[STORY] An ordinary rivalry that turned fatal

An Ordinary Rivalry That Turned Fatal

Chapter One: The First Day

A promotion is sometimes all it takes to reveal what’s been buried. In the hallways of a company, rivalry can quietly become obsession. Each person seeks to reclaim what they believe belongs to them — until the day invisible lines are crossed.

The day Maelia first walked through the company’s doors, she had the strange feeling that something was about to change. Not necessarily for better, not necessarily for worse — just change. She walked in with a slight reserve. This position was one she’d hoped for a long time, so she was careful about everything — her outfit, her posture. She wanted to do well. Above all, she wanted to stay.

Within the first few hours, she noticed the team functioned like a well-oiled machine. Everyone had their place, their habits, their unspoken alliances. She introduced herself, observed. Nothing seemed hostile. Then she felt a gaze.

Maelia looked up and met the eyes of a woman seated a few desks away. She wasn’t smiling. She was simply watching, with a calm intensity that felt almost disturbing.

That woman’s name was Isandre. Later that day, she was introduced to Maelia as a longtime, respected colleague. Isandre shook Maelia’s hand with perfect politeness. Her smile was brief, controlled.

“Welcome,” she said simply. One word. Nothing more.

Maelia looked away first — not out of courtesy, but because something in that gaze had pinned her in place for a fraction of a second too long. She set the impression aside, telling herself it was first-day stress. Not everyone was expansive, after all. She herself had learned, over the years, to blend into a place before asserting herself in it.

Chapter Two: The Silent Rivalry

The following days confirmed one thing: Maelia was competent. She worked late, anticipated needs, submitted her files on time. She began noticing small details, though. When she spoke in meetings, some gazes drifted away. When she asked a question, Isandre always answered with precision, but never looked at her directly — as though Maelia were merely an obligatory formality, never a true interlocutor.

Maelia had learned over the years that surviving in a new environment sometimes meant not existing too loudly at first. She focused on her work, on her goals. Her prayer life, nourished by her Christian faith, once regular and calming, had gradually faded since she’d started this job. Fatigue, the demanding pace, and the commute had taken over.

One evening, leaving the office later than planned, she ran into Isandre near the elevator.

“You’re working late,” Isandre remarked.

“I’m trying to adapt,” Maelia answered with a smile.

Isandre nodded. “Here, some people adapt better than others.”

As the elevator doors closed, Maelia had the strange certainty that the gaze that had followed her since day one wasn’t that of a simple colleague. It was a gaze that measured, that compared, that kept count. Without knowing it, Maelia had just entered a space where everything wasn’t decided by competence alone. Some battles began long before any words were exchanged.

Chapter Three: What Was Being Counted

Over the following months, Maelia stopped being simply “the new one.” Her name came up often — discreetly at first, then with a regularity that no longer went unnoticed. She worked quietly. Gradually, management took notice. She began to be entrusted with tasks and responsibilities beyond what her position called for. Maelia accepted. For her, it was proof of a fragile trust that mustn’t be broken.

But for Isandre, these changes were far from insignificant. She watched everything — the exchanges in the hallways, the increasingly attentive glances from leadership. For years, Isandre had waited. She had held on, accepted the sacrifices, the overtime. And now a newcomer was arriving, quietly taking that place.

One morning, in a meeting, a manager openly thanked Maelia for her work. A simple thank-you, but Isandre lowered her eyes. Something cracked that day. From that moment on, Isandre no longer looked at Maelia the same way. Maelia suspected nothing.

A few days later, the confirmation came. Maelia was called into an office. They spoke of potential, growth, prospects. The senior position was offered to her. She accepted without exulting, without celebrating.

