“One last cup of coffee before we finish up?” Jennifer asked, smiling.
“Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“You sure? It’s cinnamon roll flavor,” Jennifer sang.
“Mmm.” Allyson rubbed her stomach in circles. “I’d be crazy to pass that up.”
“One cinnamon roll, coming up!”
“Thank you!” Allyson swiveled around in her chair, squinting at the bright computer screen. She cracked her knuckles (a bad habit), slipped her feet back into her pumps to get into work mode, and pulled another order sheet from the red binder. As she typed it up, she stopped a moment to turn the dial on her old radio. There was a lot of static, but it finally picked up a weather station. The snow had stopped and according to the weatherman, it was done for the night. After that, his voice was overcome with static. Allyson shut the radio off and kept working.
She finished up on the last report about fifteen minutes later, hit SUBMIT, and let out an exasperated sigh.
“Done, Jenn!” she cheered. “Hey, whatever happened to that coffee?”
Silence.
“Jennifer?”
Nothing.
Allyson got up and walked into Jennifer’s office. The door was open and her computer screen was locked, which either meant Jennifer locked it or it locked itself after ten minutes of inactivity. Her emerald clutch purse was on the desk next to her printer.
“Jennifer,” Allyson called. She walked to the break room, forcing herself not to look into the creep conference room. The red flashing from the phone in the room was distracting, but she pretended not to notice.
“Jenn, you slacker.” Allyson poked her head in the break room.
Empty.
A nervous chill ran down Allyson’s spine. Suddenly, she felt like she was being watched. She looked over her shoulder. No one there, of course. She looked towards Sonia’s office. The blinds were drawn. Had Sonia drawn the blinds before she left?
She quickly tried to piece together what was happening. It didn’t make sense. Where would Jennifer go?
Allyson noticed the coffee pot was sitting on the table beside a mug. She went to touch the side of the pot. It was lukewarm. An uncomfortable, isolated feeling swept over Allyson. Somehow, she knew she was alone.
A toilet flushed. The noise made Allyson twitch.
“Jennifer!” She felt better about everything then. Jennifer must have had a tummy ache, probably from too much cinnamon roll coffee! She had spent the past fifteen-twenty minutes in the bathroom. How embarrassing.
Allyson opened the bathroom door just next to the break room. The motion sensor picked up on the door opening and the lights flickered on. Allyson’s heart started to race.
“Jennifer?”
Nothing but the drip-drip of a leaky faucet. Allyson looked at her reflection in the unframed mirror over the sink. Her face was pale and she looked tired under the fluorescent lights. She looked terrified.
The stalls were closed. Allyson wondered if this was some dumb trick. But that was out of character for Jennifer. And why would she do it alone, at night, when it was time to go?
Who flushed the toilet?
Hesitant at first, Allyson took a breath and knelt on the cold floor. She looked under the stalls from the entrance of the bathroom, too afraid to go in all the way. Of course, no one was there.
But then a rush of jumbled whispers hissed into her ear and she screamed, falling on her butt and slamming the bathroom door against the wall. She followed the whispers into the conference room, with its long oak table and swivel chairs. Then Allyson saw it. And it made her heart skip a beat. Her breath caught in her throat. She opened her mouth to scream again, but this time, her terror was too intense to make a sound. She stared at it, and it stared right back at her.
Its shape was contorted and inhuman in the shadows beneath the table. She could hear its raspy breathing through the glass. It moved like it was underwater, and its many limbs groaned and creaked like tree limbs. Its eyes were white and glowing with a red slit in the center of each.
The fear was incomparable. Allyson was sure this was it. It was the end. In a second, this thing would come after her. Despite knowing that, Allyson screamed again. Her eyes swelled with tears from the burning pain in her throat. She scrambled to get up and raced down the hall to her office. She was running so fast, she kicked one of her pumps off. She rounded the corner so fast that she almost lost her footing on the slippery floor.
Allyson didn’t bother to look behind her. She was sure it was on her tail. In one lightning fast swoop, she ran in her office, slammed the door behind her, tripped on her one pump and crashed into her chair. The back snapped and the chair tumbled on its side. Allyson fell hard against the wall, bumping her head on the side of her desk.
She knocked her paper shredder over as she struggled to get to the door and lock it. When she did, she flicked off the light and crawled under her desk, bringing her knees up to her chin. She clamped her hands over her mouth to muffle her panting. Allyson didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the warm tears rolling over her fingers.
She waited.
And waited.
....to be continued on my website :) For now, I just want to see if people enjoyed it!
I truly hope you did, thank you for reading fellow horror fans :D
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