Between a Rock and a Hard Place

She got interrupted once. While typing the word wicked. A young intern--younger than her at least--looking so frail. Unsmiling. Eyes piercing, analyzing, her attention span absolute.

First time Lenore saw her.

"Is that your Halloween story?"

"Yea."

"What's it about?"

"Satan's deed."

"Fuckin' metal."

The interruption was interrupted by Melissa of Management. "Ariadne, Michelle asked you for the report ten minutes ago, you quit your slacking. What are you doing here? Why are you talking to her?"

And while Melissa was keeping a socially acceptable distance between herself and the two women, Ariadne looked left and right, then walked straight to her and punched her in the gut without a word, before going back to her duties on another floor.

The blow had been insanely powerful, the impact felt in the air. Lenore, already unwell in the presence of Melissa, was paralyzed on her chair, fascinated. And this woman, this awful woman, coping with a punch that would make her shit shreds of her own liver tonight, was still smiling. A sneer just for Lenore, that seemed to say, this is where you are.

It lingered until the woman had gone back into other open spaces. Good thing Lenore was almost finished, her fingers shook way too much for typing on her keyboard.

She sent her oeuvre to Legal before going out for lunchbreak. It sucked. She didn't care.

She drove to Papa John's and saw Kate was busy reading from the restaurant's suggestion box and filling out forms.

They waved at each other, through a window, too far apart to even mouth anything, and Lenore ate somewhere else.

At 2pm, a new e-mail was waiting in her inbox.

It contained the pending version of Monthly Green, Halloween Special, with its ten extra pages: The Upper Floors by Lenore Llamarada.

The e-mail said: Awesome story. 2 thumbs up from every hand in legal dept. Don't forget to save your manuscript on 3 separate devices. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.

She called Kate and left a message on her voicemail, tried to sound as not scared as possible. She didn't bother adding that she loved her after Bye. They were not friends anymore. They were something less or more than friends.

The opposite of friends appeared behind her: Becky and Jill going, "Yo, Sylvia Plath, congrats, you've done it!"

Lenore jumped to her feet, realizing too late it was the body language of a prey. She whispered, "You stay away from me."

"What's wrong? Everybody's saying you're finished with the new great American classic. The piece of literature that will bring Deep Green together, into one big cultural shift. Employees will quote your dialogs for generations, until they quote you without even knowing what they're quoting anymore. They'll make up a word for your style: lenoresque. And they'll always use it wrong."

The other one went on: "Can't wait to read it. I'm sure I'll enjoy your shit."

Lenore backed off, rear against her desk. She feared the two girls would get closer.

They didn't.

Three more came up. Women she had barely talked to before. Then two more. Then four more. Saying the same things. Keeping an unthreatening distance but growing a threatening number.

They were so many, the air was buzzing, was heating up.

"What's it about?" the first row was asking. Or, "Can we be friends when you're famous?"

The second, third, fourth row and the others gravitating around seemed to be mouthing the same nonsense, mouths full of spit clapping and smiling over a dark hole.

"Everybody fuck off! Leave her alone." The whole bunch dispersed. The woman who had shouted this only had time to push away one or two of them. Lenore didn't even look at her, she ran to the stairs, ran up to Management. Eliza.

She was done. She wanted out. And if they didn't let her, she would do the necessary to, break things, hit Eliza in the face, whatever fear would inspire her to start.

Only, the manager wasn't present. Or at least her office was closed and silent.

"She's not here. Come with me." Lenore recognized the voice that had "saved" her a minute earlier.

It came from inside the elevator.

The woman was beckoning her in.

Lenore was only a few steps and a serious hesitation away from her.

Did she have a gun or a knife?

"I have answers," said Freya of Management, a hand holding the elevator doors open.

Lenore took one step forward. Eliza burst out of her office. Her smile was horribly twisting the unaltered rage coming out of the pit of her chest. "Lena, come in!"

Lenore walked.

"Lena, get in here right f--RIGHT NOW!"

The distance closed down faster and more easily between Lenore and the elevator.

She passed the metallic threshold, broke her vow to never set foot in one of these evil machines again, turned around: she was standing next to Freya, facing Eliza outside.

"I'll tell the discipline committee!" Eliza spat out.

