HUMAN RESOURCES
Monday – The Interview
The shape of the building made Paul nervous. It looked like the
architect had gone to town at his drafting table after swilling most of a
bottle of scotch. But, he supposed, that’s what passed for trendy design these
days. A company couldn’t make it in the Tech-Com industry without their
headquarters looking like it was pulled from a Dr. Seuss book.
In all,
the structure seemed to have started rectangular, but was then manipulated,
like it was made from clay, into a geometric impossibility. The upper left
corner of the front side of the building was lower than the right, and it also
extended a good ten feet over the sidewalk. The lower floors were relatively
normal, but then grew wider as it rose, twisting counter-clockwise. And to
completely screw with a person’s perception, the windows angled different
directions, on alternating floors, from left to right. The whole thing
resembled at giant, twisted Rubik’s cube in a funhouse mirror.
In the
parking lot, Paul straightened his tie using his reflection in his car window
and slid on his suit coat. This was his first real job interview since
graduating college two years ago. Sure, he’d slapped together a few sub
sandwiches to pay the bills, but this was the possible start to a career. So,
with his leather-bound folio in his hand, he marched toward the main entrance
of Riley & Taggen.
Paul
went over the company’s brief history in his mind, recalling as much as he
could from the Wikipedia article he’d read the previous night. He was always
told that employers were impressed when an applicant knew enough about the
company to bring it up during casual conversation.
Founded
at the end of the techno-boom of the last part of the millennium, Keith Riley
and Shirley Taggen had opened their company to act as a bridge between the
battling technologies and communications operations out there. They were the
ones you went to if you needed your company’s Windows-based software to talk to
your customer’s Mac software. And it made them a fortune. But soon they
realized that the future was not just in bridges between competitors, but in
how those competitors adapted to one another’s breakthroughs. So in 2007, Riley
& Taggen began a process they described as precognitive engineering with
the help of silent partner, Kenchi Fahn. This step allowed Riley & Taggen
to see what a company was a company was announcing as their future development
and predict where that technology would lead. It was how they helped Apple
develop their iPhone a full three years before the techno-giant had originally said
they would be ready for it.
Paul
went around the large fountain. The water décor featured a wide basin of pink
marble topped with a bronze statue of a bearded man before a wall of stone;
naked and rippling with muscles, the figure pulled open a crack in a stone
wall, releasing the flow of water that splashed at his feet and into the basin.
Paul didn’t recognize the image from any story or myth that he knew, but there
were so many. Maybe it was Gilgamesh?
Paul
had majored in Modern American Literature because he wanted to work as an
editor at a publishing house. But half-way through his sophomore year, the
e-book trend took off and there was a huge cut in publishing jobs. Then he’d
found the open position at Riley & Taggen for an editor working with their
marketing department. It wasn’t exactly Simon & Schuster, but it was work
in the field and experience he could use later.
The
main lobby of Riley & Taggen was a cavern of glass and marble. Inside the
door was a huge C-shaped desk and a young receptionist with a low-cut blouse
and a porn star smile invited him to sit in one of the plush chairs and wait
for a Mister Baldwell. Paul had just enough time to decide that the
receptionist had probably stripped her way through college when an elevator
dinged to his left. A short man in charcoal slacks and a lime-green polo
stepped off and came over to Paul. He was carrying a manila folder.
“Sorry
about the wait,” he said, hand extended.
Paul
shook it firmly but not dominantly. “It wasn’t long at all,” he said.
“Chester
Baldwell,” the man said.
“Paul
Kessinger.”
Baldwell
gestured for Paul to come with him. The two walked through the lobby to a glass
door. Baldwell swiped a card, something beeped, and he pulled the door open.
It was
a narrow hall lined with wooden doors. “We’ll take one of the conference rooms
at the end of the hall,” Baldwell said. “I think the rest of these are
reserved.” He led the way. “I’ll tell you, that Jenny is something else,” he
said referring to the receptionist.
