After Hours

The lift doors opened and a clear robotic voice indicated that she had reached the eleventh floor. Her heels echoed on the marble floor as she stepped out into the corridor. The fluorescent lights above blinked to life and illuminated only the security keypad entrance. She keyed in the code and the doors slid open.

The 24-hour safety lights cast strange shadows over the cubicles, giving her the unsettling feeling that someone was watching her.

The computers in each cubicle hummed together in an eerie chorus. Surrounding the office floor were large black windows, like gaping eyes looking out to the city and the streets below. As she walked through the rows of cubicles, she caught a glimpse of her reflection. Was that someone standing behind her? Stephanie turned — only a bamboo plant. Why, then, did she still feel as though someone was watching?

She continued to walk through the floor and had reached the last row of cubicles when she heard insistent dripping.

She had started to shiver even though it wasn’t cold in the office. The air conditioning had been set to switch off at 8pm and the computers made the whole room stuffy.

She looked up to the ceiling but couldn’t see anything that would indicate a leak. She thought that maybe she should leave. She knew she wasn’t meant to be in here after hours. She had only come in to get her iPod from her desk. Her heart was beating fast now. She had worked herself up into being frightened over this silly noise.

Finally, she reached her desk. She just had to grab the iPod and then she could leave. She opened the drawer under her desk to retrieve it, but all that was in the drawer was a pile of pens and unopened packets of post-its. The iPod was gone.

Had one of the cleaners had taken it? Had she even had it at work that day?

She decided that it was a good time to leave. At this hour, the office was creepy.

She closed the drawer and started to walk back to the lift. Just as she was about to reach the last cubicle before the entrance, she heard music. It was playing softly but there was no mistaking it. It was coming from the women’s toilets. She looked at the entrance to the lifts and saw that the fluorescent lights and EXIT sign were now flickering on and off. She knew that if she didn’t leave soon, the after-hours access code she used to enter the building would expire and she would be trapped inside until a security officer came to check the floor in their next round.

She moved closer to the women’s toilets entrance and could hear the music louder. She pushed the door and it opened with a creak. The music continued and then she heard the insistent dripping again.

She was shaking, but curiosity got the better of her and she continued into the toilets. The tiles were slippery with water and she wondered how recently the cleaners had been in there. She opened the doors that lead to the toilet stalls; she could hear the music and the dripping like a sinister song. There were three stalls inside; the sounds were coming from the one in the middle. She gently pushed the door open and screamed at the sight before her. Hanging upside down in the stall was a woman; an iPod was clipped to her clothes, the headphones in her ears. The woman’s body was covered in blood and it dripped down into the porcelain toilet bowl beneath her. The music was playing almost in time with the dripping blood.

© Sarah K. Gill on January 14, 2017.