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Office Vortex by Jennifer Caress (Issue 7)

Week 1

It was my masochist tendencies that led me to this job. Where I once found joy in being a housewife, I had recently become bored and lonely. Plus, I feared that I was beginning to blend into the furniture by the way my husband was able to ignore me with such ease. If I screamed in his face he wouldn’t skip a blink, if I stripped down to nothing but skin and danced a cheer in front of him, he would grumble that I was blocking the television. I had overstayed my welcome inside my own home and I knew it, so I did what a million other poor schmucks did, I got a job outside the house.

I could have gotten work as a cashier where I had to wear a smock and nametag, or I could have gotten a job in a factory, but I didn’t. I went straight for office work. See? Masochistic.

I’ve been here a week. “Here” meaning the business office of Drench and Spack, Inc. The people that work here are enduring, so far, except for Debra. She is the religion recruiter. Convinced hers is the only correct and historically accurate religion, she tries hard to convince everyone else. I don’t know why; maybe it is because the only way she can believe it is if she can get others to believe it, or maybe her church keeps score and hands out door prizes after so many recruits. Who knows? All I know is that I ended up with a new pamphlet sitting on my desk once a week. Aside from the religion thing, Debra is an uptight, bat-shit crazy bitch. I mean that in the nicest way possible, of course. There was the Chihuahua: a ninety-pound woman who shook and pissed herself whenever someone in management spoke to her. When someone asked her to do something, she damn near burned the rug trying to get it done fast enough. And there was Sarah, a lovely woman who surrendered to life long ago. She smiled and nodded a lot, but mostly just looked vacant and ready to die.

The boss, the Drench in Drench and Spack, Inc., (I never did meet Spack) was a man who only knew one way of communicating his thoughts: smugness. The few times I dared ask him a question, he couldn’t turn his nose up to me fast enough, and every single thing he ever said to me had the “duh” tone to it.

“Did you have a nice weekend?” I asked him during that first week, before I learned not to do that.

He snorted, “Uh, yeah. It was the weekend, wasn’t it?”

One day some idiot—ok, fine, it was me—dared to confirm instructions he had given. “Sorry, you did say that you wanted three columns instead of the standard four on this spreadsheet, right?”

To stress my incompetence, he sighed dramatically, rolled his eyes then pinched the bridge of nose for effect and hissed, “Yes, that is exactly what I said. Any other questions you want to ask that I’ve already answered?”

“Uh, just the one—how far up does that bug go?”

OK, I didn’t actually say that. But oh how I wanted to.

Week 2

The coffeepot in the kitchenette was where hope was born. Every morning we all congregated to it as though it brewed eternal youth and second chances rather than bitter brown water that burned the tongue. We assemble at the coffeepot and wait for the coffee to stop brewing. Why? Maybe because coffee is the caffeine-nectar of life or maybe because we know the coffee will be warm and right now we can all see our breath? I can’t really say with any degree of certainty. All I know is that we all worship at the altar of the percolator. Amen.

Why can we see our breath? Because Drench and Spack are two cheap bastards, that’s why. It isn’t really fair to blame Spack, I suppose, since I’ve never met the man, nor have I ever met anyone who has met the man. And it was Drench who I both saw and heard standing over the kitchenette trashcan scooping up coffee grounds, screaming, “These grounds weren’t used twice! How many times do I have to say it? Reuse the damn coffee grounds, or you all will start buying your own from now on!” As he steamed away in a huff, I leaned over to Sarah and whispered, “Is he serious?”

She smiled her blank, sad little smile and replied. “Honey, your face doesn’t turn that shade of red unless you are serious.”

We were not allowed to turn the heat on, “unless you want to start paying the heating bill yourself” so I wore a pair of fingerless gloves everyday and nobody ever took off their coats. As I said, we could see our breath, and even if you couldn’t hear the words, you could see when people were talking to each other.
It didn’t end there, either. Paper towels were becoming a budgetary problem, we were told, so used paper towels were not thrown away anymore. Instead they were hung up to dry so that they may be used over and over again.

