“…when the great Demiurge, Faro Lord of Waters and the Word, was setting the world in order, he made women fertile with tomatoes and in return women continue from time to time to make offerings of this vegetable to the god.”
~ Dictionary of Symbols
Blue sky over a green field with short grass. The view of the sky is from a slight angle upward, so the horizon is the ridge of the hill. You can’t see beyond. It’s serene. Motionless. Even the clouds never move. A cursor appears from the edge of the screen, scrolls across the field, and clicks twice. A folder opens, a white box opens over the field filled with hundreds of pdf files. The mouse clicks on one, opening it to reveal another beautiful landscape, a beach this time. Similar ambience to the field. Similar deadness.
The mouse double-clicks on it. A text box appears over the beach.
Typing: A beautiful place to go!
Blue font smelling of Papyrus graces the red sky over the beach. The cursor clicks the photo, unfurling a neat list of options. It clicks SEND, and the file shrinks to the corner in a blink, heralded by a digital whoosh—calling to mind a plane taking off. The beach goes on a trip. The mouse goes back to the folder, clicks on another file. A forest blows up on screen. This time hikers can be seen on the trail, frozen in transit.
Typing: A wonderful place to be!!
SEND.
whoosh.
A serengeti. A cheetah chasing zebras.
Typing: WOW!!!
SEND.
whoosh.
Zee’s face, illuminated in blue. Tired eyes.
A dark room, perfectly square with four desk spaces populated by four bodies, only their faces illuminated by blue screens. Tired eyes, all.
“Hey,” says Elle, not turning to look at anyone, “does ‘Oh, You Betcha!’ have a comma?”
Zee turns to her and asks, “Where?”
“After ‘Oh,’”
“I don’t think so,” chimes in Em, spinning to face them both.
Ignoring her, Zee asks Elle, “Does it read as an exclamatory phrase?”
Elle shrugs, “I just always thought you put a comma before a direct address, and the implied imperative we are speaking to textual ‘You.’ I figured a comma was prudent.”
“Prurient,” corrected Em, incorrectly.
Zee regards Elle’s screen, sees the phrase splayed over a winter wonderland. “Why didn’t you put an apostrophe after ‘Betcha?’”
Elle looks confused, “Because it shouldn’t have one.”
“It’s a contraction, isn’t it?” Zee follows through, “It means ‘bet you.’ So you should put an apostrophe to signify the missing letters.”
“No, that would look awkward”
“So would a comma.”
Elle’s eyebrows raise. “Okay. No comma then.”
“Yes, comma,” chimes in Em. “For accuracy.”
“Fine,” says Elle, ending the matter. The squeak of chairs swiveling back to face their desks. A moment of silence, except for typing.
Zee glances back at Elle, “How’d you come up with ‘Oh, You Betcha?’”
Elle shrugs, “Heard it in a movie.”
Zee’s gaze lingers on Elle, her long black hair flowing over the back of her chair. For some reason, it was Elle’s beautiful hair that made Zee shave all of her own. She looks at Em, the assistant-supervisor, who is already turned away after having successfully assistant-supervised the end of the exchange.
Finally, Zee glances at Kay, the last person in the room, whose headphones blocked out the whole thing.
Zee turns back at her screen and thinks. She swivels her chair around.
“Does anyone want to eat lunch outside today?”
Em spins around again, “I usually eat at my desk.”
“Me, too,” says Elle without turning.
“Yes, I know,” says Zee. “We all eat at our desks every day. I want to change it up. I think it would be nice if someone joined me.” She gave the back of Elle’s head another lingering look.
“We never eat outside, Zee,” says Em.
“I know.”
“Why?”
Zee shrugs. “It’s just the routine we fell into.”
Em pushes, “No, why do you want to eat outside right now? What changed?”
“I told you: I want to change it up. I’ve changed.” Zee feels a rush of exhilaration. Potential terror and joy mingle in the crucible of the moment. She hopes Elle says yes and Em gets hit by a train.
Elle sighs and finally turns around. “Let’s call Queue.”
“I agree,” pipes in Em.
Zee clams up. “Why?”
Elle answers, “I don’t think we should discuss going outside without consulting our supervisor first.”
“I agree,” says Em again.
Kay remains glued to her screen, her headphones locked in place.
Elle stands and pushes a button next to the only door to the room. Into it, she says, “Hey, Queue, it’s us. We gotta question.”
A few moments pass. Zee can feel the future shrinking to a pinpoint.
