Special

Toronto has a population of 2.93 million people, and not a single one of them was making a sound. There were no horns honking or people shouting or sirens blaring out through the crowded streets. Not even the sound of footsteps on the sidewalks broke through the wall of silence that had descended.

Marcus took note immediately and looked up from his phone at the throng of people surrounding him at the crosswalk. No voices. Nothing at all but eyes. Pair after pair of them was on Marcus. A man, tall and flabby in his business suit, had his cell phone pressed to his ear, clearly in the middle of a call that had gone totally dead on either side. That man was looking at him too. A woman pushing a large, complicated looking stroller with two babies in the seats was staring too, as were her children. On the other end of the crosswalk, Marcus saw another dense cluster of strangers staring at him. They weren’t doing so aggressively, he noticed, or with some kind of inexplicable awe. It was impassive, totally neutral, but the moment the light at the crosswalk changed to the little walking man, Marcus broke into a brisk jog to the other side, where the crowd parted to let him through.

Still they were staring, even as he hustled up the stairs to his place of work; a huge glass tower holding his companies office. The moment he walked through those doors he felt a tightness in his chest loosen. He breathed in the smell of the old, ragged carpets and of new coffee stains coming in from the security office with a renewed appreciation. The silence had followed him inside, and he knew that the second he looked at the reception desk and saw the workers there looking at him. He froze in step, discomforting giving way to fear, as he ran, sprinting now, to the elevator at the end of that awful empty hallway. He was the only one going up it. That was not normal, he knew this, and when it dinged open at his floor, he found himself hesitating to get off.

It was silent up here too.

Eventually, he stepped out and the doors slid closed behind him. He walked forward, crouched down low and ready with his lunch bag held by the middle of the strap like a ridiculous morning star. When he rounded the corner into the bullpen, he saw them. All of his coworkers and their eyes.

Eyes, eyes, eyes. All of them pointed in his direction. Marcus felt something more than tightness in his chest now. His brain felt like it was shorting out, sparking as it failed to process the information it was being presented with, or the lack thereof for that matter. Marcus straightened himself to a stand and replace his lunch bags strap over his shoulder. He had made his decision; if anyone tried something on him, he’d whip the shit out to them. He said this out loud, his voice a hoarse shout as he walked to his cubicle, the familiar faces of his coworkers backing out of his path but never taking their eyes off of him.

He sat down and logged in, his lunch bag place between his feet. He opened Excel and went into yesterdays spread before a new sound that wasn’t his keyboard clacking got his attention. It was the sound of something groaning under pressure, something like wood. He turned to it and saw Betsy Smith, the oldest person working for the company, leaning over the cubicle wall from her own, the bottom half of her face concealed behind it and her eyes wide in her craggy old head. Marcus jumped at the sight, placing a hand over his chest before another creak came in. Roland White was doing the same thing as Betsy, as was Millie Townley. He was surrounded on every wall of the cubicle, so when he turned to the opening, he intended to go. His boss was standing in the way, flanked by two people that Marcus was too scared to recognize. There was a mass of humanity outside of his cubicle and inside those of Betsy, Roland, and Millie. Everywhere around him was at least three sets of eyes.

Fear had melted away into anger, and when no one moved when he shouted at them, or reacted when he swore at them, that anger melted even quicker into indignant rage. On his feet, Marcus shot his open palms into the chest of his manager and shoved him to the ground. His head bounced when it landed, a crack audible in spite of the thin carpet over the concrete floor. Marcus was staring now as his boss went limp and blood began to pool out of he back of his skull. No one stopped him as he grabbed his things and hurried out. Back down the elevator, back out of the lobby, and right into the mob of people outside. He couldn’t count them all even if he tried, even if he wasn’t running scared, but the number of people was easily in the high hundreds, and all of them were staring at him as he hurried back to his dingy little apartment across from his work place. He did not leave for the rest of the day.

When his alarm rang the next morning, Marcus woke up to a world full of noise. When he looked outside, people were shouting and cars were honking in the traffic. No one was staring at him. When he went into work that day, people greeted him with the usual friendliness, and Betsy Smith gave him a hug that she was always inclined to give. He didn’t bring up yesterday, if it even was yesterday, and became comfortable with his self-explanation that it was just a dream when two new people came up the elevator and around the corner.

It was the police. They arrested Marcus for the death of his boss.