James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

She turned and disappeared silently up the aisle, and Paul watched anxiously over the top of his cube until the doorway of the coffee room filled with bright, fluorescent light.

“Olivia?” he called out weakly. When she didn’t answer, he raised his voice. “Olivia!”

Olivia stepped into the bright doorway with the coffeepot in one hand and a paper filter in the other. She lifted her eyebrows at him.

“I’m, uh, I’m just going to splash a little water on my face.” Paul gestured over his shoulder. Olivia said nothing, but simply stepped out of the doorway.

The men’s room was pitch-black when Paul gingerly pushed open the door, so he stood in the hall, snaked his arm inside, and groped for the light switch. Through the crack in the door he watched the fluorescents flicker on, filling the room with a bluish glare. Then he pushed the door wide and surveyed the room, squatting down in the doorway to check under the sides of the stalls. At the sink he ran the water full blast, for the sound of it, and in the mirror he kept an eye on the ceiling as he bent over the sink and splashed two handfuls of water on his face. He pumped a little liquid soap into his palms, then, glancing once more at the ceiling in the mirror, closed his eyes and quickly scrubbed his face. He opened his eyes again, blinking against the water dripping off his eyebrows, and fumbled a handful of towels out of the dispenser. He mopped his face and turned off the water, pausing with his hand on the tap to listen hard. With the crumpled paper towels in his fist, he surveyed the ceiling tiles above him. But he saw nothing and heard only the water gulping down the drain.

“Suck it up,” he told himself, but not too loud. “Grow up.”

He turned off the men’s room light as he left, though he did it from the hall, reaching back through the door for the switch. His face tingling, his head throbbing less painfully, his nerves buzzing less anxiously, he walked through the bright sunlight of the elevator lobby, passing the recycling box without even a glance. As he came into cubeland he noted immediately the twin, square pools of light in his and Olivia’s cubes, printed against the gloom, and the bright rectangular glare of the coffee room doorway. Over the rumble of the AC he could even hear the busy little trickle of the coffeemaker. He successfully resisted the urge to scan the cube horizon again, and he allowed himself to fall heavily into his squealing chair. His screen saver streaked slowly across his monitor, so he bumped the mouse, and then called up the RFP from the server. The trickle stopped, and a moment later Olivia arrived. “I noticed you don’t have your own cup,” she said, and he took a Styrofoam cup from her, secretly pleased that she hadn’t startled him.

“I forgot to ask if you wanted sugar or creamer,” Olivia said as she carried her own cup — FOLLOW YOUR BLISS, it said — into her cube.

“Black’s fine.” Paul turned away, blowing across the coffee as he lowered it to his desktop. “So, Olivia,” he said, lifting his voice as he faced the glow of his monitor, “how do you want to work this?”

He heard a bump and scrape from across the aisle, as if she were moving a ring binder along her desktop. “Do you want to look over my shoulder,” he said, “or shall we work together from our own separate monitors?”

He heard her chair creak, heard it roll against the carpet.

“What do you think?” Paul said. “Olivia?”

He picked up his coffee and, slouching in his chair, turned slowly to look across the aisle. Olivia’s chair was spinning slowly in place, empty. Then, as he watched, her shoe dropped onto her desk from above with a soft slap, and Paul lifted his eyes to see Olivia’s wriggling legs, one foot bare, rising into a gap in the suspended ceiling. Several pairs of pale hands were grappling with her, hauling her from above into a black square where a ceiling tile had been a moment before. Olivia’s sweater was rucked up, baring her doughy midriff; her legs kicked and pedaled at nothing. Paul heard a muffled cry, and the groan and squeak of the ceiling tiles all around the gap. The tiles bulged and sagged, and out of the dark Paul heard thumps and grunts. Suddenly Olivia’s legs jerked a little higher into the ceiling, and Paul felt a searing heat on the back of his hand.

“Agh!” he cried, instinctively dropping his cup from his violently trembling hand. Hot coffee splashed across the carpet, soaking immediately into a dark stain. An unusually loud thump made him look up again; only Olivia’s flailing calves hung from the hole in the ceiling.

“Oh, God,” breathed Paul, and a moment later, to his astonishment, he had crossed the aisle, jumped up on Olivia’s desk, and leaped to grab her ankles. He caught one and held on, his feet crashing against her desktop, making her cup jump and slosh coffee all over her computer. Smoke and sparks began to sputter out of the unit, filling the air instantly with an acrid chemical reek, but Paul hung doggedly onto Olivia’s ankle, stretching himself to his full length like a cat reaching for a treat. With a grunt he lunged for her other ankle and caught it, and he managed to haul her slightly down out of the gap, as far as her thighs.

The computer on the desk was popping and sizzling, and a gray thread of smoke stung Paul to the back of his nostrils. “Olivia, knock it off!” Paul cried as she began to kick harder. “Quit kicking!”

Then one of the pale arms reached out of the ceiling and, with a cold, clammy grip, peeled the fingers of Paul’s right hand off Olivia’s ankle, bending his fingers back so painfully that he let go with a cry. He leaped again, trying to regain her foot, and another pale hand descended out of the dark and gave Paul’s left hand a vicious slap.

“Goddammit!” cried Paul, smoke rising all around his waist, sparks flying round his ankles, but before he could leap again, a pair of arms grasped him round the knees and hauled him violently off the desk. Olivia’s ankles were wrenched from his grasp, and he crashed painfully against Olivia’s clattering chair. The chair heeled over, and Paul landed in a heap on the floor, the wind knocked out of him.

“Ahhhhhh,” Paul groaned, twisting off his bruised hip onto his back, and the last two things he saw were Olivia’s twitching heels — one shod, the other bare — vanish into the dark above him, and the round, bleached face of Boy G — his glasses awry, but as expressionless as ever — looming over Paul with his clenched fist cocked over his shoulder.

“Boy G,” said Boy G in his breathless monotone, “the one and only.” Then his fist fell, and Paul was out cold.

PAUL CAME TO IN HIS OWN BED, alone, with the covers tucked up to his chin. Charlotte crouched weightlessly on his chest, watching him from inches away with her fathomless black eyes. Paul felt no pressure from her — what does a ghost cat weigh? — but he felt a freezing cold seeping through the blanket over his heart and something else, an electric buzzing in his chest. Paul realized to his horror that Charlotte was purring .

“Nice kitty,” Paul whimpered, feeling the cold all the way down to his toes.

Charlotte thrummed like a little Harley through the blanket. It was a strange, weightless, icy buzzing, but she was purring nonetheless. Nose to nose with Paul, she opened her wide, black mouth and made a tiny, mewling cry. Then she vanished.

It took Paul a minute or two to catch his breath, but at last he flung back the covers and jumped out of bed, chilled with sweat, his heart pounding. His brave little air-conditioner was chugging under the window, and for a moment Paul cowered in the corner of the room in his underwear, rubbing his arms against the chill. Sunlight glared through the gaps in his front curtain, and he glanced at his bedside clock, which read 7:00 A.M.