Angela Meets the Scranton Strangler

SUMMARY: After Angela Martin narrowly escapes becoming the latest victim of the Scranton Strangler, Dwight makes it his personal mission to catch the culprit. Meanwhile people at the office obsess over the strangler and are accidentally insensitive toward Angela, who hopes to keep her encounter with the strangler a secret, while Michael attempts to teach his employees self-defense techniques.

NOTES: Set in season 2. Reminder, if you've forgotten - Angela and Dwight are in a relationship, but are attempting to hide that fact. Jim and Pam are not dating yet. Pam is with Roy. That last bit isn't all that relevant since Jim and Pam aren't major characters in this story, but they are included and aren't dating because of the season 2 setting...

Dwight and Angela are the main characters in this - other characters will show up here and there, but the focus is very heavily on Dwight and Angela, with Michael's presence becoming more prominent near the end - even in the end though, Angela and Dwight remain the main focus. I do not know when the Scranton Strangler really started killing people on the show, but I'm deciding it was well before he was ever mentioned... Mostly so I could have this set during Angela's and Dwight's secret romance and also have Jim still working at the Scranton branch. The characters are just where I want them for this story during season 2, so that's when it takes place. I think I've included (if only just barely) every single season 2 character from the Scranton branch excluding the warehouse employees.

Furthermore, I'm taking creative liberty in creating more details about the strangler - we never learned much about him on the show besides his name and the fact that he strangles people, so a lot of how he works is pretty much my own creation. I've devised a somewhat specific way he goes about killing as well as habits he gets into before killing - including how he chooses his victims. He was never an actual character, so I had to either make it up myself or be very vague...

The story is told through 3rd person limited - pretty evenly split between focusing on either Angela or Dwight. One other character gets the focus near the end for just one chapter. And I'm not acknowledging the camera crew at all. You can pretend it's there or not. I'm certain it would create a very awkward presence in this story - especially considering that there's a murderer hanging around - surely the crew wouldn't just sit back and see what happens... So there aren't going to be any characters talking directly to the camera in this.

Also, this story is funny, but it's also not. Characters will still have their eccentricities, and they're all very funny people in their own ways, but they are also going to behave like real people and be bothered by things that would upset a real person. So I do have purposefully funny things happen in this, but I also have purposefully traumatizing and sad things happen. It's a story that centers around murder and attempted murder - and also around one of the funniest shows ever. It's also even sort of accidentally romantic because I love Dwight and Angela together. Strange mix, but I think it turned out well...

Enjoy:

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Chapter 1

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Angela exhaled as she pulled her car into the Dunder Mifflin lot. She was returning from lunch, and wasn't necessarily eager to get back to work. Everyone seemed extra irritating today, and she really didn't want to spend any more time with them than she'd already been forced to.

Ordinarily, she didn't leave the office for lunch. It was more cost-efficient to eat in the break-room, even if it did mean she didn't have much of an opportunity to get away from everyone. Today she and Dwight had decided to secretly have lunch together. In order to maintain their secrecy, they decided upon leaving the office ten minutes apart, going to separate restaurants, ordering takeout, and meeting in a secluded park. They planned to return back to work ten minutes apart as well, and since she'd left first, she had to go back first too.

She parked her car, pulled down the sun-visor and checked her appearance. She and Dwight had gotten a little too into their make out session and she needed to be sure she still looked okay before going back into work. Keeping this whole relationship secret from her colleagues required a certain degree of attention to detail, and that meant she couldn't leave for lunch looking neat and tidy only to come back with messed up hair and wrinkled clothing. There was a reason no one suspected that she and Dwight were seeing each other, and that reason was because they were careful. Looking in the mirror, she ran her fingers through her hair, straightened the collar on her shirt, and put the visor back up. She looked fine, as usual.

Grabbing her purse out of the passenger seat, Angela stepped out of the car and closed the door as the sound of another car pulling into the lot caught her attention. She glanced over with a frown, hoping Dwight wasn't back already. They were supposed to be strategically spacing their separate returns so as to not raise suspicion.

Angela raised her eyebrows as she looked across the lot to see an unfamiliar white van. It looked like something a delivery driver would use, except that it was unmarked and the windows were tinted, even the front windshield. The driver was not at all visible, but as far as she knew, no one from work owned such a vehicle. She was fairly certain driving a car with a tinted front windshield like that was illegal.

