Corporate Wellness Retreats

“We’re doing yoga!” Derrick said.

Julis tried to keep his hands from shaking with rage. He knew that yoga was not code for anything, it was just yoga. What set him off was the idea of sitting in the same location as Derrick for longer than an hour, of watching his body move, twisting into impossible shapes and having to hear his voice over and over again. Julis had spent his teenage years fantasizing about Derrick’s body. Proximity, however, had caused this to wear off quickly.

Lacy sat down next to him. She was late to the morning meeting, Derrick didn't notice. 

“What’s today?” she whispered in his ear. 

“Yoga.” he replied, Julis didn’t take his eyes off of Derrick as he spoke. 

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Lacy said a little too loudly. 

After years of botched plastic surgery, Derrick had lost the ability to turn his neck. So when he turned to find the source of the profanity, he had to turn his entire body, shuffling his feet to meet Lacy and Julis’s gaze. His face was stuck permanently in a smooth, wrinkle-free smile. His skin was stretched across his face like pie crust. 

“Which one of you said that?” Derrick pointed a finger at both of them. His skin was wrinkled and leathery on his hands, showing his actual age. 

“Me.” Julis said. 

“Well please refrain from saying anything else. I have so few rules here. You’re all so lucky to get to come to this island and I ask for one thing.” His voice rose an octave above where he’d started on one thing. 

Julis was not afraid of Derrick. Julis was afraid of the men that stood over Julis. Each of them were, what he could only assume, two college linebackers glued together. Each man stood a foot or so above him, with dark sunglasses and earpieces. If not for them, Derrick would have never gotten them to do yoga, or swim in the lake with piranhas or managed to take their passports. 

That last part had prevented a lot of violence against Derrick. 

Julis didn’t reply. He narrowed his eyes at the man standing in front of him. He was in a white linen tunic with white pants. Despite being a blonde haired white man, he dressed like an Indian prince and always had a sash of some kind across his chest. He had no shoes on, he never had shoes on. Julis wanted to take his boot and smash the guy’s toes into the sand. 

“Anyways. Before I was so rudely interrupted. I was saying that we’re going to do yoga today.” 

Derrick clapped his hands and an attendant with a cart full of yoga mats walked out. She struggling to get the wheels across the sand. They waited a painful amount of time for the mats to make it the 40 feet to where they were seated on the beach. 

The group got up to retrieve a mat. Lacy handed one to Julis. “How long until this turns into a weird sex thing.” 

“I’m sure it’ll get there.” He said, “some work retreat, huh?” 

“Honestly, I’ve had worse.” She placed her mat on the ground and brushed off the sand, “So long as they don’t take my PTO for the extra days, I’m prepared to endure. Really beats being on the sales floor.”  

“Well it’s not like your boss can approve the PTO request. Or HR for that matter.” Julis said, making Lacy crack up. 

“You know how the Mayor of DC is in line for president if there’s a really bad tragedy? Are we HR now?” Julis was laughing now too. 

“In that case I’m denying your time off request.” Julis said, wheezing from the absurdity.  

“Julis if I hear ONE MORE PEEP.” Julis shuddered to think what Derrick might have in store for him. He shut his mouth and tried to copy the yoga poses. 

Neither Julis nor Lacy wanted to go on the mandatory worker’s retreat to the CEO’s friend’s private island. They’d tried everything to get out of it. Faced with the threat of unemployment though, they chose to go on the wellness retreat. Julis was even excited to learn it was led by Derrick Stynger, the lead singer of The Tonnes, he’d been really into rock music from the 70’s when he was a kid so this was a bright spot on an otherwise god-awful ordeal.

When they first got to the island Julis really liked Derrick, he was charming and sweet, even showed them his vintage guitar collection. For all intents and purposes, the first three days had been a pretty relaxing and fun wellness retreat. 

On the fourth day, Derrick killed the CEO. After that, the retreat stopped being fun and relaxing. When he killed the five person HR team and the sales VP, Julis let go of the notion that he’d make it off the island alive. 

“Remember, Business to Business sales can be a relaxing environment.” Derrick said as he went into downward dog. How he did that without use of his neck, Julis did not care to find out. 

After yoga, Paul caught up with them on the way to breakfast. He smiled at Lacy and his eyes lingered on her longer than they did on Julis. “I feel like I’m really learning how to relax in the face of adversity.” 

“Do you think it makes you a more effective sales agent?” Lacy asked laughing. They all shared a dark sense of humor– watching your coworkers die will do that to a person.

“I’m not ready to commit to Being Better until tomorrow when we do the Big Swim.” 

 Lacy and Paul had been sharing a cabin since HR had drowned, so they’d started talking in their own inside jokes. Julis felt a little left out, though he had to admit that they had much larger problems. He decided to table this for another day, maybe one where they could laugh about this around a water cooler.

Julis had noticed that no one seemed to be saying what everyone was thinking. They had to kill Derrick. If they were going to get home in one piece, they needed to be able to use their phones and passports. In order to get those, they had to kill Derrick. 

