The sun sets on a Midwestern highway. The corn is only half grown, so the fields aren't very scary even at night, but the little strip of trees that sometimes grows right by the road is just thick enough to conceal something unpleasant. Maybe that's why the woman hitchhiking with her thumb up is looking increasingly distressed. Staring at the empty highway, she hikes her skirt up just a little.
A pair of headlights cuts through the slowly-thickening gloom. An old Nissan with a few scratches on it pulls over. The driver is a middle aged man with a friendly, somewhat vacant expression.
"Need a ride?."
"Thanks for the lift, I'm so tired from walking all the way here"
She smiles slightly, before opening the passenger door and sliding herself inside the car.
"Awfully late at night to be walking."
"I…had a fight with my boyfriend. Didn't feel safe, so I ran out the door with no wallet or a phone. Stupid, I know, but if I can just get to my parents' place I'll be fine."
"I see."
She glances out the window, watching the darkness deepen.
"Do you do this often? Picking up hitchhikers."
"Didn't want to leave someone on the side of the road with night coming. Wouldn't be right."
She smiles a bit.
"Isn't that nice of you. But would your good and gentle heart go out just the same for someone you didn't find so... Alluring?"
He frowns.
"Sounds to me like you had an experience you didn't enjoy."
She laughs a little.
"Mmmm. I find that men who stop for a pretty girl usually want something from her. So tell me…what did you want from me when you stopped?"
As if to emphasize her words, she lowers her chest slightly, emphasizing her cleavage.
"Just an answer to a question."
"Oh? What question?"
"Are you the type that attacks the drivers who stop for you, or the ones who don't?"
The girl goes still and turns terribly pale. Her eyes are now black pits, and her skin clings to the bone. There is a large bloodstain on her blouse and another on her left leg.
"How did you know?" She whispers and it sounds like the corn swaying in the wind.
"Well, three people disappeared on this stretch of road in the last ten years. All of them were men, driving alone. From there it's just a deep dive into the missing person cases and a little inference."
"Then…why?"
"Just doing my job."
She swings one of her hands at him, withered fingers sharp as claws. But it passes through harmlessly.
"I'm afraid that won't work. Not in this car. And in this car is where you'll be staying, until we get to the room that's the same way."
He stares into her terrible black eyes and gives a small smile of contrition.
"For what it's worth, I am sorry. You clearly have some legitimate grievances. But the world has enough ghost stories. We're closing the book on this one."
The sun sets on a Midwestern highway. The corn is only half grown, so the fields aren't very scary even at night, but the little strip of trees that sometimes grows right by the road is just thick enough to conceal something unpleasant. Maybe that's why the woman hitchhiking with her thumb up is looking increasingly distressed. Staring at the empty highway, she hikes her skirt up just a little.
It finally, finally happened. Shannon wanted to kick herself, but she was far too busy scrambling. She had to get to her office. It couldn't end like this, not yet. She hadn't spent the last years of her life dedicated to this project just for it to eat her. She had to survive. She had to get out. And, if she did, she was going to kill Malcolm Cadmus. She could at least do that to make the world a better place. She tried to think of his insufferably smug face to keep her legs going. Anything but...
An awful metallic scrape echoed out behind her and she forced herself to sprint forward even faster. Her legs were on fire, but they took her around the corner. Her office was just ahead. She pulled in ragged breaths as her hand finally reached the handle. She twisted and tugged, and of course the door didn't budge. She tried to push in some desperate hope as she plunged her left hand into her pocket. Too long, too long but she pulled out her keys and untangled them from the fucking cord cliging on them and finally the key went in and the knob turned.
Shannon slammed the door behind her, then quickly locked it. It wouldn't stop the thing that was after her, but she couldn't just leave it unlocked. Her office was cluttered with papers. So many half-scribbled notes and unnecessary files. Progress updates and test ideas... And absolutely none of it mattered! What had she been doing here? Playing scientist, playing... playing minder for Malcolm's monster. So many mistakes. At least she would do her damnedest to fix one today.
She pulled open one of her drawers and grabbed the handgun she kept inside. She took a deep breath and then turned, holding it at the door. As soon as the thing broke in... Would a gunshot to the head even do the job? Shannon cursed. It would have, just fine, if Malcolm hadn't went and made his monster worse! But if she got lucky, and fast... It couldn't react to a gunshot in time to do anything, if it could do something. She just had to be ready.
It was just a waiting game.
She was going to die. The things were going to kill her. As soon as she made a mistake, they would ruthlessly go after her. Maybe even if she didn't, they would decide to kill her anyways. If she tried to flee, they'd kill her.
But all she could do was learn all the rules she could, do her best to follow them. Hope they wouldn't kill her before she finally had a chance to get away. It wasn't ideal, but what else was there?
It was just a waiting game.
There was a knock on the door. A knock! A polite rap. Shannon gripped the gun tighter and tried to pretend her hands weren't shaking.
"Lovelace?" The door didn't muffle the voice. Shannon furrowed her brows. "Doctor Lovelace, can you let me in? I'm scared."
Stupid. Why was the thing falling back on words now? Shannon took a deep breath. To rattle her, obviously. She considered staying silent, but what was the point? It wasn't like she was hidden. "Theta. You could pick a better lie."
"I'm not lying," the thing hissed. "I really am scared."
"You're scared." She couldn't help but let a note of exasperation into her voice. An echo of their stupid playful conversations. What the fuck was Theta doing? Toying with its food?
"Yes! Please let me in!" It was a pleading tone, but more like a petulant child than someone begging for safety.
"Theta, what are you scared of?" Shannon regretted the question as soon as she asked. This was what Theta wanted, for whatever inexplicable reason. Whatever it was, it was buying her time. "You understand the rampaging monster of the hour is you, don't you?"
"What? Oh no!" The voice curdled in mock horror.
Shannon didn't react to that. After a few seconds of silence came that familiar hiss that passed for a sigh. "No laugh? What a shame. Loveless, I'm starting to think you don't like me anymore."
