Headhunters, Part 1

I set the phone down and began my wait. The only other person left in the office worked upstairs, so she couldn't have heard my phone conversation. My personal e-mail account would be a good way to get the details of the offer. Jumping ship meant sailing in the same ocean, but it might also mean docking at better ports and getting finer hauls. Sighing at my failure to include a pirate metaphor to my florid self justifications, I returned to actual work, with my eyes always on the tab along the bottom that told me if I had new gmail.

Five-fifteen rolled around, I still had a few loose ends to tie up and no e-mail from the headhunter. I thought about when Cynthia, the upstairs coworker, got a job offer from one of the cable companies. She said she'd have passed it on to me if I had enough experience, mostly to get them off her case it sounded like.

My cellphone shrieked its awful chorus of rings, sure to attract my attention no matter how deep into work or interesting stuff I got myself. I picked it up. "Hi Margaret."

"Planning on sleeping there tonight?"

"What are you making for dinner." I scrolled through my spam folder, looking at the fifteen new, useless messages that came in since the headhunter called.

"A surprise. A very yummy surprise." The faint sound of cars passing came over the line.

"Getting ingredients for it now?" I flipped back to the actual inbox, still no message. I looked over my shoulder, but I hadn't heard Cynthia moving around upstairs for awhile. She was probably locked in place in front of her computer, handling whatever they handled up there.

"Possibly. Anyway, I'll let you get back to work so you can get home."

"I have something to talk to you about when I do, I think I'm being headhunted already." I let it out in one awful rush, straight into the speaker.

More faint sounds of cars passing came over the line. "Let's talk about it when you get home."

We went through our hang up rituals. I looked over the haul for the day: statistics on international migration, the price of pop in various countries of interest, and performance predictions for web-based multimedia conferencing services. Typical stuff for Looking Glass Research. With nothing left to do, and no owners around to keep me in the office, I turned off my machine and straightened up the office.

On my way out I flipped off a few of the lights and headed halfway up the pine stairs that had been shoved into the house after its construction to make a single office area for Looking Glass Research. When I got up high enough to hear Cynthia in her office, I cleared my throat and then yelled, "Anything I can help you with today?"

"No, thanks Max, I'll see you tomorrow."

Cleared I left, closing the security door behind me.

Diving

"There won't be any homeless people." Mitch's voice cracked.

Kathy frowned. "Don't be so loud."

In front of them, the rag-man kept still. His eyes opened wide into their lamplight, drinking it in like a desert nomad encountering a waterfall. The light didn't flatter the rest of him, showing off the layers of dirt over ruined cloth and flesh.

"He sees us." Mitch took a stiff step backwards.

The rag-man kept still.

Mitch worked his hand slowly to his side, where he had all his emergency gear holstered. "We should come back with police."

The whisper carried across the empty factory floor. It bounced off of the high walls that bordered the gloom, giving the hints of boundaries to the blurry darkness that their head lamps barely disturbed.

Kathy took a step backwards.

The rag-man took a step forward.

Kathy scuttled back four steps.

The rag-man kept still.

Mitch stepped backwards, fumbling with his emergency gear as he did.

The rag-man took a step forward.

"I understand." Kathy whispered, taking out her flashlight.

She turned off her head lamp.

The rag-man moaned.

She turned on the flashlight, and the moaning stopped. The rag-man's mouth stayed open. Behind him, more bright eyes emerged from the gloom. Kathy waved the flashlight, and the rag-man's head followed the light. She took a step towards him.

The bang froze her in place, flashlight in her fingers and eyes unfocused. In front of her, the rag-man swayed and mewed. Those other eyes closed and vanished, a wail raising up from the distance. Mitch pointed the gun into the gloom and fired again, over the rag-man slumped body.

"We'll need the police to clear the rest." He said, taking Kathy by the arm and leading her out of the building

Introduction

The horror fiction on this blog will tend to be short, and some of the pieces will be linked. My basic idea is to just get out some tiny pieces of writing based on things that I encounter in my life.