"You do that," Freya replied confidently. The doors closed. They were alone.

Lenore's stomach was so tingly she didn't feel the elevator start downward.

The woman gave her the USB key she forgot at her computer.

She spoke: "There's a coven of witches at Deep Green Alliance."

She explained everything. It took so long the elevator probably reached hell.

It wasn't exposition for Lenore. It was her short story. The original one. The flies, the portal, the lay-offs. Everything she had imagined. Except for a detail.

"There's only concrete behind that door, I saw it," Lenore said.

"The entire corridor is an error. The flies feed off errors. And weakness. If someone passes that door...hell, we're fucked."

"I have the keys."

"Are you sure?"

No, she was not.

"So I hope you figured out you're not one, you are two."

Lenore figured it out. "They'll hurt Kate?"

"They hurt everything, you're all weak."

"What are you?" Lenore asked.

"It doesn't matter. You don't talk about us, you talk about them."

THERE ARE TWO COVENS OF WITCHES AT DEEP GREEN

"Are you protecting us?"

"You're in the way."

"Are you protecting us?"

"Keep the keys safe, publish your fucking story, and face the consequences of your actions."

Lenore looked at Freya for the first time and met her gaze.

And she saw what she already saw inside Portia, inside Ariadne, something she had mistaken for cruelty. There would never be a smile on that mouth. And her eyes would never falter. Freya was fixing her till the end of times. In these eyes was no cruelty, no sadism, no superiority, not even a divine indifference so dear to fucking Lovecraft. Because her mistake had been to look behind the eyes, missing what was behind the whole head, behind the shoulders. There she would see the territory, the nest, the cubs, an Earth they--whatever they were--didn't had to vow to protect, burdened enough of their own nature. No sense of right and wrong rested on their shoulders, none was needed when their arms hit, they left it to human beings. These eyes were the eyes of survival. And Lenore was a threat.

The elevator braked so harshly Lenore was hurled to her knees.

The doors opened to Management.

Eliza was there, on a soda break, four hours younger. Freya was nowhere at all.

"Good morning, Lenore, you wanted to see me," she said like nothing happened.

Lenore stepped out. Eliza stepped back.

It was starting to make sense. Lenore approached her. She tried to reduce the distance between them.

She raised her hand toward her and Eliza moved away, asked nonchalantly, "So um...what's up?"

"You can't hurt me, is that it? Your threats are empty."

Lenore sprung forward swiftly enough that she was able to push her shoulder.

Eliza didn't lose her condescending smile. "You received threats? That's serious, Lena, you should tell Twitter."

Two smiling women came from deep into the hallways and joined the empty conversation. "Hey you're Lena, the writer girl?" one asked. "Hey did you get my circular about libel?" the other asked.

"I'm not afraid," Lenore said.

"Of course you are."

"I'll go back to work now."

"Best decision of your life."

Lenore swung her arm at the three women and they jumped back like a bothered swarm. They could have almost laughed.

*****

Everything was to be re-done.

First her story, which was the easiest because all she did was plugging her USB key in and sending the real story to Legal, a first draft, rough and full of plot holes, entitled The Witches of the Upper Floors by Lenore Llamarada. About flies. Only about flies, she thought.

Then she went to look at Kate through a restaurant window once more.

Back from lunchbreak, a cake on her desk said, HURRAY FOR HEMINGWAY, written in chocolate syrup, which smelled like...whatever--Lenore threw it in the trashcan of the breakroom, plate and spoon included, it's not what creeped her out.

What did was the e-mail from Legal, the PDF. Because she had broken the rule and now they knew about it.

And there were worse fates than being fired. Like losing someone.

She opened the e-mail. The body was blank.

The rotten butterflies awakened in her belly only when she saw this time Monthly Green featured Sawn-off Shotgun Romance and Zombies by Lana Almareda.

She closed down everything and went home.

She had a story to finish.

*****

She turned off the WiFi and took an old laptop from a drawer.

The battery and the fan had seen better days but it worked. She plugged the USB key in and had one thing to decide. To decide right.

If they were flies, what could be the opposite side?

More than ever, words would count.

Lenore had never thought about where inspiration came from, she left that to real authors. Those who do interviews.

