Original short fiction from The Daily Mosaics, published in a numbered series. Every story here is invented — the names, the places, the companies, the people. Nothing in this section is reporting, and none of it describes real events.

They share a shape. Someone with a little power humiliates someone they’ve decided doesn’t have any, usually in a room with witnesses, usually while believing they are simply maintaining standards. Then the room turns out to be arranged differently than they thought.

What we’re interested in is the second half. Not the shouting, but the paperwork — the incident report, the suspended certification, the four-sentence letter, the policy paragraph that outlasts everyone involved. The satisfying version of this story has never been the one where someone gets to scream. It’s the one where someone stays calm, and then a process happens.