A few years ago, I got back in touch with an old friend of mine. Phil had always been a bit of a visionary. He could make anything sound convincing, so when he suggested I moved down to Oklahoma City to work with him at his startup, there was no way I’d say no. The business plan seemed solid, and he’d already laid the groundwork.
The first three employees had been Phil himself, his college roommate Lance, and this guy named Milan who they’d flown in from Slovenia. An actual computer wizard. I was among the second generation of hires, along with six others.
He had this idea of an event planning business centered around corporate culture. Company outings, conventions, events, and all comforts in-between. Phil knew there was enough demand for someone to “deal with that kind of stuff” at several large firms.
I was brought on as a front-end developer. Basically, I make sure you can click things. I connect the backend systems to an easily navigated front and present it in an inviting way. I’ve got a background in user experience, HCI, and various evaluation processes. Focus groups, cognitive walkthroughs, user cases, personas… that’s my jam. I make clever solutions, test them, and measure results. You could say I “Fab Five” whatever system we need to make interactive.
So that’s how I got involved. By the time I got there, they’d changed the company name to “Marion & Landing Corporate Events”. Apparently, having a double name tested well with investors.
My first day was pretty much everyone’s first day. M&L had relocated to a large office space, a company incubator a few blocks from downtown OKC. Phil made a big deal of it with ribbon cutting and handing out our pass cards in a sort of off-beat ceremony. We all got our desk spaces assigned, there was cake, and all ten of us had to take turns introducing ourselves. The place had been fixed up a bit, but I’m pretty sure the wall-to-wall carpet was at least from the late 80’s.
We spent most of that day just setting up our workspace. Installing software, setting up the infrastructure, reviewing our workplace routines. I spent the day being ping-ponged between Phil, talking short-term gain, and Lance, talking big futures and scalability. It worried me, in a way. I could tell these two would have trouble cooperating in the long term.
The first time I got to talk to Milan, we were in the conference room grabbing a second piece of cake. I found him staring at something in the corner, and walked up to see what it was.
Someone had given us a flower, as part of our welcome package. There was a little gift basket, and a nice little yellow flowerpot. It had a little “Welcome”-sign and everything. The flower itself was a bit weird though. Some kind of sunflower, but smaller, and with a blue tint. Had a strange smell to it. A present from the previous tenants, perhaps. Or the landlord.
“It’ll be dead in a week,” I sighed.
“Sorry?”
Milan looked at me with wide eyes, as if I’d said something inappropriate.
“The, uh… the flower. I can never keep those alive for long.”
“Oh!” he chuckled. “Oh, yes!”
He patted me on the shoulder and gave me the widest smile. He left the conference room, only to turn in the doorway.
“Dead in a week!” he chuckled. “Just can’t help it!”
The following days were a lot less fun. Phil was on a tight schedule. He’d promised a major investor a working prototype on a tight deadline, and a first version by the end of the month. He had this big speech about responsibility and camaraderie, and how we would all have to pitch in to make ends meet.
“This is an adventure,” he beamed at the morning meeting. “We’re going through dangerous woods, and some days we’re gonna have to ditch our backpacks to get away from angry bears. We might have to trek through stinking swamps, or… or fend off wolves with nothing but sharp sticks! I won’t lie; this is going to be tough. But I promise you. I promise you, that at the end of that journey, there’ll be a beautiful meadow.”
I listened to the best of my ability, but I couldn’t ignore that our new office flower was already looking a bit beat; and it’d only been a day.
It was all hands on deck. I didn’t have much time to think about anything outside of font choices, domain names, verification procedures and meetings. Every goddamn day, meetings. I’ve worked on SCRUM projects before, but this was ridiculous.
Still, we did good work. We made the deadline for the working prototype. We hit a few snags, and we got some feedback that might be hard to act on, but overall it worked out in our favor.
Strangely enough, the office sunflower still hung in there. I’d completely forgotten about it. It still had the little “Welcome”-sign, and it had turned completely blue. The petals were sagging. If it wasn’t dead already, it was dying.
As I looked it over in the dreary conference room, Lance knocked on the door.