Without any internet she relied on her knowledge, a big word to say a sum of anecdotes. She knew arachnophobia was prevalent in parts of the world where spiders were actually harmless. People in the rain forest walked around half-naked and barefoot, never checked under their pillow for any eight-legged nightmare that could give you three minutes of agonizing death in one pinprick bite.

Spiders.

Fear.

Pure irrational fear.

A fear that was a fear of something else.

Nobody was really scared of flies. Grossed out, sure. But she remembered plucking the wings of a black fly as a kid and letting it crawl over her hand before crushing it with a glass. She had laughed in disgust.

Would the box say something about spiders? About the real ending she had failed to unearth in her first draft?

It was infinite, the two sides were in.

Would the box be compliant?

No. The suggestions were all small strips of paper.

HOW ABOUT VAMPIRES? EVER READ POLIDORI?

A child drawing of a house, a smiling sun and a woman lying in a doodle of red pencil.

WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN THE DOOM SOUNDTRACK HITS?

Several straps of $20 and $10 bills. Unmarked. She stopped taking them out around $12,000 and went back to reading.

WHY DO YOU MAKE THIS POSSIBLE? STOP MAKING MONEY AND FIX YOUR GF!!

Nonsense.

YOU KNOW WHAT'S THE SWEDISH WORD FOR 'THE END'?

And then just a few words here and there, or blank pages.

WANNA CRY?

She finished her second draft without any help, saved it, printed out two copies, one for her, the other she put into the box and let it sink down like in old movies quicksand. Movies where spiders were ten feet tall.

The biggest sheet she found was a suicide note, or something close.

She didn't know Kate's handwriting.

It could be anyone. The last throes of despair don't make a particular face. She learned it from Brian.

Finally, there was an object in the box which she at first thought was another sextoy.

It was a side-handle baton. And she took it with great care, with great interest. Especially since she had found out she was missing the two P29 keys.

Time for a ride.

*****

She couldn't afford to feel bad.

But she sure didn't feel badass as she parked near the Papa John's and waited in her car like a detective, waiting for the moment she would betray someone she loved.

People outside came and went, marked the passage of time toward the stillness of night, going less and less as her determination had to grow higher and higher.

Lenore came out of the car.

She walked in the darkness to Kate's old beaten Honda. She could feel her presence somewhere inside the restaurant, out of her sight.

She looked at the stuff on the back seat, so obviously hidden under a blanket.

It was for her own good. These words were probably the motto of Hell.

She took the baton out of her bag, looked around. No lampposts, no witnesses.

The toughened glass broke more easily than she expected. In one hit. The sound of it was tragic.

The baton shattered on impact, leaving only the handle in her hand. A sign she was doing right. The item had run its course.

She searched the glove compartment, some bags, some suitcases, and found the keys.

Lenore began running, asked for forgiveness now that the deed was done.

*****

Tuesday (zero day)

Ten minutes later, she realized the gate of Deep Green's parking lot would not open at this time of night. She would not be able to stake out P29 from inside her car.

And it was too cold to do it outside.

The solution would be to do what her suspicions had been telling her to do for hours. Or her bad feeling. Or her certainty.

So after much looking around for cops and security guards, Lenore sneaked in the premises under the guise of the night. She prayed there was no camera as she'd been told.

But no camera meant more certainty.

She opened the P29 door and stepped inside. More bad feeling.

The neons clicked alight automatically. No more suspicions:

At the end of the corridor was a sleeping bag. A laptop. Empty bottles. Empty pizza boxes. A backpack. With a Jack Skellington keychain on the zipper.

She was right.

It's awful being always right when you're a pessimist, as Kate would have commented. Lenore should have completely collapsed at this thought but she remained expressionless. Right now, she loved her more than anything and it was enough.

But it was also too late.

She closed the door and went to sit on the sleeping bag.

How could she have missed it? How could she keep missing things like this?

In the backpack, she found a folder full of suggestion notes. Handwritten madness, the same as hers.

One of them was telling Kate there could be a chance she get her job back at Deep Green.

And also there was a gun. This stupidly large gun burned into Lenore's memory.

It was hers now. She put it in her purse.

