She imagined being watched. She heard a soft thump from over her shoulder. She felt a warning zing up the back of her neck. She was being watched.
She did not turn her head. She did not move. She looked only with her eyes, pressed so far to the right it hurt her sinuses.
There was a shadow against the blinds. The blinds were closed. There was a person just on the other side.
The person was neither tall nor short. She did not know if the person could see her. They were not leaving.
If you are seen you will be eaten, the tarantula thought without human vocabulary.
Diane was unintentionally not breathing. When she noticed, she continued to hold her breath. Her hands stayed where they were.
There was a rapid clicking. The doorknob rattled back and forth. She couldn’t remember if she had locked it. She was eventually going to have to breathe. The doorknob rattled.
She breathed. Her breath sounded so loud. Was it always this loud?
The computer flashed to a screen saver. She did not know if this change in light was visible through the blinds.
Again the doorknob rattled. Then a knock. Another. Three hard taps on the door.
There was nothing she could do. She stayed where she was. Did nothing. The shadow returned to the window and stayed for a long moment. She didn’t know how long the moment was. It felt endless to her, motionless in the chair.
Then the shadow blurred as its source moved away from the window. Light began to come in around the blinds’ edges.
She heard a muffled creaking, like wheels. Wheels on a cart. A custodial cart. The sound moved away down the hall.
Diane imagined that custodians worked long hours, and would not be out of the office for some time. Hours maybe. She turned off the computer monitor and waited in Catharine’s office, quietly, alone, breathing.
THE VOICE OF NIGHT VALE
CECIL:… allergies to shellfish, dislike of shellfish, apathy to shellfish, philosophical disagreement with shellfish, or a general uncertainty about the whole concept of shellfish should let the event planners know when making their reservation.
And now a word from our sponsors:
We know that sometimes in life you find yourself with nothing to do but wait. Maybe you have hours to wait. Maybe you have hours to wait hiding in a darkened office until the custodian leaves so that you won’t be caught snooping through confidential files at work. There’s lots of reasons you could be waiting. It just happens to be that the reason you are waiting right now is that one. Yes, we know a lot about you.
Wouldn’t this period of malfeasant waiting be better if you were able to use it, say, catching up on the latest episodes of your favorite TV shows? Think how less boring illegally breaking into your boss’s office would be if you were watching TV right now, Diane.
We all thought better of you.
Hulu Plus: Good for criminals.
This has been a word from our sponsors.
And now a word about librarians. We are all, from our youngest years, warned that the most dangerous, untrustworthy creature is that which stalks our public libraries. We all remember as children having this told to us by frazzled men in rumpled suits clutching ancient tomes to their chests.
“Agggh!” they would say, pointing at a diagram that was just a square with the word LIBRARY written neatly in the middle of it.
“Ouuugh!” they would continue, pointing at the clearest photograph ever taken of a librarian, which is a blurry and badly burnt Polaroid.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” they would conclude, pointing at the first diagram again. It was always a very short presentation.
Then the men would run from our classrooms, looking fearfully around and muttering, “There’s no time, just no time,” and never would be seen again.
These warnings, as playfully conveyed as they were, are serious matters that should be applied to your grown-up, serious life. Librarians are hideous creatures of unimaginable power. And even if you could imagine their power, it would be illegal. It is absolutely illegal to even try to picture what such a being would be like.
So just watch out for librarians, okay?
And now, let’s have a look at traffic.
Here is a man with a new job. Here is a man. He has a new job. So new that he hasn’t actually gone to it yet. He is now only in the process of going to it. It is his first day. Not as a human, but at this job. It is approximately his ten thousandth day as a human. And yet, for all his days, he is not yet very good at being a human. He still makes a lot of mistakes. All that time and he still is unsure of himself.
He drives to his job. His car is nice. Nicer than he can afford, but just as nice as he hopes he can soon afford. His car is aspirational. His gray pin-striped suit, his smile, his silver watch, the way he walks, these are all also aspirational. He doesn’t think of himself as the him that exists in this moment but as the him that will exist soon. He is not far away from the him that he really is. He will be that version of himself very soon.
But then he sees something. It doesn’t matter what. It’s someone dying. It’s sudden and not anyone’s fault, but also could have been prevented. He is sitting in his nice car and he sees this death. And he does not go to his new job. He never does. In fact, since he never actually goes to it, it is not accurate to call it his new job. It is the job he never had. It is a future that, like most futures, never happened.
This has been traffic.
New statistics by the community activist group Citizens for a Transparent Government say that it is as difficult as it has ever been to get through City Hall alive and speak to Mayor Cardinal, that over half of citizens who have appeared before the City Council have been eaten by the council, and that the government is still not transparent.
“I can still totally see them,” said Frankie Ramon, spokesperson for the group. “They’re not even faint outlines in the air, they’re still totally visible, totally opaque. It’s like they’re not even trying.”
Next: a sudden loss of consciousness followed by a waking as a new person, living a new life, but with all the same old questions unanswered. Starting in one, two,
Chapter 16
Jackie dropped off Erika across the street from City Hall. It wasn’t safe for Erika to exist in such close proximity to the source of city law.
“Thanks,” Erika said as they opened the car door.
“Hey,” said Jackie. “Don’t worry about it. Thanks for the cash.”
“You’re a good one, Jackie Fierro,” they said. “And that makes the world a dangerous place for you.”
There was that flutter of wings again, and a dark haze filled the air behind Erika. Once they had unfolded themselves from the car, they stood over seven feet tall, much more than could have fit in Jackie’s compact.
“Be well,” they said, as their feet and then the rest of their body melted down into the sidewalk. “Failing that, Jackie, simply be. Simply continue to be.”
And they were gone into the earth.
“Why did you need a ride if you could do that?” Jackie sighed.
She pulled the car across the street and parked it in the small lot reserved for those visiting the mayor or looking to throw themselves on the terrible whims and absent mercy of the City Council.
City Hall was a majestic building when it was fully uncovered from the black velvet that shrouded it each night. When not covering the building, the velvet sat bunched up on the yellowing lawn. Jackie headed through the arched entrance, not bothering to check in with the guard by the door. The guard wore a mask that blocked all sound and sight, so that he would not see anything he was not supposed to see. Even if she had tried to check in, it would have just added minutes more of frustration to an already frustrating day.