I was given my own itty bitty office once it was made clear to all that I was an unsociable creature who had a pension for cursing at the computer when it ran too slow or just plain fucked up. Apparently, customers didn’t appreciate hearing a string of bad words over the phone when they called in. So I got my own office where I didn’t have to darken the rest of the employees with my oddities. It had a window, which was perfect for staring out of instead of doing any real work. Being given my own office sucked and I thought about quitting. I didn’t want to be isolated in my own little room. I didn’t want to be without conversation and laughter, without gossip and idle chitchat. Damn it. If I wanted to be indistinguishable from the walls, I could just stay home.

This blows.

The turd on top of my crap pile was that my office was right next to Debra’s office. I heard her humming and singing all day long, in between customer phone calls. Apparently, what Debra saw in me was a scapegoat, because every time her computer went silly, she walked into my office and asked what I had done to cause it. One time her phone cut off during the middle of a call. She walked in, hovered above me, and asked how I managed to do it. Her tone was a forced polite, my tone was a wobbly polite teetering on noticeable aggravation.

But thus far I had managed not to yell or scream. Thus far I had managed to keep my cool (more or less), until the first day I stepped foot into the filing room slash supply closet. It was the day that I needed a new pen. Mine had run out of ink and I was in luck, the Chihuahua told me, because the boss just bought a new one.

“A new one of what?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“A new pen for us.” Smiled the Chihuahua.

“Oh god, you’re serious, aren’t you?” I was stunned. In this day and age a person can buy a box of a thousand pens for less than a dollar.

“Mr. Drench is very,” she looked around for him and lowered her voice, “frugal.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

She led me to a room that had a hand written sign on the door that read “Filing Room/ Supply Closet”. The room is how one might expect it: metal filing cabinets and metal storage closets lined the walls, but when she switched on the light, there was something I didn’t expect to see in a million years.

In the middle of the room, taking up the majority of the room, sat a cage, whose top reached the ceiling and whose sides were just a foot away from the filing cabinets along the walls. It looked like a thick chicken wire but I noticed the wire was two-toned. The side of the cage that faced out to where we were standing appeared to have a door on it, with a latch made of the same two-toned entwined metal. I stared at the cage and waited for an explanation, but Chihuahua seemed eager to ignore it. It took great effort to ignore something that took up the majority of space in a small room, I would imagine.

“I got your pen,” she said and marched out of the room.

I followed her out of the room, but stopped her when we got past the door. “Wait- why is there a cage in there?”

She started to shake and I feared I had caused her to piss herself again. Before she could answer, something inside the filing room/supply closet began to stir. The air was electrified to the point where the static raised my hair and objects popped all around me. The filing cabinets started to shake and the supply closets rumbled.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, but Chihuahua was long gone, leaving behind a spot on the rug. Debra walked by but once she heard the sounds coming from inside the room and felt the air change, she began to hum (something I noticed she did every time she felt threatened) and walked quickly back in the direction she had come from. “Debra,” I called out to her. “What is happening?” It was too late. I could hear her singing a prayer without tune, tone, or melody.

I stood at the threshold and watched the gigantic cage shake as the electricity in the air made my hair stand up even more and the carpet become a dangerous current. Loose papers that had been sitting on top of filing cabinets flew at the cage and stuck. Some unfortunate soul had left one of the filing drawers open and its contents were emptied on to the cage until it was covered. A blue and purple light seeped through the paper and I just couldn’t help myself. I had to see for myself what was in the cage.

Whatever it was it was acting like a large vacuum, sucking all the contents of the room towards it, the cage acting as a filter. Walking towards it, only half of my own accord, I fearfully reached out and ripped away one sheet of paper, trying to get a peek into the cage. But as I tore away one sheet of paper another flew in to take its place, until I was unwrapping the cage the same way one unwraps a birthday present, only it wasn’t gleeful anticipation dancing in my stomach, it was a dread-laced excitement.

As large as the cage was, the thing inside, which looked like a tube, of sorts, made out of wind took up the entire space. Actually, it looked like a blue, white, and black tornado sitting on its side. The damn thing was beautiful and destructive and all I could do was stare.