“She
was very nice,” Paul said.
“I
heard she strips on the weekends.” Baldwell stopped and opened a door. Paul
went in, suddenly growing chill. “But I’m too old and lazy to track down if
it’s true or not.”
It was
a very small room with a single table with four wooden chairs. In the corner
was an end table with a plastic plant. Paul took the seat facing the door—a
power move he’d been told—and Baldwell sat across from him. “So tell me about
yourself,” he said.
“Well,
I’m originally from Cincinnati, but moved to California to go to school. I
majored in Modern--.”
“I know
all that,” Baldwell sighed. He opened the folder he’d been carrying and pulled
out Paul’s application and resume. “All that stuff is right here. I read it.
What I want to know is what you didn’t write down.”
“Oh,
well,” Paul paused, thinking. He wasn’t sure how to proceed. He’d heard that
some of the more innovational companies were using bizarre interview methods to
find out who candidates really were. Google, he’d heard, had applicants use
crayons in a kids coloring book during the interview; Westman Intel conducted
interviews while having the applicant bake cookies with their possible
supervisor; and Harper Solutions was famous for having the interviewee
participate in a paintball course—if they passed that, they made it to the next
round.
“Here,”
Baldwell offered, “I’ll start you off.” He flipped through several of the
papers in the folder causing Paul to wonder just what all was in there. “What
kind of Chinese food do you like best?”
“I
guess that’d be General Tao’s chicken.”
“Good.
See, that wasn’t hard. Just tell me more stuff like that.”
“Well,
I collect Superman comics from the nineteen eighties; I have never had a
Mexican pizza; and I want this job more than anything.”
Baldwell
took out a pen, the kind with the clicker at the top, and wrote something. Paul
suddenly regretted his last statement, realizing that it sounded desperate.
“I’ve
never had a relationship with a girl last longer than three weeks,” he added
quickly.
Baldwell
sat back and smiled. “Now that’s the kind of thing I like to hear.”
Paul
swallowed, his dry throat clicking.
“You
see,” Baldwell said, “I’m not asking for your deepest, darkest secrets. I want
someone on my team who is willing to go that extra mile, even if it makes them
vulnerable. I want someone who is ready to be part of the family from day one.
Is that the kind of person you are, Paul?”
Paul
said that he was and spent the next twenty minutes giving up small portions of
his past that he didn’t really think were any of Riley & Taggen’s business.
But damn, he wanted this job. He told Baldwell about the time in high school
history class that he got away with cheating on the final exam—he scored a 91
instead of a 100 so that it wasn’t suspicious. He told about setting fire to
his friend’s playhouse because he was jealous. He even admitted that he was
only planning on working at Riley & Taggen until he gained enough
experience to move on to a legitimate publisher.
Balwell
laughed, nodded, and put his pen away. “I won’t lie,” he said. “You are one of
the most interesting applicants I’ve interviewed. I had a young man the other
day spout off chapter and verse how impressed he was with the history of our
company and how he saw himself running it one day. And before that I had a
woman tell me that she didn’t really want to work here because that meant she
had to give up her government assistance.”
Paul
smiled politely, wondering, if he didn’t get the job, what Baldwell would tell
someone else about him.
“But I
got a good feeling about you,” Baldwell said. He put his hand out and Paul
shook it. They stood and left the room. Baldwell opened the glass door at the
end of the hall and escorted Paul to the reception area. “You should hear
something by the end of the week.” Baldwell shook his hand one last time then
went over to the elevators.
As Paul
left he looked at the receptionist. She nodded at him and winked. He tried not
to image her, naked, full breasts flopping as she gyrated on stage, pinching
her pale pink nipples.
He
failed. Paul went home and masturbated.
Friday
For the previous four days, every time his phone rang,
Paul’s heart jumped and he had to take several breaths before looking at it.
And each time he’d been let down. It got so that he wanted to put his phone in
the blender and end his misery. It was even worse when the sun set and he knew
that he wouldn’t be hearing from Riley & Taggen at all that day.
