One day out of the month, a raffle ticket with one lucky worker’s name got picked. This happened at the employee appreciation party.
This winner got gifted the usual items one would expect at these sorts of functions. Things like new crockpots or cutting boards.
There was one prize which interested us cubicle workers more than any other.
It was a trip. It was not one overseas to Hawaii or Switzerland. It was an opportunity to see a part of the company building which was off limits. It was even guarded by armed Security.
It was a chance to visit the sixteenth floor.
What stupefied everyone was how the workers who had won in the past never came back.
Even the associates who knew the prior winners stated they would no longer return calls or texts.
The consensus was they won a severance package. Or an early retirement. Or at the least a financial windfall good enough to take a sabbatical from the corporate world.
I stopped by my Supervisor’s office in the morning before the next raffle. I knocked on Glen Bevan’s door and he waved me in.
“I’ll give you five hundred dollars for extra tickets. I’m going to put them all on the sixteenth floor visitation.”
“What if they do an audit?” Glen asked.
“I don’t think they’ve ever done that before. Once the winner‘s declared, they throw the rest out. I’m putting them in on the single winnable prize. It’s not like they’ll know I’d had extra chances since they’ll only be pulling my name once. Neither one of us will get in trouble.”
“They keep the tickets in a back room with cameras. I will have to be quick and hope no one catches me. The department has gotten smaller, so I can’t justify grabbing a fistful.”
“I know you’ll be stealthy.”
“Make it six,” he said.
I winced. I knew my beginning price was already too steep. I was cutting into my budget, but I nodded.
We shook hands. The higher echelon of management is always easy to bribe.
*
The drawing took place in the convention center part of the structure.
When the HR representative pulled my name, I stood.
“No,” a voice cried out in the back.
We all turned around to look at Jim. He looked as though he was there on his day off, if he was not drinking on the job.
“I needed the sixteenth floor,” he said.
“There’s always next time,” the representative said.
“I can’t stand this place,” he said. “Nowhere else is hiring at the starting wage I’m making in this micromanaged cesspool.”
“That is your opinion,” the HR lady said. “Keep in mind these things are only relative to other work environments. Ours is not bad.”
Jim stormed out. He never came back, and rumor was that he had booked himself into a psychiatric ward.
A part of me did feel guilty about Jim’s response, despite not having been close with the man. I knew him to be a generally decent person around the water cooler. He never did anything to irritate me, although he did speak his mind, which our bosses did not appreciate. It was not as though he ever said anything the rest of us were not thinking.
The HR person said to expect an email with the time, date, and location. I was to make the visitation with punctuality.
I fantasized about being able to spend more time at home. I was not able to do so since the worldwide shut down stemming from a contagion. This resulted in a brief taste of the good life. A time without worry of new standard operating procedures and anxious shift changes. The reopening forced us all back against our will.
I went into work every day for the next week with a smile on my face, anticipating everything to get better.
*
The email was in my inbox without a subject line. I found it in my spam folder. It was a bit alarming, considering I had to get permission to open up the attached file.
‘Stay after your shift ends tomorrow,’ it read, ‘and meet a leader at the old transportation office.’
I asked Glen where that was, and his face turned pale.
“That is usually where we escort terminated employees,” he said. “It is right next to the interrogation room - I mean, erm, the internal services office.”
“Good to know,” I said.
I had a choice to make. I could assume that this was their excuse to dispose of me as a valued member. Or it was going to be the complete reverse of such a negative situation, a promotion to a permanent vacation.
It was possible they wanted to give me my early retirement. Better on their part to walk me out of a hidden doorway and not attract attention.
I opted to follow the directions without further internal debate.
When I showed up to the location, which was an old abandoned desk in a shadowy corner by a bunch of dusty windows. I met with a gaunt man next to two broken down elevators there.
He had a thick mop of black hair that hung down across his forehead in a slant.
“My aim is to make this quick as possible for everyone,” I said as he motioned me to follow him.
My suggestion was born from fatigue at having crunched numbers for eight hours. I wanted to reap the reward sooner than later.
How naive.
The man did not say any words as he reached into his pocket. He pulled out a metal key, and used it to access a door I had never seen before located past the oak slab.
“You are lucky to make money in such a fine establishment,” he said in a monotone as he led me down a cobweb strewn corridor. “You will operate on the timeline given to you, not one you can dictate at your whimsy.”
His response was rude, but I did not become defensive. I considered this to be a litmus test to see how I would react to some push-back before a fortuitous happening. It even occurred to me that he may be jealous.
We made our way through another chamber that was empty, sterile.
He took me to a staircase, and it went straight up for at least two dozen steps. Each one was not made of concrete or metal, but was a filing cabinet.
I gave him a sideways glance.
“Once you take the first step,” he said, “you must not look back. If you do, the visitation’s canceled, and so will your employment be with this glorious company.”
I tried to read if his words were sarcastic or a case of bullying. His tone was serious.
I rested my body weight on the first cabinet. The drawer opened a crack, but it held. I went through a threshold painted beige and gray.
The room I found myself in after I traversed the flight was stuffy. Shelves lined the barriers, and each of them had jars and random knickknacks. Old antiques with rusted metal lined the walls.
