One ebook. Many personalities. A whole lot of unfortunate endings.
Halloween is the perfect time for a little mischief, a touch of the macabre, and a reminder that even the most ordinary day at school can take a decidedly unexpected turn.
So, from Mrs. Office Lady, consider this your Halloween treat: a peek inside my new ebook, She Died Doing What She Loved.
Mrs. Office Lady has spent years navigating the daily chaos of school office life. She has handled paperwork, managed teachers, battled office equipment, and tried to keep everything running smoothly. But as it turns out, surviving the school day isn’t always guaranteed!
In this collection of darkly humorous short stories, Mrs. Office Lady meets her end in a variety of spectacularly unfortunate ways. The fun lies not only in the freak accidents themselves, but in the many different versions of Mrs. Office Lady who manage to get themselves into such predicaments.
Meet the many faces of Mrs. Office Lady
Mrs. Office Lady isn’t just one woman. She’s a whole collection of personalities, each with her own special talents, quirks, and fatal flaws.
The Prim and Proper Mrs. Office Lady
Old school to her very core, she’s the keeper of office traditions and the self-appointed guardian of proper procedure. She spends her days tsk-tsking at teachers who fail to follow the rules, shake their heads at modern methods, or dare to do things differently. In her world, there’s a right way to do everything—and heaven help anyone who gets it wrong.
The Do-It-All Mrs. Office Lady
Why delegate when you can do everything yourself? This Mrs. Office Lady takes the weight of the entire school on her shoulders. No task is too small, no responsibility too great, and no request can go unanswered. She volunteers before anyone else has a chance, takes on jobs that aren’t hers, and is perpetually astonished that nobody appreciates just how much she does.
The Beautiful-but-Befuddled Mrs. Office Lady
Think Carol Burnett’s Mrs. Wiggins: a very attractive woman whose looks are considerably more developed than her common sense. She’s charming, impeccably put together, and always ready to bat her eyelashes at a problem she cannot quite understand. She may not know what’s going on, but she looks fabulous while things go terribly wrong.
The Distracted, Ten-Things-at-Once Mrs. Office Lady
This Mrs. Office Lady is flying in every direction at once. Her mind races ahead while her hands are busy with something else, and she’s always halfway through one task when another catches her attention. She answers the phone while sorting paperwork, rushes down the hall with something she forgot to deliver, and remembers three more things she should have done along the way. Somewhere in the middle of all that activity, something is bound to go wrong.
The Young and Excited Mrs. Office Lady
Fresh-faced, enthusiastic, and bursting with ideas, this version approaches every school day as if it’s the beginning of a wonderful new adventure. She wants to help, impress everyone, and prove that she’s the perfect addition to the school community. Unfortunately, enthusiasm and good judgment don’t always arrive together.
And then there’s the Old Hippie Mrs. Office Lady.
Peace, love, and positive energy are her guiding principles. She’s a devotee of feng shui, believes the universe is constantly sending messages, and sees nothing wrong with bringing a little bohemian spirit into the school office. Her Birkenstocks, flowing skirts, and treasured memories of the Grateful Dead are essential parts of her identity. She’s determined to preserve the past, even when the present is trying to tell her something important.
And that brings us to today’s Halloween treat. Our old hippie Mrs. Office Lady is about to discover that the universe doesn’t always send the signs we expect. Sometimes, what looks like inspiration is simply a very bad idea waiting to happen.
Settle in, enjoy the story, and remember: when it comes to school office safety, sensible shoes and a closed window may be more useful than positive energy.
Blinded by the Light
Mrs. Office Lady had always believed that the universe communicated through signs. Horoscopes, moon phases, the occasional feather on the sidewalk—she paid attention to all of it. After all, the universe had a way of nudging people toward their destiny, provided they were sufficiently enlightened to recognize the message.