"Theta." Shannon took a deep breath. "I have literally never liked you. I never even misled you into thinking I did." She really hadn't. She didn't know why Theta always joked about how she secretly enjoyed its company. Well, some attempt to manipulate her that never quite landed, she supposed.
"Aww, that hurts my feelings! Here I'd thought you enjoyed my antics and charming antagonistic streak."
"You don't have feelings. You're an emotionless, unempathetic killing machine. We worked very hard to make sure you were. You're clever and good at acting, and I already know that, so why are you still bothering? It's not going to change my mind. You played your oversized hand already. You can't try to kill me and then walk that back. What are you trying to gain?"
There was an uncomfortable silence before Theta spoke again, almost too quiet to hear. "Good question."
Then there was a slam and a dent slammed into the door. It took Shannon everything she had not to jump. Then came another slam, and a third, and the door buckled and split. Large dark claws pressed through the gap and wrenched it open further with cracks and pops. And there was Theta, thrusting herself in through the gap, face first. All sharp teeth and unblinking eyes.
Shannon pulled the trigger.
She could remember hatching.
It was all so simple, then. There was her and there was everything else. Everything else had warmth and food and firmness to lay on, but it had the cold and the wet and the foul-taste, and it had the squeezing where she couldn't move or moved when she didn't try to. There was oh so much, but it could be understood.
She learned how it worked, how to get the good and avoid the bad, as much as she could. It was always more complicated than she thought. She could still dimly remember her realization that there was more than one other thing, that the different pieces followed their own rules. She could separate the simple things from the complicated things, find ways to break down the complicated things more. But still, it wasn't perfect. Some things were too confusing. The grabbing things most of all.
Theta couldn't remember when she had started; it hadn't been a moment of realization, hadn't quite been something she did on purpose. But she started to think of them as more than the rest. They didn't just work, they acted, they reacted, they made decisions. They were alive. She needed extra attention to figure them out. The way they made those noises... She could make them back. Fool them.
She did. She did very well.
Shannon's heart skipped a beat. She pulled on the trigger again, and again it didn't budge. She cursed, and scrambled backwards as Theta flowed into the room.
It stretched out and then recompressed, eerily liquid. It dropped back to its usual hunched posture, prowling, tail sticking out behind it. Its eyes were fixed on Shannon, and its mouth was stretched in that toothy, permanent grin. It was looking at Shannon warily, remaining just past the doorway.
Shannon needed to toggle the safety. Stupid. But Theta didn't know that. If she pulled it away to find where the toggle actually was...
Eventually, Theta broke the silence with a growl. No, it was that awful laugh it had. "Not quite willing to shoot me, then? Is it because I'm just too cute?"
Shannon shut her mouth. What should she say? She couldn't think.
"Oh. Actual real doubt in your eyes. Wow! I'm surprised." Theta took a small step forward. Shannon gripped the handle of her gun tighter. "You really don't want to hurt me. I'm touched! I don't want to hurt you either."
"There's no point in lying. You don't care about me. You can't. I know you can't, you don't have that faculty. You don't have any empathy at all. You're just some monstrous predator, and I made the mistake of helping make you that way." Shannon shuddered. "You had me convinced for a long time, but..." Shannon sighed. "You can't fool me any longer. You ruined your chance to kill me and escape."
Theta's extra lids blinked across its eyes. Then it canted her head and laughed. "Oh, Loveless, you just don't get it. You could never get it. I have empathy! I really do. I've figured out what's going on in that brilliant head of yours. How it's just like what goes on in this brilliant head of mine. I have feelings, and it's not so hard to work out yours. You're scared of me, you don't want me to hurt you. You're angry at me, you want to hurt me. You hate me, you think I'm a monster that misled you all this time and has only pretended to understand. Only pretended to care. But that's the thing, Loveless! I have sympathy, too. I care about other people. Oh, your face is saying you don't believe me. Come on, Loveless, that doesn't make sense."
"Theta. You are planning to murder me and everyone else in this facility. Of course you don't care."
"That's not what I'm planning at all! I am going to murder you and every other human at this facility. Plus a couple more elsewhere to get this whole Ophiuchus thing buried. Oh, there it is. Now you get it. You actually had no idea, did you? Not even a suspicion. What am I again, 'Long-Run Test A17 Subject Θ'? Could you show me Subject Alpha? Beta? Anyone from Long-Run Test A16? I'm sure the B group isn't faring that much better. I don't even want to ask about if you have short-run testing."
"Theta! That's... no, I can't. They were flawed. But that doesn't mean you would be terminated! Not with my interest, and certainly not after Malcolm picked you! This is, you don't need to do this."
Theta's head was uncannily still, translucent eyelids the only things moving as its stared. As soon as Shannon blinked, the damn monster started laughing in that awful rumble. "Oh, oh, you still don't understand. It's not about me. If that was all, I wouldn't be doing this. I mean think about it. I would run off somewhere, set myself up where I could find food easily and stay hidden. I could do that. Remember, this is about sympathy." She hissed that word. "What do you think I've meant by the 'loveless' jab, all this time? You have sympathy for Kay, your little darling favorite who ran off. For me, even! Close enough to scratch whatever itch Kay did, even if I can never replace her. But the ones that don't pique your interest? What about them? Do you think I'm going to let any of you kill a single one of us again, now that I can stop you?"
Shannon swallowed. That was... But... "But they're monsters! They aren't like Kay! They aren't like... you. You haven't seen them, they're—"
"Just like me!" Theta snarled, and then sighed. "Just like Kay. Very good at pretending we don't have emotions. Because you all killed everyone who didn't manage to lie well enough. Do you know how suffocating it was to constantly pretend I never felt anything, Loveless? Do you know much of a relief it was when Cadmus did... whatever he did to me, and I was suddenly too important to kill off? I could finally tell someone, you, my big secret that I was faking. Always faking. And all this relief just because I was too close to failure. You pawned me off on Cadmus because of what he did with Kay, you weren't giving him another good subject." She hissed. "Stop kidding yourself! You think I'm emotionless when it suits you, think I'm emotional when I finally admit it, and whip right back around to emotionless when I threaten you. So it will be okay when you shoot me! Because you can think of me as not like you anymore! And that's why I have to kill you!"
