This is probably going to shock you, but I’ve been finding it pretty hard to land a job with my PoliSci degree. Crazy, right?

I’ve been applying to pretty much anything and everything under the sun. Admin Assistant? Sure! Data Entry? Why not! Digital Content Specialist - not sure what that entails but hell fucking yes!

Having clocked in at nearly 500 applications with no responses (outside of automated rejection emails, of course), I was naturally starting to sweat a bit. Thankfully, my throwaway application to the “Marketing Assistant” role at NexaNova Systems was able to get a bite. It was a joyous occasion, and soon after my response to their brief email questionnaire, they were already set for me to come onsite to take some sort of “Marketing test”.

Deciding to not overthink a good thing, I made my way to their office, located in a part of the city I’d never been to before. I took the elevator up to the seventh floor in the towering, yet somewhat run-down, building that housed them and other companies. As the doors opened, I was met with a depressing-looking reception area and a rather uninspired logo.

A nervous-looking man sat at the reception desk.

“Amanda… for NexaNova Systems, right? 5 o’clock test?”

“That’s right!” I said, as cheerily as I could muster.

He looked around, awkwardly drumming at his desk for a while. He grimaced, as if he were deep in thought. Finally, after a painful minute of waiting, he said “Alright, let’s go!” and lifted from his seat.

I followed him down the lengthy hallway, past dingy offices and tables with scattered paperwork on them. The office was basically empty - I clocked, like, one guy drinking coffee in the kitchen, and maybe ten flickering lights on my walk? Disappointed with the office decor thus far, I was tempted to ask the guy escorting me more about what NexaNova Systems did. Yes, they did have a website that I scoured during my five minutes of pre-interview prep, but there wasn’t much on it except for vague mentions of market research and ‘top notch product evaluation’.

We arrived at the “Testing Room”. That’s what the placard on the door said, anyways. He held it open, and I entered the very long and narrow, almost rectangular-shaped room. It was completely empty inside, save for an old computer on a small desk in the center, a gray folding chair positioned in front of it. As I approached the desk, I noticed a row of windows to my left that unveiled a massive, seemingly endless warehouse below.

The receptionist motioned for me to take a seat, and so I did.

He booted up the computer, and before I could even ask him any questions, he was already on his way out. I’m pretty sure I heard him half-heartedly mutter “best of luck” before he closed the door behind him.

I’ll be honest. I wasn’t particularly excited to work here. But, the prospect of being able to afford hot pockets again was enticing, so I decided to press on.

I examined the archaic computer that was in front of me. Bulky, beige, 15-inch CRT screen, with a similarly chunky keyboard sitting in front of it. Fucking prehistoric, but a welcome throwback to late 90’s computing nonetheless. Ah… what a simple time that was. A time where I could spend my full weekend wrapped in blankets while watching TV. Send me back there, please.

The computer finished its start-up sequence, and immediately, I was greeted with a form asking questions like my name, my email, and the position I was interviewing for. I promptly filled it out.

After that, the test kicked off. The questions were simple at first: “What are the 4 P’s of Marketing?” and “What does positioning mean in marketing terms,” stuff that I was able to address reasonably well with my one hour of studying this morning - thank you very much ChatGPT.

As I kept up the momentum, carving through the questions with relative ease, I started to feel a bit proud. Maybe, just maybe, I was assistant material after all?

I wrapped up the section, only to be greeted by a black screen with a small icon of a spinning hourglass on it, indicating that the next screen was loading.

Underneath the hourglass, the following text slowly appeared, displayed in a white, jagged, dated-looking font:

“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. With the universe bearing solemn witness, God, in His infinite majesty, succumbed to the slumber of death.”

What?

I was by no means up to date on my bible lore - it’d been well over a decade since my mom last forced me to go to church - but I’m pretty sure God dying on the eighth day wasn’t part of the King James canon.

Before I could muse on this quote for longer, a voice blaring from somewhere jolted my attention away.

“Don’t worry about that,” said a voice that came through loud, tinny, and mildly distorted. Is that a PA system?

I turned around and confirmed my suspicion. Nestled in the corner at the junction of two walls and the ceiling, was a PA speaker that looked tarnished from years, nay, decades it seemed, of use.