This guy was three years younger than me, and about as “Type A” as you can get. Vicious go-getter and visionary, whose family had deep enough pockets for him to afford failure. He tried to keep some sort of “corpo surfer dude” look, but he just seemed out of place.
He walked in, noticing me looking over the office flower. Without a word, he walked up to it and picked it up. A few petals tumbled to the ground.
“Poor thing,” he said. “You think it’ll make it?”
“I dunno,” I shrugged. “It’s been indoors and unwatered for a week. It is either dead, or a vampire.”
“I think we’ll be okay,” Lance said, putting it back down. “I don’t see no fangs.”
As we struggled to meet deadline, after deadline, after deadline, that first week had suddenly turned into a month. Phil was sounding a bit less optimistic. Lance mostly just sat by his window, trying to figure out some impossible resource puzzle. Milan was working pretty much around the clock. I swear, the guy had a sleeping bag next to his coat, and I never actually saw him leave.
By the end of the month, we ended up in another meeting. This time, it wasn’t quite as positive. Phil’s tie was loose, and Lance was uncharacteristically quiet.
“I’ll just say it,” Phil sighed. “This is not sustainable.”
A month in, and we were already cutting three people loose. On top of that, we had a new deadline; two weeks. That’s when the first version had to be available. There was an actual gasp around the table.
“A big client is ready to sign us,” explained Phil. “Hatchet Investments. We’re talking long term contracts. But they have other options, and if we can’t get this up and running by then, they’re dropping us. If this company is to survive, we have to look forward. Always forward.”
I was mentally checked out. The amount of work we could expect was staggering, and just thinking about the upcoming late nights drained me. I found my thoughts and eyes constantly drifting away from the charts and explanations; desperately looking for something to latch on to. Like the office flower.
By now, it was as dead as could be. The petals littered the floor.
But the “Welcome”-sign remained.
Things got ugly fast. Phil started handing out free take-out to everyone who stayed late, and we got an extra couch just for sleeping. Luckily, most of us didn’t have any other arrangements. Many of us were single and childless, so there wasn’t anyone relying on us being home at a certain time. Incidentally, all three people who had been cut loose had rich family lives.
We got into this rhythm. All day, every day, all we did was work. At one point, I saw Milan washing himself with a sponge in the communal kitchen. Lance was handing out company t-shirts for those who hadn’t showered. Take-out boxes were piling up. Still, we soldiered on. We trusted Phil, and his vision that there’d be a green pasture past the brambles.
But man, were those some deep brambles.
“Hey man, are you okay?”
The voice hit me out of nowhere. I snapped out of a daze and found myself looking at a man. I was standing in the hallway, holding the door open to a stranger.
“I’m here for the, uh… quality assurance position,” he said. “Is Lance in?”
“Yeah, uh… sure,” I said. “He’s around.”
Of course he was. We all were.
I invited the young man in but found myself confused. I was second-guessing myself. My phone had long since run out of battery, and I hadn’t even considered charging it. I looked at the young man, who kept shifting his eyes at me.
“Excuse me, but… my phone is broken. It’s the 15th, right?” I asked.
“18th,” he answered. “Surprised to see you guys working Saturdays.”
So was I. I’d thought it was a Wednesday.
I walked up to Phil, who was half- asleep at his desk. I saw Lance invite the young man into the conference room, right across from the dead office flower. No one’d had time to clean it up.
“I’m, uh… I’m gonna head home,” I said. “Get a fresh pair, shower, have some fruit.”
“Yeah, you… you do that,” mumbled Phil as he shifted in his seat. His face was stuck to his keyboard, leaving deep marks on his chin. “Get… get back soon.”
“Just a few hours,” I yawned. “I’ll get the, uh… the presentation done by the morning meeting.”
“No… no slacking.”
“None.”
I headed out the door, but as soon as I stepped out, I had this violent coughing attack. It felt like I’d tried to inhale a handful of needles, as tiny pricks of pain invaded my throat. I leaned against the wall, gasping for air. I don’t suffer from allergies or asthma, but I can imagine this being something similar. For a moment, it just felt like I was dying. Like my body was rejecting something foreign.