The door opens, and Queue enters. Em stands reverentially. Queue is shorter than everyone, even shorter than Zee, but carries herself with the arbitrary authority she’s been granted.
“Queue, good to see you!” Em shakes her hand.
“Haha, come on, Em, no need, I saw you like two days ago,” Em sits. Queue leans on Zee’s desk, holding a coffee mug with nothing in it.
“So what’s shaking? How do my favorite copywriters do?”
“We do well!” answers Em.
“Zee has a question,” says Elle.
Queue’s gaze rakes over Zee’s body. Zee feels small.
“I just,” her words catch in her throat, “wanted to know if it’s okay if we take lunch outside today.”
Queue’s voice immediately cascades into blustering words, “Whoa now, hey now, cool idea!”
“So I can?” says Zee.
“I mean, yeah you can,” Queue’s bluster continues, “go out for lunch, if you can find your way outside. That’s what you want, and we can’t take away what you want, but since it’s outside you want, I shouldn’t think—I don’t see why not—I mean, I like the idea, but I wouldn’t advise it. You can do it, if you can do it.”
“I don’t understand,” says Zee, “is there a rule against it?”
Queue gives a queasy smile. “No, yeah, you totally can, just try not to, y’know? It’s gonna be a toughie to pull off. I just mean, just, you have just half an hour for lunch. It’s what?—noon, now. Just make sure you can get outside, eat, and be back before time runs out, y’know? That’s all I mean.”
Zee is even smaller than the pinpoint of the future.
Queue is already out the door mid-sentence, “Wonderful job, everyone, we look forward to seeing your reports at the end of the week. Don’t hesitate to call me for anything else, and um don’t eat lunch outside.”
Her voice is far down the hallway. A door slams.
Elle shuts the office door and returns to her desk, “That was pretty clear.”
Em sits and types Great Scott! Great Spot! above a concrete housing complex.
Zee gives Elle a look, attempting to convey a spectrum of emotion for which she doesn’t have language. Shapes sit unformed outside the boundaries of reality. Elle receives Zee’s look, its message evaporating like morning dew. Elle swivels to face her workstation.
Zee looks at the other three, including Kay, who didn’t even notice Queue had been present. There is no need for language in these moments, for nuance. There is only the choice: stay or leave. Zee opens a drawer at her desk and retrieves a lumpy brown paper bag. She rises to her feet. She opens the door and exits the room.
Elle turns, as the door slams shut. She looks at her screen. She picks up a plastic container and stands.
“Really?” Em tosses in Elle’s direction as she heads out the door. Em glances at Kay, still blanketed by her headphones. Em feels the crushing loneliness of having no one to hector. She gathers a tinfoil wrap and goes out the door.
The room is quiet.
“Hey, guys, is there a comma in ‘Oh, My God?’” Kay takes off her headphones and surveys the empty room. “Guys?”
The hallway is white walls. Gray carpet floors. Fluorescent light ceilings span seemingly for miles.
Zee, Elle, and Em walk slowly. Zee checks the brown doors they pass. More dark rooms with blue lights, none of them occupied. Some open to further winding hallways. She doesn’t check every door.
Em: “Let’s just get to the elevator”
Elle: “Yeah, stop disturbing these people’s offices, Zee. What are you doing?”
“We walk past them every day,” says Zee, “they’re empty at the beginning and the end, wanted to see if they stay that way.”
Elle snaps, “Well they don’t go outside, that’s obvious.”
Zee is feeling a strange elation. The unexpected flow of blood to her legs and brain have sent her on a wild ride. The trio rounds the corner where an elevator door stands sentinel. An out of order sign hangs above, inscribed like Dante’s third Canto.
Zee: “That wasn’t there this morning.”
Em: “I always take the elevator.”
Zee: “We all do.”
“I don’t know how to get outside without it,” says Em. “I ride the subway to the station below the building and take the elevator up to our floor. That’s how I always get to work.”
It’s how they all get to work.
“Maybe Queue set up the sign,” says Elle, “to stop us.”
“Stairs,” says Zee, avoiding the thought of the sign as a diversionary tactic.
“I’m not walking all the way down to the lobby!” says Em.
“No,” says Zee, “let’s find out what floor connects to the neighboring parking building and use that to get outside.”
“But what floor is that?” asks Elle.
Zee can feel energy sapping from the others. Soon, they would turn back, and she’d be on her journey alone. Desperately, she goes to the last door at the end of the hallway.
