Putting my hands under the faucet, the water kicked on and I splashed it onto my face. The hotness went away and I grabbed a paper towel. Drying myself off, I tossed the paper towel into the garbage and pushed the restroom door open.
The lights were flickering like they were having a seizure.
“Freaking great,” I whispered.
I stood there watching the office spastically flip from light to dark for almost thirty seconds and then the flickering suddenly stopped and the lights stayed on. My eyes ached a bit from the light show but I couldn’t let that stop me—another hour or so and I’d be out of here anyways. I started to walk back to my desk and a sharp thud like a thick stack of papers had been smacked against a desk shot across the office.
Someone’s here?
I walked past the cubicles to the other side of the office where the mangers’ offices were lined up. All the lights were off. No one was here.
Shaking my head I headed back to my desk. When I rounded the corner of my cubicle I saw my laptop upside down and my chair lying on its back next to the big cane plant in the corner of the room.
I’m knocking someone’s teeth out.
A stupid plastic chair was one thing, but the $1500 laptop was no joke and I felt my face get hot again. I turned the computer over and stormed through the office.
Everything was neat; everything was quiet.
The lights flickered again and my cell beeped. It was a text from Ashley.
“What time are you going to be home?”
I ignored it and went back to looking around.
I looked inside the break room: the microwave and the refrigerator doors were wide open. A carton of strawberry yogurt had been smashed into a thin, messy sheet of plastic and thick pink cream was splattered all over the fridge.
A deep sigh echoed through the office and I jumped back out to the main area.
Over the rows of cubicles I saw the light in the center manager’s office on.
I stomped over there and once I got past the last row of cubicles saw a stocky man with thin, wispy hair sitting at the desk scribbling on a yellow legal pad. He didn’t work here and papers were scattered all over the desk and a container of paper clips and rubber bands had spilled onto the floor.
The door was wide open and I walked up to the archway. The man looked like a blurry gray photocopy of a person. A face, hands, and a suit the color of elephant skin and a body that didn’t really have any definition or detail. Yeah, the guy definitely didn’t work here but he did seem strangely familiar—like I’d seen him somewhere but had no idea where. He scribbled for another few seconds and then looked up, wrinkled a crooked nose, and pushed back his few stands of hair. Raising his arms like some construction work had just started blasting outside his window, he sighed loudly again and then reached across the desk to a big stack of papers. The gray man swatted some of the papers away and then slid a thin book out from under the stack. He got up and almost seemed to glide as he moved behind the desk. When he rounded the corner, my heart seized when I saw that his feet were not touching the ground. He floated to me, stopped about a foot away, and held out the book so I could see the cover.
It was the SK Digital corporate handbook.
He opened the book, and as he thumbed through the pages I could see that his fingers were like thick wisps of gray smoke. He then held the book out to me as he pointed a cloudy finger at the top of the page.
“Rule 27-92: No one except senior management allowed on the premises past midnight.”
He folded his thick wavy arms and glared at me.
I backed away from the office and then ran to the elevator, smacking the down button three times as I held my breath, waiting for the doors to open. After a heart-pounding minute they did and I got in and punched the lobby button. The doors closed and the elevator started moving. When the doors opened again I shot out of the elevator, across the lobby, through the building’s revolving door, and sprinted across the parking lot to my car.
When I got home, Ashley was asleep; I did three shots of whiskey before watching TV the rest of the night.
The next day I sat at my cubicle waiting for the hammer to drop. The report was still only 80% done and it was supposed to have been turned in 9:00 a.m. sharp. My IM window popped up.
Seth, please meet me in my office in five minutes.
- Max
A few minutes later I was sitting in front of the office manager’s desk.
“Work late last night, Seth?” Max asked, bringing his fingertips together.
“Yeah, pretty late.”
“You know the office was pretty messy this morning.”
“Yeah, well—”
Max sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin. “That damn old man,” he said looking at the rows of the dozen or so framed photos on the wall. I looked them over and then saw it. Bottom row, second to last on the left: a stocky, balding guy in a gray suit.
Underneath the photo was