I scrambled back into the office, as my coworkers stared daggers at me. I downed three glasses of tap water and hunched over the kitchen sink. The pain subsided. A brief calm settled in my chest as the sound of my heartbeat turned down from a banging assault rifle to a soft, steady, drum.
I figured I might as well get back to work.
But it wasn’t that simple. By the time I got back to my desk, I looked around. It occurred to me that pretty much no one was working anymore. Milan was half-asleep on the couch, swiping on Tinder. Phil was fast asleep at his desk. My other three colleagues were either browsing social media or blankly staring out the window, wrapped in a blanket. At some point, we’d all just stopped. We were just… living there.
The young man that lance had interviewed hurried out of the conference room. I could see Lance leaning back in his chair, taking a sitting nap. Had he fallen asleep during the interview?
I hurried to catch up to the young man, waving him down by the entrance.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Everything okay in there?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t… I can’t work in this environment. That guy is clearly on drugs. Half of you seem to be having a mental breakdown, and… and…”
The young man stammered, waving his arms around.
“And the smell! And I’m not just talking about the pizza boxes, man, it’s… it’s something in the walls. Like old bread or something. Can’t you smell it?”
“The pizza boxes, sure, but…”
I took a few deep breaths. No biggie. A bit dusty, but that was it. I just looked at him and shrugged.
“Y’all got problems,” he said, shaking his head. “Good luck.”
I got back to my desk and placed my hand on my comfortable office chair. I could just plop back down and try to get the presentation done. But had I already given up on going home? That was fast.
I decided to try again. I buttoned up my jacket, took another swig of water, and walked out the door.
I made it twenty steps.
That sharp pain came back to my throat, spreading like a burning centipede all the way down to my diaphragm. It was this black, all-consuming pain. Blinding, violent, medical condition kind of pain.
I just lay there, gasping for air. I couldn’t move. My eyes were watering, and I could feel tension building in my head. My chest was caving in on itself, as my body turned over every nook and cranny, looking for oxygen.
All I’d done was walk out the door, and now I lay dying in the corridor.
My vision was just a pin. A speck of light. But gradually, I could feel the coil loosening over my chest.
I was being moved.
An eternity later I found myself on the sleeping couch, being gently slapped awake. Milan looked down at me, trying to force that wide smile back. It didn’t work. It didn’t look genuine against those sunken, exhausted eyes.
“Don’t push… too hard,” he nodded. “Dead in a week.”
“Dead… in a week,” I agreed.
He chuckled, patted me on the shoulder, and wandered off. I stayed there, trying to figure out what was happening. Once the chest pain subsided, and my throat was cleared, I decided to test this further.
So it turns out, I physically couldn’t leave the office. It wasn’t a matter of distance, but time. The longer I was out of the office, the worse I got. Even a single step outside the door and I began feeling symptoms of asphyxiation.
But it seemed like I was the only one who cared. Everyone else was either asleep, or just… lounging. I tried talking to Milan again, but he didn’t seem to understand. I tried waking Phil, but he just dismissed me. Lance was leaning back in his chair, mouth wide open and snoring loudly in the conference room.
Still, I had to try something. Conference room was my best bet.
“Excuse me,” I said, sitting down across from Lance. “I need to talk to you.”
His head came up with a yawn. He cleared his eyes, scratched his stubble, and looked at me with an honest confusion.
“There’s something wrong here,” I said. “We’re… we’re sick.”
“Sure, yeah.”
Lance leaned over into the corner of the room and picked up the yellow flowerpot. The wilted sunflower barely held on.
“We gotta call someone. Poison control, or… or someone.”
“Alright, I hear you.”
He snapped the wilted flower in half, and put it into his mouth. Still maintaining eye contact, he stared me down, chewing.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Lance, you… you’re eating it,” I said. “You’re eating the, uh… the flower.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I guess.”
He scooped up some wilted petals, along with a handful of dirt; slowly consuming it like it was nothing. Little specks of dirt fell from the corner of his mouth, as dry and crunchy as sand.