This time, she finds someone inside. In a dark editing bay, a woman sits hunched in front of a half-dozen screens displaying the same repeating footage: a different woman on a bed, completely nude.
Zee only sees the image for a flash, but its details carve themselves into her memory: full-figured, the woman’s naked body lies draped on her side, her exposed bosom resting amply on the lush bed of a Minoan-style palace. Her black hair falls in succulent curls on the cushions around her copper-toned skin. An equally curly muff entices from between her thighs. She holds a tomato in her hand. She has just taken a bite, like it’s an apple, and speaks through the translucent scarlet juices dripping down her face.
The six screens display six identical goddesses, all speaking simultaneously. In contrast to the visual tone of luxurious peace, her pitch is high and manic:
“You’re just in time!—”
“You’re just in time!—”
“You’re just in time!—”
“You’re just in time!—”
“You’re just in time!—”
“You’re just in time!—”
The nude figure’s voice replays endlessly, the fruit’s flesh sloshing in sync.
Zee starts, “Excuse me—”
Glued to her work, the hunched editor shrieks, “Screw off, skinhead!”
Zee shuts the door and backs away. She turns to the others. “She’s busy.”
The stairwell is tannish, no drywall on the unpainted concrete. Yellow lights above the doors. The trio clanks down the metal stairs and enters the floor below, which sports the same white, gray, fluorescent layout as the above hallway. Taking this in, Zee goes to the door corresponding to the editing bay she found above.
She opens the door and finds an identical editing bay. This time, the screen shows the hunched woman from the above floor. Zee can make out the six screens within each screen, also displaying the Minoan palace scene. Thirty-six tiny goddesses bite thirty-six tomatoes inside their electric blue multiverse. The woman at the seat in this editing bay is, in fact, the actress from the scene. Her black curls fall around her shoulders. Garbed in office casual attire, she turns to look at Zee, who can’t help but picture the copper-toned naked shapes carved in her memory.
Audio from the six screens replays:
“Screw off, skinhead!”
“Screw off, skinhead!”
“Screw off, skinhead!”
“Screw off, skinhead!”
“Screw off, skinhead!”
“Screw off, skinhead!”
The full-figured editor smiles, “You’re just in time!”
Zee shuts the door and backs away. She blinks off the discomfort. She looks further down the hall and discovers that the other two have not waited for her. She rushes around the corner to catch up, wondering if she should tell them about what she just saw.
Further down the hall, Em falls behind Elle. An ajar door reveals another hallway, through which something catches Em’s eye. She pushes it open and finds Queue waving at her.
“Hey, Em, come’ere!”
Em glances at her two companions marching onward, unbeknownst to her departure. She steps through the door. Queue puts her arm around Em’s shoulder and begins walking her down this new hallway. Being shorter than Em, Queue struggles to get up and around. Em hunches to allow the side-hug.
“Em, I wanna thank you for all the good work you’ve been doing for us. The boys upstairs really love it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Ha! I told you long ago, Em, there’s no ‘Ms. Inntescense’ here. Just your best good friend, Queue.”
“Yes, I remember,” Em glances down the way she came, watching it sink away. “The others are gonna lose track of me—”
“This’ll take just a moment,” Queue turns her down another hallway. Em struggles to remember the way back. More egresses and splits occur on this floor.
“Em, the boys upstairs asked me to ask you about something you asked earlier.” She takes a photo out of her suit jacket pocket, a printout of Elle’s winter wonderland ad. The words Oh, You Betcha! stare back at her.
“Oh,” she says.
“You betcha!” Queue bursts out laughing. “No, but really. We wanted to point out that, while it’s a very creative phrase, we find the comma a little awkward.”
“But Elle wrote this,” Em starts.
“But you had final say as assistant-supervisor, no?”
“But Zee said—”
“No one likes a blamer, Em. You gotta watch these sheep carefully lest they sprout fangs, know what I mean?”
Em doesn’t know what she means. Having nothing to say, she nods.
“Good girl, let’s take this upstairs to talk about your future with our organization.”
They’ve reached the end of the hallway, where Queue unlocks a hidden elevator door.
“Hey, where’s Em?” asks Elle, looking back. The long hallway gapes empty behind the pair.
“Maybe, she went to the bathroom,” says Zee, trying to swallow the knot in her throat. Zee feels relief mixed with shame and excitement at being alone with Elle.
“I don’t like this,” Elle shivers.
“We’ll figure this out,” says Zee, trying to take charge and appear powerful. “Let’s ask someone for help. Someone on this floor has to know how to get outside.”