He
thought about the receptionist again, thought about storming in there and
forcing himself on her while she pretended she didn’t like it. He thought about
taking out his rage at the company’s lack of consideration upon her body.
Then he
slept.
Saturday
Paul didn’t even look at his phone all day. He let every
call (both of them) go to voicemail, every text went unviewed.
There
was an Outer Limits marathon on TV.
Sunday
He awoke in the early afternoon from a dream about the
receptionist. She had been stripping in the lobby of Riley & Taggen, slowly
and seductively removing a custodian’s overalls. When she slid the garment off,
Paul saw that her pubic hair was made of leaves from the plastic plant and her
breasts were bronze and devoid of any features other than their curve. In the
center of her chest a crack appeared, splitting the skin in a dusty cloud like
it was stone. She reached into the crack and pulled it wider. A flood of water
poured out and she began to bathe in it, rubbing herself sensually. Baldwell
appeared and began tossing gnawed chicken bones at her like he was tipping her
in the coin of the realm.
He
cleared his phone of from the previous day’s communications—nothing important
was missed.
Before
dinner he walked to the Rec Center and jogged around the indoor running track,
then showered, actively avoiding thoughts of the receptionist, and went home
for a cheese sandwich. But the only slice of cheese in his fridge had gone
moldy (seemingly overnight), so he settled on just buttered bread.
He
missed no calls and received no texts the entire day.
Monday
Paul awoke to one missed call and a voice mail.
“Hi,
Paul,” a cheery voice that he didn’t recognize said. “This is Lou Cather in HR
with Riley and Taggen. I just wanted to pass along the good word that Mister
Baldwell would like you to call him to set up a start date.” He relayed
Baldwell’s number twice and told Paul to have a good day. Paul didn’t need to
be told.
He
called Baldwell right then, still in bed, naked and dreary-minded.
“The
sooner the better,” Baldwell said. Paul could hear his smile through the phone.
He had apologized for not getting back with him by the promised end of the
week, but he’d said there was a family emergency he needed to take care of.
“Why don’t I put you down for eight o’clock tomorrow morning?”
Tuesday – First
Day of Work
As Paul past the fountain he saw that, in the early
morning light, the crack the man was ripping open, looked a little bigger than
it had the previous week.
“Good
morning, Paul,” the receptionist said when he came in. “I’ve been waiting for
you.”
His
suit suddenly felt too tight—especially in the crotch—and he could feel steady
heat rising from below his shirt collar.
“I’ll
let Mister Baldwell know that you’re here.” She picked up the phone and dialed.
She whispered into it, glancing up at him several times, then hung up. “Take
those elevators to the left. Third floor.”
He
thanked her and went over and pushed the button. As the doors closed he thought
he heard to call out to him, but there’s no way he had actually heard what he
thought she’d said. He repeated it to himself just to prove how silly it
sounded. “I go down, and I’m a good lay.” Just nerves, he told himself. She’d
probably told him to have a good day.
Baldwell
was waiting for him when the door opened. “First thing,” he said, “let’s go get
your ID badge so you can get in and out.”
Paul
followed him to the right. The hall was long. On the right side was a wall with
paintings, mostly abstract art of lines and curves and squiggles. On the left
were the head-high, fabric-covered walls denoting cubicles. Paul could hear the
soft clacking of keyboards, like chattering teeth.
Then,
to his surprise, he saw that the hallway was not nearly as long as he’d
thought. It was an optical illusion created by the walls angling in, the floor
rising slightly and the ceiling lowering. It was like a funhouse. But Paul was
confused why this was hall was designed like this. It wasn’t drastic, not so
that he had to crouch or felt like he was walking uphill, but it was a definite
change he was not expecting.
