Landing a job is the most difficult thing for a lot of people. We wake up, we try to get a handle on a million different apps and search engines and try to perfect every available technique. There are thousands of HR recruiters online, searching every day and every second for the perfect candidate. And yet, despite all that… There’s a good enough chance that you still won’t find a job.
My name’s Trent Larson, and until recently, I was one of the 220 million unemployed dipshits around the globe.
Don’t ever think for a moment that I didn’t try. LinkedIn? Check. Open To Work? Check. Updating My CV? I even got my girlfriend to download one of those fancy apps that get all of those pretty designs just so it would look really appealing. But the truth of the matter was that I just wasn’t able to cut it. It didn’t matter that I had recently graduated from one of the most prestigious colleges in my country, or that I had worked for a very popular Marketing Agency: I was screwed beyond belief.
The thing was, opportunities come at the most random of places. I just didn’t understand it. My old man had a history of unemployment as well. He’d worked for this big oil company and had a few bumps along the way (let’s just say that he got a bit antsy about the legality of certain measures the government was taking). I still remember what he told me on my first day after my previous job sacked me.
“Look Trent, you don’t gotta worry all that much”, he said as he drove with me to my house. “Good things come in time. The key is not to lose your mind and do something stupid.” I simply looked around me, watching the streetlights pass me by as they became tiny dots of refracting beams in the distance. I wasn’t ever going to be like him. I’d spent over two years of misery when I was eight years old because of his stupidity. If he hadn’t talked, we would have still been rich. But that was in the past. That wasn’t me. I was gonna do something about this.
I was gonna make it right.
About five months ago, I was partying. Claire, my girlfriend, was paying the bill tonight. As usual. My drink was almost empty, and I could barely make out the rest of the locale. Something about alcohol always gets me down, I don’t know why I insisted on drinking so much that night. It was almost midnight and it felt like I was about to slump over the table.
“Babe, are you ok?” Claire had been trying to get me to dance, but I just wasn’t feeling it that night.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine”, she said as she stood over me. Something about her blue eyes made it easy to focus on her face. “Do you want to go home? We can just try this another night.”
“I said I’m fine. Jesus, why do you have to treat everything like it’s such an emergency?”
“Well, perhaps because you’re doing this whole ‘drunken boyfriend’ bit, which is really killing the vibe right now. I mean, the overturned bottles, the tight shirt, the angry face…It’s almost a cliché at this point.”
She was right, it was a really tight shirt.
“Look, Claire, I’m fucking tired, ok? Nobody wants to hire me, and we know that you can’t maintain the both of us with your salary. I’m not saying that it’s not enough, but I need to earn at least a little bit for us to be ok. Every single day is a reminder of what a failure I am, and I’d just like to be ok for one night, you know? Just forget about everything else for one night, can you give me that, please?”
“Babe… I know you want a job, I get it. But you don’t need to rush it. I mean, with the pandemic, and the recession… Everyone’s struggling a bit. You just need to relax a bit. You don’t need to be the main breadwinner every day. Right now, this is enough for me.”
“Well, it ain’t for me, ok? Just leave me in peace.” The moment I said that, I knew I’d fucked up. Claire just looked at me coldly for one second before turning away. “I’m gonna get a cab for the both of us, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Angel, wait”, I tried gesturing a bit, but she walked at a brisk pace. Might as well let her steam off a bit. It’s what I’d like, too. Maybe a few more shots would bring some sense to this.
Then, it happened.
You ever felt that feeling in a nightmare, where you’re walking around in the middle of the night? It doesn’t matter if it’s your childhood home, a street, or a dark hallway. It’s that feeling that the rooms keep getting bigger, and you feel like a certain kind of darkness keeps watching you, ready to pop up.
I was feeling it. Something else was off. I couldn’t make shit of anything else, but I could make out a pair of eyes in the distance of the nightclub. They seemed to belong to a shadow, or they were part of the wall. I honestly don’t know at this point. All it mattered was their color. Yellow, a sickly yellow, like that of a haystack or an insect. The kind of color that pops up in the middle of the night to warn you something’s off.
“Fucking what–
As soon as I looked at it, the pair of eyes disappeared. I was alone in the club again, my mind racing and the walls spinning. Then, that voice. A stranger sat down in the chair behind me. I tried turning around, but my body was limp at this point.
The voice was like that of a mountain, falling into an abyss. It drowned out the music, the light, and all remaining senses.
“Have you felt it too?”
“What?” I said, feeling sweat trickle down my back.
“This climate. A wave of decay, sweeping away every life as if they had never been there. No matter how much your body rattles the cage, it still won’t budge.”
“What are you talking about, man?” I didn’t understand a single thing, but the voice kept getting louder, as if it was in my head.
“I understand your pain, young one. Born into a harsh land, you’re trying to reap some kind of fortune, correct?”
