Mike’s eyes grow wide with the realization of something stabbing him in his neck, and as he does, he pushes me away. I fly across the room, landing with a thud on the floor as my back hits the tile and I skid another five feet. Mike has his hand on his neck, blood spurting between his fingers.

And that’s when I feel the pen still in my hand.

It all happened so fast that I never had a chance to let go.

“I’M GONNA KILL YOU!” Mike rages at me with a raspy voice. He takes a couple of steps before his gait stumbles a little.

I scoot backward across the floor on my butt because I can’t seem to get up on my feet. My body is numb with fear and shock. The pen clatters against the tile each time I use my hand to move my body backward, leaving a smear of blood.

My back hits the counter to our break room, and I lose my other shoe in an effort to get as flat as I can against the half wall. Mike is breathing heavily as his foot doesn’t quite reach the height it needs to with his next step. He trips and falls onto the floor a couple of feet in front of me. I use this chance to roll over onto my hands and knees, and crawl as fast as I can away from him. When I reach a fellow employee’s cubicle, her phone cord drags across my shoulders.

The cops! I need to call the police! I pull myself up into the chair and lift the receiver. Mike isn’t moving. Or rather, he hasn’t moved since he fell face first onto the floor. I watch to see if his back is rising and falling as the dial tone blares in my ear. His back is just as still as the rest of him.

I set the phone down in its cradle as quietly as I can just in case Mike is pretending to be dead. He doesn’t move. His hand has released its hold on his neck wound and the blood has created a puddle in which he is laying. His wound isn’t spurting like it was…does that mean his heart has stopped beating? If this were a tv show, I would hit pause and Google it. But this isn’t a show. Even though it feels like I’ve lost grip with reality.

There’s a stapler on the desk. I pick it up and balance it in my hand. It’s heavy. If I throw it and hit him, it will hurt for sure. So, if he’s pretending, that would make him mad enough to forget that he’s faking.

I scoot to get a better angle and the horrible scraping noise of the chairs wheels not rolling makes me flinch. Mike doesn’t flinch though. I hold the stapler in my right hand and lob it across the room. It arcs in the air and comes down directly in the middle of Mike’s back with a thud.

I find that I’m holding my breath, waiting for him to move, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even groan or say ouch. Nothing. Not a damn thing.

My body collapses against the back of the chair as I feel the shock of it all start to swallow me whole. The clock on the computer says 6:08pm. Maybe he’s just knocked out from the blood loss. I mean, how realistic is it that I actually hit the artery in his neck? I had a greater chance of hitting any of the other parts of his neck that that.

Fifteen minutes later, I haven’t moved. I’m just watching him. Waiting for him to get up and charge at me again. He never gives up. He has always made sure that I paid for anything that has made him upset. And yet, he’s still there, in the same position.

I decide that I need to find out if he’s just waiting me out. I get out of the chair as quietly as I can, and tiptoe over to where Mike is laying. I can barely breathe. I can feel every nerve on edge, just waiting to jump out of the way if he lunges for me. Except he doesn’t.

Mike’s arms are above his head, the one that held onto his neck is close to the wound but not holding onto it anymore, and his legs look like a frog laying on a science class table waiting to be cut open. I wish I had my shoes on, but I don’t want to risk walking to the other side of him, so I nudge him with my bare foot. His body rolls up and then comes back down like an ocean wave.

Nothing.

I tiptoe around him to see his face. His eyes are wide open, his pupils are huge and jet black, the blood pooling around his face. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

And then it hits me.

I’m a murderer!

I’m going to go to prison for this! Except, I would do it again. Mike was a terrible abusive man that always took out everything on me. Who knows how long it would be before he took out his anger on Viv. She’s a strong woman but I don’t know if she would’ve been strong enough to deal with him. He had a way of making me feel like I wasn’t worth the dirt I was walking on. I would rather be in this situation than to be in fear for the rest of my life.

I walk to my desk and pick up my phone. I need to call the cops. That’s what normal people would do in a situation like this, right? And then I hang up my phone. I’m not normal. Never have been and never will be. But now what?

Mike is a good six feet tall and two hundred pounds on a lean day. He said that he disabled all of the cameras. If it weren’t for the fact that he was going to beat the shit out of me, I wouldn’t believe him. How am I going to move him? I can’t leave him here for people to find when they come in tomorrow morning. How would I explain that? Everyone knows that I was the last one left at the end of the day.

Deep breaths. Just gotta take a couple of deep breaths.

The maintenance closet! There’s got to be something in there that will help me move him. I race to the closet that’s on the far side of the room behind my desk. Fortunately, the door isn’t locked. We all have keys, but we never lock it because it seems silly. The heavy metal door swings out, allowing me access to the tools and cleaning supplies inside. I grab for the string dangling from the ceiling to turn the light on. The lightbulb illuminates the space with a yellowish hue, but it’s not bright enough. I can see the top few shelves, but the ones down lower are in a dark shadow.

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On the second shelf from the top is a bright yellow strap that resembles seat belt material. Viv got us this so that we could move around the fridge and other things instead of hiring moving guys. The strap works fine but it’s just a symbol of how cheap she is with her employees.

I grab the strap, turn the light off and close the door. Now that I know how to move him, where am I going to put him? I can’t put him in his truck. I’ll never get him out the door and up into it. I have to take him lower.

The basement.

When Viv built the building, she made sure to capitalize on space by building a full basement underneath the publishing house. It’s been finished and there are multiple rooms down there. Most of them are old records rooms, some dating back a good decade or so. Nobody ever goes in those now since most everything is digital. The only thing anyone goes downstairs for now is to change the filter on the furnace.

