Clock Me In, Clock Me Out

Trent hadn’t slept in thirty-two hours. His fingers trembled over the keyboard, not from the triple espresso he'd pounded at 2:41 a.m., but from the mortal terror of missing the deadline for the ThistleCraft Rebranding Campaign—a PowerPoint deck, of all things. The kind of job that could get you fired for a bad kerning decision. The kind of job that made you want to marry a toaster.

Across the office, the motion-sensor lights flickered back on as Trent waved his hand in front of them like a drowning man begging a helicopter to notice. It was 5:58 a.m. Outside, New York’s financial district wore its dawn like a threat.

He took a breath. Slide 47. "Emotive Impact Mapping." He typed the words, stared at them, deleted them, and then retyped them in Comic Sans out of spite. Left it there for exactly four seconds before self-disgust set in.

In the quiet, he could hear something—a light hissing. Then a whimper. Then a voice.

“You're going to miss it, Trent.”

He froze. Slowly looked over his shoulder.

Nothing. The desk lamp still buzzed like an old wasp. The ficus was still dead in the corner, having committed photosynthetic suicide sometime in March. And his screensaver now glitched to display stock photos of golden retrievers licking oranges.

But that voice. Male. Smooth. Smarmy. Familiar.

He shook his head. “I’m hallucinating. Normal.”

And got back to work.

By 8:05 a.m., people started filing in. You could hear the caffeine kicking in through passive-aggressive throat-clearing and the squeak of ergonomic chairs failing their one true purpose.

Ellen from HR walked by and paused at his cubicle. “Did you sleep here again?”

“Nope,” Trent said, blinking furiously. “I just really enjoy looking like a Victorian orphan.”

She smiled like someone trying not to get blood on their new shoes. “Well, you do you.”

Behind her, the intern—what was her name? Brittani-with-an-I—tripped over a phone charger and made a sound like a duck being tackled. Trent didn't move. His eyes were glassy. His jaw twitched.

A new voice, softer than before, whispered directly into his ear:

“What if you just deleted the deck? All of it. Gone. One click. And you’d be free.”

He jerked back from his monitor so fast he nearly headbutted the hanging corkboard.

No one else reacted.

“You heard that, right?” he said to Brittani, who was now picking up a vape pen like it was the Holy Grail.

“Hear what?”

He was alone again.

The hallucinations didn’t stop.

By lunchtime—an hour Trent experienced only via the slow collapse of his stomach lining—he had heard at least three distinct voices. One of them was British and insisted on calling him “old chum.” Another demanded he create a pie chart titled “The Cost of My Sanity (Q2 Projections).”

He obeyed, just to shut it up.

It actually looked... good. He applied a radial gradient. The screaming in his skull softened to polite applause.

For the first time, he smiled.

At 2:13 p.m., Trent received an Outlook notification:

“Hey Trent—just a friendly reminder that we’ve moved the meeting up to 5:00 p.m. instead of 6:00. Looking forward to your presentation! —Barry.”

He clicked on the notification. Double-checked the sender.

Then typed "I hope you get mauled by a stampede of sentient Roombas" into the reply box. Then deleted it. Then retyped it. Then deleted it again, screaming internally.

The voices returned.

“Oh, you're fucked now,” the smooth one said.

Another chimed in: “Just crash the company servers. Power outage. Act of God. You get a delay and a restraining order.”

“I don’t need a restraining order,” Trent muttered.

“Not yet,” said the voice.

By 3:30 p.m., Trent was openly arguing with the ghost of Steve Jobs. Not the real Steve Jobs. Just a floating head in turtleneck and jeans that had appeared over his dual monitors to say:

“Simplicity is genius. Delete all the bullet points.”

“But it’s a stakeholder deck!”

“Delete the bullets, Trent. Embrace chaos.”

He did it. The slide now read:

“Why ThistleCraft?”

Because we are not legally allowed to say "gluten-free heroin."

He stared at it for a long moment. Nodded.

Yes. This was the truth. No more lies. No more Helvetica.

The British voice cheered.

It was now 4:01 p.m.

He had 59 minutes left. And the office smelled like cold pad thai, deodorant failure, and existential rot.

The voices were quiet. Which made it worse. They were plotting.

Trent stared at the screen. He was on the last slide.

“Closing Thoughts.”

He typed:

“Thank you for your time. If you liked this presentation, you can Venmo me $3. If you hated it, well, that’s between you and your god.”

He clicked Save.

Sweat soaked his back. His gums itched. He couldn’t feel his feet.

Barry messaged: “Excited for your closer! See you in 50.”

He replied: “You will never know peace.”

Then deleted that. Then typed: “Sounds good!”

He stood in the elevator, clutching a USB like it contained the antidote to a global plague. The walls seemed too close. The lights too bright. He could feel every hair in his nostrils screaming.

The voice returned—soft, cruel, intimate.

“You know they’re going to hate it, right?”

He pressed his forehead against the steel. “I know.”

“And then they’ll fire you.”

“Probably.”

“You should fake a seizure.”

“That’s a felony.”

“So is emotional honesty in a corporate setting.”

He stepped off the elevator.