“There hasn’t been anyone anywhere!”
“This level mirrors ours,” says Zee, an idea striking. “Let’s go to our office.”
She runs ahead, leaving Elle no choice but to follow. They arrive at the door matching the one to their four-desk office on the floor above. Zee pushes it open. She gasps.
A large office space with dozens upon dozens of cubicles span before them. Completely deserted. Papers lay scattered on the floor. A broken desk lamp hangs by its cord, as if watching its shattered guts split on the floor below it.
“What the heck?” says Zee, stepping inside.
“What are you doing?” Elle’s voice is squeaky with fear.
“If they left, that means there could be a path outside.” Zee waves for her to follow.
“You’re still on about that?” squeals Elle, “Let’s just go back, eat at our desks, and forget all about this!”
Zee remembers that Kay is still in the office. This might be her last chance to be alone with Elle. She keeps going into the office. Elle releases a tense whine, then follows. They step over chairs, going deeper into the cubicle bullpen. Along the walls of this expansive space, doors stand wide open. Empty single-office rooms sleep beyond them. The silence is eerie—until it’s broken by a sound—a muffled sound, maybe a voice, maybe human. Zee picks up the pace at the sound and marches deeper, Elle in tow.
Zee passes open office after open office, glancing into each one, finding nothing after nothing after— She stops. There is one closed door. A handprint in wet reddish liquid resides on the beige surface. Zee hears another muffled sound, maybe a voice, maybe human. She steps carefully toward the door. Over her shoulder, Elle mouths no-no-no-no-no-no. Zee breathes deep, then grabs the doorknob and turns. It swings open.
Queue sits behind a desk, “Oh, hey, guys!”
“Queue?”
Sat in a messy office, she slices a tomato.
“Whatcha doing here? You never visit me. Aw, that’s so nice! Instead of taking lunch outside, you’re taking it here! Aw, that’s so nice.”
“Well, um, we didn’t know… What happened here?”
“Uhm?” Queue peers past Zee and Elle into the cubicle abyss. “Oh, everyone’s out to lunch.”
“Out to lunch?”
“Yup. Word got around about your exciting idea to eat outside, and I guess it inspired everyone.”
Zee’s eyebrows lifted, “So they’re outside?”
“No, they’re downstairs. Still. A change of scenery.”
The muffled sound again, this time accompanied by thumping. Faraway bumps, like the heartbeat of a whale.
“I was actually just about to join, if you guys wanna tag along.”
“Well…” Zee can’t find the words.
Elle picks them up for her, “We wanted to eat outside, as you know.”
“That’s right,” says Queue, “then how ‘bout I just introduce you to the gang. It’s a real treat having you down here. I’ll introduce you to my work-wife, Bee!”
Her grip is tight on Zee’s shoulder. She leads Zee past Elle, who yet again must follow.
“My department is a real chum bucket of chums!” says Queue in her characteristically chipper timbre.
“I thought we were your department,” says Elle.
“You are! You’re my buddies! But I report to the guys upstairs. I’m their buddy, so you don’t have to be. Come on.”
“But we are downstairs.”
The trail winds through the bullpen ruin. More red handprints appear on the cubicle walls. Another series of thumps, accompanied by muffled laughter. Queue takes them to the back corner of the enormous room. A short staircase leads down to a brick wall. Dozens of red handprints cover a metal door at the bottom.
“Go on.”
Zee doesn’t move. Wonders hysterically about throwing her boss down the steps. Elle strides past and obeys the supervisor’s command. Zee quickly steps past and moves down the steps, insistent on facing the uncertain future first.
Another thump, much louder, emits from behind the metal door.
“Go on,” Queue says again.
Powerless to refuse, Zee grabs the rusted handle. Shifts it up and pushes inward. The door swings open.
A vast room. Firelight glows from within a massive boiler in the back. The black walls and concrete floor are lined with wide sheets of plastic. Dozens of women are spread out wearing business casual attire—all on their knees. In the center of the room stands a figure draped in bright, billowy, almost satin-like clothing. Its face is painted white with a jagged black line dissecting from right eyebrow to left cheek. On either side of this line is lime green and sensual scarlet.
