Before Friday, The 13th Arrives

Today is Friday the 13th.. this reminds me of my story which was published a few months back in the book Strangeness & Wonder. Read the story below and do let me know what you think of the story.

Listen to the story on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vLOKTpc8jTSP9sDR1sw2E

Before Friday, the 13th arrives; a full week of tension takes place. In a country overlooked by the universe, there is a city meaningless for the world in which a gray street stretches towards a dead end into a 11-floor building. Its name, motivation and employees could be as miserable or as extraordinary as human kind could imagine them to be. But no one is safe from the lethargic torture of an office job. There exists the nine to six terror of stillness and monotony augmented by mindless company and heavy hierarchy hanging from everybody’s backs. In such an environment, the minds that aren’t dulled and slowed down by the tedious lifestyle might have a bit too much spare time, a bit too much freedom to constrict and expand, morph and transform into something it wasn’t before.

On the seventh floor, nerves grow each passing day. Monday morning, as everybody arrives, they watch concerned the small chaos their neat office space has turned into. It looks so much like a disaster done by a small animal, ignorant and hungry, scared and restless. If the workers closed one eye and tilted their head, with a smile they could easily picture a big rat-like animal, a stray little dog or a desperate cat rushing through, banging on the trash cans, knocking into drawers, spilling paperwork around. All the workers, without fail, sat down to work that day like any other. Some complained about the mess, some joked about it, high on the relief to their routine. Bureaucracy quietly worked and it wasn’t until Tuesday morning when everybody found out about the disabled security cameras.

After all, how would any animal get in the building, take the elevator, open the drawers, low and tall, mess with their content and then disappear without a trace; a hair, any filthy thing an animal might have left behind. Tuesday was a day for gossips. Who could have done that and how and why and when. The rumors rose, victims were chosen and the guilty parties were secretly pointed. But it was all good fun, harmless, meaningless, and no one really believed these acts to be of human nature. The unlucky ones called supervisors, or any kind of higher ranked employees were the only ones going home with sweating palms and worried eyes.

By Wednesday, a few blanks were filled, in exchange for ten times more questions that were finally shaping up as a threat. The police report appeared, no animal went in the building, no cameras captured the criminal. The full sweep of the office had ended, spare sets of keys were missing, and crucial copies of paperwork had been lost. Employees arrived to find their computers working, missing files, strange viruses making a new home there. A sour smell, almost of rotten meat, almost of remnants of a deadly fire, had filled up the floor, the seventh floor and nothing else.

“Somebody was here, without a doubt.” – a stern woman of fiery red hair said as she pushed papers around and away from the puddle of spilled water on the top of a desk.

“Or something was here.” – replied an old man wearing a cap and bow tie, and holding up a calendar, a trembling finger barely pointing in the right direction.

But everybody was aware of the meaning – Friday the 13th.

The boss was a hot-headed stubborn man. He called everybody to show up to work on Thursday morning. Turns out that by the time everybody arrived, they found the door was locked, as usual. Yet, key after key found its way on the lock and nothing worked, nothing opened the unlocked door. Firefighters were called-in. The firefighters kicked and pushed and finally the door gave the way to a mountain of piled chairs and desks pushed up against the door.

Second in command, Miss Chanda was a slim woman of dyed blonde hair and innate shyness, but the way in which she commanded the numbers produced by the office, she stormed into the room and looked around. She had a horrible week. First, there was the mess, the missing objects, the overall disaster. Then, came the unavoidable complaints of the boss, the rumors among the workers, the disbelieving stares of the authorities. Finally, the things only she knew. The disgusting smell didn’t only come from the broken bathroom; it had spread through the office and was so similar to the smell of a morgue that it made her breathless, eight hours a day.

It was a fact that the lost objects didn’t send a clue as to why someone would take the keys to the storage of stationary, residual files and recyclable material. It didn’t seem smart or deliberate; it was merely chaotic and somewhat evil. It was just as well terrifying. Miss Chanda kept to herself the stories about the dead rat below her desk and the dead bird in the hallway. No need to create more rumors.

“There’s no one here and nothing strong enough to stop us from doing our work. Everybody get in here, help clean up as necessary and get to work. There’s no time to lose!” – She exclaimed, then directed her words to the team of firefighters – “If you’d be so kind to give us a hand, it would be lovely.”

Among the three firefighters that came that day was Sharada, a brave woman of strong muscles and even stronger religious beliefs. She didn’t care if everybody watched her as she folded her hands and whispered a small prayer. Beside her was Madan, firefighter by profession, accountant by passion, he gave Miss Chanda the business card of a friend. Seeing the scene, knowing the facts and reviewing the experience it seemed that company was probably a few hours away of a massive attack on its bank accounts. Last but not the least; leading the team, Rohit was a man of instincts and a decently enough bright mind.

This firefighter looked suspiciously around the room. There was the anxious Miss Chanda, disregarding an extraordinary situation, her eyes wild and her voice trembling. What did she know that nobody else did? There was Jamal, the old man that was praying as well, yet he walked in and sat down to work, mindless of the rotten smell, the spilled water, the burnt down papers around his desk. There was Geeta, the young woman with the nervous hands that did her best at fixing up the place, looking around every other second and breathing too hard to pretend to be innocent and oblivious to what has happened.

But that was not the job of a firefighter. So, Rohit helped the workers at his best, and then left as he should. On the way back to the station, he wondered about the fate of that office. Who would benefit from destroying the office? Who had the strength? What about the malice? And the abilities, the determination, the necessary reasons? Was that chaos a crime, a robbery, a vengeance, an act of leisure or something beyond worlds? A cold-headed firefighter that had risked his life too many times to count went to bed that night after a prayer, just to dream about dark shadows and empty eyes roaming around the walls of the seventh floor he had visited.