As she stared across the way at the unfamiliar vehicle, and as the van came to a stop near the edge of the lot - not in a parking space, Angela frowned again. Who was this person, and why were they here? Maybe they were lost. She'd have to walk past the vehicle in order to get to the front door. Part of her wanted to get back in her car and wait for them to either park or leave. Part of her wanted to go up to the van, knock on the window, and inform them that this lot was for employees only and that they needed to go.

She didn't feel as assertive as usual with all of the talk going around lately about the Scranton Strangler. He'd killed at least seven people over the past year, his murders were becoming closer and closer together, and the local news was covering the latest victim in great detail lately.

Everyone was on edge - the murders was all anyone wanted to talk about. It was scary knowing someone out there was indiscriminately strangling people. The fact that there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to how the victims were selected was very unsettling. He'd killed women and men, of different races and ages, from different parts of town... None of the victims seemed to know each other in any way. It seemed completely random, which was making finding the person responsible very difficult for the police.

She swallowed nervously as she stared across the lot. Whoever was driving the van didn't seem to have any plans of deciding what exactly they were doing here. They still didn't pull into a parking space or back out and leave. Maybe they were lost and were re-planning their route.

Nervously biting her lower lip, Angela decided to just go inside. They weren't that close to the building. She wouldn't have to walk right up to the side of the van or anything... She figured she was probably being ridiculous anyway. It was just a van. Lots of people drove vans. It didn't make them murderers. Of course, a lot of murderers did happen to drive vans over other vehicles though. If a murderer was going to stalk the Dunder Mifflin parking lot, they probably would be in a van...

She nearly screamed when she heard a car door close behind her. Spinning around and putting her hand over her heart, she looked across the lot to see Kelly pulling her purse up on her shoulder and locking her car with the push-lock on her key chain. Kelly offered a half smile and waved to her co-worker.

Angela exhaled. When had Kelly even gotten back from lunch? Angela had been so distracted by the suspicious van that she wasn't paying attention to anything else going on around her. She looked across the lot at Kelly, didn't smile or wave back, but chose to wait for the other woman to make her way over so they could walk in together. The strangler never went after people if they weren't by themselves - not that she knew of anyway. No matter how much Kelly annoyed her, Angela would rather walk inside with her than go by herself and have whoever was in that van jump out and attack her while she was alone.

"Hey, Angela!" Kelly grinned as she made her way over with enthusiastic, bouncy steps. "You waited for me!" She seemed shocked and also excited, probably because most people immediately tried to run off as soon as they saw her - to avoid having to suffer through endless stories about celebrities or shopping.

"Did you have a nice lunch, Kelly?" Angela made polite conversation as she quickened her pace and made her way toward the front door of their building. She couldn't exactly tell Kelly she'd only waited because she had an irrational fear of walking into the building alone.

"Yeah. There's this new sandwich place and Ryan knows one of the guys who manages it, so I can get stuff like half off even when Ryan isn't there. I wish he could go to lunch with me, but he always says he's too busy. Michael really makes him work hard, Angela. It's totally not fair. Isn't that illegal or something?" Kelly rambled.

Angela shrugged. Ryan didn't have too much work. He was avoiding her.

"Anyway, it's pretty good. I'm kinda trying to watch my weight, so I get water instead of a soda, but they have like lemonade and tea and stuff too. Maybe on fridays I'll get lemonade. But that's assuming I go there like every day. Maybe that's excessive."

"Maybe," Angela agreed. It was a good thing she didn't really have anything to say to Kelly, because the other woman was not leaving her much time to say it.

"The sandwich shop is right near the mall though, so that's really convenient..." Kelly went on as Angela toned out her increasingly annoying voice.

As they walked, Angela glanced back at the van, narrowing her eyes as she tried to see through the tinted windows. She frowned as the vehicle backed out of the lot and back onto the main road. Maybe they really had just made a wrong turn. It's not like the strangler ever struck in the middle of the day in business parking lots out in front of potentially dozens of witnesses. She was being paranoid. Everyone talking about nothing but the murders was making her crazy.

"...And they were like half-off, but there was another sale for twenty-percent off anything in the whole store! And they let me buy them for both - like half and twenty percent off at the same time. Both sales together... So like seventy percent off! Or maybe it was just twenty percent off of fifty percent, so like sixty percent? Or would that be if they were ten percent off? I really don't know how it works... I mean, you're an accountant, so you'd probably know. Anyway, they were only like fourteen dollars. And they're really nice, Angela. I mean really, really expensive. On an ordinary day, I mean... Before they were discounted. It was a really good deal." Kelly spoke in a quick, excited voice, barely even leaving herself room to breathe between sentences.

