Any other skilled man would’ve elected to get it over with quickly.
Yet another two foot high stack of documents landed on the crook of her desk. The insufferably tight cubicle was stuffy enough with what few office embellishments Sherri could afford. Wistfully, she stared into the emptiness between her and the makeshift wall. It was as if her entire world revolved around a six-by-six cubicle, and she longed for indefinite release.
Then again, ‘release’ had a number of interpretations. The rim of the disposable cup had touched her plump lips for the 26th time. Only a couple minutes afterward did she start to fidget. Once she had vetted the nth document, she swiveled about, rose from her seat, and strode away with the grace of a fashion model in business attire. She slipped into the ladies room.
Confusion and vexation flared within her eyes. First, it was a pen. Two months after that, the papers rack had moved. One time the computer had ‘shutdown’ on its own in the middle of vetting. This time, the laser-engraved bear holding a heart within a rectangular crystal had vanished.
She huffed, smoothed her skirt, went back to work.
Infiltrating her organization proved easy enough. A simple application-and-interview process, as most jobs tend to be. Blending in turned out even easier than that. It’s not like someone’s constantly staring her down with the kind of conspicuousness as a big red dot on a black background, but it isn’t like she’s the keenest of women, either.
Because he made contact. He brushed her shoulder in passing, and she thought nothing of it. Though perplexity hit her when she found a peculiar golden coin in her pocket. Two more appeared over the course of the past five months.
The third one she took from the drawer of her desk and turned it in her slender fingers, entranced by its every glittering detail.
“Did you come up with anything?” His name is Yordan. He didn’t slip her the coin.
“No.”
Making contact is an art. It’s tacky when the anomaly directly imposes its presence upon the reality of the prospect.
“That’s bad if you want that promotion!” He’s obnoxiously loud, then his voice lowers to a whisper. “You’re being watched.”
“I am?” She starts to glance over her shoulder.
He snaps his fingers. “Keep your eyes on me.”
She does as told.
“Go into the loading dock when the building closes just after third shift. I’ll explain everything to you.” He clears his throat. “Keep up the good work. You’ll get it someday!” After a tap on her shoulder, he casually strides off.
Between third and first shifts it is, then.
The rest of the afternoon went without hitch. She clocked out and went out to her car. That was a whole other matter. It was impossible to afford a luxury vehicle on an office-slaves penny. It looked like perhaps a husband or a boyfriend had gifted it to her, but Sherri had none.
No, she lived alone. He’d been inside her car several times. It was quite spacious. Big enough in the back seat to throttle several bodies, but with her waiting in a restricted area of the parking lot, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy that space. At least, not as alone as he would’ve liked.
When the hour finally arrived for shift change to begin, she got out of her car. The rear hatch lifted.
“Stupid broke-down piece of…” She fiddled with the fob, and the hatch went back down. “Going to have to fix that,” she grumbled, and marched inside.
There he was, standing in the back of the loading dock, just where the lights were bright enough to make out his figure.
“Yordan!” she barked, “You’ve got a lot of explaining to —”
Except that, as if on cue, Yordan’s head tumbled from his severed nape, bounced, and rolled towards her. His glossy dead eyes stared up at her while his face was locked in shock.
“I really wanted to enjoy this, and if he’d just kept his mouth shut, I would’ve. Yet, here we are, and I don’t have time to explain anything to you, Sherri.”
She sucked down air, whether to speak or to unleash a blood curdling scream, he didn’t know and he didn’t care. In that very instant, he pointed the silenced end of a gun at her. The bullet entered her left eye and exited, crooked, through the back of her skull.
Making contact was an art. It was insufferable when some sub-standard normie tries to force the prospect to recognize that they’re being watched by the anomaly.
Niklas knew exactly what he was, a stranger in a normal world. He chucked the gun to the floor, not caring where it went or what happened to it, because it was too easy to get another one. He pressed the palm of his hand to the scanner on Sherri’s car door. Like an obedient vehicle, it lifted open. After he settled in, the vehicle casually drove off.
Behind him was the screech of sirens, fading into the distance at their own method of godspeed.
He didn’t know where the car was taking him. But eventually he arrived at a parking lot stretched under an abandoned overpass. Eventually, it’d see some sort of reconstruction, but he left the vehicle there, pristine, clean, and seemingly malfunctioning.
A small hovel abandoned by some lucky homeless person provided plenty of shelter for the night. It wasn’t too far from a gas station that serviced truckers, at least, the handful dumb enough to head down this broken highway.
Under the cover of the vast, starlit heavens, he watched as the detective finally caught up with Sherri’s vehicle. As they inspected it, Niklas took his only companion, a dull pocket knife, and began carving into the walls of the hovel.
Qwaid is their word. It means “The threads connecting all universes; oblivion, the Over-Realm.” I thought I had found one of them. No, they were both human. My bad.
What he actually carved was:
I gotta quit vidya gams.