They
turned the corner and Paul realized that something was off. The wall to the
right made a ninety degree turn, but the one on the left angled much farther
away. The obtuseness of it shocked him. Several yards down, there was a hall
that interrupted the wall and where it began again, it was positioned a foot or
more off of even and then angled in again. Well, Paul figured, the inside
matched the outside. As they passed the hall, Paul saw that the two parts if it
didn’t line up, so that if you were walking down that hall and came to the
intersection, you’d have to slant to the left to continue your path. It was as
if each part of the building were built separate from one another and then
assembled together and patched up just to make it fit.
Finally
they came to a room with a blue cloth tacked to the wall with a chair in front
of it, one of those professional flashbulb things that looked like an umbrella
on a tripod, and a table with a laptop and webcam. Baldwell took Paul’s picture
and sent it to HR. “They’ll email you when it’s ready,” he said. “But right
now, I’ll bet you want to see your desk.”
The vulgar
maze led through bizarre hallways with unnecessary turns and into a confusing
arrangement of cubicles. Some were facing one way, others the opposite. Some
sections were organized in a semi-circle. Again Paul got the impression that
everything was put together by completely different people in different places
at different times. He wouldn’t be shocked if the whole thing was held together
with duct tape under the paint.
Finally,
after coiling through the labyrinth, Baldwell stopped at an empty cube. Though
it wasn’t quite empty. On the L-shaped desk, in the corner by the computer, was
a framed picture of a young woman in pigtails and deep sapphire eye shadow who
looked suspiciously like the receptionist. He looked at Baldwell, skeptical.
But Baldwell only clapped him on the shoulder and winked. “Feel free to
decorate how you’d like. It’s your space,” he said. Paul didn’t want to bring
up the possible sexual harassment situations that could stem if anyone cared to
complain.
“There’s
a Post-It under your keyboard with your computer login information,” Baldwell
went on. “Surf around the company system, our shared drive. See what’s out
there.” He leaned against the cube’s wall. “Not really a whole lot for you to
do your first day. Feel free to surf the web—we don’t monitor usage or
content.” He paused, pursing his lips. Baldwell turned to go. “If you need me,
I just follow this row to the right and you dead end into my fancy office.”
Before
Paul could say anything—not that he was currently able to, having just been unloaded
upon—Baldwell walked away, his footfalls fading.
Left
alone, Paul logged onto his computer. He already had a dozen emails, most that
he was just carbon copied on from other department members. Pretty boring
really; updates on product processes, communications on changes in the company
language that his team needed to be made aware of.
Three
hours of Facebook, solitaire, and Google Earth and Paul was ready to take a
walk. He got up and left his cubicle, and then he noticed that the ones on
either side of him were empty. Had there been someone in them when Baldwell
brought him over? He couldn’t say. Paul had been too wrapped up in the moment.
The cubicles looked as though they were regularly occupied. There were pictures
and magnets and notes on pushpins tacked to the wall. Maybe they were at lunch,
he told himself. It was going on 11:30.
Paul
went out of his area, somehow managing to extricate himself from the Möbius
knot. Each of the alien halls looked familiar, but none seemed to lead where he
expected them to. He wondered if all the floors were like this. And what about
the ones farther up the building where it began to take on the qualities of an
M.C. Escher reality?
Ten
minutes later he found a bank of elevators, though he was sure they weren’t the
same ones he’d ridden up on in the morning. But elevators were elevators. They
went up and down and smelled like hot mechanical grease and ozone. Paul rode up
to the sixth floor and found that it was similar in some ways, but drastically
different in others.
As he
meandered around, trying to look like he was supposed to be there, Paul saw
that there were no cubicles, but instead an open floor plan. The desks were
arranged in long rows with ten on each side that face each other, and one on
either end, holding the shape together. Phones rang. Keyboards clacked. The
general sounds of mumbled whispers and office productivity filled there. But
there was no one in sight.
Paul’s
mouth went dry. Tentatively he moved down the rows of desks listening to the
phantom workers toil away. On the far wall was a series of offices with doors
of blonde wood and a frosted glass pane that went from floor to ceiling about a
foot wide next to the door. The glass of the center office glowed a pale gold
while the others were dark. When Paul started for the office a dark shape
passed across the glass, then the light went out.