“You… what are you doing?”
“What?”
Still maintaining eye contact. Nothing about what he did seemed to register as something wrong. If anything, I was the one being odd. I looked out at the others, but no one seemed to care. Milan just walked by, smiling and nodding.
“Lance, you gotta-“
I leaned forward to take the flowerpot away from him, accidentally tearing off the little “Welcome”-sign.
Lance’s demeanor shifted in an instant, like a wild animal stepping into a fox trap. He pulled the pot back, put it on the file cabinet, and kicked the table over. He assumed this aggressive stance, positioning himself between me and the door.
Not a soul reacted.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” I yelled. “Is… is anyone seeing this?!”
“What was it you wanted to discuss?” he asked in a neutral, monotone voice. “You got the presentation ready?”
I was caught off guard as he suddenly leapt towards me, only to trip on the flipped table. I ran across the room, accidentally knocking over the file cabinet.
The yellow flowerpot tumbled to the floor, as I realized there really was a smell.
There was a big green spot of mold behind the file cabinet, reaching into the floor; covered by the old 80’s carpet. It had made a soft spot there, where you could physically press your foot down at least half an inch. I looked up, only to see all my coworkers on their feet, staring at me. I could even see Phil back on his feet. Eyes wide open, but head slouched against his shoulder. He was fast asleep, but his body was still standing up.
Lance was circling me like a shark. I carefully stepped over the file cabinet.
“If there was nothing else, you ought to get back to work,” Lance said. “Get cracking on that presentation.”
Milan was lying on the sleeping couch, staring at me, eyes black like a hungry predator.
“Sorry, I, uh… I just wanted to check in,” I said. “Nevermind me.”
“No worries.”
Lance leapt over the table and carefully picked up the yellow flowerpot. Again, he scooped some dirt up, shoveling it into his mouth.
“You’re doing great,” he coughed in-between bites. “Keep up the good… the good work.”
I walked out into our communal workspace, feeling the stares coming at me from every direction. It was as if they didn’t know what they were really doing. If one were to close their eyes and listen, it’d just sound like an office. But looking at them, it was a nightmare.
Now that I knew what to look for, I could see it everywhere. Pieces of mold reaching into the furniture. The chairs, the tables, the desks. Hell, even the hat rack by the entrance. Now that I knew about it, I could definitely smell it. It had a medicinal sourness to it, like something chemical and nauseating. With every step I took, I could feel it puffing up from the carpet.
How hadn’t we noticed it? Had we grown so dependent on it, so gradually?
I couldn’t charge my phone, so I tried to go online. Only now did I realize that our internet connection had died. We could fiddle around on our computers all day, but we weren’t actually connected to anything. Two of the others were just clicking away, but their screens had long since turned off. Phil seemed to be writing a document, but it was all just jumbled nonsense.
That got me thinking. Milan had been swiping on Tinder. Did he have a connection?
I walked over to him, only to see him swiping his fingers against a blank screen. He looked up at me with tired eyes, giving me a forced smile.
“Dead in a week,” he nodded. “Yes?”
“Yes, Milan. In a week.”
In that environment, it is hard to stay sane. I lost track of time over and over again. There were no deadlines to meet. No meetings. No phone calls. We all just assumed we were constantly in-between work. At one point, as I headed to the bathroom, I realized it’d been two days since the young man knocked on our door. All we did was drink water and hallucinate. At one point, I woke up, thinking everything was fine. It took a whiff of that mold to come crashing back to reality.
Phil had started eating the cardboard from the old pizza boxes. Milan was obsessively drinking water like his life depended on it. I hadn’t even seen Lance in a couple of days. Our other coworkers were either making out like it was the end of the world or squirming against the carpet like dogs rubbing their backs.
With what little clarity I had, I tried to do something. I tried putting up a “help”-sign in the window, but I couldn’t find a working pen. Someone had used most of our markers to draw on the bathroom walls. I tried throwing a monitor out the window, but the others just grabbed me and pulled me down to the floor, and I blacked out from the mold smell.