When the news spread through the offices, Isandre remained motionless at her desk. Her face betrayed nothing. But inside, something closed shut. It wasn’t modesty. An image returned to her with sudden clarity. A few years earlier, she had been offered a position at another company — more stable, better recognized. She had turned it down. At the time, she’d been made to understand, without it ever being stated clearly, that her future was here, that she just needed to wait a little longer. She had chosen to stay, to give up that opportunity, to bet on that implicit promise. And today, she understood that the wait had served no purpose at all. For her, this wasn’t a promotion. It was a dispossession.

From that day forward, Maelia was no longer simply a colleague. She became the woman who had taken what didn’t belong to her. And some people, when they feel robbed of their future, stop trying to succeed. They start trying to take it back — by any means.

Chapter Four: The First Warning

The weeks passed. Maelia’s first warning wasn’t triggered by a word, but by a number. A file she’d approved the day before came back with a red annotation: Inconsistent. She reread it twice. The figure wasn’t hers.

“Who modified this table?” she asked calmly in a meeting.

Isandre answered without looking up from her screen. “I thought it was you.”

No one pressed further. The file was corrected. But from that day on, incidents multiplied. One morning, Maelia arrived late to a meeting whose time had been changed the day before. She’d received no message. The manager glanced up briefly from her file.

“The information was sent yesterday,” she said calmly.

Maelia felt a flicker of confusion. “I didn’t receive anything,” she answered.

The manager turned to Isandre. “Were you supposed to notify the team?”

“No?” Isandre nodded without hesitation. “Yes, I sent the email. It might have gotten lost.”

Maelia checked. She had received nothing. She apologized anyway.

At lunch, two colleagues spoke in low voices near the coffee machine. “That’s a pretty fast rise,” Lune murmured. “Maybe too fast. Who knows what she did,” the other answered. They fell silent as she approached.

Maelia felt then the unpleasant sense that everything was aligning against her — the remarks, the oversights, the averted glances. The thought struck her, then she pushed it away immediately, telling herself she was searching for a pattern where there was probably only stress, fatigue, and the brutal learning curve of a new position.

Chapter Five: Unstable Ground

The following weeks, Maelia felt as though she were walking on unstable ground. Every mistake, real or not, seemed to come back to her. Every success was minimized, attributed to the team, to context, to luck. One day, in front of the entire department, Isandre said, “We can clearly see you’re competent, but this position also requires solidity.” No one responded. No one defended her.

That evening, Maelia stayed alone in the office. She stared at her screen without really seeing it. For the first time, a thought crossed her mind: What if she wasn’t up to the job? She went home with that weight in her chest — not anger, doubt.

The decision came down on a Tuesday morning, in the middle of a meeting. The manager calmly explained the department’s new organization. The words were measured, professional — until she said Maelia’s name.

“From now on, Maelia will be the point person on this file. All approvals will go through her.” Maelia looked up, surprised. Isandre remained motionless.

The manager continued. “Isandre, you’ll work with her going forward.” For Isandre, time seemed to stop. That sentence, delivered without emotion, placed her under the authority of a woman she considered a mere passerby.

Maelia didn’t dare look at her. At the end of the meeting, Isandre left the room without a word. In the hallway, she stopped short, one hand clenched against the wall. That day, the truth settled in fully. The position hadn’t just been lost. It had been transferred.

Chapter Six: The Marabou

That very evening, she looked for a way to regain control. That is how she came to knock on a marabou’s door. Isandre entered without looking around. She stood still for a few seconds, as though to make sure she’d see this through.

The man seated across from her finally looked up. “Welcome. Tell me what brings you here.”

Isandre sat slowly. “Someone took my place,” she answered. “My position. The one I was promised.”

“And what do you expect from me?” the man asked.

Isandre clenched her fists. “I want her to leave that position. I want her to fall far enough that it frees up.”

The marabou took a small cloth, unfolded it — inside, a small tied sachet. He handed it to her. “You will place this where she works.”

“And after?” she asked.

“After, you do nothing. You let it act. But remember this — once you’ve placed it, you never touch it again.”

