u/collinweaves

PART 1
The clocks in Department C never agreed on the time. The clock above the break room microwave ran seven minutes fast, the one in Human Resources lost three seconds every hour, and the largest clock that was mounted over the sales floor occasionally skipped entire afternoons. Nobody mentioned this, ever, and the company handbook described timekeeping discrepancies as opportunities for schedule flexibility. Every morning at 8:03, regardless of what any clock claimed, we arrived.
We crossed the carpet in synchronized currents; we hung our coats, we opened spreadsheets, and we repeated greetings with the exhausted precision of slaves.

"Morning.” One of the male employees said.

"Morning." A female employee said.

"Living the dream." Cheered the male, sarcastically.

"You know it." She sounded dead.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like trapped insects. Another workday began.

I occupied Cubicle 6-14-B. The cubicle measured six feet by six feet when I started working there, but now it measured about four by five. The Facilities Department periodically sent emails explaining that cubicles had always been this size, but I know it’s bullshit deep down in my heart. I’d love to say that I believed them for the most part. My desk had a computer, a family-sized bottle of antacid tablets, three dead pens, and an impressive collection of emotional catastrophes. Not visible catastrophes, though. These were more like tiny, carefully harvested, secret little disasters. The office had a never ending supply of reasons as to why I have these “emotional catastrophes”.

Once, a receptionist laughed at a few of my jokes and she remembered my coffee order— for a few weeks I took that as spiritual compatibility. I spent two months imagining what our apartment might look like. Whenever I would be falling asleep, I’d think of her. Her warmth, her beauty, the way she smiled whenever I made a joke, the fact that she cares about me enough to remember my coffee order, her beauty, the way she smells, the silkiness of her hair, her milky pale skin, the way she smelt of black pepper, petrichor and night-blooming jasmine, and her smile. It’s like she loved me. It felt like the most beautiful woman in the world asked me to marry her when she repeated my coffee order. But of course, it wasn’t real. It never was. The pattern never changes, kindness, fantasy, devotion, collapse, and finally replacement. It’s like weather, or a quarterly report.

I think about myself like a pack of cigarettes, that is, I recognize the problem in full.

The drink I made a few days ago is still on my desk. The plastic container it’s in is stained darkly, and the drink inside is congealed. A woman walked over while I was googling “how to create a 12x8 table in microsoft word”. It was Emilia, one of my co-workers a few rows down. She must’ve been getting something from the printer.

“See you tomorrow, Desdemona,” she said.

My hands started shaking. More than they usually did, and I grew hot. She said “see you tomorrow”! Not “goodbye”, not “later”, tomorrow. She assumes I’ll exist tomorrow! That’s a shared expectation, a shared expectation is a promise. A promise means she cares. Emilia cares about me. I imagined Emilia in a white dress, walking down the aisle as I stood at the front of the room in my white suit. Her curves were accented by the dress, the veil flowed past her face, yet I still see her. How does a wedding even work? I don’t think I had ever been to a wedding. I wondered if she would prefer a beach wedding or a garden ceremony. I didn’t think she liked the beach though. A beach would have public access as-well. A garden ceremony would be ideal. She seemed more of a calmer type to me anyway. I wonder if she had any of her own wedding ideas? I went on and on thinking about our wedding, and before I knew it, 5pm rolled around. Sweet freedom. I wish Emilia had a better schedule, though. I never saw her often.

I walked into the office, and I said hello to Emilia before I sat down. The lights flickered a bit. “Hey Emilia! Good morning! I hope your day goes well.” I said, putting as much genuine enthusiasm in my voice as physically possible. I read that girls like a confident, positive man— so I try to be like that.

“Hi… Desmond..?” She must’ve been confused.

“My name is Desdemona.” I stated, my tone slipping a little bit.

“Yeah… yeah, right! Desdemona. Have a good morning, I guess.” She didn’t even remember my name. It’s okay. I’ll be okay. Maybe it’s just a little slip of the mind, I thought.

She had put in her resignation after a few weeks of me trying to entice her to dinner, coffee, breakfast, lunch, brunch, my place, or her place, you get the gist of it. I don’t know why it’s not working. All the books I’ve read told me to act this way, so why isn’t it working? I thought love at first sight was real. Emilia never cared, nobody ever does. I miss Othello.

