Onboarding

The HR lady leads a woman out of her office. The waiting room is full of recruits. HR lady’s secretary hands her a folder, and then takes a call. HR lady tells you she’ll be back and ready to start your onboarding in a few minutes. You were about to stand up and put out your hand for a handshake, but when she breezed past you, you plopped back down. Awkward. You give a little wave that indicates, “Take your time!”

Your time. Her time. Someone’s time. It must be for efficiency’s sake for the new applicants. They’ll want to know when they died, and how, and how long it’s been for the people on Earth they left behind. 

You wanted to know. When you arrived, and asked that question, the secretary told you your friend stayed at the crash site, waiting for an ambulance, using a sweater around your neck to keep your blood from pouring out of you. But even if the rest of your blood stayed in, you had lost enough to not be alive anymore. She cried, and attempted to time travel backwards, not a lot. A few minutes so she could go down Sea Street instead of Main. It wouldn’t have been that much slower. She failed at this attempt. She heard an ambulance, and wept, lamenting that going back in time wasn’t as easy as turning a few pages.

So it hadn’t been very long that you were dead when the secretary handed you an application and said, “They know when you’re lying so be honest. Or don’t. Like, I said. They know the answers already.”

There wasn’t much to know: two questions. 

How do you think you did?

Pretty shitty. Phony. Probably disappointed my mom a whole lot.



Any regrets?

All of them. I don’t know what I did right.

You returned the application. She read it and said, “You could have just wished that your friend took Sea Street instead of Main. It wouldn’t have been that much slower. It doesn’t really matter, though.”

“I feel like a fresh start would be better,” you said.

“Yeah, everybody feels that way. Again: it doesn’t really matter.”

“How is my friend now? Did the ambulance get there? Is someone taking care of her?”

“Oh, she’s a long ways away from your accident,” she said. “She’s 58, been married for 25 years, had two sons, one’s in rehab again, she manages a veterinarian’s office and she thinks about having an affair, but not with anyone in particular.” 

You stared at the reception with an open mouth, searching for a way to ask a question. The secretary saw you struggling.

“Don’t stress about the time thing. It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “She still thinks about you a lot, if that helps.”

It did. Did it?

“You’re all set here,” she said. “Nice to have met you. You can go look around.” 

“Go where?”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “And you’re gonna hear that a lot, and it’ll annoy you, but— ”

“It doesn’t really matter?”

“Aw, look who thinks they’re clever,” she said. “Everybody makes that joke. Sometimes it’s hilarious. Yours didn’t land.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” you say.

She shook her brown, funnel nose at you, and squeezed her eyes behind her square glasses. “You’ll get there.”

She placed your application on her desk. Wooden, painted orange, with many stackable, extendable parts to hold hundreds of manila folders. 

“You haven’t updated to digital yet?” you asked her. You tried to get one over on her, at least one. To spare your pride.

“That’s sweet you think you could improve our system,” she said. “I humiliated Steve Jobs when he tried that shit. You’ve got no chance.”

And then, all of the stackable, right angle ledges of her desk folded in on themselves while keeping the files secured. The desk grew smaller until it was the size of a pack of cigarettes. Then she opened the pack-cum-desk and lit a cigarette by blowing on the end. “Later.” She exhaled a puff of smoke that encompassed her. The smoke dissipated, and the secretary vanished.

You stood in the office deciding if she had been nice or not before realizing, “It doesn’t really matter.” 

It bothered you that your friend had to grieve over you, then that led you to thinking how your mom and all your family and friends grieved you, too. It had been 25 years back where time moved forward. Had they gotten over your death? That sounded impossible when you imagined your mother, and that one time you concussed yourself on the edge of a diving board at your best friend’s tenth birthday party. Before you passed out, you heard her screaming like knives were slicing open her throat, and because you were only unconscious for a few moments, barely seconds, you still heard her screams when you came to. But your experience of unconsciousness lasted for so long. You thought you’d been under for hours. 

Your mom could never get over burying you. 

You did the math, though; she would be 80. Maybe she was dead. Not fair, not knowing. Not fair, not being able to have helped plan her funeral with your big, useless brother, and your little, hippie sister. 

The waiting room was a circle with wood paneling on the walls. You knocked on one. Not paneling, actual solid wood. Fancy, you thought, as you traced a finger in a groove in the wood and walked around the office. You completed the circle, but you passed no doors. The secretary told you to go look around. Did she mean that literally? Go look around the round office, around and around, around and around on the merry-go-round? Round and round the mulberry bush? 

You recalled the origin of that nursery rhyme. It started in a women’s prison. The prisoners did their exercises around a mulberry bush. Dark. 

You mumbled the lyrics. 

Here we go round the mulberry bush

So early in the morning

This is the way we—

Hmm. 

You couldn’t remember.

This is the way we…

This is the way we…

This is...oh, what is it?