A tall and thin man dressed in all black stood in the center, and next to him was a table with a single lit candle. Faint white symbols decorated the upper half of his suit coat.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
I looked around to make sure he was alone. I presumed he was talking on corporate’s behalf.
He reached over and grabbed a stack of papers. He lifted them up in the air and showed them to me.
“This is a collection of your performance infractions,” he said. “Everything from complaints of clients to coworkers who stated you have been slacking. They have to pick up the tasks you were not disciplined enough to finish. I also have a list of your greatest transgressions. The sins you have committed which you hoped were so far behind you.”
“Impossible,” I said. Write ups are not uncommon in my career. It was always my goal to make the process of them giving me the criticism as uncomfortable as I was receiving it.
“You don’t know who I am.”
“The new GM?”
“I am the one in true auditor of everyone’s greatest missteps,” he said.
He bent down to drop the stack back onto the surface.
“Sounds like an exhausting position.”
“You will sign these write ups, or your secrets will come to light. There is a pen next to the sheets.”
“What do I get for complying with your order?” I asked as I felt my body tense up.
“You will maintain your status as a worker. Also, you will get a transfer to somewhere else. It is a place with much less downtime, but one for more suited to the choices you have made thus far.”
“Is that where everyone else who won went?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“It is subterranean, and a very claustrophobic space. You will always be warm, especially in the winter time.”
“I refuse to pick up that pen. Can I width draw from the whole contest? I’ll even give my ticket to someone else if that’s an option.”
He screamed, but it did not sound human. It was more like a raspy wail, one obstructed by thin sheet metal.
As he was in the midst of his emanation, veils of mist began to fall down the walls. I looked for stage hands holding fog machines in the rafters.
“You must sign the write ups,” he said.
His voice had altered, as though a swarm of fire ants were swimming in his throat. He also swung his head in an odd directions, a contortion of pain.
“You can’t force me to,” I said. “If you do, I’ll sign it under duress, which is going to make a court case of my wrongful termination that much stronger.”
A torch that I had not taken notice of since it blended in with the darkness where it sat lit up behind him. This was either a pyrotechnic trick, or someone managed to ignite it ran away fast enough to vanish.
“You will sign it or you will not leave this room alive,” he said. That same echoing growl and transformed groan filled the ether.
He took a few steps towards me, and his stride was so massive that I had underestimated the size of his frame.
My blood turned cold as he wrapped his hands around my shirt collar and forced me against the wall. He raised me up and my feet dangled.
I could not believe his strength. I was terrified. My first instinct when I realized that I could not punch or kick was to spit in his face. He did not even flinch at my act.
“You automatons are all the same,” he said.
His breath stank of curdled milk or week-old fish.
“Let me go,” I said. “If you do, I won’t let HR know.”
“You don’t understand how I’m their boss. I am the secret leader of all. You miserable wretches pretend as though you have sovereignty. You clock in and out every day, making someone else wealthy to only go further into debt. You’re too stupid to see that it was all by design. You try and be grateful for your lot in life while we bleed you for everything you have to benefit us. You will sign the paper. You will sing the praises of our culture’s environment following your transfer. After all, it’s people like you who make this place thrive, isn’t that right?”
I slammed both of my palms into the side of his head. I felt his form start to crumble, and his head bowed forward a bit. He did not lose consciousness, but he did back away far enough for me to push him.
I turned around and attempted to access the same door I had entered through. It found it locked. In my periphery, I saw, approaching towards me at a hurried to pace. He seemed angrier than I had even seen him a few moments prior.
I circled around him, and extended my hand behind me to grab the candle. I gripped the metal holder at the base and lifted it.
I threw it at him. He screeched in agony, backing away. I heard the sizzle of his flesh from the hot wax. I grabbed the same pen he tried to force me to use to sign and stabbed him it in the abdomen. I felt the heat of his blood run over the back of my hands as he continued to scream before it turned into a gurgle.
He reached into the inner-lining of his coat and pulled out a metal key. He handed it to me and said something unintelligible before I watched the life drain from his eyes.
I tried to use it on the same door. I ran my hands along the walls until I found another entranceway, one almost hidden save for the keyhole. It opened.
I found myself outside. The distant sounds of lawn sprinklers filled the air. All I saw around me were rolling hills of grass.
I was on a golf course at night.
A long table stood in the way of me being able to leave the area. On either side were two black metal gates that were taller than what I could climb.
Over a dozen people sat there. They all dressed in white. They were all older, in the 50s and 60s, and they all stared at me with wide open eyes.
“We can tell you were anxious to leave,” the oldest one in the center saidlaid. He lifted his hands with the palms facing out towards me. “We are unable to oblige that desire of yours until you agree to our conditions. We need someone like you. The transfer offered earlier has upgraded. We need a headhunter. Someone who is willing to tell our employees when they need to step up their work ethic or get let go. You could be the one to inform our worker bees of when we no longer have any use for them.”
I started to wonder what kind of hierarchy this was.
I gazed out at the plains behind them, and wondered if freedom was close, if I were to go along with their game. If I did not, they might swarm me. This was all me strengthened by the fact that one of them pulled out the sharpest butcher knife I had ever seen. Something told me it was not for a steak.
I wondered how many winners at the employee appreciation parties died.
“Yes,” I said. “I will prove my loyalty to the company if you promise not to harm me.”
The one in the center smiled and said, “looks like someone has gotten a promotion.”