CALL LOGS

God damn it’s hot.

Probably the hottest it’s been in years. I swear it feels like the sun is closer to the earth, Jesus Christ!

Sorry. The heat has gone to my brain a bit, left me at my boiling point. That’s because of the fact that the damn ac is broken right now at work.

I think everyone in my department has put in a request to get the thing fixed.

“Our inboxes are full enough as it is! Look, we’re struggling enough already with a skeleton crew, we don’t have the budget for all of this!” one manager said.

Thankfully two of the supervisors, Trenton and Barkley, were a little more understanding and came up with a radical solution.

“We’re going to put together a go fund me. Everyone is dealing with hard times right now. And once people see the work we do is important, they’ll help out!” Barkley said excitedly.

Most of us wanted to believe it was going to get better after that. We’ve been through hell and back with Brighter Futures. Heck, I’ve even been considering leaving altogether. Especially since we lost our stocks and our president died unexpectedly. It’s a wonder the company is still afloat.

But I came here to help people and I don’t really know anywhere else to turn. The work we do here does matter. Despite all the scandal brighter futures has been in… maybe we can endure the heat just a little while longer?

I thought so anyway; but then days turned into weeks and summer started to rear its ugly head. It felt like when I stepped into my cubicle I was about to melt.

“A friend of mine in accounting said this is the hottest summer on record. In like 52 years!” Hugh told me as we took a smoke break. The air felt so dry every time we exhaled a sharp burst from our mouths.

If the heat didn’t kill us, maybe this bad habit would.

“It’s so crazy, Paul. It feels like the whole world has fallen into chaos lately. Nothing even feels real!” he told me.

“I keep thinking the same thing. Each day a little hotter… do you think even hell itself could be this bad?” I asked.

“Heh… funny you even mention that. Been having so many weird dreams lately. Bout heaven and hell. Been a year since I lost my dear Denise ya know,” he said as he took another cigarette out.

He tossed it down, not even feeling the urge to finish. “I used to be filled with so much hate about what happened to her. How this damn company took her from me in a horrible accident. Honestly I guess I still feel that way, that I would be better off dead. Not much left to live for is there?” he commented.

I didn’t know what to say. He had never talked like this before. It made me uneasy, despite the heat Hugh was frightening me.

“Who knows? Maybe this is all an illusion and I can just fade away tomorrow,” he said with a laugh as he got up and muttered, “Doubt there is a god out there that would answer that kind of prayer; eh Paul?”

I didn’t offer him any sort of comfort in return, just watched him go as I pondered his words. I didn’t want to say it, but there had been so many times that I had felt that I was dead inside because of the menial work.

Brighter futures was such an important place to so many lost souls, but lately it seemed they just treated us all like fodder. Expendable. Treatment like that; especially in this summer heat; could drive even the purest of us mad.

Maybe that’s what drove Lyle to kill his brother? Those sands…

I tossed aside idle gossip that flurried through my head and got back to work, trying to keep my mind sharp and focused.

Trenton came by and reassured me that the gofundme was going to pay off.

“Before you know it you’ll be as cool as a cucumber!” he joked as I watched sweat pool off his face.

I wanted to believe him, but the next day even that hope was dashed apart. His partner Barkley, had abruptly killed themselves the night before.

“Something about cooking the books, keeping money on the side for some secret new program,” a friend in customer service told me.

“That’s not what I heard at all. Barkley was going to leave. Found a way to get inside tips and was going to go to a competitor and work for them,” Hugh told me.

“Does brighter futures even have competition?” I joked.

“Yeah. I actually saw him reading a brochure from this new beginnings place… sounded pretty cool,” Hugh admitted.

“Any place work working air would be great right about now!”

Worst of all we were still forced to dress business casual. Everyday felt like 103 degrees with those restrictions. And Trenton took it worst of all.

Forgot to mention this before, maybe it was the heat on the old noggin, but him and Barkley are twins. Usually you never see one without the other. Now with his partner gone, Trenton looked like a sad little puppy that had been dumped in the middle of a desert.

“I can’t understand how this could happen… he never told me he had financial issues… why didn’t he come to me?” Trenton asked.

Things got worse after that. The funding was cancelled because Facebook found out that the user that had started it was not longer alive and they assumed the whole thing was just a scam. We had nearly gained 900 dollars before they pulled the plug.

“What the fuck man, this is insane! We need to complain to someone and get that fucking AC working!” Hugh told Trenton the next day.

I’d never seen Hugh lose it like that. But now with Barkley gone; it seemed like the temperature was rising daily.

A few of my coworkers had already fainted from exhaustion on the floor above us. How long were we expected to endure this?