It is a clown. Zee can’t tell the gender of the person under the costume. The makeup is thick, and the tent-like suit disguises the body’s shape. On top of its head, the clown’s massive shag of black hair has been greased into the shape of a harlequin’s headpiece. The clown is lunging around the room, tossing tomatoes into the faces of every person on her knees. The red juice splatters their faces; the chunks fly in every direction. They are wheezing with laughter. Every once in a while, the clown picks up a big hammer—a real sledgehammer—and swings it down on a pile of tomatoes, smashing chunky shrapnel onto the gathered coworkers, who cheer in response. The tomato juice leaves angry-looking red splotches on their skin. The end of the hammer emits a powerful thump. During this exhibition, the clown never smiles. It snarls and gnashes its teeth, airing its growls into high-pitched yelps of fury.
Queue points, “There’s Bee: my work-wife.” A short woman with a shaved head waves. “She’s not really my wife, y’know, just a little joke we have.” A tomato smashes Bee in the face. A mark, red with juice and pain, blossoms on her cheek.
Bee and Queue roar with laughter. “Not quite ‘food for the feeding,’” the supervisor says, “but I think we’re getting closer. We like to have fun with lunch.” She turns her leering face to Zee, “Wanna join?”
At that same moment, the clown turns its head to look at Zee. Zee looks back, and in that moment recognition lances her worrisome boil of a brain. The eyes flashing with rage from within the makeup, which no doubt disguises copper-toned skin. The curly black hair greased into the strange hat shape. The curvy hips hidden beneath the spacious costume. The Minoan goddess now squawks in monstrous horror amid cackling martyrs.
Almost as if enraged at Zee’s realization, the squealing clown lobs a tomato at her. Zee lurches to the side, pulling free of Queue’s grip. The red veggie splats Elle square on the nose, red fluid runs down her face, mixed with blood from her nose. An angry rash blooms on her skin beneath the juice. Zee’s shame will outlive her. The crowd of coworkers erupts into gleeful chanting,
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
The call rings out all over the boiler room. The women leap to their feet and rush the newcomers. Zee instinctively lunges away from the wormy mass. Her hand grips Elle’s, and they turn toward stairs. The mob grabs Elle’s other hand, violently tugging her back into the room. Zee stares, helpless, at Elle’s expression of shock, betrayal, outrage, and finally: doom.
The mob pulls Elle into the darkness. The door slams shut, leaving Zee at the bottom of the stairs alone. Zee bangs on the door for a good long time, long enough to show just how valiant her feelings are for her stolen crush. But all that calls back is the resounding echoes of her weak fists on the cold, red metal.
Kay opens another door. She has been wandering up and down the hallways and stairs, looking for her officemates, but completely at a loss at how to get back to her office. She doesn’t have a good sense of direction. She hears laughter. Might be them! She follows the sound through the walls to a door in the corner. She decides it is polite to knock. The door swings open, and eleven or twelve executives in suits sit chortling around a conference table. They bear the same short haircut in the same metallic gray.
“Welcome, dearie!” says one, “Always room for one more!”
“Thank you,” says Kay, “but I’m actually searching for my coworkers.”
“Of course!” says a second woman. “Come in and tell us all about them.”
“Thank you,” says Kay.
The door shuts behind her. She’s never been in a conference room before. It’s more spacious than any room she’s ever been in. The table alone spans longer than her childhood bedroom. Kay looks up at a large portrait on the wall, depicting a curvaceous woman lounging nude in a Minoan style bedroom.
Saucy, Kay thinks to herself. She sinks into an empty seat.
“We’re about to start our lunch,” says a third executive, “join us for a bit before moving on, won’t you?”
“I won’t argue with that,” says Kay.
“That’s the spirit!” says a fourth.
“Good man!” says a fifth.
The executives start donning bibs.
“So,” says the sixth executive, the largest, at the end of the table, “are you hourly or salaried?”
“I get paid sourly,” says Kay with a smile. It’s a joke she always uses because it always kills.
It kills now. The uppercrust women burst into guffaws that crackle like scattering pigeons.
“I like her!” says the sixth executive. “Let’s keep her.”
“What department did she say she was?” asks a seventh, seated beside the sixth.
“Don’t think she did quite say,” says the eighth.
“Copywriting,” says Kay.
“That’s why the wit!” says the ninth.
“Well you’re in our department now,” says the sixth executive. “Use that wit to keep us old sows sharp!”
“You can’t mean it,” says Kay, dumbfounded. “You don’t even know me!”
“You’re with the company in the first place, which means you’re a fine fellow with decent sense.” The sixth executive interlocks her fingers pensively. “Your determination and courage affords you the exemplary qualities required by our growing organization. Why, a rising star such as yourself may even find yourself in my seat one day.”
Kay couldn’t believe her ears.
