Screeching, clutching at fragmented glass, a last glimpse of waxy desks, a cry for help with no one to listen.
Stan, a 27 year old, starts his new job at a cold, industrial company. His coworkers seem tense and irritable, which isn’t uncommon in a competitive environment like this. Though, this company, or more importantly their CEO, has a dark secret.
His first day, Stan runs into trouble. He’s slouching at his ordinary office desk working on some paperwork for his new job under strong fluorescent lights surrounded by his cold coworkers. The clicks and clacks of keyboards at work seem to be getting louder as the minutes go by. Within 10 minutes, the sound is deafening. Suddenly, it goes dark. The windows lining the office seem to have gone dark as well, as if it were night. The click clacks are gone. He checks his watch with a small light and read “1:38 P.M.” He didn’t hear anyone startled, but he did hear them stop typing, so he begins to look around, only to see the cubicles around him empty. Suddenly, all of the monitors read the same message: “It wasn’t an accident.”
He blinks, but opens his eyes to a well lit office with his co-workers around him.
“Are you okay?” said numerous unfamiliar voices.
“What happened?” said another.
They began to tower over him, as though he were an animal in a cage. He realizes he’s on the floor clutching a paper reading the same message as the one on the monitors from his hallucination. Their glances sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Dazed, afraid, and intimidated, Stan goes home after work to seek rest. He lies down in bed, feeling excessively tired, which is understandable after working his first day in three months.
“Man, I hope I can sleep off this annoying feeling,” he mutters to himself.
He slips into a deep sleep. His snoring figure lay under velvet sheets in an ice cold room. He begins to dream. It’s an oddly familiar setting. Windows lining an entire wall, the skyline just through them. There are two men in this office. Stan is one of them, sitting beside a window in an office chair, while the other is standing over him. The man pushes him, forcing him out of a window, causing him to fall 40 floors. A fall guaranteeing his death. Stan shoots up from the falling in his dreams, gasping for breath. He wakes up in a cold sweat, fearing what caused this dream. Was it related to the message? Who were they? Was he imagining it all? He takes a drink of water to try and calm his nerves, but all he tastes is despair.
The light of the morning felt like the shards of glass he remembers from his dream. Grabbing, flailing, light, dark, reflection. Then, thinking back to the dream, he remembers seeing a shard of glass, a large one, that reflected the image of the man who stood over him. A tall, bulky man with a round face and a dark fire in his eyes. He then realized that he recognized that man. It was the current CEO of the company he just started working for. He was the man standing over him in the dream, once a reality.