I race over to the basement door and open it, slide the rubber wedge stopper underneath it to keep it propped open, and then make my way back to Mike. He still hasn’t moved, and his eyes are still open. I’d be shocked if he wasn’t dead at this point.

I take in a deep breath and then bend over, sliding the strap underneath his chest and pulling the ends up through his armpits. Should I roll him over? The thought barely crosses my mind when I realize that I have his blood on my hand.

“Ew!” I bend over and wipe my hand on the back of Mike’s shirt. I don’t want his blood on me.

I turn around and tie the ends of the straps around my waist so that I can pull him across the floor. It takes everything I have but the blood makes him a little more slippery than normal. Once I have a good momentum going, I can feel that the blood has mostly smeared away from underneath him and it’s just his clothes making the resistance against the floor.

When I reach the top of the stairs to the basement, my eyes can’t adjust to the darkness. I fumble around and find the light switch. This one switch turns on every light in the basement. I hope that no one is outside the building right now because they will know that someone is in here for sure. I mean, besides the fact that my car and Mike’s truck are still in the parking lot.

Mike’s truck.

Shit.

Deep breath. I’ll worry about that later. First, I need to get him downstairs.

I step down onto the first step, second step, third step, and then when I hit the fourth step, that’s when Mike’s face clears the top of the stairs. Rigor hasn’t set in so he’s still floppy. I step down onto the fifth step and that pulls Mike’s chest past the top step, allowing his face to slam into the stair.

Hmm.

I might not have figured physics into this.

Sixth step, Mike’s waist passes the top step.

Seventh step, Mike’s thighs start to pass, and I can see his dead weight is going to catch some momentum here in a second.

Eighth step and Mike’s body begins to slide. Just a little, at first, but then before I know it, I have to jump out of the way as he slides past me, thumping and wobbling his way down the stairs.

All fifteen steps.

His body crumples at the bottom of the stairs in a heap. His head is wedged up against the end of the railing on the bottom step which has forced his head to bend backward against his back. One arm is still on the second to bottom step, his hand dangling in between the spindles on the railing, while his other arm is stretched out in front of him on the floor. Oh, but his legs, it honestly reminds me of when I would play with my dolls as a kid, and they would land in a pile on the floor when they fell off my bed.

I attempt to shimmy past him because his limbs are all over the place and take up so much space on the steps but there’s nowhere for me to walk easily. I cringe as I step on his butt, feeling it squish beneath my bare feet. Just as I reach the floor, I realize that the strap has slid underneath his body. I can’t reach either of the ends.

I grab the one arm that’s laying on the floor and give it a yank. It’s just enough to pull his chest forward a little, but the position of his legs force him to roll over. Now he’s facing me, eyes open and everything. I liked it better when he wasn’t looking at me.

Hey! Now I can see the ends of the strap though! I grab the ends, thread them back under his armpits and loop them around my waist again. Thankfully Viv doesn’t like carpet because the tile down here makes it just as easy to drag him as it was upstairs.

I pass by three rooms before going to the farthest room in the back corner of the basement. This is the very first room of records. The cobwebs over the door frame show me that it’s been forever since anyone has made it through here. Perfect.

The cold doorknob grinds open under my hand and the door creaks as it swings inward. I try desperately to leave the cobwebs intact. If it doesn’t look disturbed, maybe no one will look for him here either.

Mike’s body drags across the cold tile floor, over the door jamb, and slips into his final resting place: the 2010 Records Room. There are multiple shelving units that glide around like the old filing units in a doctor’s office. When I move one ceiling high shelving unit forward, it opens the space to get to the one behind it. I move all the shelving units forward so that I can prop Mike up in the far back corner.

Once I get the shelves out of the way, I go back and pick up the strap I’ve been using to haul him around with and wrap it around my waist for what I’m hoping is the final time. I pull on the strap, dragging him past five or six shelves, take a right, and then turn around so that I can back in.

I back up until I hit my back against the corner, but Mike still has his legs in the main aisle. The strap is too long. I take the strap and wrap it around my arms, shortening it as much as I can and then pull hard. The strap digs into my arms, and I can feel the fabric causing a friction burn. I was only able to move him another foot with all that effort.

“Okay, Mikey. We gotta get you in here.” I slide the strap off from his body, knowing that I will have to dispose of that somewhere else, and throw it in the main aisle for now. I scoot past Mike as he lays on the floor, face up, and make my way to his feet. I’ll just push him in by pushing on his feet.

I get down on my knees, place my palms against the bulky tread on his black boots, and shove as hard as I can. His knees give way and now his knees are up in the air. The rest of his body didn’t move an inch.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!?”

I push his feet up further so that the back of his heels are against his butt, and then I push on his shins. This time my efforts work, and his body slides all the way in until his head hits the wall in the corner. It’s close but not quite.

I get to my feet, straddle his body, and then reach into his armpits, hooking my arms under his. The blood on his shirt squishes under the pressure of my arms as I lift, hoisting him into a seated position. I use my legs to push his body back further into the corner where I am finally able to let go. His back slams against the wall with a sickening thud and he starts to slide down. I quickly run out into the main aisle and ram one of the shelving units against him, wedging him in.

The weight of his body pushes against the shelf and makes the shelf move back when I let go. Shit. I run to the beginning of the shelving units and push them all toward the corner.

Slam.

Slam.

Slam.

Slam.

Slam.

Thud.