“We can talk about it over lunch.”
“Speaking of!” says the tenth executive.
Kay looks up to see the door on the other end of the conference room. It opens, and a secretary enters dressed as a waiter—a cummerbund and cartoonish bowtie sit awkwardly over her dress. The waiter-secretary pushes a cart bearing an enormous silver platter covered by a shiny dome lid.
“Yumbly-rumbly in my tumbly!” says the eleventh or twelve.
With great effort, the waiter-secretary shoves the covered platter from the cart onto the table. Kay notices the ensemble licking their lips and smacking their chops, but none of them have forks or knives.
The waiter-secretary clasps the handle of the lid and says, “Lunchtime!”
She pulls it off. Kay clasps her hand over her mouth to smother a scream.
Em lays fetally on the silver platter. At the uncovering, her body flexes outward like a tree. In fact, at first Kay thinks Em is also wearing a costume, but upon closer inspection, her naked torso is mottled with bark-like rhytidome. Her limbs stretch into branches. Her taut skin splits in places, revealing intertwisted twigs replacing her musculature. Her pink flesh turns gray-brown on the way down. Her abdomen sags heavily into a bloated trunk covered in scabrous scales. Her folded legs remain stuck, slowly fusing together via a viscous sap. Em’s eyes, alive and wild, rove around the room before landing on her coworker seated among the suited women.
Her lips split open, spouting more sap, “Kay?”
“Didn’t realize we still had Spanish-speaking employees,” says the sixth executive in full sincerity. She climbs onto the table and gallops like a gorilla toward the platter.
The other ten or eleven chant as they watch their leader:
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
“Food for the feeding!”
The large executive skids to a stop just in front of Em. With her left hand, she grabs the smaller woman’s upper arm and twists it painfully. A crack forms in the hardened flesh above Em’s armpit. Using her right hand, the executive jabs her palm into Em’s breast. Kay winces, as Em emits a deep-throated grunt. The scaly flesh crunches under the blow. The breast depresses into Em’s torso. The executive twists further and jabs again. Another tortured grunt. The crack grows bigger. Another twist, another jab, another grunt, and a cherry tomato pops out of Em’s armpit.
The crowd cheers.
“Now we’re talking!” says one, clambering onto the table to grab the fallen fruit. Rather than eat it, she tosses the tomato, and one of the others catches it in her mouth.
“Feed here!” shouts another.
The women stand and clamor around the table, reaching desperately toward the large woman and her mutated tomato plant. The leader smacks again. Another grunt. Another tomato. Another feeding.
The sixth executive smiles, “Fully neöxidized for the freshest produce!”
“Oh, my God.” Woozy, Kay rises to her feet and backs away from the chair. Her stomach floats above her heavy feet. She tries to flee, but vomits on the chair.
An executive grimaces, face smothered in tomato juice, “Disgusting.”
Elsewhere, Zee stands in a narrow hallway alone. She banged on the red door as long as she could before remembering she still wanted to make it outside for lunch. The solitude has made her delirious. She wandered offices, hallways, and stairwells before landing on this spot.
A door with a bar marked exit stands at the end, several yards in front of her.
Zee hesitates. It could be a trick. She thinks. Far behind her is her desk. Her blue light in her small room. In front of her is unknown. Could be more clowns and Queue. Could be a blue light in a bright, worldwide room.
Zee walks. She jogs. She runs. She sprints. She slams against the door, and it gives way.
White light, too bright to see. Heat, too hot to touch. Zee lifts a hand to shield herself. She summons resolve to weather the temperature. For a few seconds, it’s as if she can feel the photons penetrate and bounce off her own pathetic particle field. Her eyes strengthen. The light weakens, but the heat does not. She sees a blue sky. Glorious, oceanic, healthy blue sky. She lowers her gaze and discovers the top floor of the parking structure. Cars fill all the spots.
“I don’t know anyone who owns a car,” Zee says aloud.
Standing on the black asphalt, she turns and regards the silver leviathan whose bowels she bested. The office building looms. An impervious zit of steel and glass, sentinel of mankind, striking out of the earth defiantly, vying to scrape the sky. Large words, a red sign, graces the utmost floor:
ALPHABET GARDENS.
The reflective surface of the windows becomes too much for Zee’s eyes, so she casts her gaze to the side. The parking garage rises to the half point on the skyscraper’s midriff. A desert expands endlessly in every direction. But from this height, she can see the sea. A thin membrane of shimmering dark gray rests just between the edge of the desert and the horizon. An ugly haze blankets the rest. Distant mountains. Nothing else. Nothing.
