Later that day, Sera is finishing extra work when a little email pops up on the corner of her screen that a meeting is scheduled. Not just any meeting, a meeting with her boss, Mrs. Valentine.
She hasn’t had an individual meeting with her boss since… well, her interview. Something must be amiss. The rest of the hour went by slower than her college graduation ceremony. It ticked on and on. Sera couldn’t focus on work and her phone didn’t ring once. By the time the big hand landed on the hour, she was out of her seat and wandering down the hall. She circled around the bend and noticed New-Guy-Gabe was not at his desk, his computer still off, and a pile of work sitting beside it.
She continues to the back corner where Mrs. Valentine’s office sits. With a deep breath, she knocks on the door.
“Come in,” a deep voice responds. Another deep breath and her hand falls to the pendant on her neck. It’s slightly warm. She glances down. It’s doing that pulsing thing again. Hesitantly, she opens the door.
The room is slightly darker than usual. Mrs. Valentine’s high backed chair is facing the opposite way as Sera makes her way inside. The overhead light is off, but there’s a desk lamp on behind her. The high chair casts a large shadow over the room and throws Sera into darkness.
She seats herself in one of the chairs opposite her boss’s huge intimidating mahogany desk. Once seated, Mrs. Valentine immediately spins around. Her face is now shadowed in the wake of the big chair.
“Ms. Cross, it has come to my attention that you have been engaging in… let’s call it inappropriate conduct with someone within the office.”
“Inappropriate conduct?” she gasps.
“I really expected more from one of our top billers.” Just as she finishes her sentence, the door opens behind her and in walks Gabe. “Oh good, Gabe, you made it.”
He brings with him a whiff of something. It’s strange like garbage or rot.
“Gabe? What does he have—”
Her boss interrupts her, “Gabe, here has informed me that you two have been indecent.” She can’t seem to say the words aloud. Sera looks back and forth between the two.
“Indecent? Is this a joke?” Sera turns to Gabe. He looks taller from this angle. His tan deeper, his eyes… darker. He has this weird look on his face, almost like he’s pleased with creating lies that will ruin Sera’s career is a game to him. Then he does something she wasn’t expecting… he winks at her.
“Interpersonal relations are no joke here, Ms. Cross.” Every time she says her name, it sounds condescending. Sera’s fists begin to clench at her sides. Could this really be happening?
“What is this? Is this because I wouldn’t go to lunch with you?” Sera has blocked out Mrs. Valentine completely now.
Gabe leans on the desk, gradually drawing closer to her. “No Angel, this is a lot more than that.”
Sera’s necklace is glowing brighter in the darkened room. It casts an eerie glow across their faces. The closer Gabe gets the stranger she begins to feel. His gorgeous features suddenly begin to change. His green eyes darken until they are a solid black mass. Those alluring facial features grow longer until they substitute evil grotesque ones in its place. He smiles down at Sera like he’s finally happy to be out of the character he’s been playing.
Disgusted, she turns to Mrs. Valentine, could she be one of them too? The pulsing light at her throat illuminates the dark room enough so that Mrs. Valentine’s eyes glimmer against it. They are not as she remembers; they are crimson.
This is wrong all wrong. “What are you?” she whispers. Gabe jolts forward, Sera immediately jumps to her feet causing the chair to smash in front of her. Gabe lunges for her again, but she slips out into the hall and slams the door behind her.
Sera begins speed walking down the hall, trying not to alarm anyone. Maybe she is seeing things again. She zips past a few cubicles until she can feel her necklace thumping against her bare chest. Pausing, she turns around. Mrs. Valentine’s door is still closed. Although, there’s a distinct smell to the air around her now. She can feel heaviness, like something is weighing her down. The hairs on the back of her neck are at attention once again, a sign that something is wrong. Her eyes dart around the cubicles around her.
It doesn’t happen right away, but as she continues to survey the office, Nosey-Nancy pops her head up from her cubicle. It’s not the fact that it happened. Nancy always had a manner of being the first to pop her head into everything. It’s her eyes. They shine crimson and they stare directly at Sera like laser beams. Her head bobs uneasily above the edge of the cubicle, like a head bobbing above the water.
Get out of there.
Like some creepy game of Jack-in-the-box, her other coworker’s heads begin to pop up in the same manner. Their eyes are all gleaming blood red. Their heads twisting to the side like curious puppies. All of them seem to be staring through her as though she would easily become their next meal.
Before she realizes it, she’s running—running for the elevator, running for safety, and running for her life. She can feel their eyes tearing into her back, more and more people she called friends are peeking their red eyes over at her. There it is! The elevator. Only a few more steps, only a few more…
Gabe steps into the center of the hall, blocking her from her only way of escape. The sheer size of him blocks the entire opening, one bicep on each side of the cubicle. She glances behind her. How did he get around her?
“Where do you think you’re going Angel-face?”
“I’m seriously getting sick of these nicknames.”
He looks like he’s about to laugh. His elongated head leans back, his black eyes close, but the sound that comes out of his mouth is deeper. It’s an impossibly deep rumble that shakes the very ground she stands on.
Get out of there NOW!
Her internal voice calls her body into action. As Gabe is weaving back and forth across the space between them, stalking her like a lion would stalk its prey. His feet spaced apart, his arms bulging at his sides now, she needs to get out of here.
The weight she feels is increasing so fast around her, she can barely breathe. She attempts to process her next steps, and her body jumps into action. Sera squats low, shifting her weight from side to side until Gabe makes his first move.
It’s only a matter of time, she knows as they watch each other for a couple seconds. Proving her right, he lunges for her slightly to her right. Her legs leap to the left. Kicking off the cubicle wall, she flips around him and lands in a crouched position. Gabe eats carpet. She breaks into a run toward the elevator whose doors have just opened.
It feels as though it all happens in slow motion. Sera’s feet pound toward the elevator. Her heart beating so loudly she can hear it in her own mind, her arms pumping at her sides until finally, she lunges into the elevator.
She feels claws scratching into her shoulder as the doors close behind her. She whips her head back to see a black hand wrapped around her bicep with hideous dark nails puncturing her skin. Instead of opening back up, as the sensors should have, the elevator doors continue to close until she hears the crack of bone breaking inside of the arm, and it finally loosens its grip on her. Breaking free, she rolls over onto her back and slides herself against the back wall trying to get as far away from the door as possible.
Once the elevator begins to move, the grotesque arm slides to the top until the weight of the elevator finally breaks it off from its body, and it falls to the floor of the elevator in front of her.
She winces at the sight of the blackened hand with witch-like fingers and long black nails on the floor in front of her feet. What’s interesting is there is no blood, it isn’t until it starts twitching and evaporates into the floor that she realizes what it is. But … that would mean Gabe is…
Strangely, she has never felt so safe in an elevator before. When the elevator dings that it has reached the bottom floor, she jumps to her feet and dashes out of the elevator as soon as the doors open. The automatic double doors on the front of the building open for her and she continues to sprint down the driveway, past the line of trees, and toward the parking lot.
Clicking her alarm off, she swings open the car door and plops inside before closing the door and locking it five times. She takes several deep breaths as her grip on the steering wheel causes the metal to whine in complaint. Her grip loosens, her head falls down onto them, and she allows herself to cry. What just happened? Was Gabe a Demon this whole time? What about her co-workers? The look of their red eyes causes a shiver to wiggle through her.
A sob escapes her lips when another thought dawns on her; no one called the elevator, yet it was there. That sensor should have reopened the door, yet it crushed the arm instead. She didn’t even have to press the button for down, the elevator just knew. Those gut feelings she gets are now telling her something else—someone, somewhere is looking out for her.