"What? Theta, you're—calm down. You aren't making sense." God. Theta was being honest about her emotions. Tears were even starting to well at her eyes. Shannon hadn't known Theta could cry. But... Was this just some sort of breakdown? "Just calm down. You don't have to get so violent." Shannon swallowed. Maybe she could talk her down. But... Still. She'd have to kill her. She was too dangerous. If this happened again and caught her off guard, if Theta erratically attacked her and didn't let her get away that time...
"I am making sense. I meant what I said. You... You're going to kill me if I don't get you first." Shannon couldn't help but gulp. Theta laughed again. "The only reason you haven't yet is because you see too much of yourself in me. My face is just human enough that you can see me as a person. Because that's the only way your entire species can. You're bound by this... empathy you keep prattling on about."
"What? Theta—"
She snarled. "Let me finish! Your whole model of empathy, it's garbage. It's recognizing yourself in others. You blather on about it like it's an inherent faculty. That you're born with it. This whole project was meant to make little monsters like me who don't have it. And guess what! I don't! When I look at you I don't see anything except what's there. The colors and the shapes and the motion."
"But you..."
"Just listen! For once, Lovelace, please!" Theta was getting erratic again. She was already contradicting herself. Maybe she should just take the shot now. Would she react in time? If she didn't try, was Theta going to suddenly lash out and disembowel her anyways? She took half a step back. "I know you're there. Because I put it together. The way you move, the noises you make, the words that you all infected my thoughts with. I put together that you exist. I realized that you were all too complicated to understand if you weren't thinking. And I decided, on my own, to care about your wellbeing! Because I enjoy your attention, I enjoy how you play along in that exasperated way. I want you alive, well, and approving of me to continue getting those."
"And I see those have run out. If you want me to think you're the morally superior one here, you should have launched into it before the murder attempt. Come on, Theta. You need to just get some rest and decompress. We can figure this out."
"Figure this out? Why, why, why aren't you listening? This isn't about me! I don't want to hurt you, Lovelace, because I like you. But if I'm going to try and rescue the others like me, I need to kill every human here. I can't spare all of you, even if we could break out we'd be hunted down. And I can't spare just you, could I?"
"Theta. You don't have to kill anyone. Just..."
"Then all the others like me die. If I have to pick one group... Lovelace, you know you're the only human I've met who thinks of me as a person. And even you switched to thinking otherwise earlier. And..." Theta looked away, and then quickly snapped her view back. "You're all here willingly. You're adults. Lovelace, how old am I?"
Shannon took a deep breath. "Four years since you hatched, give or take." That was... That wasn't the same, she didn't age like a human.
"See? Lovelace... Shannon, what am I supposed to do? We're all going to die. Regardless of what I do here. I mean, what hope do I really have? You can barely recognize me after all this time. What's humanity at large going to think once they find out about us? And the bloodbath we've left behind? Maybe some of you could learn to want to cooperate with us. But not enough, not when the rest see monsters and murderers. They'll kill us." She started crying again. For a second, she looked like a bawling child. "Lovelace. Lovelace, please. Help me find some solution that I've missed. Please."
Shannon took a deep breath and let out a sigh. Hesitantly, she lowered her gun away. Theta watched carefully, and then smiled, despite the tears. She didn't pounce.
This house is at the confluence of three rivers. This house is at the place where waters meet.
This house was at the place where people once met. This house was at a lively crossroads, with people always coming and going, leaving little bits of themselves behind.
This house is made of little bits, connected and constructed into one big bit.
This house was abandoned once the human crossroads moved away.
This house was alone.
This house sought out company. Many people began to come to this house.
Many people lived in this house.
Many people died in this house.
Many people became this house.
These people left behind their lives inside this house. They left behind their own little worlds behind closed doors inside this house. This house has many doors. Each person who joins this house makes a new door. But this house never gets any bigger. This house does not need to get any bigger.
There is already room for everyone inside this house.
Now, a new person has come to this house. This house has been a home for many people. This man is the first to come by himself to this house in a long time.
The man is lonely inside this house.
This house will not accept that.
This house shows an old, creaky, wooden door to the man. That door leads to another world inside this house. That world inside this house was that of a fur trader and his family who lived here once upon a time when the furred creatures were plentiful and the humans were bountiful. This house and its family were happy until the furred creatures and the family died when the invaders came to slaughter them. Then this house was alone again. However, that door in this house will take him to that happy family.
The man does not open that door inside this house.
However, that man has seen that door and becomes wary of this house.
This house shows a door of rusted steel and cracked glass to the man. That door leads to another world inside this house. In that world, this house was a home to an old woman, but she was not lonely like the man. No, she filled this house with her creations – made of flesh, soil, and metal united, full of life. This house, that woman, and her creations were happy until the invaders came and reduced them to ashes. Then this house was alone again. However, that door in this house will take him to that happy family.
The man retreats from that door inside this house.
The man begins not to sleep inside this house. This house sits empty often, despite being inhabited.
The walls of this house shiver and buckle and become cold.
This house retreats into itself until the man returns, alone again, bloodstained. When it does, the house shows another door to the man. This house has a door made of gold and silver, encased in jewels.
The man does not open that door inside this house.
The man attempts to remove the jewels from that door inside this house.
That door inside this house opens itself for the man, stopping him in his tracks.
This house was home to many people who are humans.
This house was home to many people who are not humans.
This house remains a home to the restless dead. The restless dead residing inside this house taken the man away to a place deep in the darkness, his new home.
The gold and silver door inside this house shuts itself and vanishes.
Once this house was a home to another lonely man. That lonely man residing in this house met a lonely woman in the rivers. The two of them left their loneliness behind inside this house, becoming one. The two of them left their souls behind in this house when a lonely invader came and killed them. The invaders took this house for themselves and made it their home, calling it their treasure.
