Mary Robb - Down the Rabbit Hole

“Yeah! Yeah, I can! And you can hear me, right? And see me?” He continued to wave his hand. He had a thick, dark thatch of hair and a broad forehead.

“Loud and clear, and I’m looking right at you.”

“Finally!” It was hard to tell the guy’s expression, since only the top of his head and his eyes were visible, but he seemed to be smiling.

“Where are we?” Jeremy called.

The guy’s eyebrows fell. “You don’t know?”

Jeremy shook his head. “You don’t either?”

The guy disappeared, and Jeremy heard a small, discouraged “No.”

“How about you?” Jeremy called. “The other guy—there was another guy over there. Hey!”

Nobody answered. Had the other guy left, or been a figment of his imagination?

“Hey, did you see that other guy? Are you still there?”

“What?”

Jeremy took the moment to drop back to his feet, then exited the cubicle. “Hang on!” he called. “I’m coming to find you.”

He turned right and headed down the long hallway. He passed multiple cubbyholes just like his, all occupied by people staring at their screens, until finally he reached the corner. He turned and started down another interminable row.

He should have reached the one who’d spoken to him by now, but nobody seemed the least bit aware of their surroundings, let alone to be looking for him, so he stopped, hands on his hips, and called, “Are you still there?”

No answer.

Disappointment threatened to swamp him. He was crazy. Someone had put him in an institution and he was imagining the cube farm, the silent preoccupied people, the colorful screens. The only real things were the four white walls and he was actually in a straitjacket. Or he was wandering around some giant man-made rat maze, perhaps observed, perhaps failing this test, failing all the tests.

“Hello!” he yelled, fear giving his voice volume. He began to jog down the aisle, arms out to either side slapping the wall, the cubicles, the wall, the cubicles. “Answer me!”

The industrial carpet, the fabric-lined cubicles all conspired to suck his voice into an abyss. The room was huge, and there was no echo, just the dead thumping of his feet on the rug. He ran until his breath ripped audibly from his throat and his chest burned.

“Dude!”

The voice from behind him made Jeremy damn near jump out of his skin. He spun around to see a short, dark-haired, square-headed guy in a shirt and tie and wrinkled khakis. He was built like a wrestler and stood with his arms out from his sides as if about to draw in a gunfight. It might have been aggressive except he looked he like might cry.

He panted as he took the guy in. “Are you the one I was just talking to?”

“I was gonna ask you the same thing! Where the fuck are we, man?”

Jeremy started to laugh—hysteria, doubtless—when the guy launched himself forward and he found himself being hugged tight around the waist.

Just as abruptly the guy let go. “Sorry, man. I’m just so glad to see someone. I mean, Jesus, this place, it’s huge, and I haven’t talked to anyone since I got here.”

“So all these other people can’t see you either, huh? How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know, man, days . One minute I was sitting in a meeting, checking my emails, and the next minute I’m like here , you know? It was okay at first, but now, I mean, what the hell, right? At least we got our stuff.” He gestured back into his cube and Jeremy saw an array of screens similar to those that he had. “I’d really be batshit otherwise.”

Jeremy’s breath was slowly getting back to normal, but “days” threatened to make him hyperventilate.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Brian. Yours?” He held out a hand.

“Jeremy.” They shook. “So how’d you get here, Brian?”

Brian’s face clouded. “Oh, man, it was awful.” He went on to describe sensations that were eerily similar to the ones Jeremy’d experienced.

“And you said you were . . . what, checking your email? On your phone?”

“That’s right. I just got this new Samsung, thing is fucking awesome. If I had it here I’d blow your mind with it. I’m talking hashtag-phone-gasm, right? I mean, I don’t even know what all it can do yet and I’m on it all the time . You know?”

Jeremy nodded slowly. “Did anybody say anything to you before you, uh, before you ended up here?”

“What do you mean? I was in a meeting.”

“I mean did anybody tell you to get off your phone, or ask you to listen up or anything like that?”

Brian shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. I was watching this video my buddy Ev sent, with this sweet chick in it wearing nothing but—”

Something from inside his cubicle dinged and Brian’s head whipped around for all the world like the dog in Up when it saw a squirrel. Brian turned without finishing his sentence and bent toward the screen.

“Brian,” Jeremy said, “did you see that other guy who popped up? Reddish hair? Looked annoyed?”

“Pay attention , boys and girls! Are you paying attention?” a female voice boomed over the cubicles. You could hear the smile in her voice but at the same time she sounded far from benevolent. “That’s why you’re here, boys and girls, to Pay. Attention. Get what I’m saying?”

The voice was getting closer. Jeremy glanced at Brian, who turned from his screens and looked at Jeremy with wide-eyed terror.

“What?” Jeremy asked. “Who is that?”

“Oh man,” Brian said, dropping into his seat. “Oh man. It’s her . Mrs. Hartz. Quick! Pay attention!” And with that, he turned back to his screens, hunching like all the rest of them, eyes riveted.

“Why? Who is it? What’s she going to do? Brian?”

But the guy was trembling in his seat, ignoring him.

Jeremy turned toward the voice. What the hell? What on earth could anybody do to them now ? They were already in hell.

He watched the hall to see if she would come this way, and he didn’t have to wait long. She swung around the corner like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters —about eight feet tall with a spherical body clothed completely in red, from her dress to her hose to her sensible shoes. Incongruously perched atop her fire-engine red hair was a tiara that did its best to sparkle despite being outgunned by the sheer massive proportions of the wearer. With her smallish head, thin legs, and colossal torso, she looked like a gigantic walking aneurysm.

“What is this ?” she boomed, spying Jeremy. As she approached, her yellow eyes became eerily clear and narrowed with displeasure. “You’re not in your office! You’re not paying attention !”

It was hard to miss the malevolent gleam in her eye, as if his noncompliance might give her permission to do something awful.

“I’m paying attention to you,” he said. He found himself sweating, despite his confidence that there was little she could do to hurt him.

“ I’m not the point,” she said.

“There’s a point?” The question sounded sarcastic but he meant it. In fact the idea that there was a point gave him hope.

“That question proves you’re not paying attention!” Her voice was piercing, especially at close range, but it was the waves of hostility and impatience that were most unnerving. “Look at all the other boys and girls; are you doing what they’re doing?” She bent from the waist to peer in at Brian. Though his back was to her, Jeremy could tell his trembling had increased from the force of her attention.

She laughed—a gruesome sound—and her eyes shifted to Jeremy, conspiratorial. “I don’t think he’s truly paying attention, do you ?”