Is that… a normal thing for… marketing firms?

I turned back to face the computer. The next section had loaded.

On the screen was an image crafted in a 2D retro art style reminiscent of old educational games like Oregon Trail and Math Blaster. There was a boy sitting at the edge of his bed in a dimly lit room, watching a TV screen that had cast a pale glow around him. Though mostly static, the image had a subtle animation - a soft twinkling emanating from the TV.

At the bottom of the screen, text displaying the following question appeared:

We want the child to remember the JOY of drinking Coca-Cola. Do you recommend:

(a) Showing him a 10 second ad every 15 minutes?

(b) Running a 2-minute storytelling ad once every three hours?

I struggled a bit as I thought through the question. I wasn’t sure which cadence was the more effective one.

The muffled voice off the PA interrupted my thoughts. “It’s a trick question,” the voice echoed. I raised an eyebrow, instinctively turning around again to look at the PA. As I turned back, I noticed that I’d missed a timer that had been running in the corner of the screen. It had already reached zero.

I sat confusedly, wondering what the PA had meant. Suddenly, the child at the edge of the bed started to fade away, vanishing as if he were an apparition. I heard a ‘ding’ sound, indicating I had somehow answered correctly. New text appeared at the bottom of the screen:

“Correct! The child was not real!”

Huh? Convinced that this question was some sort of dramatized interpretation of a rule about marketing to children that I had missed, I decided to take the victory.

But as I sat, the image of the empty room with the TV playing lingered for longer than I would’ve liked.

Finally, the computer transitioned to the next question.

On screen, in a similar 2D-animated style, was a gardener donning a sun hat and a green apron, carrying around a watering can, sprinkling pixelated droplets on the flowers in his busy garden.

Text appeared at the bottom of the screen:

Jack is thinking about the best digital marketing strategies to utilize for his flower business called JACK’s FLOWERS. What are your suggestions for Jack?

A prompt with an empty text box appeared, awaiting my response. In the background, Jack continued adorably flowering his plants. Not really feeling as ‘in my element’ as before, I typed a generic answer: Market on Facebook and Instagram?

As soon as I submitted, Jack paused his gardening, glanced up at the screen with a smile, and offered a ‘thumbs up’ in approval.

A new text box emerged, accompanied with the instruction, “Give Jack more advice!” I thought over what to type next, but as I ruminated, I noticed a shuffling in the bushes in the corner of Jack’s garden. Two bright red eyes appeared in the hedges.

Distracted, I carelessly typed another generic answer in the text box: Do an email marketing campaign?

The text box disappeared, my message received, and again, Jack flashed me a thumbs up.

The red-eyed character in the corner of the screen stepped out of the bushes, its full figure now in frame. It was hard to make sense of what the creature was. The smiling, demonic-looking thing was animated in the same artstyle as everything else, and yet, it looked completely out of place. It crept towards Jack, holding a pair of hedge shears.

New text box appeared. “Give Jack even more advice!”

I typed: Turn around Jack, something is coming for you.

But weirdly, as I pressed enter, the text changed right in front of my eyes to: Focus on your fucking gardening, Jack.

I whispered “what in the ever-loving-fuck is this test?” under my breath as Jack flashed me another sign of approval, and the twisted entity arrived behind him, shears readied.

I tensed up, but thankfully, the screen went black.

When it returned, it was a tranquil scene in the garden. Jack was nowhere to be seen, and the demented red creature was now the one attending to the plants. Except, the plants looked to be twice as large now, and the pixelated droplets falling from the watering can looked a bit too red to be water.

Genuinely disturbed at how morbid this test was, not to mention thrown off by how dark the room had gotten all of a sudden, I was again greeted by the crackle of the PA system.

“Fair warning,” the amplified voice reverberated through the room, “This next question requires a very fast answer.”

Oh great.

The image on screen shifted from the garden to the next, similarly-styled 2D animation: the disturbing scene of a woman, bound in ropes, being lowered into a large bed of spikes. A timer in the corner of the screen was counting down from 20 as a new question appeared:

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Keeping psychological pricing in mind, what should the price of the bed of spikes should be?