Isandre paid the requested sum, stood, and left the house. Outside, the air was cold. She felt strangely relieved.

She didn’t place the object immediately. She waited two days, wanting to be certain of the location, of a moment when no one would be paying attention. On the third evening, as the office slowly emptied, she stayed under the pretext of finishing a file. Once the hallways were nearly silent, she stood. Maelia’s desk was still lit. Isandre approached without a sound, slipped her hand beneath the desktop, and discreetly fixed the small tied sachet out of sight. Once finished, she returned to her desk, gathered her things, and left the building.

Chapter Seven: The First Sign

The next day, Maelia arrived as usual, but mid-morning, the moment she sat down in front of her screen, her vision blurred. A sharp pain shot through her abdomen without warning. She pressed a hand to her stomach, went pale, then stood abruptly. She didn’t reach the bathroom. A colleague caught her in the hallway.

“Maelia, are you okay?” She didn’t answer before fainting.

She was taken to the hospital. The tests revealed nothing precise. She went home that same evening with light medication and vague recommendations. But the episodes kept returning, always at work — sudden pains, violent nausea, a brutal weakness that sometimes forced her to leave the office early. Each time, without warning.

Management began to worry — not for her health, for the department. “Maybe you should ease up a little,” the manager suggested. “I’m fine,” Maelia answered, though it wasn’t entirely true anymore.

Isandre watched. She monitored Maelia with an almost obsessive attention. Every absence, every extended leave — she didn’t celebrate openly. She waited. In her mind, the script was already written. Maelia wouldn’t hold on. She would eventually leave the way she’d come — quietly. Then everything would return to order. Things would resume their natural course. Isandre no longer needed to act. All she had to do was watch time do its work.

Chapter Eight: Returning to Prayer

Maelia went home early that evening. She lay down without turning on the light. It was there that the thought returned to her, obvious: her prayer life. She hadn’t abandoned it out of rejection. She had left it behind, gradually, chasing stability, recognition, success. She had carried everything alone. That evening, she didn’t search for the right words. She knelt and prayed as best she could.

The next day, Maelia requested three days of rest. It wasn’t an escape or an abandonment. During those three days, she stayed home. She cut off almost everything, and above all, she picked back up what she’d set aside for too long. She prayed to reconnect a bond she’d neglected, to place herself again before God. She prayed the way one sheds a weight too heavy to carry. She rejected what troubled her, what exhausted her, what afflicted her without her understanding the source.

When she returned to work, something had changed. The episodes didn’t stop all at once, but they became less violent, less unpredictable. She began praying again — briefly, every morning.

Chapter Nine: The Discovery

One afternoon, as she bent to pick up a pen that had fallen beneath her desk, her eyes fell on something unusual. Beneath the desktop, stuck against the wood, was a small tied sachet. Maelia took a few seconds to react. She detached it slowly and set it on her desk. The object had nothing impressive or threatening about it, and yet an instinctive unease swept through her. She knew one thing immediately: this didn’t belong to her.

The hallway was nearly empty. Maelia walked forward, holding the small sachet in her hand without looking at it. She nearly collided with Isandre. They stopped a few steps apart.

“Isandre,” Maelia said calmly, “I found this under my desk,” she added immediately, without preamble. Before Isandre could even ask a question, Maelia slipped the object into her hand.

Isandre felt the contact before she saw the small sachet. Her breath caught. She lowered her eyes and understood. Her face instantly drained of all color, her fingers clenched, then flew open abruptly. The sachet fell to the floor, bounced slightly against the tile, and settled between them.

Chapter Ten: The Second Touch

“Isandre?” Maelia asked, surprised. “What’s wrong?”

Isandre stepped back. “Nothing,” she answered too quickly. “I— I wasn’t expecting that.” She avoided looking at the object.

Maelia bent to pick it up, but Isandre thrust her hand out abruptly. “No.” Her voice had trembled. She caught herself immediately. “Leave it. I’ll take care of it.”