Now all she had to do was to wait. And if Kate shows up, they would vanish together. Away from all this. Even if she had to convince her at gunpoint.

Lenore didn't even smile at that. Didn't even blow air through her nose.

The corridor was heated. As long as she would move, the lights would stay on. The sound behind the Upper Floors door was low enough at this hour to be bearable.

She waited for Kate.

Outside, only the sun came. Cars started to come and go.

At 6:30am, her badge let her in. The security guard in the lobby nodded at her no more than casually.

She took the stairs and visited the first floor, then the second, then the third. No one at work yet, everything was quiet and empty and abnormal. The buzzing of the lights. The conditioned air keeping still around her as she walked the hallways aimlessly.

She wasn't scared--wouldn't be scared, wouldn't be surprised.

Some walls glitched as she raised her eyes on them. The textures would apply incorrectly, or be displayed broken down into tiles or blinking errors from other walls. Some were the walls of her apartment. The flower print of her kitchen. Some were from unrelated surfaces, street pavement, a fire engine, contracts she signed, or simply a vivid blue in the corner of her eyes.

There was one floor she didn't visit. As she entered it she saw the cleaning ladies were there, working. Lenore turned back, because the social commentary was too on the nose for her, and because despite her name she didn't speak a word of Spanish.

She settled for Accounting.

The water cooler by the dolphin poster was fluttering in and out of being, depending on the angle she looked at it.

No names were being droned out by the impossible wall. Even witches had to sleep sometimes.

They found her at her desk. No hello or anything. Lenore waited 9am to plug in her USB key and send the PDF file that was on it in a mass e-mail.

Deep Green Alliance drank its first coffee in front of a leaked version of Monthly Green, featuring Witches on Every Floor by Lenore Llamarada, a silly but uncensored story about flies and spiders and the people in between.

"What do you think you're doing? What the fuck you think you're doing?"

Lenore rotated slowly on her chair and almost fell down. Melissa of Management was towering over her, trying to look menacing in her enraged powerlessness. But it's not what made Lenore jump back in fear, it was the face: as unstable as the walls, flickering from a caked-up beige of human beings to the rotting grainy green-gray of a bluebottle. Red eyes by the thousand.

Terror blew all over her skin. Adrenaline wanted her to act, before panic would take over. But Lenore stayed put.

"Fuck you, Melissa," she said.

"Oh now you speak out? Bravo! But you think anyone will read your shit? Who do you think you are? You fucking dollar-store Edward Snowden. You only won the right to get fired. No one fucking cares!"

Another alternating monstrosity showed up, with its own string of insults. The whole floor could be like them. Lenore had no idea how many humans were left.

Despite their impotent hunger to kill Lenore on the spot, they were still always on the edge of laughter.

Lenore was thinking about Kate. She was dreaming Kate. She was breathing Kate. Nothing else was left to prevent her from cowering in fear. But it was enough.

Rumbling amplified around them, sounding part workday, part disturbance.

A man passed them, human-looking, said, "Hey there." He was gone.

"See?" Melissa said. "No one cares."

Someone screamed. Desk furniture scraped the floor, as if bodies had been startled.

"What's wrong with your mouth?" they heard, a female human voice filled with genuine fright.

"I e-mailed the Board too," Lenore said.

They shrugged. "How fucking naïve can you be?" They clenched their fists. Or the claws of their forelegs.

Her landline rang. It was Eliza.

*My office. Now.*

She got up, drove away the two flies just by doing so. As she passed between them they spat out, "Enjoy unemployment!" but Lenore didn't look back. She waited to be alone in the stairwell to break down.

She had experienced pure horror before but this particular strain of it had its own crippling bite. One that wouldn't leave her stronger or sicker but different. Incompatible with even the most depressed paths of everyday life. Paranormal was forever. All the prescribed drugs in the world wouldn't take her back or numb her out of it.

Trembling from arms hair down to bone marrow, she knocked on Eliza's door.

There was no response. Only a group of flies down the corridor, observing her, chortling through the muck in their fly mouths, wings contorting under their jackets like a hunch.

Lenore looked through the windows and saw the office was empty.

Her phone rang.

ELIZA

*Lena, it's me, there was a Kate Toynbee asking for you in the lobby, I let her in, did I do right?*