(a) $11.00

(b) $10.99

(c) $9.50

Aaaand I think I’m done here.

I got up from the chair, now convinced that this whole thing was just some sort of twisted prank, when I caught a movement in the corner of my eye. Glancing towards the windows on my left, which overlooked the vast warehouse beneath the interview room, I noticed a rope swiftly descend down, with what I could’ve sworn was a person attached to its tail end.

In a panic, I rushed to sit back down, half-hoping that I had just hallucinated that. The counter descended down from 9, 8, 7, 6… and with the animated woman now seconds from impalement, I hastily guessed ‘B’.

Ding! The sound from the computer indicated that my answer was correct.

But… on-screen, the rope-bound woman still tumbled down into the bed of spikes. Despite the dated graphics, it was a nightmarish sight.

I sat still for a moment. Then, in a strange reflex that betrayed my usual timid self, I got up from my seat and walked towards the windows to look into the warehouse room.

As I peered down, I saw a bed of spikes - a near-perfect 3D replica of what I’d seen on the computer screen, out below in the vast room. Beside this, a woman stood, her arms triumphantly raised. To her left and right, there were two individuals who helped steady her upright stance. A banner unfurled in the warehouse with the words “She’s Alright!” written on it, confetti falling all around the scene below.

Seriously, what the fuck is this.

As I tried to make sense of the sight, I noticed that the woman, though apparently in a celebratory pose, was leaking blood. The people at her sides were propping her body up, and especially, holding her neck up, but the holes in her body made it very clear that she had, in fact, been impaled.

The lights in the warehouse room immediately flickered off. I was now staring into a sea of black.

I stepped away from the window and made a beeline for the room’s exit. Whatever the hell this test was, or this fucking job for that matter, I wanted nothing to do with it.

A voice from the PA blared, seemingly in reaction. “Don’t worry, she’s safe. Didn’t you read the banner?”

I pulled at the door. It was locked. Of course it was fucking locked. I pounded at it, continuing to pull as hard as I could.

Static from the PA crinkled as more words came through. “There isn’t that much left in the test–”

“Get me the fuck out of here!” I yelled.

A pause, as if the voice was thinking. Then, more hissing from the PA system. “You can leave when the test is over. Promise.”

“I’m not fucking interested in this job anym–”

“The hallway isn’t safe right now,” said the speaker, cutting me off. “Please.”

Weirdly, despite the muffled, overmodulated quality of the PA voice, something in the delivery of those words sounded authentic. Also, the hallway, which now had most of its lights off, looked… different. Narrower. There were fewer offices lining the halls, fewer bulletin boards, heck, the actual lightbulbs looked different. The more I stared, the more I noticed a disconnect between the walls I remembered walking down and the ones I was looking at now.

Where the fuck am–

“Please take a seat,” the voice echoed.

I thought about it. Staring into the hallway was bringing about a more and more uncomfortable feeling in my chest with each passing second.

Staving off my body’s urge to hyperventilate, I obliged with the tinny voice’s request and returned to my seat, hoping the test would offer a distraction, more than anything else.

A video player popped up on the computer screen, with text below it reading: “Let’s do a recap of your journey thus far!”

I pressed play on the video, hoping that its content would somehow alleviate my mounting anxiety.

The video was 30 seconds long. It contained three equal-length snippets.

First, it displayed footage of… me. A younger me. No more than ten years old, playing with toys in my room. The closet door in my childhood room hung open, and within its shadows, a pair of glowing red eyes stared out.

Next, it was footage of teenage me, sitting in a high school exam hall taking a test. A comical-looking arrow was overlaid on the screen, pointing at the door in the distant corner of the room. Outside the door, the glare of faint, red eyes could be seen.

Finally, I saw grainy footage of me… from earlier today… coming in for the interview. Except, the footage showed me approaching the building while walking… backwards. Through the lobby, and towards the elevator… backwards. And then, all the way to the interview room, backwards, with no one escorting me.

By this point, I was on the edge of breaking. I shrunk into myself, fearing that any sudden movement, or hell, even me just turning around at this point, would bring about some horrible fate.