Isandre bent down immediately, picked it up quickly, as though to erase the scene. The moment her fingers closed around it, a violent sensation swept through her — not a sharp pain, something deeper, a sudden oppression, as though the air around her had thinned. The marabou’s voice echoed inside her, clear, implacable. Once placed, you never touch it again. She had just broken that rule. Twice.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Maelia pressed, genuinely concerned.

Isandre forced a smile that didn’t hold. “It’s nothing,” she added quickly, in a more assured tone. “Must be some old thing that was lying around. I’ll throw it out.”

Maelia looked at her a moment, hesitant. “Okay. I just wanted it away from me.”

“You did the right thing,” Isandre answered. “Really, don’t worry about it.”

Maelia continued on her way without looking back, reassured, convinced the incident was closed.

Chapter Eleven: The Fire Within

A few days later, Isandre arrived at work as usual. Everything seemed normal. Then she felt a warmth inside her — slow, diffuse. It rose from her stomach, reached her chest, then her shoulders, as though her body were catching fire from within, in a silent, unexplained blaze. Isandre clenched her teeth, kept staring at her screen. After twenty minutes, she couldn’t stand it anymore. She stood, walked to the bathroom, splashed water on her face, which calmed her somewhat. She left work before the morning ended, claiming she felt unwell.

The next day, Isandre arrived at work in perfectly good shape, sat at her desk, and began working. A few minutes later, the burning surged again. Isandre straightened abruptly, hand pressed against her stomach.

“No,” she murmured. The heat rose all at once. She felt as though her body were catching fire from the inside. She tugged at her collar, searching for air. “It’s burning.” She stood. “It’s burning.”

Conversations stopped. Eyes turned toward her. “What’s wrong with her?” someone murmured. “She’s losing it,” another voice answered, too audibly.

Isandre stumbled backward, hit a chair, knocked it over. She clutched at herself everywhere at once, unable to stay still. “It’s burning!” she cried. “It’s burning in my body!”

“Isandre, calm down!” a colleague called out, but she no longer heard anything. She spun in place, panicked, breath ragged. “I’m burning,” she repeated. “Help me!” Her legs gave way. She grabbed a desk, knocked files to the floor, then collapsed to her knees, shaking violently.

Chapter Twelve: The Collapse

Maelia had just arrived, a file clutched to her chest. Around her, no one really understood what was happening. “What’s happening to her?” she asked quietly to a colleague. He shrugged, at a loss. “I don’t know. She was fine a few minutes ago.”

Two managers came running. They tried to speak to her, to help her up. She was still screaming, her voice breaking, drawing every eye. “Get her out of here,” someone said. They helped her to her feet. As she was led away from the open office, her screams diminished. The burning seemed to lose its intensity. Outside the building, she slumped against a wall, trembling.

“It’s a little better,” she said, disoriented. They put her in a car. Driving toward the hospital, her body gradually calmed. She closed her eyes, exhausted, unable to understand what had just happened.

At the hospital, the tests revealed nothing precise. No burn, no clear cause. She remained hospitalized for several days. When she felt better, she decided to return to work. But approaching the building, something happened. A few meters from the entrance, her pace slowed. She felt the burning rise again, accompanied by a violent dizziness. She placed a hand against the wall, unable to move forward. Colleagues passed near her. “Isandre, are you okay?” She nodded without answering, turned around, and went home.

Chapter Thirteen: What the Marabou Said

The following days, the attempts multiplied. Always the same pattern. At home, everything was almost fine. But the moment the company building came into view, her body said no.

Isandre went back to see the marabou, driven by a growing anxiety. He studied her at length before speaking.

“What brings you here this time?”

Isandre hesitated, then answered. “For some time now, I’ve felt a burning in my body every time I enter my workplace’s building.”

He didn’t seem surprised. “Does the burning disappear when you leave?”

