Works

A piece of existential horror, for anyone who has ever worked in an office...

The scaffolding started going up at around half-seven this morning.

There's always construction work going on in the city, so no-one really noticed the noise over the traffic, until the structure started going up in front of our windows, and the sound of boots and metal on metal pressed in over the persistent hum of computers and air-conditioners.

Here on the third floor, that happened at around ten, although it's difficult to give an exact time with any certainty: the side of the building that's away from the street only has very small, high-up windows, so it could have been going up from a little earlier round there, and we wouldn't have seen it.

Anyway, around then-ish, one of us asked our office manager what was going on, just out of interest. He shrugged, suggested it was just a bit of cosmetic surgery for the distressed concrete 1950s carbuncle, and strode off to do something managerial and important in a different part of the office.

That seemed reasonable enough. The stretch-and-compression of 50 odd years of nights and days had etched long, thin hairline cracks into the grey finish; nothing too worrying structurally, but if you looked close at the front of the building, you could easily see them.

Curiosity sated, we went back to work.

At 12, buying lunch, out on the street, I looked around to see if I could find any of the scaffolders that had turned the day into such a mess of clanking, cluttering and criss-crossing shadows. By now, the structure reached so high that it almost took on an identity of it's own, seperate from our building... up around the eighth floor it continued to grow, but the noon sun, so high in the sky, threw the workers totally into shadow, so that they were little more than a mess of movement and furtive noise up there.

It was easy to imagine the cold, dark and fibrous structure growing organically in the heat and humidity of the day.

I shook that particular nasty thought off, threw my crusts down for the birds, and went back to work.

At around 3.30, a rumour started to flutter down from the IT guys that the work was continuing on past the 18th floor... one of them was up working in management (that's the top floor, 20) and had been able to look down on the approaching upper platforms of the structure from the windows there.

Word came down with them that it was a bigger job than we'd first thought; that there might be structural work being done. As is typical hereabouts, actual solid information was difficult to come by about a functional thing like that, and yet, if someone from accounts had had sex with someone from marketing, or the cute new girl in human resources turned out to be gay, news of it would spill down the corridors like floodwater, instantly reaching every point in the building.

By 4.30, you no longer noticed the long, alien, geometric shadows that the bars threw across each office.

The noise had subsided as construction continued upwards, until there was only the smallest irregular vibration singing down to us along the tubes from high above.

Now, even that had stopped, and the only noise was the lazy tapping of fingers on keyboards, and the last minute clicking of mouse-buttons in the afternoon heat.

And then at 5, the daily exodus. But today, those of us that put in till exactly 5-o-clock spilled into the building's reception area to find the slackers who habitually left ten minutes early standing, vexed and irritable, in front of tightly closed doors. Bewildered muttering escalated to agitated flustering as each new arrival compulsively checked and rechecked the firmness of each door, despite the obvious dark weight of the scaffolding showing through the textured glass.

Caretakers were called, keys were tried, and by about 6, panic started to bubble through the ranks. The odd managers who remained at work on the upper floors were called, but they didn't have a clue what might be going on, and some even threatened dire consequences if the situation hadn't been sorted by the time they left for home.

But by 8, they were all sitting in the foyer with the rest of us.

Some people had started crying when it was discovered that all outside phonelines were down... And I think to be honest that their will might have been stronger had it not been for a workday spent under the oppressive weight of all that metal.

The internet, despite the IT guys' best efforts, was no longer accessible, and the scaffolding seemed to be interfering with mobile signals, too. By the time someone had thought to try to get out onto the roof, no-one was particularly surprised to find out that all roof access points were blocked.

Everyone stopped expecting to be rescued around an hour ago... I don't know if it's something to do with the structure, or something that we've realised subconsciously over the days and months and years of this relentless, redundant existence, but we all quietly realised that this building, and everything in it, needs some work done. Has become obsolete. Needs renovating.

At some point someone has raided the kitchens scattered around departments, and someone else has started passing mugs of tea to anyone who wants them. Biscuits have been found, by god! Distracted, I have lost at least two halves to the depths of my mug, but at least I know that they're waiting for me when I reach the bottom.

I just hope I have time.

Twenty minutes ago, exactly midnight, work restarted. The sound reaches us as distant grinding and screeching, but it's getting louder all the time. The sounds of deconstruction. The sounds of reconstruction.

I wonder what will be put here in our place?

Reviews

[Mark D. Chevalier]

Foreboding and creepy story. Deconstruction and reconstruction, with everyone around waiting for the end to come, and wondering what's going to happen next. It's the kind of story that tugs at my head, and I have to respect your skills at doing it successfully. Great work!
M