An Even Worse Day At The Office
The plywood door swung to; it was cheap and looked it. Behind the door the coats were still swinging, but they did not stop. Chris watched the movement, then he heard rustling. He looked closer, saw legs emerge. It was Williamson.
‘I thought you’d gone,’ he said. Silly stuff, but he had to say something. Williamson came out fully and stared at him with a glittering eye, his other was closed. It was a knowing, almost winking knowledge.
‘You know more about all this than you let on, don’t you.’ Chris said. He was being clever here; clearly he had my private detective head on. Williamson moved kind of sideways towards him, crab-like. He was a little disconcerted by this, blurted,
‘Well, out with it.’
‘There was a ship,’ Williamson said, his look far away. No, thought Chris, I hate the sea. ‘And a storm-blast tyrannous and strong. It drove us southward ever south, far from shipping lanes, the current’s corridors. As though it was playing with us. It drove us on to places of many wonders. Then stranded us in a rotting calm of sea, the engines down. A place of ice and fogs, and endless days. I had been drinking rain water since leaving port – better than that muck they bought in. An albatross found us. It used our ship for resting in the endless wastes of the nights; used us like a beacon, like a… toilet,’ he snarled suddenly. ‘So I shot the filthy thing. No meat on it neither. They all blamed me for that, my colleagues. Keep to your stations! the captain said. But they hacked me, the lot of them. Filthy emails, pop-ups, stuff, stuff…. . Reported me for the slightest slip. I was soon fearing for my future. What rescued me was those… little rats and mice about the place in those days.’
‘Couldn’t we skip this bit?’ asked Chris.
‘I cared for them, bedded them down in the warehouse, fed them, and mourned them when they died. It was as though a weight passed off me. I was skin and bone, but fed the little dears as if my own flesh and blood.’
‘You really shouldn’t be telling me, anybody, this.’ Chris said horrified, drawing away from him.
‘I have to. I have to tell it. And besides…’ he gave a cunning look, with both eyes this time, ‘You’re the bridegroom.’
‘What?’ Chris spluttered. ‘Have you gone soft on top?’
Williamson went scarlet, spitting fury, frantically combing and flattening a huge comb-over. Then drawing a utility knife for parcels, muttered, ‘We should have done this before.’ He put the knife between his teeth and made slowly towards him, scattering chairs with both hands. Chris backed away into the corner, and a filing cabinet. That bruise will stay with him forever. Williamson came on and on, a kind of wild look in his eyes. A part of Chris’s brain noted how he was heading straight for the pile of papers on the floor, and… the gonk.
Crunch, and slide. It was over in a fraction of a second, but the bruise had got his adrenalin going, speeded up his sense of time. Williamson was doing this kind of slap-stick routine of every time he put foot to floor the paper skidded out from under and he was down again.
Looking back he could not believe this – someone like him dived for the table between him and the door and rolled over it, landing on two feet facing the objective. In one stride Chris hit the door. It wouldn’t open. He rattled and rattled it. Williamson was snarling, threw the table over, and was standing. Then Chris remembered it was an inward opener, flung it open in panic – and in a bound he was free. It hit Williamson full in the face, though.
Chris heard his howls behind him as he took corner after corner among cubicles, doubling back to jump from where he last stood sideways, and off down the corridor outside, then another corridor. He felt like Danny in the snowy maze in The Shining. Except there was no snow and he was a lot older than Danny. And this was the admin section of a modern office. Ok and he was on the third floor. So no maze, no snow, no Dad with an axe (would old Williamson with a parcel knife do?) and he was not a kid.
Chris ended up in an empty office. Empty; even the carpet gone. Great, he thought. Now what do I do? But there outside the window, a window-cleaner’s cradle; if he just slipped out that window, past that post and…. No way. No way. I’d rather…. And it was then a phone rang. He tracked the sound down, behind, round. Behind the door, on the bare floor a connected phone.
Ringing.
michael9murray 