That morning, her horoscope had promised an unexpected opportunity for creative expression. Mrs. Office Lady took this very seriously. She brushed the crumbs from her avocado crisps, which she relied upon to sustain her energy throughout the workday, and adjusted the strap of her bohemian sling bag. Her long gypsy skirt swished around her ankles as she gathered a stack of school bus route signs from her desk. The signs needed laminating, and the laminator, inconveniently, lived on the third floor in the faculty room.
With her Birkenstocks clacking against the polished hallway floor, she set off toward the stairwell, mentally reviewing the day’s cosmic possibilities.
She had nearly reached the lobby when the newly updated art display boards stopped her in her tracks.
The fall course of study was folk art, and the children had produced an impressive collection of handmade treasures. There were painted wooden spoons, braided rugs, paper quilt squares, and enough macramé to furnish a small commune. Mrs. Office Lady gazed upon the display with the reverence of a pilgrim arriving at a sacred shrine.
Then she saw the fifth graders’ paracord friendship dolls.
Something stirred deep within her, a memory rising from the fog of time like incense from a long-forgotten peace rally.
It was the summer of 1995. The friend group had reunited for what would be their final Grateful Dead concert, and Mrs. Office Lady could still recall the excitement of those days when the world seemed full of endless possibility. She had grown up trailing her parents from one campground and commune to another, a child of devoted Jerry Garcia disciples. Though she was too young to remember the original Summer of Love, she had inherited its essential philosophy: peace, love, personal freedom, and a healthy suspicion of anyone who wore a necktie.
Her Auntie Moonbeam had given her a paracord friendship doll for her fifth birthday, and she had treasured it ever since. The doll had survived countless moves, questionable relationships, several questionable hairstyles, and decades of spiritual reinvention. It remained one of the few possessions she carried everywhere, along with her concert tickets from that final Dead show.
A brilliant idea bloomed in her mind.
Why merely laminate school bus routes when she could create something meaningful? Something that combined the innocence of childhood, the enduring spirit of friendship, and the transcendent beauty of a bygone musical era?
She hurried back to her office, rummaged through her boho sling bag, and retrieved the treasured tickets from her wallet. Their faded edges and softened creases testified to the passage of time, but to Mrs. Office Lady, they were priceless artifacts. She pressed them against her chest for a moment, allowing the vibrations of 1995 to wash over her, then set off for the third floor once more.
The faculty room was her favorite place in the entire building. Originally the attic of the old school, it had been transformed into a multipurpose space with oversized windows that stretched from two feet above the floor nearly to the ceiling. The windows flooded the room with sunlight and offered a panoramic view of the school’s entrance and flowerbeds below.
Of course, the room also possessed an unmistakable atmosphere of accumulated frustration. Decades of staff meetings, broken copiers, budget cuts, and administrative announcements had left their energetic residue clinging to the walls. Mrs. Office Lady was convinced that the room was plagued by bad juju, and she frequently recommended sage, crystals, and improved furniture placement as possible remedies.
The copier, she had long insisted, belonged beside the largest window. Its position was essential to the room’s feng shui, allowing the machine to benefit from the free flow of natural light and positive energy. Anyone who suggested moving it was met with the sort of pity normally reserved for people who had never heard of chakras.
She reached the third floor, switched on the laminator, and then stopped.
The bus route signs were still on her desk downstairs.
For an ordinary person, this would have meant a trip back to the office. For Mrs. Office Lady, however, it presented an opportunity to demonstrate the superior efficiency of a truly enlightened mind. The laminator needed several minutes to warm up. Surely that was enough time to copy her concert tickets and retrieve the forgotten signs.
She placed the tickets on the copier glass, smoothing them carefully with her fingertips. She couldn’t bear the thought of lowering the lid and creasing the fragile reminders of her youth. Instead, she would hold them flat herself.
Before beginning, she crossed to the window and opened it wide. The stale air drifted outward, carrying with it, she hoped, a few decades’ worth of faculty-room negativity. A gentle breeze stirred the papers on the counter and lifted the edges of her skirt. Satisfied that the room’s spiritual balance had been restored, she returned to the copier.