Zee’s flicker of victory quickly dampens. She remembers that she misses Elle. She feels the sunlight reflecting off the building’s windows and onto the asphalt, compounding the heat. She turns back to face the lot and spots something. A picnic table in the middle of the asphalt. She squints. Queue sits waving at her.
“Hey!” Queue calls.
Zee has no words.
“Come on over!”
Having accepted the unknown, Zee trudges. The black asphalt is unbearably hot beneath her shoes.
“So glad you could make it,” says Queue as Zee arrives. “I realized eating outside was a delightful idea, and I decided to join you.”
The table is laden with bread. Sliced ham. Cheese. Mustard. Lettuce leaves blow away in the blistering breeze. Queue spreads mayonnaise on a piece of bread then sticks the knife in a jar, cooking in the sun. Zee sits across from her. The shade on her knees beneath the table does nothing to quell the impossible temperature. She realizes that every second of her day and night is spent in an air conditioned container. She discovers how dependent she is on the leviathan, its intestinal maze, its lifeless ecosystem; she is its musty barnacle.
Queue continues making herself a sandwich. Zee looks down, her paper bag still tightly clutched in her fist. It’s been there the entire journey. The brown paper is wrinkled like withered skin. She uncurls the opening and pulls out an apple.
“Where is Elle?”
“Pardon?” asks Queue.
“What are they doing to her?”
“She was chosen,” her tone is casual, “Food for the feeding, y’know.”
“I don’t.” Zee feels like a husk. “I don’t know.” For a frightening moment, she thinks about taking the mayonnaise knife and— “I don’t know anything about our culture, Queue. Who are the ads for?” Zee starts trembling. “Who can afford to travel to those places? Do they even exist?” Her jaw clicks as she talks. “Why are you doing this to us?”
Zee stops when she notices Queue giving her a look of softness that Zee has never seen from her.
“Can I tell you a story? I’m not sure if it will answer your questions, but something you said reminded me of it. Do you know Yu from Legal? You probably don’t. She works on the nineteenth floor. My boss hands me the Electronic Routing Sheet for the Ligotti Copy Bundle. It’s that project we did back in 2017 during the Koros strike—ah, you wouldn’t know, it’s not important to the story. My boss tells me we need Legal’s signature on it by next week. So I’m trying to reach Yu on Friday, ‘cause I need it signed by EOD, otherwise it’s sitting there all weekend, and before you know it, it’s Monday, and that’s next week, and the strike’s worsened, and my, y’know, it’s my ass if I don’t get them in, but she isn’t getting back to me. I get her number from Aitch-Arh in HR, and I text her, ‘Hey, Yu, please sign that ELRS by EOD or it’s my A-S-S (haha).’ I wanted to keep it light but also convey the urgency… And she doesn’t respond! And I’m like where is this woman?”
Queue finishes making her sandwich and begins eating it. Zee remembers how hungry she is. She bites her apple, feels her cheek muscles clench from want of use. Zee notices the sweat on Queue’s forehead. The heat must be getting to her, too. Zee’s never heard Queue swear this much.
Through chewing: “I’m thinking, she better not be taking a flex day, because she knows that end of the week is busiest for those ELRSes. She needs to stand by, ready to sign. I’m about ready to tear into her once I catch hold. I mean, I really raring to go! It’s twenty-to-four when I get a text: ‘Sorry about the delay! I was out with Ehks,’ and I’m like, ‘Ehks? What is the goddamn assistant-CTO doing going to lunch with a goddamn clerk in Legal?’ Doesn’t add up. Is she lying? So I call up Technology, and ask if Ehks is out for lunch, and they say, ‘Yes, she is,’ and I say, ‘with whom?’ and they say, ‘a Ms. Ülk in Legal.’ Well, what do you know? So, okay, she’s not lying. They did go to lunch together. I ask what the nature of the lunch was, and—you won’t believe it—Ehks’ secretary didn’t know.”
Zee’s vision grows hazy. Her apple turns sour in her mouth. She feels sweat trickle down her back.
