It wouldn’t have been so bad if I had just been fired. I was, after all, a pretty bad worker. Certainly not nearly motivated to even hold a position at Sullivan & Smith for as long as I did. But that damn bitch decided to fire me and dump me on the same day. Not that I didn’t deserve that, too; I was only sleeping with her to keep my job. Still, it’s a lot to deal with in a single day. Two years of pretense and a decent paycheck, all held up by flattery and vaguely illicit sex. Not quite good enough to build a career on, but it did define my existence for those two years.
I’ve cleaned out my desk. It’s time to go clean out her apartment. I haven’t had an apartment of my own for years. I don’t even know where to look. In the past, I’ve had another woman with another apartment waiting for me. This time, I guess I just got lazy. I’ve been worrying that my luck has been changing for a while, now, and this bad turn has only kicked me down further. No girlfriend, no job, and all I’m left with is a small box of crap from the office and clothes in her apartment that will fill a few more boxes.
I’m leaving the office, alone. I never leave an office alone, but here I go. The light gray walls, dark gray carpet, and even lighter gray ceiling tiles are oppressive in their blandness. No one says anything to me. I can’t even catch anyone’s eyes. I’ve been here two years, and the bastards can’t even acknowledge me. I suppose they’re waiting to ransack my desk for supplies. Of course, I’ve already taken the good stuff. I don’t particularly care for anything in the box that I’m holding, but I’ll be damned if I let anyone else take it.
The elevator dings open, closed, and open to the parking garage. Where the lights are flickering.
There’s a storm coming tonight. So I heard on the news, and as I try to confirm that from the little rectangles of sky that I can see between support pillars as I walk to my car, I notice that those rectangles aren’t there. And I notice that the cars aren’t there, either.
This is wrong. I must’ve pushed the wrong button, ended up on a service level or something. Do they have those? Damned if I know, but there’s nothing here. Just a handful of flickering fluorescent lights, a very right-angled cavern, and me, standing like an idiot in a goddamn boiler room or something holding a box full of crap. If this is a final, bitter joke…
I stop on my way back to the elevator, because there’s a man there. A man who is obviously homeless, and I’m not sure whether I want him to be the janitor or not. I want a real janitor, preferably in a uniform, to tell me that I’m on the wrong floor. I don’t want a crazy man who’s going to stab me and shove me into the boiler. If there even is a boiler.
He’s standing there, staring at the light and mumbling. I’m trying to reach around him and be ready to throw the box at him at the same time, and my free hand is feeling nothing. There’s no elevator button. There isn’t one behind him on the other side of the elevator, either. Fuck.
“The King,” he says. Why the hell are they always fixated on Elvis?
He’s a mass of stained clothes, wild hair, and yellow teeth. There’s an almost overpowering miasma of mildew and old paper. He smells musty, like he’s been locked in a library for a hundred years.
“The last king is coming.” His eyes are as yellow as his teeth, and he stares right past me. Like he’s blind, or at least blind to me.
There’s a noise behind me, like leaves caught in the wind in a deserted alley. I look behind me and I see…dear God, coming towards me…dim lights, but they aren’t lights, they’re pale ovals, and there are a dozen of them, and they’re faces, but not faces, they’re masks, but they’re moving like faces, and they’re rushing towards me, or I’m rushing down towards them, and I’m falling over, down towards the lake…
And the elevator doors open, and I fall backwards, away from the faces. I’m stabbing at the buttons, any buttons, and the man is cackling and the doors close.
I stop screaming. I hadn’t realized I was, but I stop now. My heart kicks back in, and I’m shivering. It’s a damn good thing that I didn’t have coffee this morning.
I’ve lost the box. I’m not going back for it.
The elevator, oblivious to my state of mind, opens on another level of the building. Turns out that I was pushing the “3” button. Standard gray office, a vase of flowers, decorative chairs that aren’t meant to be sat in. I let the doors close, and the elevator returns me to the lobby. I can move now.
This time, the garage is really a garage, with overhead lights and cars and no crazy Mildew Man. I check to make damned sure, though.
I pull the car out of the parking space and race down the levels. Damn the speed bumps, I need to get out of this building. High radon levels or something.
Mildew Man is standing in the gate booth, staring. There’s no gate on the exit side, but I wouldn’t stop, anyway. A delivery truck swerves out of my way.
I need to get home. No, it’s not my home anymore. I need to get my stuff. All the lights are yellow, and I race to catch every single one of them.
It’s late afternoon, but the sky is so gray it’s black. The streetlights aren’t on, and the rain is starting to come down hard. Everything is a gray blur through the windows. None of this matters to me, but I feel vaguely sorry for the poor bastards who get in my way. I’m not far enough away from the office to slow down.
I get to her apartment, and everything is still a gray blur when I get out of the car. As I’m running through the rain, I drop the keys into an oily puddle. I need to get out of here.
But I have to get my stuff, first. The building is dark. The power is out, and my stuff is four flights of stairs up a dark building. I’m too drained to yell, too tired to kick my frustration out on the wall.
Four flights up, and I hear it. I know what’s coming. I run, taking stairs three, four at a time. The faces are coming up the stairwell, coming towards me. The keys are wet and oily in my hand and I can’t find the right key and they’re coming, all of them speaking, all of them calling to me, and there’s no one else here, no one in the building to help me, and goddamn her for kicking me out, leaving me homeless, and sending me to face this. And they’re coming for me.
Inside, I slam the door closed. I slump against the door to brace it, but it’s not there. I’m standing on the shore of a gray, misty lake, looking at a gray, misty city. This isn’t her apartment, and I’ll never get my stuff. But I know that I’m home.
My King awaits.