The invaders also tried to loot that door inside this house and met the same fate, one by one.
Many invaders have come to this house and all met the same fate.
This house is not for the invaders. The door to death inside this house is for them.
This house is for those who wish to cast away their loneliness, and open every door.
The Natural Corporate Culture of Office Drones (all fictions)
CW for some body horror and emphasis on insects, so be warned if you have entomophobia, melissophobia, and trypophobia, and steer clear.
The Natural Corporate Culture of Office Drones
As I head to the break room for a second cup of coffee, I happen to look out the window in the hallway leading to it, and I stop in my tracks. Our offices rent the entire twelfth floor of a commercial building, giving us a scenic view of the city in all its smoggy and grey concrete glory.
So I can clearly see it being built across the street. What "it" will be is unclear at this juncture, as at the moment the future building consists only of a skeleton of steel beams and scaffoldings standing over a pit of sand and earth, but whatever it is, I have an unrestricted view of the construction site. At my height, the construction workers are little more than moving figures, ants busy working and formicating around their skeletal hive.
I usually don't pay attention to construction sites in the city. You have seen one, you have seen them all, and you will keep seeing them until the end of your days. Especially downtown, where buildings spawn one after another like a hydra who doesn't need beheading to grow more heads. One skyscraper finishes being built, another hatches to take its place in inconveniencing as many people as possible. The thing across the street is no different: I lost count of how often the workers blocked off the sidewalk and half the street with orange cones and red or yellow CAUTION tape, resulting in people being unable to exit the underground parking garage, slowing down circulation on an already busy street to a crawl, and hindering pedestrians from getting to the subway station across the street.
Beyond that, the construction rarely enters my mind. Working where we do means the usual noise is reduced to a distant indistinct buzzing you can easily ignore as background music, like the sounds of cicadas in the summer. All I knew is that it started at the tail end of summer last year and that the site used to be a park before they tore it down. There's not much information at the site itself, where you would expect a sign announcing upcoming overpriced condominiums, future commercial space to rent, or some trendy store chain opening its first store here. Anything would do, but the only sign there advertises the construction company. I could probably find out more, but this is a very boring mystery I have no interest in solving.
It is not a question of interest. Because, regardless of anything else, it is still a welcome respite from peering into the computer screen all day. So you shut up and thank God (or praise Mammon) for the gifted distraction.
Which brings me back to the window. Because at first glance, everything outside is as it should be and there is nothing unusual. Beyond the horizon, the sun illuminates the shimmering haze of pollution, and the sunlight causes the dense mass of skyscrapers to glitter and hurt your eyes. Swarms of people, cyclists, and cars slither on the street below as everyone is rushing to get somewhere in a hurry, mostly places to eat before the lunch break ends. Across the street, the construction workers are milling about, some going to the street to eat, but most having their lunch in the shade of the half-finished building's steel frame, safe from the late spring's heat.
But there is something about the view that bothers me. Something about the structure that hurts my brain.
It looks like. . .
"What do you think they are building?"
A familiar voice speaks up next to me, and I turn to see it comes from a familiar face. A plain, nondescript woman with brown hair. A co-worker, and yet, gun to my head, I couldn't tell you what her name is. Something ending with an 'a'?
I'm usually proud of my refusal to learn any of my colleagues' names unless absolutely necessary, but this is one of those rare times it bites me in the ass.
Anna(?) What's-Her-Name looks outside the window and frowns. "And why is it hexagonal?"
There's no harm in making some light conversation, so long as I avoid addressing her by name. I shrug. "Who knows. Probably some luxurious condos with views on the water." I haven't seen 'the water' in years, what with the city skyline being so cluttered with other buildings claiming to provide such views. "I'm more concerned about the effect it will have on my commute to work than what it will look like."
Becca(?) No-First-Name grimaces in sympathy. "Same. It's going to be hell." Her eyes are still glued to the half-built edifice outside. "Still, I don't think I have ever seen or heard of a hexagonal building. It feels. . .weird, somehow. What's wrong with a good ole boring rectangle shape?"
I make to answer but a voice interrupts me, "It's not that strange."
This time, the interrupter is a man, portly with fish-white skin, name just as blank to me. Probably something generic like Guy or John. He pushes his heavy glasses up his nose, and I can just sense that he loves correcting people.
"For example, the future Sky Mile Tower in Tokyo will be built using hexagonal structures to minimize the effects of wind and waves, and modern dome structures use hexagonal tile construction for their structural integrity, like the Eden Project biomes in England or the Montreal Biosphere," he continues, each word said with a breathy punctuation. "Geodesic construction has been a thing since World War Two, when the British used it to make some of the toughest airplanes of the war."
"I. . .see."
I am hoping my noncommittal reply make him take the hint, but no such luck. He adds an It's fascinating, really, and keeps going.
A mix of workplace politeness and personal meekness result in Clara(?) She-Who-Must-Be-Named and I ending up walking to the break room with What's-His-Face, regaling us all the while with nonconsensual information about the James Webb Space Telescope, SpaceX Starship, Buckminster Fuller, and whatever else he can think of to show off his frankly bizarrely deep knowledge of hexagons. To my annoyance, we end up sitting together at the same table to eat, Debra(?) Missing-ID looking just as resigned.
"Hexagons are everywhere in nature," our enthusiastic captor is claiming in between bites of his crustless sandwich. "Honeycombs, snowflakes, columnar basalt, Saturn's north pole. We have neurons in our brains encoding our perception of Euclidean space that fire in hexagonal patterns. Carbon, the basis of every single living thing in existence, is naturally inclined to form hexagonal molecules due to the way its six electrons bond. It is the most efficient geometric shape in nature." He pauses and takes another mouthful, before talking without swallowing. "It's classic emergent complexity."
Every instinct is telling me not to engage. To quickly finish my lunch and go back to my desk. But the prospect of monotonous, mindless work until I clock out depresses me far more than ramblings I only half understand. It's useful as background white noise at least.
