Dallas waited, angry but determined. They were not going to get away with this. He’d been set up and misled by shady employment offers before, but this was the worst. He waited some more, got up and went out to the reception room, which was empty. No surprise there. He went back to Rigel’s cube.
“Hey, are you coming back?” he shouted. Apparently not.
Fed up with waiting, Dallas went around to Rigel’s side of the desk. Under its Plexiglas cover he saw a map of a world which he assumed was Earth, with small pulsing red targets in hundreds, maybe thousands, of locations. Limbus offices? He pulled out the wide front drawer — empty. In the right-hand drawer he found, to his great surprise, a stash of Japanese Pocky in his two favorite flavors, strawberry and chocolate. He checked the date on the back of several boxes. They looked fresh. He couldn’t imagine Rigel munching on sweet-coated biscuit sticks, but how could anyone at Limbus know it was his own guilty pleasure?
The left-hand drawer held an industrial-sized key on a metal ring and a flip-top phone. The tag on the ring gave him a start: STAFF ONLY, D. Hamilton. A key to the front door? Or maybe the one behind the desk? He turned the key over in his hand wondering when it would have been made and why Rigel hadn’t given it to him. He flipped open the phone, which instantly lit up with a message: HELLO NEW RECRUITER.
Dallas checked the phone’s contact list and saw two entries, his own name and just the one word, Limbs. He punched it and put the phone to his ear.
An androgynous voice of indeterminate age responded.
“Greetings, new recruiter. Thank you for joining Limbus, Incorporated. Always remember your primary mission: we employ.” The call disconnected. Annoyed, Dallas hit redial but got a flashing message instead: SORRY, YOUR CALL CANNOT BE COMPLETED AS DIALED. He was about to try again when a small voice interrupted.
“Excuse me, are you the recruiter?”
Dallas looked up to see a teenaged girl in full Goth drag, her kohl-rimmed eyes and cropped black hair a perfect complement to the fat-bodied tarantula clinging to her shoulder.
Dallas hesitated a moment, then sat down in Rigel’s chair. “Yes. I am.” He put the phone back in the drawer.
“We answered an ad I saw on the Internet.” She shrugged, as if that should be explanation enough.
Dallas smoothed his hair away from his face. An inexplicable calm seemed to have settled over him. “Certainly. Have a seat, won’t you?”
She sat in one of the chairs fronting his desk. “It’s for him, not me.” She nodded to the arachnid, who leapt from her shoulder to the empty chair with a substantial thump.
“Of course.” Dallas took the recruiter’s badge and pinned it to his shirt front. “I’m Recruiter Hamilton. I’m sure we can find you something.” Instinctively, he pulled out the main drawer again. There was a single sheet of paper inside.
He took it out and slid it toward his applicant. The tarantula climbed up onto the desk and the girl leaned forward, studying the job description carefully.
Dallas leaned back in the recruiter’s chair and discovered it to be more comfortable than it looked, as if molding itself to his body. He watched the girl and the spider communing over the various points of the contract, and only idly wondered what deep shit they might be getting themselves into. Whatever it was, the pay would probably be more than enough to seal the deal, and in any case, it was not his problem. His intention had been to confront the Limbus agency, to pull the curtain aside a la Dorothy and reveal the evil piss-ant manipulators pulling the strings. But that didn’t seem so important anymore, because clearly he was on the inside… and employed.
Dallas opened the right-hand drawer of the desk and extracted a box of strawberry Pocky, the cascade of Kanji on the packaging telling him it came in crunchy almond as well. He popped the top and tore along the perforation, pulling out two long crispy-sweet Pockysticks, the most sought-after snack treat in Japan. The aroma of sweet biscotti and fresh, otherwordly strawberries broke over his tongue. He couldn’t remember why he’d been so angry a moment ago. Maybe this Limbus gig wasn’t so bad. He might even grow to like it.
Strip Search
By Jonathan Maberry
The card was on the floor. I kicked it when I opened the door.
Not the first time somebody slipped something under my office door. At least this time it wasn’t a threat, a fuck-you letter from a girl, a summons, or an eviction notice. Been getting way too many of each of those lately. Economically speaking, this year sucks moose dick.
This was just a business card. It looked crisp and expensive. The kind lawyers sometimes use.
I have three ex-wives, so I left it there. I do not want to hear from another lawyer. Sure, maybe if there was an estate attorney trying to find me to tell me I’d just inherited a mansion and a vault filled with gold bars. But, since the odds on that were on a par with me getting laid this week, I didn’t bother picking up the card.
Instead I went through the ritual. I closed my office door, flopped into the piece o’ crap faux leather chair, sorted through the mail for job offers or checks from satisfied clients, found none of that shit, listened to my answering machine, didn’t hear a thing worth listening to, opened my laptop and checked my agency email, didn’t find anything except a Nigerian prince who wanted to transfer thirty million into my account and an ad for the latest dick pills. Same shit, different day.
I had a mildly masochistic urge to log into my bank account to see how much I had left, but I drank beers until I came to my senses.
Outside it was the kind of spring day that Philadelphia gets a lot of but doesn’t deserve. Maxfield Parrish blue skies, a few sculpted white clouds, temperature in the mid-seventies, and low humidity. The city was pretending to be San Diego, and it fooled a lot of tourists, but only those who weren’t here in the summer, when the humidity and the temperature jump into the low nineties and refuse to fucking budge. For months. I sometimes think the real reason the Founding Fathers started the Revolution was because they were hot and cranky. When Philly summers really start to cook even a Buddhist monk would lock and load and go looking for someone to shoot.
But it was May tenth.
The day was beautiful. I had windows open and the breeze was perfect.
I sat there, sipping a Yuengling and looking at the door, trying to will it to open at the touch of a client with an expensive job.
Nothing.
I was four beers in and the door still remained closed.
I sighed.
I looked around. I run a one-man investigation office. Industrial, domestic, whatever. I’ll look for Hoffa if there’s a paycheck in it. I have a secretary who works on a per diem. Right now there was nothing to type or file, so she was at home with a dozen cats and her skewed perception of reality.
I saw the card on the floor. Yup, still there.
Another beer came and went.
The card was still there.
I would have knocked back a sixth but I didn’t have one. The only thing left in my little cube fridge was a three week old yogurt that was evolving into a new life form.
That was the only reason I got up to get the card. Boredom and no beer.
Funny how things start.
I bent and picked it up.
Frowned at it.
On the front, printed in black on cream stock, raised lettering.
Limbus, Inc.
Are you laid off, downsized, undersized?