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Karen carefully crept into her office suite carrying a bottle of experimental reverse-diffusion formula she swiped from the lab. The reasonable action would’ve been to simply ask the scientists to hand it over, seeing how she was in charge of the business and she funded the research with her own fortune but Karen wanted to make things more interesting. The more preparation and testing the lab put into this, the more the excitement started to diminish. She wanted to use the formula on herself, preferably away from any isolated room or scientific environment.

She awoke with a start, her dream of weightless frolicking interrupted by the sickening feeling of free fall. Down she fell from her pleasant dreamscape back into the cradling arms of her real world bed, the illusion of clouds being replaced by her comforter and the soft red glow of the clock.

2:34 AM.

For the past three years, Nick had dutifully played the role of Santa Claus at Bristol's Galleries Mall. He hadn't meant to take the role originally, but as he was a fairly husky man, and could put on a decent baritone voice, his superiors had decided that he would fit the role of Santa perfectly. He'd come to actually enjoy the role every year; getting paid extra to just sit around in a costume and amuse a bunch of kids all day was certainly preferable to dealing with crowds of annoying Christmas shoppers.

The office “holiday” party had been going on for over an hour. And although it was scheduled to run for at least another two hours, Charlotte didn’t think she could last that long. The introduction of alcohol into the party had caused her generally tolerable co-workers to become, well, less than tolerable. It had become painfully clear to Charlotte that at least a third of her co-workers were lightweights when it came to alcohol. On top of that, it was also clear to her as to what kind of drunks each of her co-workers were.