Angela looked back at Kelly and realized the other woman had been talking while Angela's focus was on the strange van. "That's great." Angela exhaled as she pulled the door open, wishing now that she'd rushed into the building back when she had the chance so she wouldn't have had to listen to this story.

"It's a really, really good sale if you're interested, Angela. Some stuff was even more marked down, but it wasn't really my style. You might have liked some of them. Like closed-toed stuff. You should check it out. Do you wear women's sizes in shoes?" Kelly wondered as she glanced down toward Angela's feet.

With a scoff, Angela walked ahead, stepping into the elevator and pressing the button to their floor. Unfortunately, Kelly made it through the doors before they closed.

"Well, I mean, it's fine if you wear kids sizes. I did too until I was like sixteen... I wish I could still wear kids sizes. I'm just asking." Kelly frowned and looked down at the elevator floor.

Angela rolled her eyes and shook her head. "I'm not going to dignify that question with a response," she replied. She and Kelly hardly had the same fashion sense anyway. Whatever store Kelly was talking about was probably not going to carry anything Angela would be willing to wear. Maybe Kelly enjoyed looking like a cheap prostitute. Angela respected herself too much to wear open-toed shoes, high heels, or anything being sold in the same kind of trashy store that would stoop to selling them.

"Sorry," Kelly muttered. "Having small feet is a good thing. I wasn't trying to be mean."

"My feet are fine," Angela scowled ahead at the elevator door, hoping they'd get up to their floor soon.

"No, I know they're fine. I just-" Kelly began.

As soon as the elevator doors opened, Angela rushed out as quickly as possible, not caring that Kelly was in mid-sentence. The last thing she wanted to do right now was talk to Kelly about shoes or listen to the woman mock her feet. She was beginning to think she would have been better off just letting the stranger in that van murder her rather than listen to this nonsense.

She was going to go back to her desk so she could finish her work, but as soon as they entered the office, she realized Michael was on another one of his missions to distract everyone from getting anything done.

"Guys! Get in here! They're talking about the Scranton Strangler on the news!" he called out from the conference room. He was poking his head out the door and speaking in a frantic whisper as he emphatically gestured for them to join him. The muffled sounds of a news report could be heard, and Angela noticed pretty much everyone in the office was in there eagerly watching like it was a movie. She even smelled popcorn.

"I've already seen the news, Michael," Angela complained as she noticed Kelly gladly taking up her boss's offer to watch the news instead of working. Angela actually had things she needed to do though. She was never going to get anything done at this rate, and really didn't want to hear more about what was really a very scary situation. People had died. It wasn't entertainment.

"Get in here, Angela," Michael persisted. "It's required."

Angela exhaled and dragged her feet into the room, sitting down in one of the vacant seats along the wall, between Kevin and Stanley, and crossing her arms over her chest as she glared up toward the small television at the front of the room.

"The latest victim of the Scranton Strangler has been identified as thirty-one year old Naomi Park, a wife and mother who worked as a nurse," the reporter spoke. "Her husband gave a statement earlier today..."

Angela frowned as she looked up at the screen, at a photo of a smiling young Asian woman with glasses. Angela remembered the previous victim was a slightly overweight fifty-some year old white woman, and a little seventy-some year old white man was before that. The killer seemed to have no preference when it came to victim 'type.' It was so odd and was putting everyone even more on edge - no one could look at the victims and figure they were safe because they were so different from the others. The killer's lack of a clear pattern had everyone wondering if his next choice of victim could be them.

The news station then played a clip of the woman's husband speaking to the press, mentioning their young son and crying. The woman had only been killed five days ago. It had just taken until now for her identity to be made public. The husband was quite clearly and quite understandably still very upset about what had happened to his wife.

"Michael, this is really depressing," Pam spoke up in a small voice from across the room. "Maybe we should get back to work..."

"Pam! We deserve to know whats going on!" Kelly disagreed. Angela knew she just didn't want to go back to her desk and actually do anything useful today. The people in this office were so lazy. "I'm not going anywhere alone ever again. This is getting crazy." Kelly went on as she stared with wide eyes up at the television screen.

"Do we have to watch it during work hours?" Angela agreed with Pam for once. "This is really inappropriate. I think we should be allowed to go through a work day without having to constantly hear about this."

"This guy could kill any one of you next." Michael pouted. "We should all learn as much about him as we can."

"We can do that on our own time if we choose to," Stanley complained, but didn't take his eyes off the crossword puzzle he was working on. "This is irrelevant to my job."

