All Chapters of Framed as the Office Stink Bomb: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

At work, my desk was also piled high with these things. There was a sandalwood diffuser. Activated charcoal packets. A humidifier. Solid air fresheners. Peppermint essential oils. Even deodorizing spray.I bought everything I could, and my desk soon became the most fragrant desk in the entire office. Anyone walking by would probably choke on how potent the scents were.But it was still useless.My colleagues would still instinctively fan their noses when walking by, and people would still try to avoid me in elevators.I was driven into a corner. I had no choice but to wake up at 6:30 am every day so that I could reach the office by 7:20 am, a good hour and a half before any of my colleagues usually trickled in.The first time I did this, I bumped into the cleaning lady, Mrs. Howell, who was mopping the floors. She was stunned when she saw me."You're early, miss," she said.I forced a smile at her and headed for my desk with a bottle of disinfectant. Then, I disinfected my entir

I couldn't sleep all night.I put all the evidence I had into a USB stick. I had secretly recorded three audio recordings of my colleagues talking. I screenshotted more than 40 images from the CCTV footage of my colleagues looking at the pink teddy bear next to me and arranged them chronologically.Then, I went through the company's website, looking up old news about their events. I then found a department group photo from three years ago when we just moved into the new office building.In the photo, a female employee named Maxine Thayer had been sitting near my current work desk. She was hugging that teddy bear.When I took a closer look, I saw that the teddy bear's neck was clean with no stitches. But the teddy bear in the office had a ring of crooked, hand-stitched thread running around its neck. The stitches were quick and tightly packed, suggesting that whoever did it had been in a great hurry.I checked the company database next and saw that Maxine's name had been erased fro

The cropped photo showed Maxine hugging the pink teddy bear.Mr. Foster looked at it and said, "Yeah, that's her. Maxine Thayer.""Where is she now?" Officer Quinn asked.Mr. Foster shook his head. "I'm not sure. She probably resigned a while ago. But my HR manager should know about it."Officer Quinn then called Lola over."Bring up Maxine's records."Lola's fingers shook as she tapped on her computer keyboard. Then, she said, "Maxine… She was hired three years ago and resigned a year ago.""Where are her resignation records?"Lola searched everywhere and said, "There was only a resignation letter received. The resignation process wasn't completed properly.""Who approved her resignation?""The system doesn't show."Officer Quinn then glared at Lola. "You were also in the HR department back then, weren't you?"Lola broke out in cold sweat. "Yes. But I really don't recall much about her case."Officer Quinn didn't press any further. Instead, she got the other officers to l

"If I come clean, will I be able to get a lighter sentence?" Joel asked.Officer Quinn didn't answer his question. She simply said, "Start talking first."There was a long bout of silence. The silence lasted for so long that I thought they had left the room.Then, Joel's voice was heard."Maxine… I was the one who killed her."I sat on the bench in the hallway and felt as though my soul had just left my body.Joel's voice continued trickling through the door."We dated for a little over half a year. She wanted to break up with me, but I refused. There was nobody at the office that day, and we got into a heated argument at her desk. I then acted impulsively and accidentally strangled her to death."When I finally came back to my senses, she was already dead.""Then, what happened after that?" Officer Quinn asked."I dealt with her body. Stuffed her into a plastic bag and hid her inside the teddy bear.""Why did you pick the teddy bear?""Because it was big enough, and everyo

The teddy bear had moved along with us from the old building to the new, from the old warehouse to the new office, and finally, next to my work desk.That afternoon, Officer Sloan accompanied me to the old office building. It was now an apartment building, and the property manager was a man in his 50s.After checking Officer Sloan's credentials, he brought out an old ledger and said, "I remember Starshade Creatives. Before they moved out, they were frequently in arrears on property fees for over a year."Officer Sloan asked, "How was it settled afterward?""They suddenly settled in one lump sum," the man said."Who paid?"The manager flipped through his ledger again. "A person named Gail Pattinson. She said she was the office admin manager."It was raining when we walked out of the property management office. I stood on the ground floor and looked up at the seventh floor. The windows were all tightly shut. There were at least ten different families living there now, but none o