The windows were shut, but even if they weren’t, there was no way I’d survive a three-story fall into solid asphalt.
Every deadline had come and gone. We were barely even speaking. We just sort of grunted, surviving like locust. One guy in the corner was severely ill. He could barely breathe.
Phil was picking insects out of the carpet, like a chimpanzee. Milan was eating his own hair. And still, Lance was nowhere to be seen.
That morning, as I wandered about in a daze, I decided to try. That was literally my entire thought. To try.
I opened the broom closet, only to find Lance.
He had curled up in a fetal position and died. There were little sunflower sprouts growing out of his ears, nails, and face. His skin was crackling, like dry dirt, and little black insects crawled across his empty white eyes.
He’d been dead for a while. A long while. Maybe a week.
I grabbed a hammer.
I had to try.
I walked out of the kitchen and lumbered towards the front door. As soon as I got near it, the others got up. They would try to stop me. Milan, still trying to smile, came up to me.
I had to remember to try. Just try.
I smacked him across the cheek with my hammer, and he collapsed on the floor.
The others started running. Phil lurched forward like a primate, grunting and yelling. The other two followed suit, brandishing keyboards like clubs.
I opened the front door, and felt that sharp pain immediately. It was like willingly stepping into a furnace.
Try. Try. Try.
I felt hands grabbing at me, desperately trying to pull me back. I kept hitting them, over and over. Breaking fingers, hands, elbows, noses.
“Don’t… don’t be late,” mumbled Phil. “The… the review.”
“You’re… on for… 9’o clock.”
“…on your desk in… in an hour.”
And then Milan looked up at me from the floor, his forced smile missing a tooth.
“Dead… in a week!”
Finally, as my crusty M&L company t-shirt failed me, I stumbled into the hallway.
I just ran.
I ran forward, and they refused to follow. Like animals recoiling from flame, they retreated. I heard their screams as my deteriorating body forced its way down the hallway. Past the company logo. Past the emergency exit plan. Past the fire extinguisher.
There was no air anymore. Just crippling pain.
My left leg gave out, but I kept hobbling forward, leaning against the wall. I felt the cool concrete against my skin, soothing the burning pain inside.
As I rounded the corner, I collapsed, tumbling down the stairs.
Something snapped in my shoulder, and my foot was turned the wrong way. I was stuck, like a rock on the ocean floor.
The last thing I saw before my vision faded was someone dressed in green, and the last thing I heard, was a gasp.
And then, nothing.
I was rescued by a cleaning lady doing her rounds. I was clinically dead for about 20 seconds, but they brought me back and put me on a ventilator. They described it as a severe anaphylactic shock. Could’ve put me in a coma.
I saw it on the news. Some of it. The version they wanted us to see. They called it severe carbon poisoning because of a failed ventilation inspection. I watched the news segment where they rolled a black body bag out. I could see it was contorted.
There were interviews with the building owner, various health inspectors, and even a few political figures. Our main investor, the Hatchet group, was appalled. They had been paying us as part of a contract to develop our platform, but agreed that they’d noticed complications. Still, I figured it was strange that they didn’t mention not sending a single person to inspect us, or hold a meeting.
Officially, there’d been a misunderstanding with the independent contractor who was supposed to do an inspection before we moved in. They had already gone bankrupt, so there was no accountability. Administrative oversight, at worst.
About a month later, the entire building was scheduled for demolition.
Not a single word of mold, or fungus.
Phil ended up with a serious tracheal infection that cost him his voice. Milan had some sort of infected stomach ulcer, and had to be put on an I.V. Last thing I heard of him was that he was in a wheelchair. Still coding though.
The other two? They seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. They were kept out of the papers and were only briefly seen on the news segment. I think one of them moved to Minnesota. The other, I don’t know.
This was a few years ago, and I’ve only recently started to remember things more clearly. It’s like a fog slowly lifting from my mind. I moved back to my hometown of Juniper to get away from all this. Got a job as a part-time teacher. I want this as a sort of record if something were to happen to me.
Because I recently found a strange blue plant growing in my back yard, and I have this dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach that I might be dead in a week.