Unavoidably, Friday morning arrived. Workers came in with extra strong coffees in hand, cigarettes as well, defying rules that nobody would bring up that day. They sported warm clothes to fight against the cold, for all the windows of the floor had been broken the night before. Afraid of unnamable things, many of them wore whatever kind of sacred object or talisman of their respective religions. They carried their cell phones in hand, ready to dial emergency services, and ready to call home one last time.

Not everybody was as dramatic, pessimistic, and afraid as the rest. But there was simply no way to react to the scene around them. All windows were broken and the pieces of glass were scattered around, making every step sound deadly. The cold rushed in violently, but not even that was enough to take away the rotten smell of death and something worse. The messes in the place made everything seem eerie; the trashed piles of papers had also apparently ended up in a pyre. Desks full of ashes, mud and God knows what, now seemed like part of a horrible ritual, something beyond the scene of a crime, nothing similar to a place to work.

Obviously, everybody had given up the idea of getting some work done. They’d be lucky if they managed to survive, if they managed to not lose their minds, not start attacking each other and worsening the mess. Then, of course, and only then, people started to wonder what even were they doing there. No job was that precious, there was nothing at all irreplaceable there, only their lives, and even then, there were millions of workers just like them around the world doing the exact same jobs they were missing that day. Surprisingly, there was not a single worker missing in there. Maybe they were afraid of being pointed out guilty, or suspicious, or just cowards. Maybe their routine was so strong that it kept them from going anywhere else.

In situations like this one, a leader always rises. But this group of people, no matter where they looked among the ruins of their office, could not find their boss. However, when they thought about their boss, it wasn’t the overweight man with a temper like a thunderstorm. They thought of the mild-mannered and soft-spoken but more capable than anybody else, Miss Chanda. When she was nowhere to be seen, the group simply lost control. Did she do it? Did they catch her? Who? Why? What? The questions spilled from nervous mouths and tainted the nerves of the neighbors. In a minute of starting the heated discussions, the blame was thrown around restlessly until a voice broke over the chaos.

“Silence!” – Miss Chanda shouted from a place atop one of the filthy desks.

She was holding her phone on her right hand. The electronic device remained close to her ear as if she was physically unable to put it down, to react, and to move her body beyond uttering words. Her left hand, at her side, was shaking uncontrollably, it was actually worrying.

“I’ve just received a call from Mr. Rahul’s wife. Our boss is in the hospital. He had a heart attack. He’s situation is very serious. The attack was the result of an immense surprise. Rahul checked his bank account this morning. All the company’s money is lost. Gone for good. Taken strangely into a regular account. Not in a con style. It was simply and easily transferred into the bank account of one of our co-workers.”

When she stopped talking, all her coworkers were holding onto someone beside them. It was partially a natural reaction. The older ones just needed someone to lean on. Some of them just wanted to make sure nobody ran away. Mostly, everybody was so confused that they needed the support, the grasp on reality. Miss Chanda’s words were an onslaught of unexpected sentences; it was like having the floor taken away from underneath your feet again and again, losing your footing time and time again, feeling like you’re falling and falling and as if you crashed through the floor and continued to fall, no matter what. It was absolute disconcert!

“Has anybody seen Danish lately?” – Miss Chanda asked.

No one had dared to open their mouths before, so she had to take the initiative and answer the unspoken question of all questions, “Who was it?” Danish was a middle-aged man of undetermined age, his face too soft and lacking any wrinkles, but his body already looking frail and his manners were so old-school. He worked in the technology department. He was responsible, friendly enough, outstandingly shy and extremely superstitious. Coincidentally, he hadn't showed up for work the entire week.

Then, the shouts started. The small crowd went crazy. They spewed conspiracy theories, they shame Danish, dirtied his name, cursed him and the day he started working with them. The heat of their anger warmed up everybody, mindless of the cold wave of fresh air that was coming through the broken windows. Surely this meant everything was solved, surely the nightmare was over, and undoubtedly the police would have a field day just catching him. But as the excited group swarmed around the desk where Miss Chanda stood still, a firm frown on her face, they slowly but surely fed on her confusion and felt the terror steadily creeping back on them.

“Chanda, are you alright? What happened?” – The eldest lady that worked in the office asked kindly.

“Danish has disappeared. He never came back home after last Friday when he left the office…”

Miss Chanda’s words were cut off by her phone ringing. Nobody moved a muscle. She let the device ring for a few seconds, the upbeat music setting up a horrible contrast for the rest of the room. Everybody present already knew they would always remember that melody. It was engraved in their brains to make them shiver until the day they died.

“Hello?” – She answered, and then repeated barely finished sentences she heard. – “No signs of him… no proof of him leaving this building last Friday… the bank transaction was made from one of these computers… get out…”

The words died on Miss Chanda’s lips, her throat tightened and her eyes watered. Pretty much the exact same reaction engulfed everybody present. Every man and woman shared a similar reaction of complete horror, disgust, fear and confusion. Of course, some of that was caused by the phone conversation. But mostly they were reacting to the horrendous spectacle of watching their co-worker, Danish, coming out of the bathroom. The sign that read ‘out of service’ barely moving as he gently pushed the door.

He was ruins of a man, remnants of the person he used to be. Covered in dirt and filth, smelling worse than hell, his pale skin was barely visible under the ashes, the blood, and the dirt that coated him from head to toe.

“I’m sorry.” – He whispered with a haunting laugh – “It’s Friday the 13th.”

With sad eyes and his small laugh turning into grunts of pain, Danish fell to his knees. He started trembling horribly. All the women and most men in the room turned their heads away. Nobody needed to see the ending of the story.