Entrance Exam

‘This isn’t what I signed up for.’

I’d noticed it a while back, when the high-rise buildings with impeccably clean, darkly tinted windows and revolving doors spilling men in suits and women in heels and blouses were replaced by sprawling, country houses with kids roaming the streets on bikes, their feet bare and faces getting painted in flaky-red skin by the sun. It had started as an inkling –a gnawing unease in my gut as I watched the world fly by from outside my window, but had said nothing. Until I saw the ocean. On a hot day, it was a bright, vivid blue, with golden sands and families bumper-to-bumper with umbrellas and beach towels propped up against coolers filled with sandwiches. But today, it was dark and menacing, with tall waves crashing against the sandy bank beside a massive jetty where several large boats were docked.

I wasn’t supposed to be by the sea. I was supposed to be in an exam, words spilling onto the page in a messy but decipherable hand, my heart thumping loud enough to alert the other contestants of my anxiety. I’d been picked up –like I was supposed to –at the designated zone by a man in a suit wearing dark shades that obscured his eyes and a curly stubble sprouting on his chin.

‘Cora?’ He had asked, glancing at a folded up piece of paper he had in his hand. Deep gouges in his face had been carved through years of smiling, yet somehow his iron-set jaw and low-pulled eyebrows made me doubt its actuality.

‘Yep, that’s me,’ I’d said, somewhat too eagerly, displaying my excitement and nervousness flamboyantly within the first few seconds of meeting him.

The man had nodded, and gestured for me to hop into his van. It was an inky black with dark, tinted windows and a seatbelt that was slightly too high, jutting into the skin on my neck.

I didn’t know where he was taking me. That should have been my first red flag. The email informing me I’d qualified for the exam to the Nexora Group –a well respected and highly selective technology development company –had only told me where I’d be picked up, what to wear and the time to be there. I’d been told to wear utility clothes –something that had movement and could protect me from ‘the elements’. Surprising, but I arrived anyway, wearing cargo pants, a lightweight t-shirt and a heavily pocketed but thin cardigan.

‘Yes, it is. You said you’re Cora, didn’t you?’ The man, my driver, hissed as he pulled the van into a carpark by the beachside. I’d assumed he was just a driver –a low-level worker for the Nexora Group, or maybe he was the invigilator. But he was starting to look more and more like a stranger.

‘Yeah.’

‘Then this is exactly what you signed up for. Come on; we don’t have a lot of time.’

The man slid out of the driver’s seat and wrenched open my side, shoving something small and hard into my hand as I jumped out.

‘It’s a radio. Anything goes wrong, press the button on the side. I’ll get you out. But don’t press it unless it’s an absolute emergency, okay?’ He showed me a small, red button on the side of a black radio. ‘You don’t get a second shot at this. This is your only chance to get across.’

I nodded, wide-eyed. We had parked in the parking lot beside the beach, near the dock. Maybe it was a practical assessment, I reasoned. Maybe they were testing my skills.

‘Okay. Let’s go. You’re going to hop inside the box in the back. It’s going to be a little bit bumpy but you should be fine. Just wait it out. You’ll get picked up on the other side.’ The man walked to the back of the truck, where he unloaded a large wooden crate on a trolley, with the word ‘fragile’ painted in large, red letters.

‘No, wait, I think there’s been a mistake,’ I began to back away as the man opened the crate. There were two smaller crates inside, stacked on top of each other, one labelled ‘food’ and one labelled ‘water’. I felt my heart drumming against my chest. ‘I’m not getting in that. I’m sorry. This isn’t right.’

‘No, there hasn’t been a mistake. I told you. This is your one chance. Get in.’ The man seemed agitated. His mouth was a thin line drawn over his teeth, his brow tightly knitted together above his sunglasses.

‘No, stop. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be doing an entrance exam for the Nexora Group. There’s been a mix up.’ I heard myself speaking faster. The man was behind me now, shepherding me into the crate, like a zookeeper marshalling a scared tiger.

‘No, there hasn’t. Like I said, this is your one chance. Get inside, or I’ll drive you back to where you came from.’ His voice was tight, tense like an overfilled balloon teetering near a sharp knife.

I hesitated. The man waited expectantly, his foot tapping on the floor in impatience.

My chest was tight. My weight swayed between feet, nudged by the gentle breeze. Was this still part of the test?

The unease heightened as I knelt down and crawled into the crate, the rough concrete chiselling gashes into my hands and knees.

The man nodded tightly. ‘Good choice,’ he said, closing the door. And then everything went dark.

The crate rattled as the man wheeled it away. My stomach was churning –a brewing potion of unease and dread, threatening to overflow. Fragments of light seeped through the cracks in the crate, where I could see the man approaching someone else –another man, dressed in high-vis vest and dark overalls, who nodded, saying something I couldn’t hear. I was passed over to him –I noticed as the crate jolted around more, the wheeling less mindful.

My driver walked away.

For the first time, the gnawing dread in my stomach twisted into something more powerful. Fear. Deep, guttural panic that gripped my chest so tightly the air in my lungs seemed to vanish. My palms were clammy, beads of perspiration clinging to my forehead. I still had the radio in my hand. I could have called for help, to be extracted out of the crate, to return and try and search for the exam I was missing. But there was something else –the sureness of the man, maybe. His resoluteness. His assurance. Whatever was happening, pressing the radio would end it all.

My crate got loaded into a larger container, packed against other crates of varying sizes. The last sliver of light vanished. The air inside the container felt stale and my crate felt like it was holding more weight than it could withstand, as if I was buried alive.

The container shifted and swayed, my crate sliding around inside, though with minimal moving space. The crates were packed like sardines inside the container.

