I walked through the office and nodded at a few people I recognised. The taste of sleep still rested in the cleft of my gums, where the face meets the skull, and the coffee wasn't washing it away. I finally got to a door and went into my office, a lone desk by the window with a computer and chair. A large metal cabinet painted in red was against one of the walls. After turning on my computer I then begin the actual work of pretending.
For a few hours I sit and stare at the screen, doing completely nothing. Sometimes falling in and out of sleep, I could hear the office sounds around me. Telephones, shoes on cheap carpet, the hum of fluorescent lights, the occasional sneeze or cough, the barking of laughter. Now and then people pass my office door although nobody ever comes in. Once it reaches twelve I go for lunch, walking through the office corridors reading printed out spreadsheets, tiny on A4 paper. I stand in the kitchen and make brief conversation with others who happen to be there, before doing a lap of the buildings exterior. Eight hundred feet high, a mirror of the sky. I eat a packet of crisps behind some trees before heading back in. I pause at the end of the corridor. My office door was open. I walked towards it, checking my lapels for grains of salt before entering.
"Hello." I said, walking past two men and sitting back at my desk.
"Hiya. I hope you don't think me rude for asking, but who are you?" said the older of the two. I introduce myself.
"I don't think we've met. Who's your manager?"
"I wouldn't say I have a direct line manager per se." I say, wiggling the mouse to get rid of the screensaver.
"Percy?"
"Per se. As in, as is. I think anyway. You haven't heard that?"
"What is it you do here?"
"Most of my time is taken up by a side project. Excuse me, but I don't think you introduced yourself. Who's your manager?" I say, turning back towards them.
"I'm the head of HR. And I haven't heard from you. So I'm asking you again, who are you?"
"I said who I am. Who's this?" I say, nodding at a young lad in a tight suit.
"I'm Adam, the new social media manager. I'm confused, I thought this was my office?" he said to the head of HR.
"It is. Do you mind stepping out a moment?" he said. Adam leaves. The head of HR and I stare, fantasising about both being killed by and killing each other.
"I don't remember hiring you."
"I started about four months ago. Colin showed me around."
"Colin left four months ago."
"I wondered why I hadn't seen him."
"So what is it you've been doing?"
"I was given some photocopying to do." I say, nodding at a pile of neatly stacked papers.
"Then what? Why didn't you ask someone what to do?"
"No. Why would I?"
"Because you work here! You turn up here on your agreed hours and do whatever is required of you. What's your actual job title?"
"Assistant." I said.
"Come with me please." said the head of HR. I paused, weighing up the situation. Imagining potential endings to various strings of action, some ridiculous, others mundane. I got up and followed the head of HR towards the door before waiting for him to leave and then shutting it behind him. Lunging across the office I grab the edge of my desk and throw it back into the door, putting a large dint in the wood panelling. The head of HR and Adam both begin to rattle the handle of the door before there are murmurs.
"Open the door please." comes a muffled voice. Quickly I open the door of the cabinet and make some adjustments to its contents before closing and locking it. I swallow the key and walk towards the window. It had been painted shut, abandoned cobwebs spread like old ice across the sill. Placing both palms on the glass I begin to push, spreading the weight of my body across wide fingers. Sometimes an old window would just pop out. The head of HR meanwhile had managed to push the door open wide enough to reach a bare arm through it, it was quite odd. I took one of my shoes off and was about to hit the window with it when I felt him grip me around the waist, dragging me down towards the floor. The smell of Joop was overpowering as we wrestled on the carpet, pulling at each others clothes and quietly grunting.
Before long Adam and a security guard had arrived. The head of HR had overpowered me and I had my hands bound behind the back of my office chair.
"You captured him!" said Adam with glee.
"I'd like to let everyone know this is wrongful imprisonment and you should let me go immediately." I said.
"You're under citizens arrest for...posing as an employee at a private company."
"I am an employee though. I've just not done anything for months."
"He's right sir, I'm afraid he hasn't broken any laws technically speaking." said the security guard.
"What about vandalism? He broke that door!" shouted the head of HR.
"I was defending myself against false imprisonment and I failed. There's no need to make me feel bad about it as well."
"Let me untie you." said Adam.
"You'll do no such thing until he explains what's in this cabinet." said the head of HR, armpits damp with sweat that must have brushed cold against his underarms as he slapped the aluminium.
"My personal things are in there."
"It's company policy to allow us at any time to search through your belongings under suspicious circumstances."
"Is it?" said Adam.
"I swallowed the key."
"Darren, do we have any bolt cutters?" said the head of HR.
"I think we might." said the security guard called Darren.
"Fetch them up here will you." he said.
The three of us had been listening to each other breathe for ten minutes before Darren reappeared. Darren glided across the ribbed carpet before resting the teeth of the bolt cutters around the padlock. Although I'd been untied I remained sat in the chair and watched as the broken lock fell to the floor.
"Open it." said the head of HR. Darren nodded and swung open both doors. Inside the cabinet was a wall of soil kept in place with a series of planks that resembled the Slavonic cross. On the inside of the cabinet doors I had made many notes in my beautiful handwriting, along with diagrams. There was a true silence as they looked upon the things. Finally;
"What is it?"
"It is a diagram involving the infinity found inside pi, which in itself is found in all circles, both a positive and a negative infinite. The circle itself occurs in nature repeatedly, from a cell to a star. If seen at the right perspective a cell would eclipse a star. And in all of infinite is all of everything. All of the things possibly said, every molecule of DNA ever coded, every image that could be seen. All." I said, pointing at my notes.
"And the soil?" said the head of HR. I walk forward and pull at the central plank, causing an avalanche of blackness to flood the small office space along with a rotting pig.
"It is a grave." I said, picking up the carcass and looking at it, face to face. The skin had turned a bruised yellow and had begun to harden, shrinking tighter to the bone in some areas and bloating out in others. Worms festered in it's ears. I left the room and begin to walk through the corridors, carrying the pig. People were awed at the foul march as I made my way through every single office, the death stench hanging heavy in the air. Parts of the corpse had begun to fall off or leave big patches of rotten slime across my work clothes. An alarm wailed as I made my way out of a fire exit and across the car park. I carefully placed the thing in the back seat of my car and slowly drove away. In the rear mirror the office fades from view, around a corner, behind a tree. The traffic ahead swallows me into it. Summer is almost here.