“Secretaries know everything! She was hiding something, I knew it! So I print out the ELRS that Yu needed to sign. By now it’s five-thirty-something, EOD is rising like The Sun Also… I go up to Legal and wait by Yu’s desk. She finally shows up, surprised to see me. I explain that my boss is on my ass, and my ass is grass if she don’t pony up da dough—by ‘dough,’ I mean the signature, of course. I needed to keep it light, or else she’d be on to me that I was on to her. Playing along, Yu bends over to sign it, and I get a quick look at the back of her neck, and—Zee, you won’t fucking believe it—tiny disturbances on the back hairs of her neck. You know how someone wears a ponytail, it leaves several errand strands sticking to the back of the neck? It’s the strands they never see or fix. The back of the neck is the ultimate weak spot: if you hold it with your hand, you can be gentle when kissing her, or, y’know, a little more draggin’ around, if she’s into the rough stuff—always with permission, though, you know me: safety first.”
Queue finishes eating her sandwich and reaches inside her clothes. She winces and produces a large tomato.
“Those back-neck strands were brushed aside, and beneath them: tiny, tiny scratches! Clear as day! From Ehks’ disgusting, unshaven face as she kissed Yu. Without a doubt in my mind, I had proof they were meeting in secret for the purpose of carnal relations!”
Queue takes a bite of the tomato.
“Now this is where I embarrass myself. I’m still in a joking mood, I can’t help it. I point at Yu and yell at the top of my lungs, ‘Aha! I caught you red-necked!’”
Queue releases a fire hose of hysterical laughter. Tomato chunks fly everywhere.
“How does that answer my question?” asks Zee.
“It’s really obvious that you have a crush on Elle.”
Zee is flabbergasted. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Everybody knows. Even the boys upstairs, and they don’t give a shit about you. All you do is stare at her. Me and the boys upstairs think it’s a good idea for her to switch departments. I’m thinking Agriculture. She’d do well there, stir up another crush for us to sweep away, ha ha, it’s probably that sexy lazy eye.”
“Stop.”
Queue smiles, “You do realize she lodged a complaint against you, right? Because of all the gaping? She was too polite to say it to your face. What a sweetie. You do good work, Zee, I’d hate to lose you. No way I can fire you over gawking. We were thinking of giving you a written notice to stop, but that would’ve made things awkward in your office. Definitely would’ve affected workflow and cubicle culture. So this is best, I think.”
“Shut up.”
Queue laughs again, “As Elle’s superior, I’m not allowed to officially comment. But just between you and me: I get it. Sure, yeah, Elle’s an office fox. I would too, if there wasn’t a whole power-dynamic going on—in fact, the power-dynamic is what makes it extra tasty—but all the same, can’t touch the stuff, y’know? Though that’d be some extra tasty fucking snuff.” She winked.
“Shut your face!” Zee grabs the knife from the mayonnaise jar and stands. The momentum tips the jar, spilling mayo all over Queue. The woman only laughs.
Zee screams, “I’ll kill you!” She lifts her arm, brandishing the knife. No one around them. Nothing to stop her. Nothing. Her muscles tense. Her body freezes. Queue howls with laughter, mayo and tomato juice flicking off with every giggling jolt. Zee wants to. Zee has to. Zee could stab her in the face, then jump over the edge of the garage. No one would catch her. Only the welcoming earth below. Freedom in oblivion’s warm embrace.
Stab her in the face. Stab her in the face. Stab her in the face.
“Everybody’s gotta eat something, kiddo!”
Zee flips around and runs back to the building. Apple core and knife clatter onto the asphalt.
Queue calls out: “Aw screw off, skinhead!”
She throws the tomato, but it splatters on the asphalt and sizzles in the sun.
Zee bursts through the door, cool internal air swallows her body.
Down the hallway.
Up the stairs.
and back in the office. Zee slams the door behind her. The room is dark. The screens dream in black. She sits at her desk and moves her mouse. Blue life returns and illuminates the three empty desks around the room. Zee looks over at Elle’s seat. Empty. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Zee perks up her ears, listening for Queue chasing her. For Kay or Em wandering back. Neither happens. She looks at the clock: twelve-thirty. She looks at her screen and finds a new message. She opens a pdf image. Warm torch-light. The raven-haired goddess smiles at Zee from the bedroom within the photo. Full-figured, the woman’s naked body lies draped on her side, her exposed bosom resting amply on the lush bed of the familiar Minoan palace. Her black hair falls in succulent curls on the cushions around her copper-toned skin. An equally curly muff entices from between her thighs. She holds a tomato in her hand. She has just taken a bite, like it’s an apple. The translucent scarlet juices drip down her face.
Zee types:
You’re just in time!
SEND.
whoosh.
All artwork by Jorge Peña. Originally published in DRIPPY TRIPPY DOOM.
Doompunk Dispatch 