The hellish sound of a pissed-off boss broke the spell.

“Who the flying fuck left a goddamned drawer open? Honestly people, do I need to start handing out common sense with the paychecks?” I backed out of the room staring, jaw agape, at what I was seeing, bumping into the yelling Mr. Drench as I did so. “It’s a vortex,” I whispered.

“Really, Einstein? You think? Were you the one who left the drawer open?”

Still staring at the paper-covered cage, I held up the brand new pen I had come in here to claim as my reply.

“Well, that pen is brand new so I expect it to last.” He reached past me and pulled the door shut. It closed only inches from my nose, but I can’t recall caring.

“How long as that been happening?” I asked, still inches from the door. “It came with the building. ‘Full disclosure’ my ass.”

“What kind of cage is that? Why does it have two colors?”

He sighed his dramatic sigh and looked at his watch, signaling that I was taking up way too much of his time. “It’s nickel and copper. The vortex ate every other kind we tried.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighed again and sucked his teeth. “We tried other kinds of metals but the only thing that actually seems to cage the damn thing is a combination of nickel and copper. The goddamned thing cost a fortune.”

His demeanor changed all of a sudden. He now seemed very angry as he got right into my face and pointed a finger so close to me that my eyes couldn’t focus on it. “If you tell any of those employment agencies that this is where their temps went, I will sue you!”

I gasped, “Are you serious? People have gone through that thing?” “Sue you!” He hissed.

Week 3

Early morning and the coffee isn’t done yet. Damn it. I can smell it from my office and I can’t wait to wrap my gloved hands around a cup. I stare blankly at the computer screen and drift off to somewhere far, far away—someplace where pretending to be happy isn’t so damn difficult. “What the hell are you doing?” the shrilled voice of evil rings in my ear. “I’m typing, what the hell are you doing?” Debra picked the wrong day to start in on me. I haven’t had coffee yet, it is five degrees above freezing in here, yesterday I heard someone was looking around for the new pen and it was only a matter of time before I had to fight to keep it, and frankly I’m just not in the mood.

“My computer crashed again. What are you doing wrong that keeps making my computer get screwy?” She kept that cracking, high-pitched voice loud and tight.

I took a deep breath and tried to remind myself that I needed this job. Punching her in her god-fearing hag’s face would just get me fired. “I’m typing in letters and numbers just like everyone else. There is nothing I can possibly be doing that would screw up your computer.” Before I could stop myself, I bookended that line with a loud and clear, “Dumbass.”

She sucked in the air around her as her eyes bulged. I couldn’t help but to notice that all noise in the building ceased. Everybody was listening in; I can’t blame them. I would have been too, of course.

“You keep crashing my computer! I demand you tell me how you are doing it and in the name of Jesus I demand that you stop right this instant!” She made the sign of the cross against her chest. Why, wasn’t exactly clear. Maybe she recognized the look of death in my twitching eye, or maybe she crossed herself as a battle cry for the rest of the evangelicals to come and help her. Whatever the reason, it just annoyed me more. Years later, people would say that they actually heard the last thread of my sanity snap.

“In the name of Jesus? Are you that fucking stupid? If your computer is crashing, then it is your fault, and not even Jesus can change that!” She turned and ran into her office, perhaps thinking she could escape. I’d bet that she wasn’t expecting me to yell back: bullies never do. I ran in after her, too late to control myself, for my self-control had snapped with my sanity.

When I cornered her she didn’t look terrified, she looked crazed, and for a moment I considered backing down. But that moment was a whisper in the wind compared to all of the frustration and anger that saw this moment as its chance to be released. I grabbed her stapler off her desk and slammed it back down over and over again, each time yelling that I had had enough of her and her idiocy, enough of her accusations and ill-willed prayers.

“Don’t ever speak to me that way again,” I yelled, stapler pointed at her head. How intimidating that actually was—or wasn’t-- didn’t matter. It was a heavy metal object, and frankly it was all I had.