Months earlier, Othello had quit. She was the stationed towards the eastern wall, I think. She was unlike Emilia. She actually cared. Management announced her departure through the office newsletter that was sandwiched between updates regarding printer toner and parking regulations. Othello had “elected to pursue external opportunities.” We were to please redirect workflow requests appropriately, and to have a productive quarter. There was no farewell party, no speech, no acknowledgement that a person left. Just workflow redistribution. Her cubicle was untouched. Someone was meant to clear it, but I guess nobody wanted to. The cubicle was an abandoned space towards the eastern wall, a museum dedicated to absence. Coffee mugs still on her desk, decaying sticky notes hanging on the bottom of monitors, and half-finished reports that lay as fossils under the accumulated dust. So many people walk past this cubicle, but nobody ever looks directly at it. It’s like an open grave. A sacred site. I had to pass by the cubicle sometimes. Just a few times, three-to-four daily. Sometimes six. Sometimes more. I liked to look at her handwriting on the sticky notes, examine the slender, neat, delicate, beautiful, letters— they were unexpectedly careful for the type of woman she was. I noticed the forgotten sticky notes stapled to the side of the cubicle. I never payed attention to that side. The notes said: “call vendor”, “update numbers”, and “remember to eat”. I really don’t like that last one. It’s such a mundane instruction, and forgetting to eat is such an intimate failure. She needed to remind herself to eat, as to keep herself from starving. I copy down the notes into my small personal business notebook. My pen slowly caresses the paper, and when I press the back of it, the tip pops out. I push the tip onto the paper, and ink flows out— “Remember To Eat.”

HR was on the fifth floor. The fifth floor could only be reached on alternate Tuesdays because the company considered it more efficient. I don’t know the legality of it, but money is money. Each month HR conducts mandatory “Wellness Alignment Sessions.” We would all gather in a conference room illuminated by these bright fluorescent tubes, which were bright enough to give you a headache. The HR lady, Bianca, stood up.

“Who would like to share a workplace challenge?” she asked.

Several hands arose, and a man from logistics stood up. He turned a bit to the side and I could see the black printer ink steadily dripping from agape, torn nostrils, and the bridge of his nose is crinkled, crinkled unnaturally, but not broken.

“I sometimes experience feelings.” he admitted.

I rubbed my eyes, looked back at the man stood there, and I see nothing wrong with his nose. I need more coffee. The room bursted into applause in response to his admission.

“Very brave,” Bianca said.

A woman confessed that she no longer remembered the faces of her children. More applause. A man admitted he had begun to dream exclusively in spreadsheet and OneDrive software. Standing ovation.

Bianca would distribute pamphlets that read several encouraging messages, such as: “thrive through adaptability”, “embrace your authentic productivity”, and “suffer with purpose”. Apparently that last slogan had won them an industry award. The meetings are sad, but I still attended, it was a sort of comfort to me. The language turns misery without love into measurable achievement— loneliness becomes resilience and exhaustion becomes dedication, basically everything has a positive framing and nothing requires a solution. I was sat in my tight cubicle, combing through my emails to find the PDF my co-worker sent me, when I get an email.

“RE: Parking Validation.” The sender was Othello. I felt the walls melting, I felt the earth spinning, and then I felt the world stop spinning. My heart scratched against my ribcage, screaming to be set free, to be given the blessing to chase the love it craves. My hands shook, my pupils dilated, and I heard the fluorescent humming retreat into distant static. The email contained one sentence, “Sorry, wrong recipient.” That was all, nothing more, an accident, a clerical error, a digital sneeze if you will. Yet, sorry is not formal. Sorry wasn’t regards, not thank you, just sorry— personal, human, evidence.

By lunch I had constructed several different interpretations, by evening I had developed twenty seven. Maybe Othello still thought about me, maybe Othello remembered our conversations, maybe she missed the office, maybe she missed me, me specifically. I think and think and think, yet reality contributes nothing. That night I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling while thoughts continue to build up in my head. My clocks beside my bed advanced at different speeds. Outside my apartment, somewhere beyond the darkness, phones rang after conversations ended. The city felt distant, the officers felt close. Closer than it should.

I wasn’t able to concentrate. I gazed up at my posters and notes on the walls of my cubicle. One of them caught my eye— that poster had always displayed a mountain, but not it was the text “WE NOTICE YOUR INITIATIVE. I stared at it, and it stared back. I guess somebody messed with my office, if you could even call it an office. The intercom cracked on, “Remember valued employees, to stay motivated!” Silence followed. Then the routine applause. The accidental email glows, I couldn’t bring myself to stop reading it. Outside my cubicle, workers flowed through the corridors like blood through arteries. The machine continued operating, the metrics improved, people vanished, replacements appeared, and my drink congealed. The lights buzzed, and for the first time in months, I had felt something dangerous return. Hope. Not the ordinary kind of hope, not the practical kind of hope, and certainly not the healthy kind of hope, but hope nonetheless. That kind of hope people turn into destiny, the kind that mistook hunger for revelation, the kind that loaded a gun and had the audacity to call it love. I opened the email again.

“Sorry, wrong recipient.” My chest tightened. Somewhere, Othello still existed. She existed outside of this shit-hold of a workplace, she was a real person, she had her own hobbies and interests.

Unfortunately, that small piece of hope was enough to force me into action.

[done]

Obviously it’s supposed to be edgy, and eventually it’s gonna evolve enough to be a horror-ish story. I wanna make Desdemona a vampire at some point but idk if that’d be able to fit in with what I have written so far.

I wanna kinda make it satirical. This is only the first part, but I’m very unsure of where to take it. Any help is appreciated.