My breath filled the small space with a stifling humidity. My neck ached from being strained at an angle inside the crate.

I heard a low, throaty groan from somewhere deep beneath me. A horn. A gentle force pressing me against the back of the crate that subsided quickly. I was moving.

I felt like a caged animal, being shipped for people’s amusement, my mind passing my dread under a microscope and amplifying it into panic. My breaths were uneven and shallow, thought ricocheting off every corner of my mind. Why had I willingly crawled into the crate? Where was I going?

I explored the tiny crate to pass the time. Two smaller boxes, stacked beside me. The first one was filled with bottled water –enough to last several weeks without rationing, which only intensified my alarm. The second one was lined with cans of beans and vegetables with packaged long shelf-life items sitting on top. I felt my head throbbing. I wanted out. There was no determiner of how long I’d be in the crate except for the food and water which indicated it could be longer than a week. My mind instantly jumped to all the possibilities –where would I go to the bathroom? What if water got in my crate? Would I drown?

The radio was in my hand, but something, be it an intangible force, a driving yearning like magnetism that kept my thumb from pressing hard enough to activate the button. To initiate my release. The battle inside my mind. Comfort and unease. Safety and the plunge into the unknown, like dipping into ice-cold water. My nervous system was working overtime. A journey I was taking, inside my head and inside this crate. Pins and needles of apprehension prodding my gut, constrained within my wooden prison, my muscles jittery yet flaccid, as if drained of energy, powered by adrenaline. There were packets of food beside me but I couldn’t eat. My stomach was a tense, confined jail, locked to the external world.

I closed my eyes, forcing down the bobbing lump that was forming in my throat. No, there had been a mix-up. I wasn’t supposed to be here. Why did I crawl into the crate, when I could have chosen not to? All of this for a stupid job exam. I should have known I was never good enough to get in. I was someone’s plaything, a puppet being shipped in a tiny crate.

A silent tear slid down my cheek.

I awoke inside the crate again. I hadn’t realised I’d fallen asleep, but waking up eliminated the possibility of it all being a nightmare.

A horn was blaring. I could hear water, lapping against somewhere far below me. The whistling of the wind. Suddenly I yearned for the fresh air. The lump formed in my throat again, and my eyes welled up.

The inky blackness was suffocating.

Suddenly, crates around me shifted. A sharp, scraping sound as they were pulled away and loaded onto a rolling trolley. My head was groggy. My mouth was full of viscous saliva and my armpits were drenched in sweat. How long had it been? I didn’t know.

Suddenly, my container opened. A sharp burst of light flooded my vision and I squinted at the figure who was looming over me.

‘You did it. Good job, Cora. You can hop out now.’ The words were encouraging but meaningless to my fatigued mind. What had I done? And where was I now?

As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw my driver, standing beside a woman with vividly red lipstick and dark hair swept back into a neat ponytail. Her eyes were sparkling beneath the moonlight.

‘Well done, Cora! Come outside. Stretch your legs. I’m sure it’s much nicer than inside that crate.’ The woman said.

I staggered out of the metal container where other crates were stacked beside mine. ‘What’s happening? Where am I?’ I felt myself sway on the concrete.

The woman smile broadly. ‘You, Cora, are exactly where you started. Recognise this dock? You were here twelve hours ago.’

I shot a sidelong glance at the beach next to the dock, where the sky had darkened, speckled with twinkling stars. A fire had been lit on the sand, and a group of people were sharing drinks beside it.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. My words seemed to meld together as if my time in the crate had washed my mind clean of communication skills.

‘You passed, is what’s happening. Congratulations in being accepted into the Nexora Group. It’s really an impressive feat. Of course, you need to accept the position. But we can discuss the details when we get back to the building.’

‘What?’ I asked sharply. ‘No, I didn’t do the exam. That’s not right.’

The woman smiled politely, as if understanding my confusion. ‘This was the exam, Cora. Nowhere did anyone say it was a written exam.’

‘I don’t understand. The exam was to sit in a crate for twelve hours?’

‘Not quite,’ the woman said. ‘You see, the Nexora Group doesn’t just manufacture state-of-the-art tech. We use it to assist the FBI on high-profile operations to catch the city’s most notorious criminals. But we couldn’t go around advertising this, for obvious reasons. And why our standard for new employees is so high. Our entrance exam isn’t an actual exam. Instead, we get our carefully selected applicants –like yourself –to get loaded onto a cargo ship without really knowing what’s going on. The ship never actually left the dock, you were here the whole time. Those who didn’t call for help passed, and are offered a position in the company.’

I realised the radio was still in my hand. I could have called for help. I had held onto it the entire time, seeking comfort in the one thing I’d brought in from the outside world. Its smooth design beneath my thumbs. ‘What about the ones who didn’t pass?’ I asked. ‘The ones who called for help?’

The woman nodded. ‘We help them, of course. We take them out and pretend it was all a big mix-up. No harm is done to anyone, except for a bit of confusion.’

‘So, that’s it then? I just get thrown in a crate to get the job?’

‘Well, yes, but we take much care in the safety of our employees. I understand you have a degree in electrical engineering, correct?’ I nodded, and the woman continued. ‘Yes. We’d be offering a generous salary if you would travel with a select group of experts in different fields and use your expertise to help the public. You’d never really be in danger –but might be in tight situations, like you were in the crate. We needed to know if you’d be up for it.’

I scoffed. A euphoric relief washed over me. I felt my shoulders sag but my face brighten at my prospective future. ‘I’m in,’ I said. ‘Sorry. I’d like to accept the job. When would I start?’

The woman laughed. ‘Come, let’s go back to the office. We can discuss all the formalities on the way. But tell me –was that the best or worst entrance exam you’ve ever done?’