Conference Room 7B was aggressively neutral: brushed aluminum legs, water pitcher sweating on a tray like it knew something. A framed photo of a man fly-fishing with a quote beneath it:

“Success is 10% inspiration, 90% pretending you know what the hell you’re doing.”

Barry had printed it himself.

The stakeholders were already there. Barry. Mallory. Guy-from-Media-who’s-always-angry. Two clients with matching blazers and resting disappointment faces. They all turned in unison when Trent entered, as if summoned by scent.

“Trent,” Barry said, too loudly. “There he is! The man of the hour!”

Trent smiled the way people do before vomiting in public.

The laptop connected. Projector hummed.

“Let’s keep it tight today,” Mallory said. “Got a hard out at 5:30. Drinks with investors.”

Trent nodded. “Of course. I’ll be... surgical.”

That was a lie. He hadn’t practiced once. He didn’t even remember what slide 12 was. Possibly the one with the rat in a business suit. Possibly not.

The deck opened. Full screen.

Slide 1:

“THISTLECRAFT: Not Technically a Cult”

Barry froze mid-sip.

“What’s that tagline?” asked Mallory, blinking.

“It’s... aspirational,” Trent replied. “You’ll see.”

He clicked.

Slide 2: A pie chart labeled “Consumer Pain Points” with categories like:

“Price”

“Brand Trust”

“Fear of Dying Alone in a Branded Hoodie”

He clicked again. Fast.

Slide 3:

“Our Brand Pillars”

Sustainability

Innovation

Clean fonts

The void where God used to live

Client A coughed. Client B frowned with her whole torso.

Barry leaned forward. “Hey Trent... buddy... you okay?”

Trent didn’t respond. Because Slide 4 was live.

And Slide 4 said:

"Our Logo Redesign: Now 37% Less Penis-Like"

Underneath, a side-by-side of the old logo and a banana.

Someone stifled a gasp. Or a sneeze. Or their soul escaping.

It should’ve ended there. But it didn’t. Because Trent, in a moment of either bravery or total neural collapse, kept going.

Slide 5:

A bar graph titled “Trust Metrics” featuring two bars:

Us

A Used Band-Aid

“We’re the blue one,” he clarified helpfully.

There was silence. A long one. The kind that breeds lawsuits.

Then Mallory said, very calmly: “Trent, may I speak with you in the hallway for just a sec?”

“No,” he said. “You may not.”

“I haven’t slept in two days,” Trent said suddenly, like a kid confessing to breaking the lamp. “I started hearing voices around slide thirty-six. One of them was British. One was Steve Jobs. None of them helped.”

He turned to Client A. “Did you know your company name sounds like an herbal laxative? I didn’t. Until hour twenty-nine.”

Client B whispered something into her phone. Possibly a prayer.

Trent advanced to the next slide.

Slide 6:

An animation of a PowerPoint man walking into a fire labeled “Q4.”

Barry stood up. “Okay, I think we’ve seen—”

Slide 7 auto-played with audio: the faint echo of a goat screaming, synced to a GIF of Barry blinking.

Trent laughed. It was... unclean.

At exactly 5:12 p.m., the building’s fire alarm went off.

Sirens screamed. Lights flashed. And amid the chaos, Barry—red-faced and mumbling about “brand jeopardy”—knocked over the water pitcher and yelled “Evacuate!” with the desperation of a man watching his career immolate in real time.

As people surged toward the door, Trent stood at the head of the table, holding the clicker like a relic.

Mallory was last to leave. She paused by him.

“You’ll be hearing from legal,” she said.

He nodded. “Tell them Slide 8 was gonna be about hope.”

They evacuated into the street. Horns blared. Somewhere, a man was playing a saxophone terribly. Someone else was eating a taco with intent.

Trent stood alone under the overhang. The deck was still up there, looping on the screen to no audience. He could feel the glow of it behind his eyes.

Ellen from HR appeared beside him.

“That was... something.”

“I blacked out after Slide 4,” Trent admitted. “Did I show the pie chart with the screaming mouths?”

“Unfortunately.”

They stood in silence. A pigeon waddled near them, judged them, moved on.

His phone buzzed. Unknown number.

He answered out of sheer masochism.

“Mr. Becker?” a voice said. “This is Ava Wrenn. Creative Director at Severance Agency.”

Trent blinked. “...Hi?”

“I was in the room. Back row. We were consulting on ThistleCraft’s rebrand, off-books.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” she said. “It was unhinged. Apocalyptic. Bizarre. And…”

Pause.

“…kind of brilliant.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

“We’re looking for someone with gall. Recklessness. Vision that borders on litigation. Would you like to interview?”

He stared across the street, where Barry was dry-heaving into a trash can.

Then smiled.

Trent didn’t return to the office the next day.

Instead, he slept for fourteen hours. Ate three bananas. Cried during a dog food commercial. Then shaved, packed, and boarded a train to Chicago.

The Severance Agency office had a live crow in the lobby and an intern named Possum.

Trent fit right in.

He never saw Barry again. But he did mail him a single printed slide from the original deck.

It read:

“Chaos is the only honest brand.”

Barry did not reply.