Eight

Computers sleeping and lights off, the office had been empty for a while.  But one tired soul, determined to impress his boss by completing a report over night, remained.  Head buried in papers, presided over by the low hum of his computer, he was in a world of his own, unable to hear the footsteps in the stairwell leading up to his office.

               

                The boy padded lightly up the stairs, holding his shoes in one hand and cell phone in the other.  He checked his phone every couple seconds.  He reached the door he wanted and slipped his shoes back on.  He checked his phone again.

                NEW MESSAGE it read.

The boy hurriedly flipped open his phone, fumbling a bit.

 The message contained only one thing:

SEVEN

The boy cursed under his breath. “He’s caught up with me.”

ME TOO the boy sent back.

He shoved his phone in his pocket and started to slowly open the door.

“Almost done,” The man said to himself. “I better get some sort of recognition for this bullshit.  He wants the report in two days?  I’ll do it in one.  If he thinks I’ll never be able to do it in two days, if he’s testing me, well, fuck him, ‘here it is sir, kiss my ass’, and if he thinks two days is plenty of time, well… I don’t know, he’s insane or something.  This is bullshit.  I have like eight hours into this thing today.  And he told me about it today.  Fuckin bullshit.”

The man continued to mumble to himself as he typed with increasing frustration.

Through the door, the boy took out a bandana and wadded it up.  He placed it on the floor so the door wouldn’t close and then walked into the room. 

Countless cubicles.  It made him sick.  What good was life if not completely unbarred?  “These are all cages”, he thought. “They are just mice, trapped, all the same, blind.  Blind mice.” He lowered his head and started down the hall slowly, his shoes silent on the carpeted floor, his rage building as he passed each “cell”.  He could hear whispers up ahead.

The man leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Finally,” he said.  After a moment he got up and put his hands on his desk, leaning forward, examining his work. “Kiss my ass,” he said, and clapped.  It was the first real noise the room had heard in hours.

He stacked the mess of papers on his desk and threw them in a folder, which he then put in his briefcase.  He turned off his monitor and then his computer.  The humming stopped.  Everything was silent. 

The boy took notice of the silence.  He stopped moving, he stopped thinking.  He heard the wheels of a rolling chair, the sound of the armrests hitting the edge of the desk, the shuffling of a windbreaker and then a zipper and then footsteps.

The man walked down the hallway, striding proudly.  He checked his watch.

“2 am.  Not bad.”

He reached the door to the stairwell and saw that it was being held ajar by a cloth.

“What the hell?”

The boy plunged a hunting knife into the man’s back, upper left, just below the shoulder blade.  Easy access to the heart.  The man fell to the ground and the boy stood over him and watched as the life drained, blood seeping into the carpet.

When the man’s breathing finally stopped the boy took out his phone.

NEW MESSAGE

HAHA it read.

The boy quickly replied and shoved the phone back in his pocket.

EIGHT.  IM WINNING.