She started to say something back, but we both fell quiet. The nickel and copper cage was rattling. The vortex was opening. Seeing my distraction as I looked in the direction of the filing room/supply closet, she pushed past me and ran out of her office. Naturally I followed. And then she did the oddest thing. She ran down the hall, past the now-finished coffee (damn it), and threw open the filing room/supply closet door, releasing a howling wind that disturbed everything in the office.

Standing in the hallway, in front of the open door, she pointed into the room and screamed at me, “That is the devil’s door! He opened it for you because you won’t stop crashing my computer, bitch!” And there it was. The line had been crossed. Well, not just crossed. A parade, actually, marched over the line of ridiculous absurdity and Debra was the band leader. All the pent up anger wouldn’t go back down, all of the frustrations of being ignored by everyone except those that hated me wouldn’t be denied any longer. This bitch had gone too far and now it was my turn.

I flew towards her. In her fear she ran right into the vortex’s room. Having no place else to go because I was blocking the door, she did the only thing she knew to do. She started quoting nonsensical bible passages.

She was a foot taller than me and a few feet thicker but this isn’t the first time I’ve lost my temper, and this isn’t the first bitch I’ve thrown a punch at. I applied to her what a few past fights have taught me: I curled my fist as she continued to quote scripture and punched her in the gut which served two purposes; first, it shut her up, and secondly, it doubled her over so that her face was at an appropriate punching level, which I took advantage of. I punched her in the face, which threw her backwards. Her head hit a metal filing cabinet and she hit the floor. She wasn’t unconscious, but she wasn’t lucid either. Her eyes refused to focus and there was drool. I just stared at her as the suction of the opened vortex caused my hair to whip my face. It wasn’t until right then that I noticed the Chihuahua peeking around the open door. How long had she been standing there? And now she would run off to call the police or tell the boss what I had done. Fuck! I’m getting fired for this, that’s for sure. Instead, she rushed into the room and grabbed Debra under the arms. “I’ll help you,” she grunted.

“What?”

“Grab her legs! Hurry!” She strained under the weight of a semi-conscious woman as I stood there like a lump. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll help you get her through. Hurry! The vortex doesn’t stay open forever!”

Oh god. I finally caught on to what she was talking about. This bitch wasn’t going to tell on me, she was going to help me get rid of the evidence. But I hesitated. I may be a horrible, evil, woman, but I’m not a killer, and since we didn’t know where the other side of the vortex was, we could very well be sending her to her death…or worse.

Sarah came around the corner at a fast pace and shoved me out of the way. “Don’t just stand there, hurry!” she said, and opened the nickel and copper cage door then coming back to clumsily picked up Debra’s legs. The two of them stumbled their way closer to the swirling hole suspended in air and I just couldn’t get past what I was witnessing. The argument I was participating in this morning turned into a fist fight. That fist fight turned into an opportunity. Turns out, I wasn’t the unpopular one in the office. Debra was.

What the hell, I said, and grabbed one of Debra’s arms. Heave-ho. With a one….two….three…. we got her in there and the perpetual suction of the vortex aided in our efforts, reliving some of our work for us: almost like the vortex wanted Debra as much as we wanted it to have her. Once she was in, we closed the nickel and copper cage door. I was certain an awkward silence would follow our horrific deed. But it didn’t.

“Good job, ladies,” Sarah said and straightened her back. “Anybody want anything from the roach coach? I’m getting a burrito.”

“Thank god that is over,” Chihuahua said. “I’ve been waiting for that moment since I started working here. Thanks,” she said, looking at me.

“Oh, you received a fax. Want me to put it on your desk?”

It was left to that and we all became semi-friends, united under a common enemy. I later learned that I wasn’t the first one to get into a war of words with Debra, but I was the first to get her semi-conscious in the filing room/supply closet when the vortex was open, so now people liked me. The boss never asked me what happened to her, but I get the feeling Sarah made something up.

It felt good to be one with the ladies, laughing, telling dirty jokes, cursing about customers, and bitching about men. It felt good just to talk and be heard.

Week 5

Contentment is only ever fleeting. In the time that passed since Debra’s “disappearance” there was still one person who hated me: Drench. But to be fair, he seemed to hate all women, especially those who weren’t submissive.