The
brisk walk back the way he came did nothing to slow his pounding heart. What
had he been thinking, heading for the lighted office? At best he was walking
into the private sanctum of a company manager and interrupting him; at
worst—well, he wasn’t willing to think about the worst.
The
elevators he came across were not the same ones he’d ridden up on. At least he
didn’t think they were. The colored trim was pine green, whereas he could have
sworn the others were burgundy. He pushed the third floor button and descended,
but Paul couldn’t get the imaginary employees out of his mind. He pictured the
huge building completely empty except for the receptionist, Baldwell, and
himself. It was unnerving. But there had been someone in the upper office. And
he didn’t know what was on floors four or five, seven through ten. Maybe, he
thought, the sound effects were piped in as a kind of white noise for the
workers. He liked the whirling hum of a fan while he worked, so it wasn’t all
that abnormal.
The
elevators delivered Paul to the hall he recognized from earlier that morning.
He did his best to find his desk again, but must have turned himself around
because he discovered that he was turning right at junctions that should have
bore left. But then there he was. The receptionist’s stripper photo smiled
knowingly at him from the black plastic frame. Paul sat down and keyed in his
login. The computer came to life—this was his desk.
There
was one new email from HR telling him his ID badge was ready to be picked up.
It listed their location in the building: tenth floor. A chill went through
Paul. That meant that he was going to have to brave the vortex of cubicles
again, fight thought the distorted perception of the halls, and reach the
elevators. He would do it after lunch.
There
was a soft rap behind him. Baldwell stood there. “How’s the first day?”
“Well,”
Paul said, “I’m a little confused. I haven’t seen anyone and—.”
“Oh,
they’re around,” Baldwell said, as if just then noticing that the cubicles
around Paul were empty. “You’ll find out soon. This place will have you running
all over. People are always wanting us to come to them when it really should be
the other way around.”
“That’s
another thing. I got my email from HR about the badge, but I can’t seem to find
them. I went looking earlier but it’s like every time I move around, the
building changes.”
Baldwell
frowned slightly. “It’s easy to get lost your first day. The layout is kind of
nutty. But you’ll get used to it.”
Paul
nodded.
“We’ll
go up together,” Baldwell said.
Paul
stood up and followed him. With the older man in the lead, it was almost a
straight shot to the elevators that Paul could have sword weren’t there fifteen
minutes before.
“Sorry
about the picture,” Baldwell said. “I was just playing a little prank. That’s
Catherine, the receptionist’s senior class photo. Don’t worry, lot s of men
look at her. It’s hard not to. She’s the one that started the stripper rumors,
you know?” Baldwell chuckled. “About gave old Robert Hu a heart attack when she
told him.”
The
tenth floor was easily the most normal of any of them from the inside, though,
on the outside, it was the most strange. Paul figured it made sense if you were
some kind of architectural analyst working on the dichotomy of the perceived
and the reality. Just off the elevators, and to the left, was a glass door with
“Human Resources” etched into it. Baldwell held the door for Paul and they
entered the little office that looked like a dentist’s waiting room. The man at
the reception desk looked up and smiled.
“Hi,
Paul,” he said. He placed a plastic card with Paul’s picture on it on the
counter. “I’m Lou. I called you about the job?”
“Oh,
yeah. Hi,” Paul said. He took the badge and clipped it to the lapel of his suit
coat.
“How’s
your first day?”
“It’s
good. A little confusing.”
Lou
chuckled. “It can be. But you’ll get the hang of it.”
Just
then a door in the back of the office opened. Paul turned to see an older Asian
gentleman in a beige suit and silver tie come out.”
“Oh,
Paul,” Lou said, “this is Hu,” the head of Human Resources.”
