It was the clicking that first got to her. The constant clicking as she and her colleagues pushed the letters on their keyboards down again and again, non-stop for four continuous hours twice a day. Naomi felt the burn of eye strain come over her again. She closed them tightly, placing her hands over her eyes. She felt the sweeping motion as spun herself around in her office chair. They became flooded with tears when she opened them again. It was almost impossible for her to make out the figure moving around amid the stationary objects in the cubicle across from her. She closed them again when she felt the twinge in her temples. Naomi has felt this many times before. With an exacerbated sigh she accepted the truth of her situation. She was having a migraine, and yet again she forgot her prescription ibuprofen back at the house.
Desperate to finish, Naomi closed her eyes again and then with her forefingers made tiny circular motions. This was her last ditch effort to get more juice out of her them before she had to surrender, and she was only on the first shift. Naomi released her eyes and looked at the clock, 10:30. Lunch wouldn’t be for another hour and a half. She took a sip of her water, the cool sensation trickling down her throat felt good to her, so she gulped down the rest. With a burp and stretch Naomi returned to her keyboard, but couldn’t bring herself to begin typing again. Instead she began reading the words she had already written, she knew that it wouldn’t make time go by faster, but at least it was something mildly different. She got far, but not far enough before a sharp sensation suddenly took over her temples. This time though, the pain rolled quickly to the side of her face.
“Shit,” she said under her breath as she grasped her eyes.
“Hey Soph, do you have any aspirin?” she asked. No response. “Soph? Sophie!”
Naomi turned around to find that Sophie was not in her cubicle.
“Ned, are you there?” she asked. Still nothing. Naomi pushed her rolling chair to the end of her cubicle and peeked into the one beside her. Ned, the five-foot-three balding man would usually be sitting in his cubicle head down typing frantically until quitting time. Many a day Naomi offered to buy him lunch. Every time he would stop to take in the request, suddenly and awkwardly decline the invitation, and then rapidly begin typing again. Ned was predictable like that. But today, Ned was not sitting in the cubicle typing away. That was odd to her. Even more so than the sudden quiet that had overcome the room. No clicking, no air condition hum. Even the lights… Naomi looked up and saw that they had gone out. As did her computer.
“This isn’t right,” she thought to herself. Just then, Naomi heard some faint whistling and then some light thudding noises coming from the main entrance. She stood up in the middle of the aisle.
Her heart sank as she watched the doors gently tremble in the distance. Slowly Naomi walked down the row, peeking in from cubicle to cubicle, and as each one of the spaces turned up empty her fear grew larger. The wide open office space consists of five rows of cubicles with each row containing about 50 designated work spaces. Naomi’s was at the end of the first row on the right. One by one she peeked at the cubicles in her row, 9 cubicles, all empty.
“Is anyone here?” she called out again.
Silence answered. She made it to the first crosswalk and peeked into the four cubicles that made up the intersection. All of them were empty. Naomi couldn’t remember a time when every last cubicle had not been filled.
Even when the supervisors call a group meeting, no one leaves the room. The supervisors simply step out of their offices onto the vast floor. The floor workers roll out in their chairs with legal pad and pens handy. The grunts listen to whatever announcements the suits have to say, and then once management has said their fill, back to work they went. Sophie is usually the first one back. Her plump feet pushing down on the floor as she took off in the opposite direction.
“And away we go!” she would say with her arms jutted out in front of her. Most days the push off gave her enough force to push her all the way to her cubicle’s entrance, then she would whip her red hair around swiftly and then pull herself into the workstation, where she would be until it was time for lunch or to go home.
In the distance she saw a window, and out the window above the trees and cement buildings, was a blue sky with white clouds. This did nothing to calm Naomi’s worried mind. In fact, it did just the opposite. Naomi turned back towards the thudding; the doors shaking had become more violently. Just then she heard some crackling coming from the corner of the room. She moves in closer to inspect the spot where the two walls met each other just as a crack quickly snaked its way up the wall towards the ceiling. Naomi backed away and then ran to the other side. It too had a crack that ran up to the ceiling. Fear settled in, and Naomi ran back the nearest cubicle frantically. She picked up the phone and dialed 911, but there was no ringing, and after tapping the hook button a few times quickly realized that the phone did not work.
Next she heard a tree split, Naomi ran to the end of the row. She was almost around the corner when the previous whistle grew into a howl. She struggled down the back row towards the fire exit just outside her cubicle. She could hear papers fluttering and the cubicles being ripped from the floor from which they were anchored down. At the third row Naomi looked towards the front of the office where the main entrance had been. The big green doors and the white cement wall had completely disappeared. In their place was a huge dark consuming void.
Naomi watched wide eyed as everything in the room went flying towards the void. To where exactly, Naomi didn’t know, nor did she have any desire to find out. Naomi felt the wall of the cubicle in front of her began to tremble; pretty soon it too would be sucked away with the rest of the furniture. She reached out to the adjacent wall. Just as she was about to touch it, a monitor flew forward nearly taking out her arm. Naomi cradled it in silent gratefulness, and then reached out yet again for the wall and pulled herself to the other end. Finally she was outside her cubicle. Exhausted she sat down for a quick breath.
If I make it out of here, I will never come back.
She looked down the row she had just scaled; one by one the cubicles began to rip apart. As quickly as she could she grabbed the doorknob and pushed at the metal door, but the force from the wind proved too great, and the already exhausted Naomi didn’t have the strength to fight against it. Desperately she pushed and banged, but it didn’t give in. Naomi was still trying when the wind ripped away the last of the cubicles. She held on to the door briefly, but within moments, she too went flying into the void with the rest of the objects.
Sophie hit the save button with a bit of satisfaction. It had been two weeks since she started the research on the Sanderson case. Two long dreadful weeks, but that was all over.
“I’m finished, I’m finished,” she sang to herself.
“Hooray for you,” said Ned sarcastically. Sophie let out a chuckle.
“Bitter much?” she sung.
She let out a contended sigh and looked down at her clock.
“And just in time for lunch!” she said as she grabbed for her purse.
“Hey Naomi, you ready to go?” she asked. Naomi didn’t answer.
“Hello? Earth to Mimi,” she said. Still nothing.
Sophie turned around and found Naomi lying on her keyboard.
“Naomi,” she called. Sophie ran to Naomi’s desk. Who laid motionless, brown eyes open, never blinking, her usual yellow skin a nice ghostly white, her usual pink lips now a very deep and unsettling bluish color. Ned peaked around the joining wall between him and Naomi. The shock of what happened clear on his face.
“Naomi…” he said.
“Call 911,” Sophie said quietly. Neither she nor Ned moved. Tears began to roll down Sophie’s face.
“Somebody call 911!”