“My dear, let’s talk.” He sat one butt cheek on top of my desk and let his leg swing. He leaned over his arm, which was resting on the swinging leg, and tried to get as close to my face as I would allow. His snobbish manner filled the room in a haze that made it hard to breathe. My fingers halted over the keyboard and I turned my head to face a speech that was guaranteed suck.

“Do you feel,” he began,” that your job performance is exemplary?”

Silence passed between us as I tried to figure out where he was going with this. I released a long, “Uh…” before I came up with this gem, “I don’t know, I guess. Maybe. Why?”

He took a deep breath in through his nose and gazed up at the ceiling.

“We’ve been noticing that your work isn’t as thorough as it could be. Frankly, we’ve noticed some mistakes.” He paused and I paused.

“A solid chunk of me dies every single workday,” I said, quietly. If he noticed he didn’t care.

“I need you,” he said, never looking directly at me, “to turn up the volume, to turn up the quality of work you are producing. I need you to try and keep this job. Am I clear?”

“I’d rather paper cut myself to death,” I said, a little louder.

“Good,” he slapped my shoulder so hard I thought he might have knocked it out of joint. “I expect great things from you from now on.” He left as I tried to kill him with the power of my mind.

It wasn’t an hour later that I found myself in the filing room/supply closet in search of more paper for the fax machine. Sifting through the metal cabinet I noticed a box of used pens sitting on the bottom shelf. There must have been a thousand pens in that small box and I had think that perhaps Drench wanted us to squeeze the remaining ink out of each one.

I found the paper I needed and walked out of the room, flipping off the light as I did. I didn’t get very far past the threshold because the electricity in the air and the rattling of the nickel and copper cage froze me in place. The vortex was opening again and I was hypnotized by the phenomenon.

My hair whipped and tossed around my head as the filing cabinets began to shake. I turned slowly; in fear and awe of what was behind me, and my stomach dropped as I realized too late that I had left the supply closet open. Worse, there was an odd clicking noise coming from the vortex and I was too distracted by the open door of the supply closet to realize that the cage door was coming loose. By the time I caught on to what the noise was, it was too late. The cage door was unlatched. At first it rattled in place but soon it succumbed to the force of the vortex and it flapped into the spiral, being held back by ever-weakening hinges. I released the papers in my hand and raced them to the vortex. My plan was to grab the door, close the door, and then step back and relish my safety. Hindsight showed me what an epic failure that plan was. I ran towards the vortex and grabbed the nickel and copper cage door, sliding my fingers into the slots between metal, but the hinges of the cage door couldn’t hold on anymore, and damn it if my fingers weren’t stuck.

It is difficult to describe the sensation of being pulled through an office vortex: it felt as though my intestines were being pulled through before my skin, and the elasticity of my skin prevented my body from going in all at once until I felt a mile long. I didn’t really see much as I was being pulled through, mostly just flying office supplies. Somewhere inside the vortex my fingers slipped out of the cage door. Where the door ended up is still a mystery.

I was thrown through to the other side, face first into a wall, and smacked down onto a carpeted floor. Stunned, I lay there and waited to be able to breathe again. When the pressure on my chest let up I bolted upright and gasped my first breath. Where the hell was I? Propped up on my elbows I looked around at a hallway akin to the one I just left behind.

I was on very similar carpeting; thin and cheap, with dingy white walls lining the corridor. Maybe, just maybe, this was a parallel universe. Don’t laugh, it was my first time through a vortex, so what did I know?

“Well, well, well,” said a voice from above. I screamed, startled by someone sneaking up on me and then screamed again when I saw who was speaking. His skin was orange, the type of orange one gets from a fake-bake tanning salon, only it was brassier and somehow it belonged to the face. He wore a long sleeve dress shirt and tie, complete with slacks and dress shoes, an outfit that my very own Drench might own. The eyes were huge but most disconcerting of all, there didn’t seem to be any eyelids so that this poor fool looked constantly alarmed. His nose came to a very sharp point and his nostrils were mere slits in the angled flesh that was his nose. Fish lips, is the best way I know how to describe his mouth. It flapped a lot when he spoke which would have made me laugh if it weren’t so damn scary. His hair was black and grew in seemingly random spurts on his head that he allowed to stand on end. As odd as his features were, there was no doubt that it was all very natural to him, though this did nothing to comfort me.