“Big Swim tomorrow, brother.” Keith from Accounting said to the three of them. He slapped Paul on the shoulder and walked into the breakfast room. 

The island would be a tropical paradise under any other circumstances. It had white sand beaches with palm trees and crystal clear water. The buildings where they had their meals and slept were basically mansions, brutalist style with huge windows overlooking the sea. Each meal had a designated room and a designated cook. There were worse places to be hunted for sport.

Based on the hikes they’d been on, Julis figured the island was maybe four miles long and circular with a lake in the center. From the last time he’d had access to his phone, he knew it was somewhere off the coast of Cuba. 

At breakfast, Derrick announced the name of the person who would be next to die and how. They would be swimming with the piranhas in the lake. Not a great way to go, but it seemed like the man was not super creative. He'd piranha-ed the HR department too.

“Julis.” Derrick finished his sentence.

“FUCK.” Julis said out loud.

They were going to kill him. Him! Sure he wasn’t the best employee, he showed up late and hung-over, he never made quota, he really hated working, but it still seemed a little disproportionate to kill him over it. 

He was beginning to understand why companies employed HR teams. 

He didn’t sleep that night. He didn’t sleep most nights on the island but especially when he knew he was going to die the next day. 

It was the kind of thing that caused one to reevaluate things. He promised that if he got his phone back, if he made it back to Florida, he’d call Mohamoud and apologize for cheating. He’d visit his mother. He’d never be selfish again. 

At the river, Julis watched as fish jumped out of the water. They had to be adding extra into it, this was an unnaturally large number of piranhas per square-inch of river. He wasn’t so observant when it was the HR team in the water, he figured at least one of them could make it back to shore. But as he looked over the pier, he wasn't so sure anything could make it out.

He watched as Derrick threw a chicken carcass into the river. Julis couldn’t remember if there was even a chicken farm on the island or if this guy was importing dead chickens. But he was taken out of that train of thought because the fish started to rip the flesh from the skeleton. Their razor-sharp teeth piercing straight through the bone. 

“Not too keen on dying this way.” he said to Lacy. She gave him a helpless look. 

Julis guessed that the solidarity they’d developed, being the only people left on the island of a washed-up-rockstar-turned-murderer wasn’t enough to save him from the same fate as the HR department. 

Derrick would row a little boat to the middle of the river and one of the burly enforcers would lift the person and throw them into the water. Julis watched as the skin on Derrick’s neck turned white from the strain of rowing a boat with approximately 500 pounds of people on it, only 190 belonging to Julis. 

“Anything you want to say to the group?” Derrick offered, more so that he could rest than so that Julis could get a last word in. 

“Guys?” Julis tried, “Is no one going to stop him? You’re going to let the 31st best sales agent die at the hands of a crazy person?” 

No one said anything. 

“Crazy person is a little harsh, don't you think?” asked Derrick. 

“Oh just get it over with.” 

Derrick took them to the middle of the Lake. Sweat glistened on his brow, Julis was enthralled to find out that his skin was still capable of sweat. 

“God commanded it.” He answered the question that Julis had been too stunned to ask. “I must make sacrifices to The Almighty.” 

“Hey man. You could always just kill goats like normal people.” 

“Not enough. It has to be flesh.” He was fixated on a point just above the treeline. Like God was talking directly to him. 

“Correct me if I’m wrong but goats have flesh, no?” Julis was stalling for his life. 

“Do it now.” Derrick said to the Enforcer. No more arguing, no more fighting. He was going to die. He hadn't even vested his retirement account. 

“Wait! Stop!” Julis braced to fight for his life, he wasn’t smart or talented or strong but he was determined and he was going to survive this. 

The Enforcer approached Derrick. He picked up the short skinny man and threw him into the river. The double cross was so shocking to both Julis and Derrick that no one made a move. 

Derrick didn’t even fight. 

“I don’t feel right about what we were doing here.” The Enforcer said.

Julis didn’t have any words to give him. He was blind from the shock and just now processing how close he’d come. 

“Can you row?” The Enforcer asked. He was cradling his shoulder. 

“Yeah.” 

When they got back to the shore, the gathered crowd cheered. They were ready to let him kill me Julis thought, and now they’re cheering for me?

But as they got off the boat and onto the pier, the crowd ignored him. They gathered around the Enforcer. Hector was his name. 

Lacy gave him a hug. “I’m glad you made it back.” 

Incredulously, Julis shouted into her ear “YOU WERE GOING TO LET THEM KILL ME.” He pulled out of the embrace and said, “fuck you. Everyone was talking in code and I figured all of you were going to sacrifice me.” 

“Well, we weren’t not going to sacrifice you, like if it came to that, maybe. We did make the determination that the sales team could do without the 31st best sales associate–there’s 33 of us like are you asleep on the job? This product basically sells itself? But! The real reason was that you were starting to get on his nerves, asking so many questions. Staring at his neck, so we knew it was gonna be you in the boat, I just had to get you in trouble one more time to force his hand.” 

“You were going to let a homicidal maniac kill me to meet next year's KPI’s?” 

“Well, he didn’t kill you. You’re welcome.”