off as he investigated further.
“I’ve heard office gossip that one of the boys down in payroll fancied himself a dragon hunter,” said de Santiago, “but I didn’t think that sort of thing would have any impact on his work. I guess I was wrong.” He went on to say that the employee in question would be held accountable for his actions.
“He’d better be!” Almieda insisted. “I’ve got mouths to feed!”
The Radiolux Dragon is an ongoing investigation by both the fire department, police, and Radiolux executives. Updates on this interesting occurrence will appear in this periodical as they become available to reporters.
Writing Prompt #253

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