Office Jobs Can Suck The Life Out of You

There was nothing special about that day. I had woken up, gotten dressed, and hurried along to work just like I did any other day of the week. I was locked in combat against my insomnia, staring blankly at my many Excel spreadsheets as I took another sip of coffee from my corner cubicle of the eighth floor. I forced the bitter gunk down my throat, hoping between coughs it would give me the strength to not go postal on my coworkers. Lifting my head, my eyes scanned across the low cubicle walls to see each zombie-like face mulling over their own work. With a heavy breath, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. My stomach was tightening, and my bladder felt full. I decided to hold out for a little while and turned up my music, clinging to some arbitrary belief that it would help me fight the urge to go. The mice in the office went click, click, click. My fingers danced unenthusiastically across the keyboard, spending more time on the backspace key than any other. Copy, paste special values, double click the little black box, repeat. I had to close my eyes for a moment to look at something, anything, that didn’t give off artificial light.

Eventually, upon finishing my fifth spreadsheet of the day, I looked at the tiny clock on the screen. It read 9:49 AM. My foot began tapping anxiously, a common habit of mine. I wasn’t going to be able to make it through another six hours of this monotony. I groaned painfully; at the rate I was going, I wasn’t going to have the other thirty spreadsheets finished before the end of the day. A notification popped up on my screen; it was my day scheduler. I had a phone meeting in ten minutes.

I continued to grind out the next spreadsheet for a few minutes, and when the time drew near for the meeting to start, I reached for my telephone and called onto the line. I could hear it connecting for a moment, before it suddenly cut out. Puzzled, I looked at the receiver, then the box it was connected to. Nothing seemed out of place.

Leaning down, I followed the phone’s wires behind and below my desk. There was the cause; I had pulled out the power cord while I was tapping my foot. Either that or one of the janitors had while cleaning. I took the cord in hand and pushed it back into its slot.

I noticed that the office immediately went dark the moment I plugged my phone back in. Thinking that I had just somehow caused a blackout, I stood up to see the ensuing chaos. Every desk was empty, and everything was grey. There were no sounds to be heard. The gypsum walls were cracked and ruined, and pieces of plaster fell from the ceiling. There was an ominous fog drifted over the ripped and ragged carpet, swallowing my legs up to the knees. Now my heart was racing. I raised my shaky hands, and could see the dingy carpet floor through them. Not in between my fingers, but through my palms.

The chill came next. A cold wind that struck suddenly, like a stabbing from Jack Frost. My head flew up in the direction the sensation had come from, and I saw it. Swearing under my breath, I ducked behind a desk, stupidly hoping it hadn’t seen me. I closed my eyes and prayed that this was all just some stress induced hallucination, or that I had fallen asleep at my desk. Once neither proved to be true, I found my balls and decided to slowly stand and get a better look at the thing.

A dark cloaked figure stared in my direction from the other end of the office. Its face was impossible to see, hidden in the shade of its hood, but I could make out of the rusted farming tool it wielded - as well as the bony finger it raised towards me, before advancing on my position.

My heart sunk in despair, before escalating to new levels of fright. I bolted from my desk and began to run down the floor towards the exit, but it was as though I were on a treadmill. My feet just would not grip, and I found myself using a lot of energy to only get a few feet away. I turned around and witnessed a group of ghastly chains protruding from my back, hooking me to my seat. And lying there was my body, limp and quiet, one hand smouldering from where the socket has fried me.

I rushed back over to my desk, an easier task as I was not fighting the chains. I tried reaching into the heart, the brain, anywhere I thought was “spiritually important”. I turned back for a second - the cloaked thing was halfway across the floor, holding the scythe in both hands. I couldn’t tell if it had feet or not, as it seemed to glide over the filthy grey floor.

I tried to put the plug back in its socket, to complete some “unfinished business.” I screamed and shouted at my body. I slapped it and pinched it and punched it. I threw drywall and coffee cups in its face. Nothing worked. The chill has grown with the creature’s approach, and my limbs felt hard and slow to move.

I stumbled back, begging for the thing to let me go. I knew what it was, but I wasn’t ready. The silent being raised the rusted tool high above its wispy cloaked head. The thought of fighting back and grabbing its skeletal arms crossed my mind, but I could barely move as it was from the cold and my own dread. The creature jerked, and I fell back once again in pure fright, landing in the chair just as the blade came slashing down.

I sucked in a large breath and coughed hard, trying to obtain that sweet oxygen from the air. The lights had returned, passing overhead rather quickly, and I felt a fierce, stinging pain in my right hand. I tried to turn my head on the pillow to see- wait, pillow?

Slowly, the faces of multiple white gowned hospital workers came into view. I could hear them saying something about “sudden cardiac arrest”, yet none of them noticed my returning consciousness. Perhaps I wasn’t truly conscious though, I couldn’t tell. Maybe I was still just a soul, watching from my body’s eyes. There was a loud crash as the bottom of my bed was forced through a large pair of double swinging doors - the emergency room.

Doctors rushed around my bed, panicked to resuscitate my body. As for me, I just laid there, realizing there was no escaping this. Staring past the professionals, I watched in horror as the cloaked figure approached from the corner of the room.