/yesod

Tag: office

  • Terminus

    The department has a new manager and she’s been placed in the cubicle with me, which means I have to shift the sprawl of my stuff in order to make room for her things (which are more important than dusty action figures, artifacts of personal flair, and binders full of meeting minutes no one if ever going to read).

    Within a day, I’ve been terminated. The packet she hands me is very well designed and includes a stack of little infographic cards detailing my various transgressions—loading up my work computer with personal music and movies, incessant and unapologetic use of profanity in meetings, and falling asleep at my desk.

    (To that last point, I woke up nestled against her midsection, cradled in her arms—so I feel like maybe that’s on her too. But she was very kind when she woke me up and handed me the termination packet, so much so that I almost went back to sleep.)

    No one is sad to see me go and they barely look up as I pass with my two cardboard boxes full of personal belongings (including the dusty trench-coat I wore every day of my senior year of high school, which was a nice discovery under some forgotten invoices at the bottom of an old filing cabinet).

    I am not upset, although I already feel the financial dread of “what am I going to live on?” once the severance runs out. It’s probably for the best, though. The building is so dimly lit that there was no chance I’d ever be able to stay awake. They should do something about that.

    A little while later I am standing on a crowded platform next to myself. My hands are empty but the other me is still struggling to manage the two boxes of office detritus. In the dim light people shift and mutter all around us, waiting for the gates at the top of the steps to open.

    “Don’t worry,” I tell myself. “It’s like ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. I’ll be here to guide you.” The trench-coat has given me newfound confidence as a psychopomp, but I can tell that my charge (my self) is not convinced.

    …

    Later still, in another place located well past the the margins of what any reasonable person would call “livable”—it’s an old refugee camp decommissioned after the Salamander Wars—the non trench-coat me is alone once again and I struggle with the boxes as I go up the dusty path to the corrugated iron shack where I live.

    Next door, the neighbor’s dogs are whining and barking. One of them has been caught in some kind of snare—and not for the first time. The neighbor is always setting them, though if it’s to catch game or trespassers I don’t know. The dog dangles a few feet off the ground, whining like a violin while two other dogs bark up at it as though offering advice (or perhaps admonishing it for having gotten itself into this predicament).

    The door opens and my neighbor’s sullen teenage spawn spill out to inspect the dog, but none of them try to get it out of the snare.

    Above, the sky is flat and white. Featureless. There is no sun in this place and never has been.

    I heft my boxes again and go inside.

  • switch

    (null)

    Sitting in my office this afternoon, working.

    A few moments ago I heard the distinctive sound of the light switch in the back hallway snapping on.

    A few moments later I heard it snap off.

    My wife and youngest daughter are napping upstairs.

    Before I heard the light switch, it was quiet and peaceful. No telltale sounds of someone coming up or down the back stairs.

    For all intents and purposes, I’m the only one down here.

    But, I suppose, I might not be alone.

  • doppelgänger

    IMG_0084…and as I walk back into my office, I see — or I think I see — a man standing to one side and looking through my filing cabinet.

    It is me, myself. I am the one standing there, dressed in the same clothes I am wearing today.

    I blink.

    He is gone.

    I am gone.

    Unnerved, I get back to work.

  • “Hey Dad?”

    Walking through the office I hear — or I think I hear — my son’s voice, very distinct and clear, call to me.

    I look back down the hallway but, of course, no one is there.

  • flake

    Packing up for the day, getting ready to head for home… I reach for my cell phone and watch in amazement as a bright flake of light, a translucent chip of yellow-white light about the size of my fingernail, floats up from the screen towards my face.

    I blink, shake my head. It is gone.

  • mossy

    Sitting with my youngest daughter this evening, something lingers in the corner of my eye.

    I have a vague impression of something olive green, mossy, no more than three feet tall. A spindly figure standing in the little hallway leading to my office.

    Then it’s gone.

  • footsteps and flashes

    After dinner, my wife runs to the store. My daughter and I play in my office.

    The whole time, my skin is crawling. I have a sense that someone — or multiple someones — is passing through my office, moving past us unseen.

    The sensation is uncanny, disquieting. My daughter seems not to notice.

    When my wife returns, I make no mention of it.

    As we’re getting our daughter ready for bath time, my wife heads upstairs for a towel.

    She comes back into the room a minute later, unsettled. “I just saw a light move across the stairs.”

    It was a white light, smallish. She saw it briefly. But she saw it.

    We nod, matter of fact. Just another thing to add to the growing list of things we’ve noticed in the new house.

    Later that night…

    I’m finishing up a few things in my office, getting ready to head up to bed. I hear footsteps on the back stairs. They stop for a moment, then continue down.

    I go out to look, assuming my wife came down to get some water.

    She isn’t there.

    I go back in my office. A few moments later, the footsteps again. This time on the front stairs.

    I open both doors of my office, looking to the front and back of the house.

    No one.

    It’s worth noting that there is no odd feeling, no crawling skin or discomfort or fear.

    No sense that anything is wrong.

  • the new office

    …and I’m surprised to find out that not only are each of us getting our own office in the new building, but we’ll have an attached bedroom as well. A few of my coworkers even have bunkbeds.

    The gossip around the office is that this is to allow for a more Mad Men like atmosphere.

    “Aren’t we way too busy for a bunch of womanizing?” I ask.

    No one answers. They’re all too busy getting ready for the big new photo shoot with our latest client, Versace.

    The office is full of art directors, make up artists, and celebrities called in for the shoot.

    I pass by an office where Christian Bale is getting his hair dyed a brilliant royal blue.

    I trade quips with George Clooney in the hall. He is wearing a two foot tall jet black fright wig and sports an impressive handlebar mustache — perfectly suited to go with his leather chaps and Village People bondage gear.

    It’s going to be an interesting day, I think to myself.

    (For what it’s worth, the tag line for the advertising agency where I work is “Exactly like nobody else.”)