Writing Sample: "Thank You For Your Years of Service, But..."

It has been a long time since I've offered up a writing sample, so I thought I'd give you something I did today in response to the writing prompt at the Creative Copy Challenge.  This is a fun site that posts a writing prompt of ten words every Monday and Thursday, and you can post your response to a very accepting community of fellow posters.

But today's words were pretty tough:

1. Lethargy - A state of sluggishness, inactivity, and apathy
2. Carbuncle – A painful localized bacterial infection of the skin and subcutaneous tissue that usually has several openings through which pus is discharged; A deep-red garnet, unfaceted and convex.
3. Meritocracy – A system in which advancement is based on individual ability or achievement.
4. Husbandry – The act or practice of cultivating crops and breeding and raising livestock; agriculture.
5. Ornithopter – a heavier-than-air craft designed to be propelled through the air by flapping wings.
6. Enclave – any small, distinct area or group enclosed or isolated within a larger one
7. Barrister – lawyer
8. Syncopated – A shift of accent in a passage or composition that occurs when a normally weak beat is stressed
9. Detritus – Disintegrated or eroded matter; popular word with CCC word pickers
10. Sumpter – A pack animal, such as a horse or mule.

These words made it even more of a challenge to do something I'd been thinking about -- taking the idea of Angel Zapata's 5x5 Fiction and applying it to the CCC prompts:  Ten sentences of ten words each, with each one incorporating one of the prompt words.  To make it even more interesting, use the prompt words in order, with the first prompt word used as the first word in the first sentence, the second prompt word used as the second word in the second sentence, etc.

As I said, today's words were a little tough, but I managed to fit them in to this self-imposed structure (Click on the title to go to my original post at the CCC)  Feel free to let me know what you think:

"Thank You for Your Years of Service, But..."

Lethargy was never his problem; he knew he wouldn't grow

a carbuncle on his ass from too much idle sitting.

He expected meritocracy to prevail; knew he'd eventually be rewarded

for his dedicated husbandry of countless creative and profitable projects.

He wasn't merely an ornithopter, passed over by the supersonic

jets -- he was in the enclave of stratospheric corporate performers.

So he was stunned when the barrister delivered the letter.

Reading the notification, his heart beat in syncopated, galloping shock.

He was being swept aside like useless, forgotten detritus:  Downsized!

Sent out to pasture like an aged and broken sumpter.