The secretary’s voice, like a blade in your ear said, “It doesn’t really matter.” 

You hear a crack like the one you heard at your friend’s pool party when your head met aluminum. But now the sound resonated from inside your skull. Cracking bones popping your eardrums, and for a moment, barely a second, the sound of your mother screaming, like knives cutting her throat.

Afterwards, blackness covered your mind. It lifted, and you could see the office, but you sensed your body was gone. You traced the groove in the circular wall again, and as you moved, the room tilted. Without a body, you could tilt with it, keeping your balance. You passed by disembodied faces. Faces sobbing, faces yelling, faces frozen, faces counting. To keep track of time? But the faces lost their place, and had to start at one again. A face nodded up and down, making a clicking sound with its tongue, like a metronome. 

Click. Clock. 

Click. Clock. Click. Tock. 

Tick. Tock. 

Tick—

Silence. A sun flare blinded your eyes. And then, and now, you sit in the same waiting room, in your body, amongst other bodies who also have to wait. It reminds you of a group interview you did for the Gap when you were in college. You think, I hope I get the job. You don’t even know what the job is. 

The HR lady comes back, and shuffles to her office. Her ankles swell despite her sensible footwear. When the door closes, the secretary from before says, “Welcome back. You can go in, ____________.” 

She says your name, but it’s inaudible, and you can’t remember it. But you thank her, and softly knock on the door before entering.

Her office is a maze of columns of manila folders that reach the ceiling. Maybe the ceiling. It is very high and you can’t see it. 

“Follow the sound of my voice,” the woman calls. She sings:

They did the mash, they did the monster mash

The monster mash, it was a graveyard smash

They did the mash, it caught on in a flash

They did the mash, they did the monster mash

You find this an odd choice, but you go in search of the voice’s body, and find it in a tiny square at the back of the room. 

“Hello, ________. Pleasure to meet you,” she says smiling, gesturing for you to sit on a pile of folders. “How are you experiencing the relationship between yourself and your current environment?”

“It’s fine,” you say.

She clicks her tongue like the nodding face. Click. Tock. She runs her hands together and you see that she has a tan line on her left wrist where a watch would go.

“No,” she says. Still a smile. “It’s confusing and disorienting, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. ‘Fine,’ as we both know, is a lie, and an insult to the work we do here.”

“I apologize,” you say. “I am confused and disoriented. A little angry.”

“Wonderful! We can begin,” she says. “And I must say, you’re lucky. Your first haunting is on Halloween!”

She claps her hands together and giggles, You’re not sure this is good news. Because first of all, “I’m a ghost?”

“You will be tonight,” she tells you. 

“Halloween? That seems like a job for someone with a lot more seniority.” What were these words coming from your mouth? Maybe circle back to the whole ghost thing?

“Common misconception,” she says. “But think about it.” 

You’re silent for a few eye blinks before you understand that she actually wants you to think about haunting humans on Halloween. Haunting. Humans. Halloween. Haunting. Humans. Halloween. Haunting. Halloween. Humans. Humans. 

Ah. 

“Humans want to be scared on Halloween,” you answer. “It’s easy to be a ghost then.”

“Excellent,” she says. “I knew from your application you’d be a quick learner.” 

You smile for the first time you’ve been here. It makes your jaw creak.

She reaches up to a precarious pile of folders, and without looking, or misplacing anything, pulls out paperwork. “This is your assignment. Go back to the waiting room, read it carefully.”

You stand. You consider asking how you’ll find your way through the maze, but she complimented you on being advanced, and you’d hate to ruin that. 

It doesn’t matter. When you turn around, there is one clear aisle from her desk to the front door. 

When you get back to the waiting room, it’s empty except for the secretary.

“How did it go?” she asks.

“Does it really matter?” You’re aren’t thinking about making a joke; just posing a question.

The secretary opens her tiny mouth and lets out a long “HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” You think this is supposed to be laughter.

“That was a good one,” she says, wiping tears from her face. 

“Where do I go from here?”

“You’ll go looking around like you did last time.” She already converted her desk into a pack of cigarettes.

“Ok,” you say. “How’s my friend? Did she ever have that affair?”

She rolls her eyes up toward her brain. “Your friend’s only eight-years-old now. You two haven’t even met.” She lights a cigarette. “Happy haunting!” Gone.

Before you go “looking around” again, you read your assignment.

Congratulations! You’re a Halloween ghost. As you may know, Halloween night is when the veil between the living and the dead becomes extremely thin. Traveling back and forth is easy, and the living love it! Tonight is sure to be lit, as the youth of your era like to say! 

Since this is your first time, we recommend going all out. Howls, screams, sobs, moving objects, throwing objects, rattling windows, blowing out candles: it’s all available to you. We encourage creativity! Now, get out there and haunt those humans!

P.S. Don’t worry about how long the shift should be. We will clock you in and out.

