Monday. Why does all the weird stuff happen on a Monday? There I was, sat behind my desk trying to write up a report based on a pile of incomplete data that the sales team had sent to me less than an hour before clock out. I had pulled the short straw this quarter and would be giving the revenue presentation , you know–a slideshow–to the higher-ups. A job that almost always ended with the presenter being demoted or fired due to their broken philosophy of shooting the messenger that told them that, much like the Titanic, the ship was going down and unlike then the captains are entirely at fault and refuse to send out lifelines.

As I scrolled through the slides I’d made so far, noting the steady drops in the graphs and trying to figure out how to convey the phrase ‘Blame Sales, not me’ in the side points, I began to hear a minor humm in the too quiet office.

Normally I would just stock such noises up there with the too bright fluorescent lights or the air system, but the only lighting in the after hours cubical floor was from the security lights.Well, them and the red exit signs above the two doors on either end of the room, and the old fashioned desk lamp I used to bring a little life to my beige prison. Plenty enough light to create the demise of my day job and still see the axe prepping to fall onto my neck. Oof, that was bleak.

Just ignore it and the noise will go away.

As a bit of background on me, I took a very different lesson from fairy tales and fantasy books than everyone else seemed to. When the protags of those saw or heard something weird they went to investigate, only to be pulled into danger and disaster that took outlandish luck to turn around to a happy ending. Consuming such stories as a child, I figured out that if you just went with the flow and ignored such things you could avoid all that from the very start. An ideal I brought with me to adulthood that, while making me a bit boring, has kept me alive and generally healthy. Those who ran from the loud bumps in the night in horror movies usually survived while the person walking into the dark confidently was the first to die, or at least that is the argument I brought forth anytime people asked about it. Such a situation was how I ended up as the newest member of the marketing team. The previous person in my position had heard a thump from the elevator, walked in to see what it was about, and ended up going down with the car as the last wire snapped. According to the police report the building owner hadn’t maintained the thing in over a decade and all the safeties had failed in a one in a million fall. Now I was in their cubicle and took the stairs.

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That was certainly the reason. It definitely wasn’t cowardice. No sir. And even if it were, who could blame me for wanting to stay alive and boring?

I was soon to find out. Good job me, for damning me to what was to come.

The humming only grew in intensity, much akin to a swarm of mosquitoes that had decided to make a nest within my ear canal.

Ignore it, Simon. Get the report done and go home, easy as that.

Ah yes, the ever constant act of lying to myself. A perfect weapon against the unknown. How could it ever respond to that excellent counter? With swift aggression it seemed.

The old boxy monitor snapped to darkness as the power went out in the building, taking everything but the exit signs and the security light that had seen better decades.

Continuing my practiced act of ignoring anything odd, I slid the external hard drive into my beaten laptop bag along with the stack of reports. Zipping it shut around the ever-present-new-and-ignored reality that was the humming and strange darkness, the reports causing the edges of the bag to bulge out showing off the threadbare fabric and faux leather to stretch to their limits.

Slipping the self-repaired straps over my shoulders, adjusting the slipping padding to sit further up, I clicked the already powerless lamp off and started walking toward my usual exit and my perfectly average crossover in the building’s parking below.

Or at least that had been the plan, but I came to find that the old adage ‘Plans are what you make when life is happening around you’ still held true as I opened the dingey door to what should’ve been a well worn stairwell and was met with a brightly lit gray metal hallway.

Well shit… At least I don’t have to finish the report now. I’m definitely going to get fired, though.

Always look at the bright side of life, Simon.