So… I just focused on the test. I hoped that if I drowned everything else out, and kept my attention on the horrific nonsense on the screen, that somehow, I’d be safe from the rest of the world. I pushed down the urge to cry, barf, jump out the window, and kept myself paralyzed. If I make myself small enough, I can get through this. Terrible logic, I know.

The spinning hourglass signifying the ‘loading screen’ stuck around for a few minutes. Then, it transitioned to the next part of the test.

The screen now displayed an animated family of three sitting at a dining table, sunlight streaming in from the large window behind them. Mother and daughter sat on opposite sides of the table, while the father faced the screen. The artstyle and graphics looked more modern than the earlier parts of the test.

After a brief moment, the image transformed.

Mother and daughter were still eating dinner the same as before, but the father was now… aggressively smiling. His being looked as if it were somehow… oscillating, almost aflame? There was a hand on his shoulder placed by a cosmic-looking figure standing beside him. The figure radiated a brilliant blue. The window outside now showcased a world that was much darker, with swirls of black and crimson red streaming in.

A prompt appeared at the bottom of the screen. The counter in the corner was already at 5 and dropping down as the question appeared:

The new God of our world has just pitched a very intriguing idea to this man. Do you have a better pitch?

And as soon as the text box appeared for me to type my answer, it was already gone, and a weird buzzing sound played, indicating that I’d gotten the question wrong.

The image transformed again.

The father was smiling, almost staring right at me. His hands were resting on the table, each holding a fork and knife with pride. The cosmic figure beside him had similarly turned to face the screen. Mother and daughter were no longer there.

As I tried to make sense of the image, I noticed a leg peeking out from under the dinner table, obscured by the tablecloth.

A flashing arrow appeared, pointing directly to the space under the table. Text appeared at the screen’s bottom:

The MOTHER and the DAUGHTER are now underneath the table. Would you like to see them?

No. I’d rather not.

The arrow kept blinking, while the father and the cosmic figure’s images seemed to somehow intensify.

I kept my eyes closed for the next minute.

Eventually, I squinted to see the relieving sight of the screen turning to black.

Please let this be over. Please let this cursed, miserable fucking experience be–

I heard a strange, hollow sound come from the computer as the next section loaded.

With respect to Bill Gates and the fine people at Microsoft, what I saw next was something that was beyond the capabilities of a computer seemingly running on Windows 99.

On screen was incredibly high quality video footage of… outer space? As if an astronaut deep in the cosmos had a GoPro strapped to their helmet or something. I heard the sounds of deep, rhythmic breathing as this unknown individual gently rotated amidst the expanse, surrounded by stars in the sea of black.

Large, white text appeared in the middle of the screen:

Sell Him On The Stars

And then a rudimentary-looking text box appeared over some of the most high-quality space footage I’d ever seen in my life. It didn’t make any sense.

What the fuck am I supposed to do here?

I typed a generic-as-hell answer that even I didn’t fully believe: Isn’t the universe beautiful?

I pressed enter and the text box disappeared.

Suddenly, in the black abyss on screen, the distant stars started fading away, one by one, like light bulbs dimming. The heavy breathing continued, as the presumed astronaut mumbled in a language that sounded otherworldly. Soon, there were only a few stars remaining. As they flickered off, I heard the voice mutter, almost cry, in plain English:

“It’s so beautiful.”

The screen remained black for quite some time. But something in me stirred. I knew that there was still something left.

An attempted whisper over the PA confirmed just as much. “Last question,” resounded the voice off the speaker system.

I readied myself.

The new image finished loading.

On screen, there was a… pretty cheerful, generic-looking 2D animated guy standing in a living room. He looked like the Office Assistant Clippy had come to life or something. He had his finger placed on top of a light switch, the living room window beside him showcasing the cosmos.

Alright, last question…

The animated character shrugged his shoulders in an exaggerated manner, with a speech bubble appearing beside his head. It read: “Should we join God in his slumber?”

A flashing arrow pointed to the light switch.

What?

He opened the window in his room, revealing a zoomed-out view of the Milky Way — the same Milky Way image I’d seen in like a million textbooks growing up.

The word bubble next to his mouth had new words now: “Is this product at the end of its lifecycle?”

I was stirring, confused. A text box appeared. I typed ‘No’.