That’s that then. You find a groove in the wood and begin walking around. You wonder if you’ll be successful; you were never scary during life.

Before you can find more self-doubt, you hear the bones cracking in your head, your mother screaming, and everything goes black.

It stays black until you hear more screams, but these belong to children, with gasping laughter mixed in. You stand in the middle of a family’s yard. They have gone all out. Fog machine. Skeletons crawling from the ground. Bats in the trees. A zombie that pops out when the doorbell is rung. 

Two men answer the door. One is dressed like the “monster” from Scream, the other is Drew Barrymore’s character post-stabbing. You wonder if the inside of their house lives up to the outside, and suddenly you stand in their kitchen. You see the clock on the stove: 9:34. You’re jealous they have an instrument that marks the passage of time.

The front door closes and the two men join you in the kitchen. 

“Do you think any of them peed their pants?” asks a de-wigged Drew Barrymore. His actual hair has gone to the graveyard, but his bald dome attracts you, smooth and shiny. He sits down at the kitchen table while his partner pours them water. 

“I think one or two,” Scream mask monster says. “The tall kid, Captain America. He tried to act tough, but we got a few drops out of him.” They laugh, and you take this opportunity to caress Drew Barrymore’s head. He shivers audibly.

“Are you cold?” asks Scream monster. 

“No,” he says. “But I distinctly felt fingertips on my head.”

It worked. You’re a real ghost. A giggle escaped your lips.

“What was that?” Drew asks. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah,” Scream says slowly. “It’s probably the wind.” 

“The wind? Really?” Drew is indignant. “You sound like every doubter from every horror movie ever.”

Scream’s real face is bearded, round, the color of nutmeg. He bursts out laughing. “Oh, you think we have a ghost? Are you scared?”

“Don’t patronize me,” Drew scolds. “My grandmother had the vision. There were ghosts everywhere in that lady’s house.”

“Sure,” Scream says. He turns back to the counter to retrieve the water glasses, but you have moved them and yourself behind a pillar. “Where’s the water? I put it right here.”

“I don’t know, maybe it was the wind.” 

“Very funny. Where’d you put them?” 

“I’ve been sitting here the whole time.”

Scream scoffs and goes to get another couple of glasses as you slowly edge away from the pillar, back into the kitchen. Drew sees the floating cups first and screams. 

“How are you doing this?” he yells.

“Doing—” Now his partner clocks me. “How are you doing this?”

“I’m not doing anything!” Drew yells. “Grab the salt and get upstairs.”

At this point, you’re fully laughing as you follow them to their bedroom. You enter to see Drew sprinkling salt around the bed. They hide under the covers in their costumes. You approach the bed, deepening your laugh for effect and then— 

You just stop.

“Oh, man,” you say out loud. 

Their fear turns to puzzlement. “Did you just hear, ‘Oh, man?’” Scream asks.

“Yeah,” Drew whispers. “I think the salt protection worked. He can’t get to us if we stay in the bed.”

“How sad,” Scream says. “Stuck in bed. Whatever shall we do?”

They begin to embrace, and you take that as your cue to leave. You’re bummed, but the HR lady was right. This is lit. 

You descend the stairs, wondering who you’ll scare next, but then there’s the bone-cracking sound, again, your mother’s screams again, blackness again.

You awake in an office chair in front of the HR lady’s desk. The room has been emptied out. No stacks  of folders. Gray walls. A concrete floor. A window that lets no light in. A deep, echoing click of a grandfather clock.

“No more maze?” I ask.

The HR lady doesn’t smile anymore, and you see her cavernous frown lines surrounding her mouth. “We only do that for Halloween. Here’s your next assignment. Go to the waiting room, read it carefully. Goodbye.”

She has the same type of folding desk as the secretary, but this one folds her body into it along with forms and papers. You stand there for a few ticks of the clock, and open your assignment as you walk to the door that leads to the waiting room. 

You will return to the home of the couple you haunted on Halloween. Five of their years have passed. The gentlemen you referred to as “Scream” will no longer be there. He experienced a seizure when he was alone in the house, cut his head on the edge of their kitchen counter, and bled to death. This occurred six months ago in Drew’s time.

Your assignment for the foreseeable future is to haunt the partner who remains. 

We encourage creativity.

You open the door to the waiting room. The secretary’s at her desk. “You’re as pale as a ghost,” she says.

“Is that supposed to be funny?” 

“No,” she says. “This is the stuff that really does matter.”

There’s pressure in your throat. You expect tears, but—

“Ghosts can’t cry,” she whispers. “No looking around this time. Walk through that door.”

And like that, a door appears on the wall across from her desk. You walk through and find Drew pouring himself a glass of water. Sunlight reflects on his head. You move to him, and stroke his bald crown. He chokes on his water for a moment, and then he cries. He cries and cries, until his sobs sound like your mother’s screams, knives cutting at her throat.