Hu
smiled. “Welcome to Riley and Taggen.” His thick tongue slithered out at the
corner of his mouth and then slid back in.
“Thanks,”
Paul said, unable to shake the unsettling feeling he had about the pale gray
color of the man’s tongue.
Baldwell
said their goodbyes for them and led Paul back to the elevator. On the ride
down he said “I forgot to mention that there’s a big to-do later this
afternoon. Kind of a keep-up-the-good-work party. I was going to forward you
the message, but it slipped my mind. But I’ll come and get you when it’s time.”
Baldwell excused himself at the third floor and left
Paul after pointing the way back. Everyone was right, it was getting easier to
find his desk each time he left it. In the cube to the left of his was a
heavyset man wearing a cream-colored shirt with green stripes that stretched
tightly over his back like a balloon about to burst. He was crammed into the
narrow chair and hunched over a stack of papers, red pen making furious
scratches across the document. Paul wanted to knock and introduce himself, but
the man looked incredibly busy so he went on. Past his desk he wandered down
the aisle and around the bend. He was headed for Baldwell’s office, just to see
it and get an idea of how Riley & Taggen treated their management.
It
wasn’t really an office so much as a double-sized cubicle. It was sparsely
decorated with some emails marked up in highlighter, a company lanyard with
some keys on it, and a picture of a T-ball team with a younger Baldwell
standing behind them. The desk was messy with papers. Overall it was boring and
corporate. But before he left, Paul noticed a small statue hidden in the shadow
of the computer. It was about the size of an upright granola bar and carved
with strange symbols that looked odd. The first symbol looked like the Arabic
number 4 with a small circle on top and a hook, like the numeral 5, under the
line that went across it. Under that symbol, the second appeared more angular,
like a Nordic rune that was a straight line hashed with two lines bisecting it
at the top and a small triangle at the bottom. Paul recognized the symbols as
being the ones painted on the abstract art that lined the halls.The plaque
read: “CHESTER BALDWELL. EMPLOYEE OF THE MOTH. OCTOBER, 1907.”
Paul
had to read it again to make sure it was right. 1907? That was ridiculous.
Riley & Taggen had only been a company for close to twenty years. Perhaps
it was from another job Baldwell had left. But then, the date still didn’t
match. The man couldn’t be more than 50 at the oldest.
He left
Baldwell’s office and headed back to his cube. Finally he came to the
conclusion that the date had been purposefully misprinted. Baldwell was the
managing editor for a tech-com company. It had to be a joke on his behalf.
As he
passed the cube on to the left of his, he noticed the heavy set man still
hunched over the papers. Paul sat down and sighed. Suddenly, he jumped up and
looked at the cube to his right. A young woman in a purple dress clicked on her
computer, bored. The fat man had switched cubes? Maybe he, like Paul, had been
turned around and just thought he was in the right cube.
Paul
rested his elbows on his desk and cradled his head in his hands. This all had
to be stress, he told himself. Just stress about a new job and new coworkers.
What
seemed like a few minutes must have actually been hours because Baldwell was
knocking on his cube wall. “Time to go,” he said. “You okay?” he asked, seeing
Paul’s weary demeanor.
“It’s
like a sensory deprivation tank in here,” Paul said as he followed Baldwell.” I
went looking for you in your office, but you weren’t there so I came back to my
desk. It was only a few minutes, I swear but…” he looked at the time on his
phone. “Now it’s nearly four.”
“Maybe
you dozed off,” Baldwell suggested. “Happens sometimes. I heard that there’s
companies in Japan that encourage napping on the job. They say it shows their
employees are working so hard they need to stop and rest.”
“Maybe,”
Paul said.
The elevator ride was silent, though the smell of ozone
was so thick it was practically wet in the air. Paul stared at his shoes most
of the ride up to the tenth floor. When the doors opened, Baldwell gestured him
to follow him to the right. Down a short hall they made a left at a junction
and strode down a long hall with no doors or windows.