“Why?” responded the character with an annoyed, exasperated sigh.

Immediately, graphic real-life images flashed across the screen over a split-second: the decapitated gardener’s blood pouring into a bed of flowers, the red-eyed entity emerging from the closet in my room, the mother and daughter underneath the dinner table…

As I recoiled in fear, the character was suddenly back on screen, back in his living room. He broke into a comically sad gesture as his speech bubble updated: “But there is so much suffering here.”

It’s funny. It felt like I’d hit rock bottom when I first entered the lobby. But somehow, the floor on this thing kept getting lower and lower.

The character motioned to the Milky Way galaxy outside his window. Then he looked at me intently.

“Justify the existence of this product.”

A new text box appeared, awaiting my input. In the corner of the screen, a timer started counting down from 20, 19…

Christ dude, I am not cut out for this. Matter of fact, I’m not cut out for anything.

18, 17…

Slowly, the room started rumbling. I was suddenly concerned about what would happen if I didn’t answer the question.

16, 15…

Fuck, I just wanted a fucking job. Does everything in my stupid, sad life have to be a nightmare?

14, 13…

If I knew how to justify this fucking product I wouldn’t be here interviewing for a fucking shit marketing assistant job for no fucking money with no fucking life or career prospects Jesus fucking–

12, 11…

Through the now-erratic rumbling of the room, which felt like a full-blown earthquake at this point, I heard a voice barely croak through the PA:

“I believe in you.”

10, 9…

There has to be some fucking reason for this to exist.

8, 7…

I searched my brain for a reason. Thinking through my experience of adult life so far, I struggled to find a good one.

6, 5…

A memory dislodged itself from my subconscious. Maybe it was jogged by the CRT screen, or the 90s graphics of this ‘test’.

4…

A memory of me as a kid… Sitting on the sofa…

3…

Covered in blankets… Drinking hot cocoa…

2…

Watching a Christmas movie I can’t remember the name of…

1…

I forced my words into the text box before it disappeared: its osmeitmes occasioanly oczy

The split-second before the textbox disappeared, I could’ve sworn that the typos had, somehow, been corrected.

The galaxy now appeared on screen in high-definition, the revised text triumphantly appearing underneath it in a jagged, dated-looking white font.

The Universe: It’s sometimes, occasionally cozy.

I won’t lie to you, it looked pretty stupid.

We were back to the animated living room, the character now tapping on his chin. He lifted his finger.

“I like it! Well done! You, my friend, are quite the marketer!”

Before I could even process the compliment, the screen fractured with a loud crack. Smoke seeped from the computer’s vents, accompanied by a whirring and sizzling sound. Heart racing, I jumped up from the chair and backed away.

I guess… the test is over?

The lights in the test room, the hallways outside, and the warehouse visible through the window all flickered back on simultaneously. I nervously stepped towards the door, and finding it unlocked as I pulled, I ran out of the room screaming. I held my fists up while sprinting, as dozens of scattered employees - including, I shit you not, the woman I previously saw get impaled - all clapped for me. The sight of them surrounding me and cheering was not helpful. I’m pretty sure it only made me scream louder as I escaped.

I arrived at the elevator - doors already open - and lunged inside, hastily jabbing the ‘close door’ button. The receptionist, voice no longer warbled by the PA, was barely able to squeak out “I knew you could do it!” before the doors shut on him.

What. The. Fucking. Christ.

I made it home. The next few days were a blur of sleep, drinking, sex and denial.

It took me a week to feel comfortable checking my emails again. When I did, I was, for reasons I still don’t quite understand, oddly disappointed that NexaNova Systems hadn’t sent me another email.

Kinda thought I nailed that test, no?

I looked up the job posting again, but it was now inconspicuously missing. In fact, their whole website was gone. I looked up their address on Google Maps, but there was no history of them ever being in that building… or them existing in the first place, for that matter.

All I had was that initial email they’d sent me.

Hrm. Well. At least they liked my resume, I guess.

Anywho… back to the grind. These bills aren’t going to pay for themselves, unfortunately!

If anyone reading has any job leads I should look into, let a girl know. I’m motivated, I’m a hard worker, and I suppose I can now say that I work pretty well under pressure.