Gemotions

“Well,” she muttered to herself, staring at the screen. The email, filled with saccharine platitudes and thinly veiled excuses, felt like a slap in the face. She leaned back in her chair, the leather creaking under her weight. The elaborate preparations for the surprise gathering, now rendered irrelevant, now felt like a colossal exercise in futility.

She ran a hand through her hair, a gesture both weary and exasperated. The carefully planned menu, the meticulously curated guest list, the *effort*… all gone. Vaporized. She could practically feel the smugness of the organizers radiating from the screen, a smugness that she found thoroughly… *irksome*.

She sighed, a sound filled with a palpable mixture of exasperation and… annoyance. She closed the laptop, the sudden darkness a physical sensation. She reached for the remote, switching on the television, the bright light an attempt to dispel the gathering gloom.