Stranger Things

The doors opened on the ground floor. Julius stepped out waving his phone; he still couldn’t get any service. How did dad call me? The ground floor lobby was a sparsely decorated area covered in cold black marble. The walls, floors, and ceilings were all made of the same material. It gave the room a cagey feel.

A dark slab of marble sat in the middle of the T-shaped lobby. Usually a pokerfaced no-nonsense receptionist sat there. Julius thought she was a polite receptionist, but a bit terse, the kind of woman that prefers one of those over the shoulder organizers over a trendy clutch. Phil would often flirt with her on his way to the elevator, and she would often ignore him with an impassive glance.

“She’ll crack some day,” Phil would say as they rode to the fourteenth floor. “I’ll wear her down, you’ll see. I’ll romance her until she speaks to me.”

“It sounds more like you’ll annoy her till she calls security.”

Phil was always good for a laugh. Julius decided the next time he saw him, he’d invite him over for a pizza. If he’s not a zombie. Wait, what am I talking about? The people on my floor aren’t zombies, they’re just spaced out…I think.

Julius approached the vacant desk, which was clean enough to perform surgery on. He picked up the phone, and was met with silence. He glanced at his cell again, still nothing. He turned right and headed to the row of doors leading to the parking lot. Locked.

Okay, this is really not cool.

“Hello?” Julius said. “Is anyone here? Can someone unlock the doors?”

He pushed against the bar but it didn’t budge. He shook each door before heading to the other end of the hall, where he found more bolted exits. His normally calm demeanor was quickly sliding in to frightened panic. He leaned against a nearby wall, closed his eyes, and breathed deep.

Surely, this was all some kind of dream, or a giant birthday joke orchestrated by one of his stranger Strange uncle’s. He wasn’t sure what kind of joke involved locking someone in a giant building with a bunch of zoned out data crunchers, but he wouldn’t put it past his family. His grandfather was crazy enough to name his son Ian Martin Strange (or I.M. Strange as his business cards read), so Julius wouldn’t be all that surprised to find out they were behind it. In fact, he kind of hoped they were.

He opened his eyes and glanced down to the other end of the hall. There was a skinny door near the stairway entry. He never paid much attention to it before, as it’s smooth black finish blended in with the wall, but something was off about it. It looked like it might be open.

Julius approached the door, his squeaky shoes the only sound the lobby had heard in hours. The door was in fact open, just barely. There was no light coming from inside, so he turned on the built-in flashlight on his phone, a feature he’d been waiting to use since he purchased the high priced gizmo months ago. He slid his fingers in the crack and pried back the heavy door. The marble from the ground floor stopped a foot past the doorframe; cold concrete covered the rest of the room.

Julius stepped inside and made a quick sweep with his flashlight. It appeared to be a supply closet, an impeccably clean supply closet. A shelf ran along the back wall, it held a few sponges and dusters. A shiny unused mop stood in the corner next to an oversized broom and dustpan. A small neatly printed schedule was taped to the back wall next to a thin computer monitor, which Julius assumed was used by the janitorial staff to clock in. Sheesh, these guys are as strictly scheduled as we are, he thought as he scanned the to-do list, which was broken up in precise fifteen-minute intervals.

He tapped the screen to see if it would turn on, but nothing happened. He felt guilty for thinking it, but he really wanted to know what the prize was.

“As promised, each of you shall receive a reward,” Julius said in his best floating head impression. “Some reward you stupid peace of—”

The monitor flashed on. A dark red screen flickered for a few seconds before his face fuzzed in to focus.

“What the?” Julius said to himself as he smoothed down his ruffled hair. “Hey, is someone there? Can anyone see or hear me right now?”

He tapped the screen again, but his face stared back at him like a clueless lizard in a terrarium. He ran his hands across the monitor, hoping to trigger a hot spot of some sort, but nothing came up. The light from the screen made the closet feel much smaller than it looked. Julius was starting to feel a little uncomfortable in the tight space. He looked back at the monitor and watched the sweat bead on his forehead. He resisted the urge to ask about the bonus and went with a distress call instead.

“If anyone is seeing this, my name is Julius Strange, I’m a data processor at Globitrex, and I work on the fourteenth floor. Something is wrong with my coworkers. They’re all stuck upstairs drooling on themselves and they don’t seem to be responding to any attempts at communication—”

Something fell off the shelf. It couldn’t have been anything more than a dry sponge, but the tiny puff it made when it hit the ground was enough to shake Julius from his digital reflection He timorously babbled on, the words falling out of his mouth like a cup overflowing.

“The main lobby doors are locked too, which is weird, oh and the receptionist, she isn’t there either. So I’m not sure if this is an emergency or if this is some kind of joke, but it would probably be best to alert the authorities. Also, if someone could call my dad Dr. Ian Strange, he should probably—”

The screen shut off.

His mouth hung open, the rest of his sentence left scattered on his lips in flecks of spit.

“I, uh, hello?”

No response, save for a quick shuffling sound.

Shuffling sound?

Julius spun around and shined the flashlight at the shelf. He had just enough time to scream before the shiny unused mop connected with his face.