“We’re
going to the executive board room,” Baldwell said proudly. “Riley, Fahn, and
Taggen will probably be there. Hell, you might even get to see the infernal
machine that runs the whole operation.’
Paul
wasn’t overly excited about a room of computer servers, but he pretended to be
for Baldwell. He remembered that Baldwell had said in the interview that he wanted
someone who wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable. Well, Paul was feeling pretty naked
right then.
But
not, he realized when Baldwell opened the boardroom door, as naked as Catherine
was as she bent and twisted and gyrated on top of the long wooden table, her
hands caressing her pale, exposed flesh. Baldwell gave Paul a devious smile.
Paul
actively tried to avoid looking at the nude Catherine as he surveyed the room. It
was a long room with windows on the opposite side of the boardroom table. The
table could have easily seated thrity.
“You
already know Cath,” Baldwell said pointing to the girl. She smiled at Paul,
then bent over, grabbed her ankles and blew him a kiss from between her legs.
He averted his eyes from the dark void between her buttocks that she had bared
to him. “And you met Lou and Hu.” The two men by the table raised red plastic
cups to Paul then went back to blankly staring at the dancing girl. “And over
here,” he said pointing, “is Riley.”
Paul
turned to where he pointed. At the opposite end of the room was a tall man in a
long, tan overcoat that was wet, as if he’d just come in from the rain. His
hair was heavy on his scalp and drops of water cascaded down his face from the
damp strands. The coat was open revealing a likewise soaked dark suit and tie.
Riley’s head turned towards Paul, the rivulets changing direction and pooling
on the floor. “I knew you,” he said. “Your name was Croatoan then, but I knew
you.” His eyes were sad and Paul couldn’t tell if he was crying. Riley lowered
his head as if defeated. Where was all the water coming from? “Yes, you were
Croatoan and I was R’leyh. But you wouldn’t help.” His shoulders began hitching
and Paul knew that he was sobbing then.
Baldwell
turned him away from Riley quickly.
“That’s
enough of that,” he said. “There’s always a Sad Sack at a party.”
Paul
saw that Cath had lain on the table, her ass overhanging the edge by several
inches, legs spread wide with her elbows hooked around the back of her knees.
Lou was crouched below her and Hu was pouring a foamy bright red substance from
his plastic cup onto Cath’s privates. The liquid dribbled down and into Lou’s
open mouth. The stuff was too bright to be blood.
“And
over here is the main event,” Baldwell said. Paul didn’t want to stop watching
Cath. He felt drawn to her now, like polar ends of a magnet. But Baldwell moved
him far enough away that the pull was nullified. They now stood before a set of
double doors. The wood pulsed and stretched. “This is the real brains of the company.”
The
doors opened on their own accord and revealed the company’s secret weapon.
In two
chez lounge chairs were the bodies of a portly Asian man in a tight
cream-colored shirt with green stripes, and a young woman in a purple dress.
Their carcasses were cracked open at the chest like desiccated piñatas. Their
own dead hands tightly gripped on the opening of the wounds, pulling them wide.
Hovering between them in the air was an opalescent membrane that was the egg
sack of hundreds of individual brains. This horrible organ was connected to the
corpses via two tendrils that seemed to grow out of the red voids they had opened
in themselves—because Paul could not deny that he knew they had ripped their
own bodies asunder.
He was
frozen on the spot, unable to look away from the living thing that could not be
there. Baldwell walked around him.
“To
succeed,” he said as if giving a presentation to a group of investors, “you
need ideas. You need to know what the competitor is planning and how to not
only beat them to it but surpass them, all in one fell swoop. We found a way to
do that, Paul. We’ve got ourselves an idea machine.” He went over to the body
of Shirley Taggen and peered inside. “It’s simple enough to run. A couple
people can do it. But it needs power. So much power. And we had an ample supply
right here. But we ran out of resources much quicker than we’d intended.” He
chuckled, but it was the kind of sound that was not at all intending to be
humorous. It was slightly too high pitched, too separated, a balloon with the
opening pulled tight and squeaking as the air tried to rush out all at once.
