My place of work is a tech start-up and Xander, its original founder, was very different from his successor. During Xander’s time at the company’s helm, the employees were constantly pulling all-nighters in order to meet all of his rigorous demands, which kept multiplying in line with the company’s rapid growth. Nothing less than 24/7 dedication to getting the company ahead at all costs was tolerated.
But all of this changed when Xander had to take an unexpected medical leave, traveling to some pricy and secluded clinic in Europe for treatment. He sent us a message informing us that while he’ll be cut off from the world, his brother Paul will lead the start-up in his place for the foreseeable future.
Paul showed up on the scheduled day. It was the same morning as a helicopter was found burned to the ground a mile from our office. In hindsight, this was a bad omen, though of course we lacked the foresight to predict this at the time.
Paul looked nothing like Xander and acted nothing like him either. After spending his entire first day peppering us with questions about the start-up (at the time, the profit margins were solidly in the black, with a small but ridiculously powerful group of venture capitalists promising to help take the company to the next level), he asked us about how happy we were at work.
The main complaints were lack of sleep and no life outside of work. Paul turned out to be attentive to our concerns. A little too attentive in fact. The very next day was when he started his overhaul. Under his management, no one was allowed to come in earlier than noon, and everyone had to be out by five. Alcohol consumption was also encouraged, with each cubicle stocked with a wide assortment of booze and going for drinks after work practically mandated. Whoever was brave enough to voice their concerns got canned quickly afterwards.
Besides the reduced hours and his seeming obsession with getting the whole office chronically hungover, Paul then took it a step further when he would interrupt our no-longer-marathon coding sessions by playing earsplittingly loud rock music, making it impossible to focus.
But most disturbing was his penchant for posting pictures of employees with their faces grotesquely distorted. Paul brushed off all our complaints about them, claiming he was offended over our inability to take his pranks. That’s what he called the disturbing images. Pranks.
I should have quit right there. Certainly, several of my colleagues did just that. But Paul was wily, suddenly tripling the salaries of the rest of us just so we wouldn’t follow their lead. For the money, we became used to tolerating his eccentric behavior. Though we only understood the whole magnitude of our mistake later on.
In the space of a month, the once dark and drab office where work had been king, was turned into something of a party house. But Paul was still not satisfied. After installing pinball machines and video games on every corner, he announced that from now on, he would set set aside two days of work a week for “game days.”
A fledgling start-up, no matter how promising, could never be successful under the kind of conditions that Paul instituted. Gradually, even some of my well-paid colleagues began to rebel. The surplus we had under Xander suddenly became a deficit, as clients started to leave us in droves after losing their patience over our sudden inability to meet their deadlines. Soon, the venture capitalists followed, with their deep pockets disappearing just when we needed them most.
Paul defended himself. The reduced hours were so we could “make the best of our skills without missing out on our personal lives.” The booze-loving culture both during and after work was a way to “get us closer together as a team.” The game days were “a way to unlock our imaginations.” The disturbing “pranks” were so we could “loosen up” and bring “our best selves to work.”
Finally, one of our team members could take it no more. Serena, one of the head engineers, had waited until most of us left for the day before angrily confronting Paul in his office, accusing him of trying to destroy the company and demanding to speak to Xander ASAP. Their conversation lasted for almost an hour and ended in a screaming match.
The next morning, Serena’s photo on the wall was mysteriously replaced with a photo of her drowning, wearing the exact same outfit she had on at work the day before. It was one of my other co-workers, Emerson, her former boyfriend, who noticed the disturbing photo first. At first we assumed it was another one of Paul’s weird pranks. But as the clock kept ticking and Serena didn’t show, Emerson dialed her roommate on his cell as we crowded around him.
That’s how we first learned that Serena’s body had been found floating in the lake in the early hours of the morning. Her roommate confirmed that she had not seen Serena since before she had left for work the previous day, and had only learned about Serena’s unexpected demise from the cops who had paid her a visit two hours earlier.
We sat there completely numb from shock, as Paul joined us minutes later. To make it worse, it was one of our two designated “game days” and Paul insisted we go through with it as planned. There was no mention of Serena and when we asked him about her, Paul banned any discussion about her. This time, Emerson, who had remained in the office during Serena’s outburst the day before, could take it no more.
“It was you!” He grabbed Paul by the collar, his face all red. It was the first time I had ever seen him lose his composure like that. “You did this to her! Admit it!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Paul said quietly. “Get a grip on yourself.”
“The hell I will!” Emerson said. “You killed her—just like you killed the damn company!” After kicking one of the pinball machines, he was about to leave, when Paul insisted he have a drink first to “calm down.” When Emerson refused, Paul had two other employees hold him down, during which time Paul insisted we all have several rounds of vodka, with Emerson being forced to drink at least twice as much as the rest of us.
Then we were made to proceed with “game day” in our inebriated state, finishing the day with our standard visit to the local bar. That was the last time any of us ever saw Emerson. He was still upright on his feet, though a little worse for wear.
The next morning Emerson’s photo on the wall was mysteriously replaced with an image of him passed out on the floor. I had a bad feeling about this. Sure enough, his crying mother called the office later that day and inquired about receiving his remaining belongings, informing us that Emerson had succumbed to alcohol poisoning the night before after ingesting tainted alcohol.
This was the last straw. After two deaths in a row, the rest of us began quitting in earnest, even after Paul proposed yet another raise. This time, no one believed him. The company coffers, once so flush with cash during Xander’s tenure, were now beyond empty. But even scarier was the prospect of ending up like Serena or Emerson.
After the exodus ended, the company filed for bankruptcy. Then came the lawsuits from the company’s former investors, naming Paul as the co-defendant.
This was when we finally learned that Paul was not really Paul. Xander made the discovery himself after finally returning from Europe and learning about the destruction of his company in his absence. He had only been gone for three months, but that had been enough for his jealous best friend Gene, a former classmate whose own attempts at entrepreneurship had failed, to successfully ruin his company.
It had been Gene all along, impersonating the real Paul who had perished in the malfunctioning helicopter that Gene had loaned him. The helicopter had been registered under Gene’s name, and it was he who had been the presumed casualty of the helicopter’s fiery demise.
That at last explained why his new office policies led to our productivity nosediving. It had been his real goal all along.
It’s now too late for Xander to fix what Gene had done. He wants us to act as witnesses for his own lawsuit against Gene, who the authorities are still looking for, but I’m too scared to have anything further to do with it.
Those of us who have no family nearby, have been taking turns staying with each other to make sure that no one is ever alone. We also switched the locks on our front doors, changed our phone numbers, and have been avoiding strangers, or anyone who might be associated with Paul in any way.
But the last couple of mornings, I’ve been waking up to the sound of loud rock music. I still can’t tell where it’s coming from or how it found me, but I recognize the melody. It’s the same tune that Gene played every time he interrupted our coding sessions.