Sam adjusted the garbage bags in the far corner carefully. The time leading up to Halloween was seldom as nightmarish as the weeks before Christmas, but this year, the Haunted office decorations had been more intense than usual.
She had been wracking her brains for ideas. The other people on the admin team, Janet and Amrit especially, had had no idea what to do this year. The competition for a free lunch was fierce, and Sam’s nerves were frayed.
The already nightmarish mountains of paperclips around her desk seemed to grow by the minute. Flurries of sticky notes surrounded her like snow. The work was fast paced, and now, this; even the office supplies seemed to be mocking her, ganging up her... It had to be the stress of the season and her lack of sleep lately. Had to be. She rubbed her eyes and pulled some more tape from the roll. Alone in this empty cubicle, at least she didn’t have to stare at her desk, and at all the work that was waiting for her tomorrow.
The garbage bag fluttered in the air conditioning. The wall was covered, the window slide was covered, and the third side was blanketed in dark plastic, but the entrance was still waiting for her. Holding her torn garbage bag in one hand and groping for the top of the cubicle with the other, she stepped from the chair to the desk precariously. Doing this with help would have been better, but necessity was the mother of invention, and desperation, the mother of stupidity. Sam tried to cheer herself up with the thought of weeks off with pay if she ended up with a workplace injury. Thoughts of hyperbolically messy leg wounds and cracking her head open invaded her thoughts gorily. Sam decided that thinking about horribly broken limbs was inviting fate, and concentrated on her task.
Holding her breath, she pressed the masking taped edges to the ceiling and fumbled for the overlaps on the adjoining bag.
There, perfect. Now for the second layer, thought Sam. The walls and roof were now shrouded in darkness. Resenting that she was alone for the task, Sam worked her way around the second layer.
The bags covered evidence of the world outside the cubicle quite well, draping sleekly over the wrap-around, faux arborite desk. Everything was darkness, and even the sunlight through the blinds near the entrance couldn’t penetrate it.
With everything blocked off, Sam suddenly felt keenly aware of how alone she was.
Not a fax or printer beeped. Not a cell phone rang. Her own, charging back at the desk, was out of reach. She suddenly craved music, even footsteps, but apart from air conditioning and a faint sound of the light, there was only silence.
Sam shook her head. Come on, she thought. It’s just a haunted house. Cubicle. Not even a real haunted house. Just a friggin’ cubicle. Precariously, she reached up for the light and started taping the square halogen over. The red tissue paper fluttered in her fingertips. Resisting the masking tape almost playfully.
She overlapped three wide panels, and it was done. The shroud of darkness now had cherry-red lighting illuminating its shining surfaces. The sanguine gleam was as eerie as she’d hoped.
A rustle in the sealed walls made her startle. Just the air conditioner, she thought. Just the AC.
Sam decided not to think about horror movies. The idea of a beast lurking, unseen in the vents, coming out to maul homeless people and interns, waiting for a temp like her to be alone.
Silly, she thought. Don’t be a dumbass. A largish predator would leave dung and corpses. They’d smell it coming.
She giggled, cutting the silence. It sounded a little hysterical. Gathering her wits, she extracted the roll of ‘bloody gauze’ and the “caution” tape. Hanging the gauze from the doorway, she taped the yellow ‘danger’ emblazoned plastic strips at odd angles around the room. The plastic darkness was fluid angels and curves in the room subtly shifted in wrong ways.