“Look at what fell through. Tom, come look at this one.” He said over his shoulder. I just laid there like an idiot—too stunned and frightened to stand up. A blond guy walked up behind him; this one had the same features only he was wearing a short sleeve dress shirt and was perhaps a few inches shorter.

Before I had time to react, Tom bent over and grabbed my by one arm, while the first guy grabbed me by the other. Together they lifted me to a standing position, but never released me.

“I have to wonder,” the first guy said, “how many laughs you people got out of tossing crap through the whirlpool. Alice, get the stuff.” Never has the word “stuff” filled me with such dread. I opened my mouth to respond, but Tom put an orange and scaly hand over my mouth. I almost hurled.

“No, no, I think we’ve heard enough of your excuses.” He said.

Todd and Guy Number One held both of my arms up and out, pinning me to the wall. I screamed and kicked but to no avail. They were stronger than me and even in panic, I did little damage to either one of them.

“Alice, get the box!” Todd shouted.

Alice, a chubby little fish-faced woman with a slightly more purple tone to her skin, dressed in what I had come to know as “business casual” attire, and a black eye patch over her right eye, came up on us with a plan cardboard box. She sneered at me through her thick black rimmed glasses and I could have sworn I’d seen a forked tongue flicker out of her mouth.

“Alice,” instructed Guy Number One. “Hand me the writing spear.” The what?

Alice handed him a pencil and I struggled against the two men even harder. Little good it did, because Todd leaned into my face and said, “Alice had two eyes before your last attack.”

“Sir,” I mumbled through his hand, “There was never an attack on you, I promise.”

“Oh no?” Alice hissed. “A writing spear shot out of that thing and right into my eye! You should have seen what happened to Dratna.” Just saying the name made Alice break down into tears. She dropped the box and ran off.

“Tell me,” Todd said as I continued to struggle, “How did you think this was going to happen? Did you think you would come flying in here….” He pulled a stapler out of the box and handed it to Guy Number One, who raised my arm above my head, pressed the “writing spear” against the palm of my hand, and pounded it into me, ala stigmata, using the bottom of the stapler has a hammer. I screamed so loud, Todd had to yell over me,” …did you think you would come flying in here,” he pulled another pen out of the box and handed it to Guy Number One, “and destroy us? Or perhaps,” he raised my other arm above my head and pinned it to the wall, “you just wanted to come over here and gloat, see for yourself all the destruction you’ve caused?” Guy Number One hammered the pen through my other palm with the bottom of the stapler and I thought I might pass out.

Todd must have seen my grip on consciousness loosening because he socked me in the face, “Oh no you don’t. You don’t get off that easy. Alice didn’t get to faint when a writing spear was sticking out of her eye socket. Dratna didn’t get to pass out when your colleague came shooting through the whirlpool and slammed her into the wall. It took her hours to die. So you,” he lifted my head up with his hand, “will stay awake until I say otherwise.”

He and Guy Number One exchanged some sort of handshake-high five and went back to their cubicles. Alice emerged from somewhere down the hall, still sniffling at the memory of her friend. All I could do was cry: cry from the pain and cry from the hopelessness of the situation.

Sometime during the ordeal, the vortex had closed and I had no idea how, if at all, I was going to escape this horror and get back home. I looked over and saw Todd’s head above the cubicle wall. He gestured to me that he was watching me by pointing at his eyes and then pointing at me. Under different circumstances, that would have made me laugh my ass off. As it were, though, there was blood dripping down into my armpits, a most uncomfortable feeling I assure you, and I was starting to lose feeling in my shoulders. Pity I wasn’t losing feeling where I had been stabbed through each hand.