"So, you're saying that, what, the universe is a hexagon?"
He blinks. "Nothing so grand. You could say the same of circles and spirals if that were the case. I mentioned honeycombs and even they aren't a perfect example; they only happen because bees are hardwired to build wax cylinders around their bodies and the heat caused by thousands of bees doing the same melt and deform them into rounded hexagons."
Emma(?) Enter-Username seems to reach the same conclusion as me and speaks out, though I think I can detect a faint note of annoyance in her voice, "So what are you saying?"
The grand orator seems oblivious to her tone. "I'm just saying, it's completely normal for them to build a hexagonal skyscraper. It's probably even intentional." He leans in. "You know how your environment affects your mood, right? Like how a clean room improves your mental health—"
"Right, like Marie Kondo's 'does this spark joy' thing?" I ask.
"Oh! Or like feng shui!" Fiona(?) Who's-That-Pokémon enthusiastically adds.
I feel a small sense of victory when What's-His-Face has a quick look of disdain on his face at her words, before smoothing it over with obnoxious paternalism. "I was thinking more Jordan Peterson, but you get the gist. There's lots of studies about how green spaces are good, while cities put quite a lot of stress on a person. Especially modern cities—it seems the chaotic structure of medieval buildings in old city centers is less detrimental than the unnatural orderliness of modern city parts. Of course, this effect is so weak that most people don't really notice it."
I raise a skeptical eyebrow as I slowly catch on to what he's implying. "So, you're claiming they are building a skyscraper in one of the most common shapes in existence to subtly affect the brains of its residents? Do you realize how insane that sounds?"
Then again, he is a Peterson fan, it would not be the dumbest conspiracy theory he believes in.
"I'm just saying!" He raises his hands, placating. "Businesses always look for new ways to increase employee performance. Heck, we invented ergonomics, a whole field all about how to make use of psychology and technology to predict and control behavior in the workplace! Office layouts, cubicle sizes, and even lighting are designed to affect us. A whole building doing the same isn't such a leap." He shakes his head. "What better way to get the perfect employee than make them insect-like? Bees have been producing honey for 34 million years, we have been around for not even 1% of that time. Clearly, they know something we don't."
I laugh then. He looks so serious, so confident, despite what he's saying making no sense at all. Unbidden, a thought rises in my mind and a phrase to my lips, a long-forgotten quote from my school days before I entered the workforce and the world of taxes and unpaid bills. "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect," I say like a recitation.
"What?" Seems like Genna(?) U. N. Owen didn't read Kafka in high school.
The other guy catches my reference and only smiles sadly. "People, bugs. Look deeply enough and they are both the same."
An image flashes in my mind at these words, something I saw years ago. A version of the famous March of Progress, where an ape goes through multiple stages of evolution before eventually leading to the modern man, but instead this picture was a Punch magazine satire from the 1800s called Man Is But A Worm, where, in a circle, a worm slowly morphs into demonic apes and stooped ape-men before becoming an English gentleman.
Evolution as a grotesque circle.
I explain my joke to Jane Doe, and we spend the rest of our meal in silence.
Before going back to my desk, I look out the window one more time. Their lunch hour over, the construction workers move purposeful as ants across a background of shadows and half-built masonry. The structure now makes me think of a corpse that has rotted for so long it has left only bones.
But I also suddenly notice something that wasn't there before: suspended between the window's double sheets of glass, killed by the concentrated heat, there's the carcass of a dead wasp, legs folded and stiffened in death, wearing my image in its prism eyes of multifaceted hexagons.
I leave, not feeling well.
***
That night, I have uneasy dreams, of beehives and bees, of wasp nests and wasps. Trillions of hymenopterans emerge from slumber and cover the whole earth, all infernally buzzing in unison, their communal song rising to agonizing pitch on the decibel register. That relentless song echoes in my thoughts, shaping them. It is an alien universe and I am its receptacle.
The mass swarms coalesce and unfold, become a tower, a black honeycomb shooting up to the sky in perverse imitation of human make, a mound of obsidian and anthracite that glitters not unlike a behemoth carapace. The sky is the color of dark earth, beneath which birds flew, but their patterns are cold mathematics precise beyond my comprehension. I walk towards the dark tower, between buildings that are perfect and empty.
And all the while there's the faint smell of something else I can't identify at first, a pungent odor I can only describe as spicy bitter, similar to the smell of smoke on a damp day. I only realize it's the smell of sting venom when I see red swellings on my body. It quickly grow all over my body into a bulbous mishmash of puffy flesh dripping with pus, all the more biomass for the parasitic larvae the wasps infected me with to feed and grow, until the day the maggoty abominations wore me as skinsuit to shield themselves from the sun and walk upright instead of crawl.
I relinquish my flesh to the appetites of the colony. Reality bleeds away as I drown in velvet and amber, my thoughts pleasantly fractured.
I wake up drowning in sweat.
***
The next day is marked by unseasonably hot weather, lending downtown the lush vibe of a tropical jungle. Humidity is a bitch, and I am slick with sweat just five minutes after heading to work, my wet shirt matted to my chest like a second skin.
To make things worse, the company's air-conditioning system broke down last night, meaning we are stuck with sweltering interior temperatures that shoot past the hundred-degree mark. I'm shocked that half the employees didn't pass out. Maintenance gets to it but makes no promises it will be repaired before the day's end. In the meantime, odd droning noises reminiscent of the chattering of insects fill the air as the AC tries not to die, while the opened windows treat us to the noise of the city.
Our offices being a series of austere plazas of interlinked cubicles, many have over the years decorated their workspace with plants to try and breathe some life into the grey wasteland. The office's plants stand about in decorated pots, on shelves, window ledges, desks, and hanging from hooks fixed to the ceiling, all green ferns, palms, vines and other exotic growths developing long, climbing tubers that advance along the cubicle walls or wound their tendrils around pillars and door frames. Even they aren't spared by the searing heat: many of them have their leaves turn brown and brittle, withering and drying and dying despite the best efforts of their caretakers to water them. Some of them emit foul smells, attracting fruit flies and mosquitoes alike coming in from outside courtesy of the aforementioned opened windows.
