Brownies.
I have seen them.

In the unmistakable shaky handwriting of Mr Wendell Montgomery, CEO of Wobble Toys, the words crowned the top of the white page.

Janine groaned and dropped the paper. It landed amid the usual mess of her desk, atop reports and order forms and the usual clutter that marked her as Mr Montgomery's personal secretary. She'd thought the page was one of the late Mrs Montgomery's prize winning dessert recipes. It wasn't such a treasure.

Really, who could have blamed her for picking it up? Had Mr. Montgomery not left mysteriously on an unexpected two week vacation, she wouldn't have had to jimmy the lock on his office to get the paychecks. Had he been a little more organized and left those precious envelopes in a more obvious spot, she wouldn't have had to rummage through the paperwork on his desk. She wouldn't have been tempted to grab the supposed "recipe" and make off with it. Unfortunately, this was payday and there were many people waiting for the paychecks she had just liberated from Montgomery's office.

They live somewhere in the boiler room. I know it, I have seen their foot prints there. They come out sometimes and they do things... like add ingenious things to the toys. I must see them again.

Brownies. She snickered. The old coot had been talking about strange little magical men that would visit in the wee hours of the morning to create toys for him. They would come out and work and create wonders that would inspire the toymakers. Montgomery would tell these stories to anyone who would listen, and in general, everyone smiled politely as they listened. It was agreed by all that Montgomery was thoroughly insane, a product of his business genius, and everyone was willing to bear with these stories so long as the old man continued to be generous with cash bonuses and holiday pay.

Where they go from the boiler room, I have no idea. They seem to disappear into thin air. Like magic. But they are Brownies-- they are Magic.

The extent of his insanity was amazing, she concluded. Tucking the page into the top drawer of her desk, she picked up the latest "To Do" list that Montgomery had placed on her desk that morning. Even out on vacation, he still made sure she had plenty to keep her busy. The yellow sticky note, handwritten by Montgomery himself, dangled like a flag from the corner of her computer screen.

1) get 3rd quarter sales reports assembled/collated/etc.
2) schedule dentist appt for denture woes
3) unlock boiler room door
4) call about replacement chips for Mr Wackit dolls - low performance lately.

The Mr Wackit dolls were the company's biggest seller, and the first toy Mr Montgomery completely attributed to the little men. The developers shuddered each time they had to endure the brownie story-- each one of them greatly disappointed that all their hard work on the talking griffin toy was written off as an act of magic by creatures of fairy tales. Lately, however, the toys had been malfunctioning. Reports had been coming in of the talking griffins telling their unsuspecting young owners horror stories of monsters under their beds, not the tales of Greek myths that were supposed to be programmed into the toys' chips.

Janine looked at the To Do list and decided to tackle the Wackit problem first. A simple call to their Japanese suppliers verified that the new chips were indeed on their way and that each of these chips was tested to ensure top quality. The suppliers had even offered to send along their best programmers to make sure each griffin doll was properly configured to only recite the myths. Janine noted that offer to tell Montgomery when he returned.

The issue of the sales reports was rather moot. Some blessed soul had come in the night before and left the finished documents, each clad in their own plastic dust jacket, on the corner of her desk. Spared the aggravating fight with the copying machine and endless papercuts, she was glad to cross that off Montgomery's list. The dentist appointment was equally as simple-- Montgomery's dentist was on vacation as well, "sightseeing in Borneo," and wouldn't be back for another week.

Lastly, there was the request to unlock the boiler room door. This was mere an act of humoring the old man, she knew. All the janitors has keys to the boiler room if they needed access.  

Within minutes she was on the boiler room threshhold, her key rattling in the old lock.  She heard the lock click and pushed the door open just for good measure to make sure the latch had fully opened. The door opened slowly and the dark room beyond was interrupted by the long rectangle of light from the hallway. Janine thought she saw movement and instinctively her hand flew to the light switch.

There on the floor in the middle of the room was a pile of Mr Montgomery's clothes twitching. Three chocolate brown heads peered from the folds of fabric up at her. Their lemon-shaped heads supported small beady black eyes and long pointy noses poked from their faces. Beneath those noses, equally pointy teeth rimmed smiling mouths. The three heads stared at Janine for a moment before swinging in unison to the right. Janine turned to follow their gaze.

Standing at the wall was another dark brown beastie, a shard of chalk in its clawed hand. It was writing on the wall, its handwriting an exact copy of Montgomery's wobbly script. Above the creature's head was written "There are no such things as brownies."

The creature dropped the chalk and turned to her as it finished the last sentence. It began to chatter at her, smiling like the others, baring all of its teeth. It pointed at the last sentence on the wall as the other three began to advance on her.

There is no such thing as Mr Montgomery.