Short Scary Stories

Down Turn

We all have our own ways of dealing with it. Connie from accounts put a jar of Vicks at reception, some people smear their top lip before going in. I just breathe through my mouth, swipe my card and head to my desk looking at my shoes. The stench of the corpses on the ceiling still hits you, but you're not tempted to look up and become one of them.
I've worked here a long time, so my desk is pretty clean. A stack of the monthly company propaganda nobody reads, some coffee cups (SUPER DAD, A Christmas one, you know the drill), and a toe I haven't dared to touch. Some of the newer guys that HR bring in have to sit underneath the liquefying corpse of the poor sucker they replaced. Sandeep, an Indian dude in the next cubicle, is like that. He just sits there shaking most of the day, I don't know what he's supposed to be doing. Once he jumped when a slab of Annette's face landed on his keyboard, but he remembered rule one-and-only: do not look up. Ever. Just keep your head down and keep working, and what you don't see can't hurt you.
In the early days, apparently, you could look at it. Jared in Sales said it looked like a spiderweb of black mold spreading across the ceiling. I didn't really pay attention because he was a boring asshole, but he kept everyone updated with his own little news report until the day it snatched him up like a frog snapping up a fly. He screamed until his lungs flopped onto the photocopier, but we all just kept our head down. Wasn't our business.
Sometimes executives walk through our cubicle farm. They never talk to us, but they make noises about everything being fine. Andrew in IT mutters the usual jokes about the Death Star being ready on time, but I can see he's noticed too. The suits they wear aren't crisp anymore, they're fluffy like mold. That's just the latest fashion or something, right?
Not my concern, I gotta get back to work