Working Late

Working Late

           Peterson pushed the file away from him and looked out the sealed window of the twenty-third floor. His gaze moved from the traffic moving silently on the streets below to the other buildings which pushed against the dark sky, their metallic silver sheen in the light of the street lamps at their bases giving way to the darkening of their forms as they rose in the night.

           In some of these monoliths a few lighted windows marked where other small creatures like him worked late within them. Lone patches of light in the immense shapes of the buildings, like membranes. In one of these membranes I work, Peterson thought, a microbe within the host organism. A strange way of thinking of it, he realized; during the day he would have considered it a bizarre description. But now, at night, it seemed disturbingly accurate.

           He wished someone else was working late in the building, but he saw no signs of it—no noises and no light coming out from under the doors of adjoining rooms on his floor. No, he was alone. The thought frightened him. As if the building knew he was working alone, had waited for him to be working alone. He tried to convince himself that such an idea was ridiculous, but it wouldn’t leave him. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. He wished very much that someone would come in and join him for a cup of coffee, conversation, even to clean around him. Yes, a cleaning woman would be welcome, the sound of her vacuuming a relief. Odd, he hadn’t seen or heard a cleaner this night. He was alone. The building, so pleasantly alive by day, was now . . . menacing.

           He looked out into the darkness at the buildings. They seemed to sway ever so slightly in the wind, as though breathing.

           He felt himself shudder for no reason. He was suddenly overcome with the urge to run out of the building, to be with people. Yet he found himself unable to move, that if he did, left the sanctuary of his desk, something terrible – he was not sure what – would happen to him.

           The buildings outside seemed to be moving, restless, grasping fingers in the night. Suppose they weren’t really glass and steel, but something more? Suppose of the thousands of people that worked in them, one disappeared every so often. Who would know? So and so was seen at work one day and never seen again. Disappeared. Gone to South America or Canada or Spain because of the pressure of work, or moved to another city, Chicago or LA.

           But suppose the buildings from which they disappeared knew where they were. Suppose they had never left the buildings alive. Devoured by the buildings one night. The buildings that had waited until they worked alone. No witnesses.

           Had any of those men who had disappeared sat alone the night of their disappearance, as he was sitting alone now, and had the same thought, the same fear come to them, and they had tried to run out of the building to escape? And . . .

           Peterson’s hands were sweating, his shirt stuck to his back from perspiration, he was breathing heavily, the sound of his breathing too heavy for himself alone, which caused him to discover, to his horror, that the room seemed to breathe also. He thought he heard a metallic sigh came from somewhere deep inside the building. No, not a sigh – more like the sound of a . . . throat being cleared. Panic seized him. Seized the normally self-possessed Peterson. Although his feet seemed glued to the floor, he forced himself from his chair. He ran from the room, dashed down the corridor as the building quivered. His feet nearly gave way under him. He clung to the wall for support. The wall was clammy, felt like epithelium. He shuddered and threw himself back into the middle of the corridor, tripped-ran forward and lunged for the elevator button. He pushed frantically, holding his finger on it as if his life depended on it.

           Finally the door opened. Relieved, he jumped into the elevator. He jammed the ground floor button. His relief was short lived because he had a sudden thought: suppose he had leapt into the throat of the building. With a sense of helpless horror he felt himself being carried to the bowels of the building, the sound of the wind about his ears, the pipes lining the elevator shaft dancing, filled with gurgling sounds that made him want to faint. He must get out before he was – the thought was too horrible. He jammed his finger at the emergency stop button, but the descending compartment did not stop. Not until it reached the bottom did it open. He made a rush to escape, but the walls of the shaft were quivering, alive, contracting in . . . digestion. Peterson screamed as the glistening walls closed in about him.

           When the elevator reached the ground floor it was empty.

            #    #    #

           When Peterson failed to show up for work for three days without phoning in sick or without informing that he was taking one of his rare vacations, his disappearance became the subject of office discussion. Although there were those who suggested that he had left the country for “greener pastures”, others disputed this because Peterson was an efficient worker who had over the years had quietly moved up the rungs of the company ladder until he reached a middle high position. Nothing about Peterson raised a suspicion of daring or bizarre acts on his part, though there were those who pointed to the fact that he had never married nor ever, as far as they knew, had a girl or boy friend. But the rest of Peterson’s resume was so regular that little weight was given to this aspect. “A loner”, a co-worker characterized Peterson. “A bit odd, but a respected worker.”        

           Since he was a valued, even necessary, employee in the eyes of his bosses, on the fourth day, putting aside fear of negative publicity with regard to the firm, they called in the police. After some days, the detectives handling the investigation had turned up nothing. Peterson had no known enemies, was not an alcoholic or drug taker. For all that, his body had not been found. No trace of him – except a pair of square cuff-links found on the elevator floor identified as his by his fellow employees who attested that he had worn the same cuff-links ever since they could remember. “Square like Pet—“ one ventured, before catching himself. 

           One aspect of the investigation troubled the detectives. According to the security guard on duty the day Peterson was last seen, he had signed in entering the building in the morning, and signed out at night. When one of the detectives pressed the guard to explain why Peterson’s signature on leaving did not seem to match his signature on entering work, he insisted that it was Peterson’s signature and besides, he added, he saw Peterson leave.

           The security guard’s superiors confirmed that he was a reliable person. “Been here so long he seems a part of the building.”  

           “During the time that we questioned him, the guard popped two pills in his mouth. Mean anything?” a detective asked them.

           “They were antacid pills. He has a digestive problem”

           “Chronic?”

           “Yes, everyone knows about it. It comes and goes. When it comes, he takes pills. Like during the last few days. He’s probably upset because of Peterson’s disappearance.