“I mean… Yeah, I guess.”
The voice laughed. It felt like ice breaking apart. “But you can’t make it happen. No matter what any of us do, we cannot defeat the impossible.”
“Look, whoever you are, you’re creeping me out. If you don’t have anything else to say, I’d like to be alone, please.”
“Young man, would you like to have riches?”
“…What?”
“Would you like to see faraway pleasures?”
“Yeah, who wouldn’t.”
“You cannot achieve those dreams… Normally. This world is a swamp. Nothing that enters it will grow. We were never meant to survive it. But I have. I have experienced the most exquisite pleasures known to man, seen the grandest empires, and lived the lives of a thousand successful men.”
I could barely understand what he was trying to say at that moment. I was drunk, afraid, and barely awake. “Why… Why are you telling me all this?”
“I know pleasure. Sometimes I like to share it with certain people. But it comes at a price.”
“What… What price?”
“Perhaps price isn’t the correct word for someone like you. What you would need to do in return is something more akin to… A job.” His voice echoed in my left ear, and I could feel his breath on my neck. “Would you be interested?”
“I… I don’t know what type of job you’re after, man.”
“You must accept it first, or the opportunity will pass, young man. You either jump towards the sea, or you stay in the burning ship. I await your answer.”
This did not make sense, of course. Like I said, someone in a correct state of mind would never say yes. Even if I worked in marketing, I had studied law in college - I don’t remember much about my time there, but you never should enter into a situation where your level of consent is dubious at best. Saying no to a stranger is the obvious choice in these types of situations.
“All right, I accept.”
Then again, I was never a good law student. Why do you think I never worked at a law firm?
“Excellent…” Something about the stranger’s tone seemed different. I felt as if the air was getting sucked out of me the moment I accepted his offer. “You must simply provide me with some documents pertaining to your identity and tell me about your qualifications.”
“I uh… I’m Trent”, I said, clumsily pulling out my ID card. “I work in Marketing.”
“A pleasure… Trent.” A hand reached out from behind me, taking my ID. Pustules and a rotten smell in my nostrils were all that I remember seeing. The Stranger observed my ID for a bit, before settling it down.
“We will contact you soon enough. You must not keep us waiting. You’re now in good company, Trent Larson. It would be a shame to squander it.”
As soon as he was gone, it felt like a weight had been lifted. Just two seconds later, I felt someone grab me by my shirt’s collar.
“Where the hell were you?!” It was Claire. Her eyes were watery. “I’ve been looking for you for half an hour! We have a small disagreement and you just ghost me like that?!”
“Angel, babe, what are you talking about? I was right here. I was talking to a man, and everything got weird and… I don’t know. I’m sorry, Claire.” While she seemed angry, something about me also worried her. “You look pale”, she said. “Who were you talking to? Did they give you anything?”
“I don’t think so… I feel cold, though.”
“Come on, let’s get the cab. I’ll get you home so you can detox. You look like shit.”
“I feel fine, angel. I’m sorry about earlier, ok? And I don’t think they drugged me or anything. I probably just imagined it.”
The next few hours were a total blur. I remember the cab, and me resting my head on Claire’s legs. I don’t know how or if she managed to carry me, because I sure as hell don’t remember how I ended up in my bed. But I was glad just to be in my own home. Tomorrow would be another day, and I’d make it up to her.
By the early morning, I could see Claire getting ready to go to work. She was so perfect, jesus. I needed to get my shit together. My head was ringing, but I felt fine aside from that.
“Ah, look who decided to grace us with his presence! It’s drunken boyfriend number 3!”
“I’m sorry, Angel. I don’t know what came over me. It must have been the alcohol. Can we talk?”
“Babe, it’s ok, and I’d love to talk about everything that’s bothering you, but I’m super late for work and I had to cook breakfast for the both of us. I’ll see you tonight, ok?”
“Ok, all right.”
“Besides, you might want to check your email”, she gave me a full, snickering grin as she said it. “I didn’t mean to pry, but you left your account open. I just saw the title, promise.”
“What do you mean?” I reached for my phone on the nightstand, opening my mailing app.
“Just wait and see!” She went out the door, grabbing the keys.
My mail looked almost the same as always. Some podcast announcements, NBA news, and the usual notifications. The only difference was a certain title, in bold.
Usher Consolidated - Welcome Message / NDA Document
I would normally have been very happy. Really, I would have been ecstatic. But I only felt like that other feeling I previously mentioned, like when you finally see the thing that’s been watching you while you stumble around in the dark. The moment where the yellow eyes come out the corner of your peripheral vision.
“This… It has to be another thing entirely. I must have sent my CV to someone else I don’t remember.”
“Oh by the way, babe”, Claire’s voice came through the living room. “Don’t panic if you don’t find your ID, ok? I put it right on the kitchen table. You almost left it by the bottles in the nightclub. Weird, huh?”