The tickets lay beneath her fingers, their faded lettering still legible. She could almost hear the music, feel the crowd swaying, and remember the carefree days when she had believed life would always be an endless road trip with no particular destination.
She smiled and pressed the green Start button.
The copier sprang to life.
A brilliant band of light shot across the glass, illuminating the tickets beneath her hands. Mrs. Office Lady knew the flash was coming, of course. She had operated copiers for years. Nevertheless, the sudden brightness startled her, and she instinctively recoiled.
For one brief moment, she was blinded by the light.
Her Birkenstocks, comfortable companions on countless journeys of self-discovery, proved less reliable in a crisis than a sensible pair of office loafers. One sandal slid backward, catching the hem of her long skirt. She attempted to free her foot while simultaneously maintaining her balance, preserving the tickets, and avoiding contact with the copier.
It was an ambitious undertaking.
Her arms flailed in a frantic imitation of a windmill caught in a summer storm. The tickets fluttered. The copier continued its mechanical whirring. The laminator hummed patiently in the background, unaware that its brief warm-up period had become the final countdown to an entirely different kind of office emergency.
Mrs. Office Lady stumbled backward.
There was nothing behind her but the open window.
For one suspended instant, the afternoon sun caught her face, and she seemed almost weightless, her skirt billowing around her like the robes of some ancient earth goddess preparing to ascend to a higher plane of existence.
Then gravity intervened.
Her final journey was considerably shorter than the cross-country expeditions of her youth.
She fell from the third-floor window and landed face down in the flowerbed at the school’s entrance, among the Hillside Black Beauty Snakeroot planted just weeks earlier by the town’s garden club. The flowers had been selected for their hardiness and decorative appeal, not for their ability to cushion falling office personnel.
Above her, the copier completed its task and delivered a pristine reproduction of the 1995 concert tickets.
The laminator reached operating temperature.
Downstairs, the bus route signs remained unlaminated on her desk.
By the time anyone discovered what had happened, the afternoon sun had shifted across the faculty room floor, and the breeze continued to move through the open window. The copier sat quietly beside it, having performed precisely the task it had been asked to do.
Mrs. Office Lady had spent her life chasing the spirit of a time that could never return, convinced that the past contained all the wisdom necessary to navigate the present. In the end, her devotion to preserving a thirty-year-old memory had cost her the opportunity to make any new ones.
The concert tickets survived, of course. They were laminated eventually, though no one could agree on what to do with them.
And the next time the school reviewed its safety procedures, someone finally suggested installing window restrictors on the third floor.
It was a sensible idea, though Mrs. Office Lady would almost certainly have objected to the disruption of the natural energy flow.
After all, the universe had sent her a warning. She had simply mistaken it for inspiration.
And so ended the most tragic example of what can happen when nostalgia, misplaced confidence, and an inability to let the past go converge in a single, blinding moment.
Sometimes, the universe sends a sign.
Sometimes, it’s just a copier.
Want to meet the rest of Mrs. Office Lady?
Blinded by the Light is just one of the unfortunate adventures waiting inside She Died Doing What She Loved.
Whether you prefer the prim-and-proper traditionalist, the self-appointed martyr who does everything herself, the beautiful but befuddled office diva, the perpetually distracted multitasker, the enthusiastic newcomer, or the old hippie who trusts the universe a little too much, there’s a Mrs. Office Lady for everyone.
And each one has her own unique way of turning an ordinary day into a memorable—and sometimes terminal—event.
Make this Halloween a little darker!
Treat yourself to the ebook and discover the rest of Mrs. Office Lady’s misadventures.
Get your copy of She Died Doing What She Loved here!
It’s the perfect read for anyone who has ever worked in a school office, dealt with an impossible copier, taken on too much, or watched a colleague make a simple task unnecessarily complicated.
Happy Halloween from Mrs. Office Lady!
Remember: a little office drama is inevitable. A fatal encounter with the copier is not.