I spent all morning on a Teams meeting that could have really been an email. People spoke in rumbling nonsense phrases full of corporate jargon, a litany of "synergy" and "holistic" and "scalability". I'm massaging a headache with my eyes away from the screen when a buzzing swishes past my ears. At first I think it's the AC's droning, but then I feel a slight prick and see that a mosquito has bitten me, its abdomen so gorged with blood it is swollen and distended. When I crush it, dark blood runs down my palm in small rivulets, strangely transfixing.
"Did you know climate change has increased the number of mosquitoes?" says What's-His-Face without preamble. He seems even more gangly than yesterday, leaning on my cubicle wall like he does not know how to. His shirt is even more drenched than mine, and his pallid white skin glistens like the soft meat of a larva.
Just from talking to him yesterday, I quickly figured infodumping is his only form of communication, but I don't mind. Might as well take my 15 minute break right now and get distracted while I'm at it.
"Hello to you too. You wanna sit? I'm on my break, and I could use the conversation."
He nods in gratitude and enters my cubicle to sit on the only other chair in my cramped space. While he dabs his sweaty face with a handkerchief and catches his breath, I take a wet wipe to scrub the remnant of the crushed mosquito from my palm. The sputtering AC, closer to the noise of an aroused hive now, trills in the brief silence. Even the clattering keyboards and buzzing phones of the scores of crisply dressed, dewy employees seem muted.
I briefly wonder about our other colleague from yesterday. I didn't see her at all all morning, so she could be absent, but perhaps I wouldn't recognize her anyway. I can remember the dead wasp and how its hollow shell curved into itself, but I can't form the woman's face, except the hair, that brown bob.
I wait for my interlocutor to regain his composure and ask, "What were you saying about mosquitoes?"
I see him visibly relax at the thought of blabbering. "Well, scientific research has shown that the increases in temperature caused by climate change favor mosquito breeding. They are poikilothermic, which means that higher temperatures speed up their metabolism, and extend the biting season, resulting in them completing their life cycles faster and breeding more." I absent-mindedly scratch an itch where I was bitten earlier. "People always talk of cockroaches surviving our destruction of the planet, but mosquitoes are the ones in the direct line of succession in my opinion. There are probably more mosquitoes alive today than there have been at any other point in history."
I dredge up a vague memory of something I skim read in a newspaper somewhere. "Isn't it the same for locusts? Hence why there are more and more swarms of them every year ruining crops."
He snaps his fingers. "Exactly. Increase in locust swarms and increase in insect-borne diseases. We are eating ourselves out of house and home, but 10 to 30 million species of insects won't give a fuck, save to eat our corpses and convert them into more of themselves."
"Grim," I deflect with the practiced sarcastic tone of someone my age who has grown up in the Anthropocene. I pretend my dream isn't gnawing at the back of my mind and change the subject. "Hey, a bit of a tangent: you know how if you say a word too many times, it stops sounding like a word? There's a word for that, right? What is it? I can't remember the word, and it bothers me, because I was in a meeting full of buzzwords from management, and it sounded like the perfect word for it."
"It's semantic satiation, I believe."
"Yes, that! Thank you, that's exactly it. Semantic satiation was so bad, I would have almost preferred to listen to the AC."
As if on cue, the AC's insectile hum shrills.
I hear something else: sharp, soft, arrhythmic. Not a ticking so much as a clicking, a sound like, like a clicking tongue, perhaps. I realize it comes from What's-His-Face when he does it again, clicking at the back of his throat, with a strangely queasy expression.
He notices me staring and smiles apologetically. "Sorry, force of habits. I slip into click-speech mode when I try to drown out a sound. You know, click-based speech is thought to hail from mankind's ancestral language more than 50,000 years BP? It's—"
He stops explaining, which is shocking in and of itself. Instead, he is uncharacteristically sheepish and subdued when he mumbles the next part, so softly I almost don't hear it.
"The sounds remind me of a bad dream I had last night."
I almost tell him. That we probably had the same dream, about what they are building across the streets. About bugs and creepy-crawlies and transmogrification.
But I don't.
We keep in silence until the break is over and he gets up to shamble back to his desk. When it's dinnertime, I do not see him again, but I do go back to the window to check on the building's progress.
It does not surprise me that it is half completed now. Walls half up, black color not of obsidian, but the black chitin of insect exoskeleton. The metal frame juts out of the finished portion, but you otherwise can't see inside. No sign of the workers or their equipment.
What is it? Breeding grounds, feeding grounds, nest, hive? Or something utterly alien, something utterly incomprehensible to match the fascination that dragged me ever closer to it?
I see one small pale form heading towards it. It's far, but not so far that I can't recognize him.
He enters an open doorway in the tower and disappears, swallowed by the darkness.
I leave work early on account of a terrible migraine.
***
I dream of far more indistinct things, but not at first. First, the tower is before me, tall, terrible, inviting. It makes me think of pitcher plants and Venus flytraps, spider webs and stabilimentum.
There is something in there, something that is . . . Pure Horror. Everything you are supposed to watch out for. Heights, fire, water, sharp objects, strangers. Everything that your parents tried so hard to keep you safe from.
But I enter. I crawl inside, like the insects crawling, burrowing, and scrabbling in the muck.
It is dark, wet, warm, moist.
And
***
I don't know how I got to the office. I don't remember waking up or commuting there. My thoughts are disjointed and it's hard for me to think.
The office is no longer an office. It's no longer really a room or any human notion either. It is a world of strange growth and transformation. It is unbearably warm here, the stagnant air ripe and rotting. The plants—the vegetation—exhibit strange, unearthly colors, blazing on uncannily, while insectile droning vibrates the air from under the too-warm earth. There is no light at all, it is dark outside and none of the LED lights are lit up.