Twice more that day, Todd came by to smack me in the face. I must have lost consciousness without realizing it. But the third time I slipped out of reality I woke back up to a dimly lit office. It was deathly quiet and it was obvious that everyone had gone home for the evening. I looked up, to my right and to my left, to look at my hands. Somehow seeing the wounds made them hurt ten times as much, but as excruciating as the pain was, I knew I had to fight through it if I were to escape. I tried pushing my hands forward, through the pens stuck in the walls, but the ache was too much so I had to abandon that idea. I thumped my head against the wall, trying to determine what it was made of. To me it felt like simple drywall so another plan came to me. I wound my hands in circles, trying to make the holes in the walls bigger, thus releasing the pens. It worked, sort of. While the pens had become looser in the walls, it still took a great deal of effort and agony to pull them free. When I did, I fell to the floor without any bodily control to speak of. My hands hurt like hell, every muscle felt strained from the fight, and my face was a cruel mixture of throbbing numbness from where I had been punched repeatedly by Todd.

Exhausted from the pain and from the struggle, I lay there like a lump for several minutes as I tried to regroup. Mercifully, I heard the low rumbling of office supplies and felt the electricity in the air, letting me know that the vortex was opening up. Not so mercifully, I heard voices of people wishing each other a good morning and someone saying they would get the coffee going. It apparently was morning and people were starting to arrive. Crap. Reminding myself that the vortex doesn’t stay open forever gave me the inner fuel to pull myself up from the floor and make a mad dash for my world, so I ran and dove through the whirlpool down the hall, pulling the pens out as a ran and praying it would take me back to where I came from.

It did. Same thing as before—going through the vortex made me feel as though my intestines were being pulled through first, followed slowly by my skin. It hurt like hell the first time, this time was that much worse because of the open wounds I was sporting. Judging by the sensation, I really was surprised when I came through with two semi-intact hands instead of mere flaps of skin where my hands used to be. I flew through and hit the file room/supply closet door with a lovely thud. I looked back and noticed the door to the nickel and copper cage still hadn’t been fixed or replaced. To my surprise, it was still daytime at my office and when I opened the door, I had an audience; all wide eyed, and only a few looking relieved that I had made it back through.

With the vortex still swirling behind me, I stared at those who stared at me and there we stood for several moments: me a bloody tangled mess, and them all looking stunned…except for Drench. He just looked pissed.

“Where the hell have you been?”

I stared at him, waiting for my body to get accustomed to the pain or for adrenaline to kick in so that I could function once more. “Well?” He yelled. “I’ve been looking for you for the past five minutes, and then I come in here to find the nickel and copper cage is broken. Was that you? Do you have any idea how much that thing cost?” Behind me the vortex stayed open and as silly as it may sound, I felt connected, bonded, to it. I understood it and it understood me. We were united and we had a plan.

The box of used pens was still on the bottom of the supply closet. I grabbed the box between my wrists and chucked the hundreds of pens into the vortex.

“Those still had ink in them! How would you like that cost taken out of your paycheck? Huh?”

I rammed past him, knocking shoulders, searching for the first and heaviest, yet still moveable, object I could find while Drench screamed and the other workers stood watching the entertainment behind me. The large office chair on wheels would make a splendid missile, I decided, and rolled it into the filing room/supply closet. Drench tried to stop me from tossing it in, but anger and the power of a brilliant idea bypassed the pain and gave me the strength to plow past him. When the chair was flying in the vortex, I pulled out a filing cabinet drawer and threw that in, too. In the filing room, a hysterical Drench grabbed me by the shoulders.

“Stop it! I won’t let you waste any more office supplies!” He was in perfect position and I took advantage of that. I kneed him good and hard in the balls and felt a wave of satisfaction come over me as his face turned red and then purple.

As he was bent over, I whispered into his ear, “Tell them I said ‘hi’ and tell them you want your office supplies back.” And I shoved his ass into the vortex.

As I said, we had bonded, so the vortex understood what was best in this situation and closed as soon as Drench was through. As odd as it may sound, I was really going to miss that little phenomenon.

To the frightened faces in the hall I said, “Mail me my last check.” I went into my office, grabbed my coffee cup and grabbed my coat. Walking past them for the last time I added, “And, trust me, get the nickel and copper door fixed as soon as possible. I may have just started a war. Well, see you around.”

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