Expertly written, I have no comments on the writing. I think the story has a few different threads which are going in contradictory directions and need to be reconciled. The opening line “Simon rubbed his eyes weakly while sitting in his tiny office cubicle” gave me an image of the protagonist which didn’t fit with what I saw him doing later—having a gun and being a burnt-out cubicle dweller I could buy, though the fact that he had the gun on him was a little convenient (could he have made a return home to get his weapon, and witnessed some scene set up by his colleagues?), but I didn’t see why his coworkers would go through all of the trouble to do this for a guy who was so burnt out. I think the rest of the story can still work if we don’t get the image of the protagonist as being such a washout.
The ending scene could have been played out a little further as well. What if he did shoot Chuck, thinking he had his child, or because he’d played the joke on him? What would people at the party, and his wife and child, be doing/saying just at the fact that he was holding a gun? Could make for an amazingly awkward scene. His angst gets resolved too tidily with him just punching Chuck in the gut. A good movie to see might be David Fincher’s The Game. It stars Michael Douglas as a high powered financial broker who becomes entangled in an elaborate hoax, and we spend the entire movie wondering if what he’s involved in is a game or for real, and if his life’s in danger—or isn’t.
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