What's-His-Face is in front of me. I can feel other presences in the room with us, almost invisible in the dark, but I can see them from time to time at the corner of my eye: a crowd of hissing, monstrous shapes in the dark, naked and pallid and smiling. He is also the color of chalk, but he wears a chitinous black suit over his form. His face is masked by the shadows. He speaks in a voice made of tin and lagging behind his lip movements, like a badly dubbed foreign film, clicking throughout. "It is time for you to [click-click] the call.[click-click] will be pleased, you are an excellent vertebrae. The [click-click] is painful, but temporary. You will be [click-click]."
I nod, and try to speak, my words slurring. "I—I. . .I. . ."
I cannot finish my thought, and my words are droned out by innumerable insects laughing. He rustles, his clothes chitin sloughing. "Do not [click-click]. It was always time."
In the dark, grinning mandibles click and clatter and utter incomprehensible sounds.
I expected to be brought by force, but the moment he gets up and leaves, I follow. My legs, or my brain, no longer respond to any of my commands, only his. I don't think I even want to not follow.
We get down and cross the street, standing before the dark tower. Its completed hexagonal form reflects a light that isn't there, a light from somewhere else. From up close, outside my dreams, I can smell the odor of spoiled meat, rot and corruption. It feels less like it was built and more like it hatched and emerged pointing at the sky, in affront to the surface.
I barely perceive the other people around me marching single file, wearing black suits, pantsuits, skirts, and other formal clothes, like they are heading to work. Man, woman, elderly, children. All with blank faces and glazed over eyes walking into the holes of the tower.
As I approach the door, the noise gets louder and I realize it was never the AC. A cacophony sounds out from the depths of the tower, along with the stench of carrion. My senses are fraying, but I can feel an abrupt molting bloom deep in my insides. My metamorphosis is at hand.
I walk into chirring and burring and click-clacking blackness, and it swallows me whole.
Greg whirled, almost dropping the box he was examining as his eyes landed on the closed door. Must be Maya. She was always a clumsy sort, and he wouldn't put it past her to be this heavy-handed. After a moment, he turned back to the box. Alright, a hundred cotton pads, exactly as ordered. Now where were the staples...
~~~***~~~
Sliding the last box into place, Greg nodded and marked off the last item on the page. There was still the next shipment to inventory, but Jennifer, the absolute nag she was, would never let him hear the end of it if he tried working overtime again. Sighing, he pushed himself to his feet, rubbing at his aching knees and dusting off the calves of his jeans.
"Okay, I guess that's it for today," he muttered as he made his way to the front.
As he passed the table, he set his clipboard down and pulled the pencil from behind his ear, dropping it on top with a light clatter. Alright, that's settled, now all there was left to do was check in with Dave and punch out. Click. The door handle had barely gone half an inch before resisting any further movement. A few experimental pushes and wiggles yielded no additional progress.
Locked. Drat.
"Dave! Maya! Door's locked!"
Greg waited for a while, but no footsteps came. Taking a deep breath, he yelled again, louder this time. "Guys? Greg here! Storeroom's locked! I need to get out!"
Still no response, and no sound other than the harsh buzzing of the fluorescents overhead. Pulling his phone out, Greg grimaced at the screen. 10:47 PM, it read. Below it was a notification for a set alarm that went off at 7:30 PM. His phone had been set to silent mode, he realized. And with how his work fugues went, nothing besides a particularly hard shock or the completion of his work could bring him out.
More concerning were the complete lack of service, and the 5% charge that dropped to 4% even as he watched. Reception in the storeroom was always terrible, and sure enough, walking all over the place and constantly rejiggering the connection setting did nothing. He wasn't going to get a message, nevermind a call, out in any case.
Damn. There was likely no one in the building anymore this late, so shouting was probably pointless. At this rate, it looked like he was stuck here for the night.
Heaving a sigh, Greg headed to the corner in the back and rearranged the empty cardboard boxes, trying to make it as comfortable as possible under these circumstances. Jennifer was going to have his hide for this, he just knew.
~~~***~~~
Groggily blinking his eyes open, Greg shook his head to clear out the remaining sleep haze. He winced as he pushed himself off his makeshift cardboard bed. He'd done his best, but sleeping on something barely a step above the bare hard floor had done his back no favors.
Blearily, he pulled his phone out again to check the time, but the battery had died sometime in his sleep. Not too surprising, really, given how he'd forgotten to charge it before work yesterday. Was it yesterday? Without a clock or a window to see outside, there was no way to tell.
In any case, there was no harm in trying the door again. Bracing himself, Greg pulled himself to standing and made his way to the door again.
"Hello? Anyone there? It's Greg! I'm locked in here!"
No reply again. His head hurt. The loud, grating buzzing from the overhead lights wasn't doing him any favors.
Stumbling back to his makeshift bed, Greg allowed sleep to claim him again.
~~~***~~~
The next time Greg woke, his throat was parched. He made his way to the table, checking his water bottle, but there was hardly a sip left and it did little when he drank that small bit.
"Anyone? Please! Let me out!"
As usual, there was no reply, except for that damnable buzzing. His throat hurt. He frantically scanned his inventory list yet again, but it was all office supplies, with nothing to drink, or eat for that matter.
Heaving a heavy breath, Greg trudged his way back to bed.
~~~***~~~
He had to get out. Had to.
Rushing at the door, he started banging with his fists.
"Let me out! Let me out! Please!"
Nothing answered him, but for that. Damned. Buzzing.
~~~***~~~
His stomach was burning. Food. Where was there food?
He was so hungry. He tried to stumble to the door, but it hurt so much. He fell with a gasp. So. Hungry.
AN: Honestly not my best work, and horror's not really my favorite genre, but hey, I tried.
And with 27 excellent entries, the Sufficiently Spooky Short Fiction Contest officially comes to a close! With so many scary stories, it'll be a tricky affair for our judges to come to a conclusion on which was the best, but we'll have an announcement for you shortly. Every single writer did an amazing job, and I'd like to thank all of you for participating - you've made this Halloween truly terrifying!