Baldwell
turned his back to Paul and started petting the thing. Paul took a step back
and turned, but he was met by Lou and Hu. They blocked his exit. Lou’s face was
stained with reddish-pink gunk that was definitely not blood, but was rank and
smelled of pickled fish and shit.
“So we
repurposed Human Resources—kept the name, though. Seemed to fit.” In the space
between Lou and Hu, Paul could see Cath, still on her back, but facing Riley
and rubbing fiercely at her vagina, head thrown back and looking at him
upside-down. Her privates were red from the the stuff Hu had poured on them and
from her own personal abuse.
The two
HR employees lifted Paul off his feet under his arms and carried him over to
Baldwell.
“THE
GOSSAMER SCRIM OF REALITY IS IN TATTERS!” Riley’s voice cracked like ice. “LET
DROP THE VEIL OF SANITY!”
Baldwell
placed his hand on Paul’s head, squeezing as if checking for ripeness. “I don’t
know how the damn thing works. I just know that Hu gets the info from it
somehow. Isn’t that right, Hu?” Hu only growled, a bestial sound in his throat
that might have been words in the language of madness.
Paul
was shoved towards the brain-beast, his legs flailing helplessly several inches
off the ground. Behind him came the orgasmic cries of Cath as she shrieked and
yowled and grunted. Paul and begun to shriek, too. In a last-second effort, he
brought his knees up and struck out at Baldwell’s back. The older man sprawled
forward, crashing face-first into the membrane. He hit with a resonating gong,
like it was made of thick glass, then slid to the side.
Before
anyone could react, the tendril that had been buried in Kenchi Fahn’s rotten
innards struck out at Baldwell. The end of the snakelike arm was tipped in
toothed cup that stretched and came down on Baldwell’s head. He yelled and
grabbed at it, but it was already fastened on tightly, the yellowed teeth
digging in.
Lou and
Hu’s grip loosened and the set him down, backing up in case the Infernal
Machine had gone haywire.
There
was a crunching noise, like an aluminum can being slowly crushed, and Paul saw
the thing had pulverized Baldwell’s skull. He’d done similar things to
hardboiled eggs, crushing the shell and leaving the insides pristine. With a
raunchy slurp Baldwell’s body fell. Paul watched the awful progression as the
lump moved up the tendril and was added to the mass of brains inside the thing.
It looked like a Salvador Dali gumball machine.
Quietly,
the tendril slithered back into Fahn’s remains and moved no more.
Paul
backed out of the room slowly. The doors closed. He turned and saw Lou and Hu,
cowering in the far corner, beside the dripping Riley. Cath was crawling like a
cat across the top of the table towards him, her breasts swinging side to side
like balloons filled with syrup.
A
sudden calm came over Paul. It was like straining over the final crossword clue
for hours then finally getting it. He pulled out his phone and looked at the
time. Five, on the dot.
“Quitting
time,” he said, more to himself.
The
elevator ride down was quiet, peaceful. He stopped by his desk to collect his
things—he had no trouble finding it this time—and then went downstairs. He
swiped his badge and passed into the world.
As he
passed by the fountain he looked up at the nameless bronze man, posed in a
scene from a myth that did not exist. The crack he was rending open was
smaller, the water reduced to a serene trickle.
Wednesday
Paul swiped his badge and entered the building. He gave
a polite nod to Cath. She looked weary and ill. Darkness itself seemed smudged
in crescents under her eyes.
When he
called for the elevator, he waited in silence, then rode up to the third floor.
He went
right to his desk, but didn’t stop. He continued on the winding Ouroboros of
cubicles until he reached Baldwell’s workstation. He set his bag down, took of
his suit coat and took a seat—his seat. The first thing he did was write an
email to Riley, thanking him for the promotion, and promised to work tirelessly
to acquire brilliant new talent.
* * *