“Fuck this shit,” Hugh said on our next smoke break.

“I feel ya bro,” I said back.

“No for real Paul, let’s leave this shithole. Heck, everyone else is! Not even the devil himself would stay in this hell!” he said as he wiped more sweat off his brow.

“And go where?”

“New beginnings.” He said pulling out a brochure.

“Look at this! Every new employee gets a trip to their exclusive company spa!” he said passing it to me.

The water looked so inviting. Like I could just melt away all my worries.

“We do something like that; we’ll be blacklisted from this company forever!” I told him.

“Who the fuck cares? They sure don’t. They never have!” he said in disgust.

I wanted to join his rebellion. But it felt wrong. I wanted to keep the faith that the funds would eventually pull through. Brighter futures helped me during a hard time, I was once on the other end of one of those phone calls. An employee saved my skin. Stayed on the line the whole night til dawn.

It felt like I owed them something.

Better to stick with the devil you know anyway, right? Felt like I heard that before somewhere…

Well, that was how it felt for a little while anyway. But then bad turned to worse and Trenton was gone too. Someone said that he took a bullet to the brain when he found out the ugly truth about his brothers inside trading. Couldn’t handle it.

“God. I couldn’t imagine doing that, taking your own life?” one girl whispered as we tried to get the last drops of water from the closest water cooler. It was so hot that the water evaporated before it touched her parched lips.

Felt like we could literally melt right there.

“I could…” Hugh said as he stared at us both. He had this wild look in his eyes like the heat had boiled his brains.

“You know in Aztec cultures, they made sacrifices to their gods on an annual basis. To bring good luck and better life to the entire nation… the ones that lost their life viewed it as a privilege,” he said as he got closer to us.

The girl from HR chuckled. “Thanks. I’ll remember that bit of trivia when I go on Jeopardy.”

He didn’t blink for the longest time and then just walked away, distracted.

“I think he may have gotten too much sun today,” she said as she made the loopy motion beside her head.

I was about to make a response when I thought I saw both of our supervisors pass by in the hallway.

“Trenton…?” I whispered as I excused myself from her.

But it had to be a mirage. There was no one there. Was I really that delusional to think that two dead men were the answers to our prayers? Maybe Hugh was right and the heat was driving us all crazy.

I started seeing both of them more and more every time I came into work. Even when I went to wash my face in the bathroom. Barkley’s messed up face would snarl back. It looked like some ancient weapon had smashed off half of his skull, his eye dangling there as his shredded arm reached out toward me.

“Join us….”

I stumbled backward and hit the wall, hardly able to comprehend what these hallucinations were doing to me. It was torture.

Not even the heat in the office was this bad.

I tried to make sense of it, to examine the weapon that Barkley appeared to be killed by. It reminded me of some ritualistic Murder axe. Sleepless nights made me turn to the internet and I found articles on Aztec death rituals.

Where had I heard this before….?

Hugh. Hugh did this. It all made sense. He was making us all suffer for what he did to his dead wife.

That little bastard. It made my blood boil to imagine he was taking pleasure in seeing us all nearly faint every day.

I knew I needed to do something to stop this from happening. It had gone on long enough.

It stirred in my brain what I was planning to do the rest of the night, Barkley and Trent's insane laughter from beyond the grave driving me to act.

The next day I walked into the office with purpose. Everyone could see it in my stride. I was going to solve our problems with the air condition today… once and for all.

Hugh was standing near the middle of the work floor, jabbering away about some nonsense that no one cared about. I didn’t even hesitate. I grabbed his shoulder and turned him to face me.

Then I tossed the glass lighter fluid that I had been concealing into his face and eyes.

He screamed in surprise and stammered something I didn’t care to repeat.

“Burn in hell, or whatever you believe in!” I shouted as I took a cigarette and tossed it on him.

The entire office heard his screams as his body lit on fire and he began to ran.

I watched and waited as the flames grew stronger, looking up and smiling as I knew the sprinklers would soon activate.

A few tried to call security. But most of them were looking at the sprinklers as well, waiting expectantly for them to bring the relief we longed for.

Finally the inferno grew so strong it was inevitable. They lurched out from the ceiling and sprayed out a fine red mist.

At first it was confusing. Then I reached out my hand and touched the droplets that began to splash from above and tasted it.

Blood.

Suddenly some of the devices malfunctioned and sputtered, shooting out more of the rotten decayed blood from their clogged pipes and covering everyone in a frenzy.

The entire office floor screamed in confusion and horror.

And me?

I stood there and smiled at the chaos.

I saw the familiar edges of the brochure that advertised New Beginnings. That inviting spa.

My time here was over. Time for a new dawn.