“Yes,” she said after a brief hesitation. “It fades almost completely.”

He nodded slowly. “And the sachet?” he asked suddenly.

Isandre clenched her hands on her knees. “My colleague found it. And I— I picked it up. I didn’t do it on purpose,” she said. “I didn’t think.”

The man studied her. “I told you never to touch it again.”

“I know,” Isandre answered.

The marabou stayed silent a moment, then continued. “What you’re feeling isn’t an illness.”

“Then help me!” she begged. “Do something.”

He shook his head slowly. “There’s nothing I can do for you.”

Isandre looked up, panicked. “Why?”

“Because what’s acting now is no longer in my hands.”

“And the burning?” she asked.

“It’s the place rejecting you,” the marabou answered. “You will not go back into that building to work. If you go back, you will die.”

Isandre felt her legs tremble. “That’s the only solution,” he concluded. “You leave. You get away. You accept it.”

Chapter Fourteen: The Resignation

She sat there for a long moment, unable to speak. Leaving the house, she finally understood why the burning stopped the moment she got away from work. Isandre no longer had a choice. She wrote her resignation letter. She gave no detailed explanation. She spoke of health reasons.

She presented herself at the front desk one morning, earlier than usual, before the offices came alive. She held a white envelope. Her face was closed.

“I’ve come to drop this off,” she said simply. The receptionist took the envelope, read the name, nodded. “Noted.”

Isandre added nothing. She turned away immediately. Turning toward the exit, she nearly walked straight into Maelia.

Chapter Fifteen: The Final Encounter

Maelia stopped short. “Isandre!” She hesitated, then added, “Honestly, we haven’t seen you around. Are you okay? Why haven’t you been coming to work?”

Isandre stared at her. Her gaze swept over Maelia from head to toe, full of contempt. “Are we friends?” she asked. “Get out of my way.”

Maelia’s expression turned suddenly concerned. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to—”

“Get out of my way,” Isandre repeated more sharply. “I’m passing through, and I don’t have time for you. I won’t repeat myself.”

Maelia didn’t understand. She stepped aside but tried once more. “Isandre, if I did something—”

Isandre cut her off with a sharp gesture. “You took something that wasn’t yours,” she muttered between her teeth. Then, without warning, she shoved Maelia hard by the shoulder. Maelia lost her balance for a moment.

“Hey — what’s wrong with you?” she exclaimed, shocked.

Isandre didn’t turn around. She crossed the lobby with a quick, almost fleeing stride, as though staying one more second were impossible. As she moved further from the entrance, her shoulders relaxed slightly.

Maelia stood frozen, unable to understand what had just happened. She watched the door close behind Isandre. Then she continued on her way, leaving behind her an unease she would never be able to name.

Chapter Sixteen: What Remained

Isandre never returned to that building again. She moved to another city, took a modest administrative job at a small firm that had no glass towers, no open-plan offices, nothing that resembled the place she’d fled. The burning never returned, as long as she stayed away. She told herself, in her quieter moments, that she had gotten off easily — that the marabou’s warning had cost her a position, a reputation, a version of the future she’d once imagined for herself, but not her life.

Maelia, for her part, rose steadily within the company over the following years. She never learned what the small sachet had truly been, or what it had truly done. She simply remembered it as a strange, unsettling incident from her early months — the kind of story you tell once at a dinner party and then let go of, because holding onto it too tightly felt like an invitation for something you didn’t fully understand to notice you again.

She kept praying, quietly, every morning, long after the crises had stopped. Not out of superstition, she told herself. Out of habit. Out of gratitude for a stability she no longer took for granted.

Moral

The injustice we feel can distort our perception of reality. It pushes us to interpret every event as confirmation of a wrong we’ve suffered. What we try to seize through cunning or anger always, eventually, turns back against us. Prayer is not a refuge for the weak, but an anchor for those who refuse to lose their way.

— The End —