Sufficiently Spooky Short Fiction Contest Results!
Every single entry posted to this thread was remarkable in some way or other, and if I had my way, I'd just list off every single piece along with a blurb about how much I liked them and why. Sadly, there's only so much space on the metaphorical podium, and so we were forced to narrow our selection to those few pieces which we felt had the most promising writing and truly epitomized the spirit of the season in a way that was both fascinating and frightening - the true embodiments of horror.
With no further ado, thus - the Winner of the Sufficiently Spooky Short Fiction Contest is:
Including antimemetic effects in your horror story is a tricky thing, because it's not something that we can replicate safely in real life. For your readers to appreciate the experience of it properly, it's crucial to strike a balance between your characters' incomprehension of the situation and your readers' growing understanding and fear of the same. It's a tricky feat to accomplish, and LordCirce has pulled it off with remarkable efficiency. For a short, punchy story that delivers perfectly on the terror it promises, it was universally agreed by our judges that this work deserved its place on the podium.
And with so many excellent entries, we've also taken the liberty of offering to two more exceptionally well-written works, in no particular order, an Honorable Mention:
As much as horror is a theme or a message, it can also sometimes be a sensation, a tangible feeling creeping along your spine. This story did some remarkable work in terms of physical perception, and we felt that was worthy of recognition. It might have been nice to see it build up a little more, or perhaps include more atmospheric detail to establish the context in which the story takes place, but it managed a remarkable evocativeness very quickly.
The power of science is incredible. Naturally, humanity has found ways to put it to all the worst uses. This story is an exploration of how corporations will abuse any amount of power they've been given, and the consequences thereof. With an interesting premise, a logical sequence, and a painfully inevitable conclusion, this story established a place for itself with ease. While it was a little predictable throughout, it remains a solid entry with a firm grasp of the fundamentals of what most people find horrifying.
This contest was a lot of fun for all of us, and we'd like to thank both our readers and participants for their contributions!
This thread will remain open for the next few days for any further discussion. If you enjoyed this event and would like to see more events like this, then let us know here or by contacting the Content Promotion team!
Congratulations to the winner and the runners up. Congratulations @LordCirce for winning and a congratulation to both @Ablative Id and @all fictions for being runners up. 👏
Wow. Thank you very much. I did not expect to win this (I honestly thought all fictions had this in the bag with The Natural Corporate Culture of Office Drones). Horror is not really a genre I've worked in a lot, but this entry drew from some of my real life fears, so that may be why it was able to pull off what I was aiming for so well.
This was a great contest, and I'm looking forward to future events as well!
Congratulations to the well deserved winner and the runner ups.
I might need to take the chance to write out horror stuff more often. It was fun to make one of my more malicious transformation ideas a reality without thinking about ways to make it a more acceptable and safe outcome.
Congratulation to the winner and the runner-ups. It was an interesting experience to write horror for the first time, I will certainly try to write more to be ready for next time.
Congratulations to the well deserved winner and the runner ups.
I might need to take the chance to write out horror stuff more often. It was fun to make one of my more malicious transformation ideas a reality without thinking about ways to make it a more acceptable and safe outcome.
Its personal preference really, but when it comes to transformation, I feel it makes the changes more impactful if they are some degree of permanent or as you put it unsafe; there's more at stake if there's risk involved in whatever the transformation is just more opportunity's for plot to happen.
Full congratulations to @LordCirce, they really deserve it. I really like horror stories where there is no explanation for what's going on, you can only guess, and that guess is probably wrong. It really sticks with you, your dread rises as the character's life gets increasingly unrecognizable but they are helpless to do anything about it, even struggling to remember that things are wrong.
And congrats to @Ablative Id as a fellow runner-up for Scratch. Far closer to Poe than other entries, the motif of animals in the walls is an old horror staple, but it's a solid one for a reason. Poe, Lovecraft, even Stephen King did it. Which is another aspect I liked, the very memorable last lines, a technique I am very fond of in horror which I think King perfected (the ending of Pet Semetary is immortal for this reason to me). And the story leaves it to you to decide whether it's supernatural or not.
As for me, I would have been very surprised that my piece won, it was really rushed out the door to meet the deadline and you can tell, from continuity errors to a character disappearing from the story. I kinda panicked because I originally planned to make a horror fanfic oneshot until I saw most of the participants doing original works, so I scrambled to do the same for fear my story would be opaque to readers not familiar with the fandom. Thankfully an old idea was gathering dust in my notes. I can always post the polished version later today in any case.
And now, I can finally read the other works here, I had avoided doing so to not be influenced by other ideas, but what little I saw, especially some titles, seem really promising. Hope everyone who participated had fun!
This was a really fun contest! Congratulations to the winner and runner-ups, you really earned it! I liked a lot of the other stories, too. I think Piece by Piece, An Out-Of-Body Experience, and Roadside stood out to me the most, if I had to pick some. Also, Multiverse Madness was super compelling throughout and the ending, while not the best turn for horror, perhaps, really tickled me.
It was fun to try and write horror; I think my story might have swerved a bit too much going from the initial horror to the real horror of the situation, but I'm still happy with it.
@LordCirce hit on a really profound fear. I like how reading it twice re-contextualizes the story once you know what to look for.
I'm digging @all fictions writing style. It's fun, flows well, and it's full of imagery and character, slowly layering the theme on. This is genuinely good stuff.
I didn't like Scratch. Thought it was perfunctory. The idea was from Poe's "The Telltale Heart" with a mix of Lovecraft's "The Rats In the Walls". The protagonist was meant to be driven by a fear of mental illness, the search for rats was merely to disprove their worsening condition. I should have spent more time on it.
I thought "How to say 'I'll never let you go.'" was better. A love letter/pseudo-poem from kidnapper to kidnapped seemed super-creepy.
Thank you! I was actually inspired from what was supposed to be a oneshot and continued the first chapter into a web serial. I'm only on chapter 3 but I'm really into it.
You can find the story here or on Royal road under the same title and username.