"It's relevant, Stanley." Michael stared back at him. "It's relevant because the strangler chooses his victims at random. And that means there's a good chance the next person to die could be any one of us, or any of our clients... You don't think it could be you, Stanley, but it could be. None of the people who died thought it would be them. They didn't think it was relevant either, and look where it got them. We should be prepared."

Angela frowned. "How does watching this prepare us for anything?"

Michael looked at her with narrowed eyes. For a few moments, she wondered if he was even going to respond. Maybe he was just planning on staring until she got uncomfortable and looked away. She was about to say something else, to ask once again if she could go back to work, when he finally started talking instead. "You're right. You're all right... This isn't enough. We need to do something better..." He trailed off and walked out of the conference room.

Angela looked around the room at her co-workers. Some of them looked confused or worried, how they often did whenever Michael seemed to be thinking of some ill-advised plot they were bound to get dragged into. Others were still interested in the news story, which was now covering previous victims and emphasizing how astoundingly different and unrelated to each other they all were.

"I hope he doesn't try to make us start carrying weapons or something," Pam whispered to Jim.

Jim shrugged, shook his head, and stood from his chair. Pam followed him out.

Angela stood from and made her way out of the room too, listening to a conversation between Oscar and Kevin as the three of them made their way back to their desks.

"I might legitimately start carrying mace," Oscar noted.

"Like a girl?" Kevin laughed.

"No," Oscar sighed. "Like someone who doesn't want to be strangled to death."

"I've only ever seen girls carrying mace," Kevin persisted. "I think I would be pretty embarrassed if someone saw me with a can of mace... Because they'd think I was a girl."

"No one's going to think you're a girl, Kevin," Angela reminded him.

"Yeah, because I'm not gonna carry mace like a girl," Kevin noted with a smirk.

"Well, if the strangler ever came after you, you'd probably be glad you had it," Oscar spoke in a very matter of fact voice as he settled down at his desk and began clicking around on his computer screen.

Angela scowled at Kevin as she sat down in her chair and then glanced over toward Oscar. "There's no shame in being prepared to defend yourself, Oscar," she spoke in a low voice.

"Like a girl," Kevin giggled.

"Kevin, you're being very offensive." Angela frowned at him.

"Sorry." Kevin shrugged, but didn't really seem to mean it. He picked up a pen and started writing something on a form he'd been working on. "Oh, man... I messed up again," he immediately grumbled.

"I told you to use a pencil, Kevin." Angela stared across her desk at him.

Kevin ignored her and started scribbling over his mistake. Angela shook her head slightly and rolled her eyes. He couldn't submit that with scribbles all over it. He was so unprofessional.

Angela looked up as she noticed Dwight coming in through the front entrance. He gave her a few second-long stare, silently directing her to meet him in the break room. She stared back, silently telling him she'd correctly interpreted his stare.

"Angela, did I do this right?" Kevin spoke as he pressed the form he'd been filling out against the glass between his desk and hers.

"I doubt it." She sighed as she rummaged through her desk drawer for some change for the vending machine and then stood up. "Be right back," she mumbled dismissively and made her way into the break room.

As she entered the room, she headed straight for the vending machine, purposefully ignoring the fact that Dwight was even there. While he examined the soda machine, she looked over the vending machine's options. She didn't want any of the available snacks, but kept pretending to be interested.

"Do you have plans tonight?" Dwight spoke in a low voice without looking her way.

"I do not," Angela responded as she continued staring at the chips, cookies, and candy lined up behind the machine's window.

"I happen to have two hours free from seven to nine," Dwight told her.

"I also have no plans during that time," Angela replied as she stared through the vending machine's glass. "I'll be alone at my house from seven to nine," she added, telling him without really telling him that she would welcome his presence. By now they were getting pretty good at communicating in a way no one else could possibly understand. No one was within earshot right now, but they still liked to keep their conversations vague whenever they were in public.

"I see. I wish you a pleasant evening alone in your house," Dwight told her.

"I wish you a pleasant evening as well." Angela nodded slightly without taking her eyes off of the colorful snacks in front of her. "I won't really be alone. My cats will be with me."

"Oh. That's good. Perhaps I'll happen to see a cat tonight," Dwight noted.

"I bet you will," Angela told him.

Dwight nodded very slightly. "That's good to know. I'll look forward to that possibility." He turned and left the break room, leaving Angela smiling in front of the vending machine.

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Please review. :) Hopefully there are people still reading The Office fanfiction... The show has been over for a while, so I don't know if anyone is even going to read this... I hope someone does. I took quite a bit of time writing it and feel pretty happy with it.