Welcome to the abyss

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His was office number thirty-four, denoted by a silvery placard with his name scribbled upon a strip of paper beneath it–a placeholder until a proper one could be made to replace it, or so he’d been told for the past year. It didn’t seem something worth raising a fuss over, so he was content to leave it as it was while focusing his attention on more important tasks. While his dedicated workspace wasn’t particularly large or glamorous, it was his. He did what he could to make it feel like the second home it was. It started with placing plastic plants on the desk and filing cabinets within, and occupying space on the wall beside the door was a framed picture of his girlfriend beside an analog clock. It was a comforting reminder of what awaited him at the end of harrowing days each time he turned to check the time.

Today, he was eager to get into his office to finally close one of the largest sales he’d ever made in his professional life. Not only would it net him a hefty bonus, it’d place him firmly within the top five of the highest grossing salespersons in the company for the month, granting him a spot in the parking lot beside the building. It’d be much closer than the parking garage across the street that often required one to wait at the crosswalk for up to eight minutes each way. With all that extra time, maybe he could finally start chipping away at that movie script that’d been rotting away in his brain for several years now.

The hall ended with a frosted glass door, bordered by a gray, metal frame, which opened up into another hallway that continued to the right. After passing through, the door eased shut behind him with a soft click, acting as a punctuation to the muffled conversations and ringing phones he left behind. Where in the previous hall, the doors were denoted only by names and corporate titles, it was this one where numbers took precedence, evens on the left, odds on the right, with fifty offices per hall. Along he trudged, passing by more metal-framed doors with similar frosted glass providing a distorted window inside. The few details that could be made out within were vague shapes representing office paraphernalia illuminated by alternating lights from the hall itself. The only sound accompanying him were his muted footsteps on the brown, coffee stained carpet, and the white noise of fluorescent lights that existed only when considered. It was no mystery why his colleagues’ offices were devoid of activity within; in his eagerness to close the sale today, he arrived a full hour earlier than his contemporaries were scheduled to be there. While they were still sleeping, he was awake and rehearsing his final pitch in his grime encrusted mirror at home. 

Soon he arrived before his office, though when he tried to turn the brass handle to enter, he found it stuck in place. Peculiar, the offices were never locked. He was fairly certain they didn’t even have locking mechanisms. There was nowhere on the door to insert a key, and when he envisioned the opposite side, there was nothing aside from another handle. Puzzled, he looked beside the door. The placard confirmed he was in the right place, so he tried the handle again to no effect. Maybe the summertime heat was causing the metal to expand. That was the only explanation he could think of as to why a non-locking door was stuck as it was. It still refused to budge after trying a third time. After looking to either side, he began pressing down on it with all his might, jumping up to bring his full weight down upon it, and still it didn’t move. Panting, he took a step back and thought briefly about trying to kick the door down. He couldn’t let anything get in the way of this sale. 

Tempting as it was to break the door down, destruction of company property was a fireable offense. Even if it was justifiable to make a large sale, it wasn’t worth losing his job over, so he calmed himself with a few deep breaths. There was a maintenance office down the next hall. He passed by it every day on his way to the break room. If anyone would be able to help him, they could.

He proceeded to the end of the hall, through the door into the next hallway, and found himself among the next span with offices fifty-one to one-hundred. Continuing on halfway down that hall, he turned to where he thought the maintenance office was, but instead found office number seventy-six. Perhaps he was mistaken in its placement, but after looking at each individual placard denoting the number and name of each office’s inhabitant, he confirmed that the maintenance office wasn’t in this hallway. His memory must have been faulty. Surely, it’d be in the next span. 

Through the next door at the end of the hall, he turned right once more. It was this one where the break room should be, but rather than finding that or the maintenance office, all he found were more soulless offices up to one-hundred-fifty. That shouldn’t have been possible. While he typically took lunch in his office, there were several occasions that he went to the break room, and it was always in this hallway. His heart began to race as he wondered if he was in some kind of strange dream. It was that, or he was losing his mind. 

Or maybe there were some renovations he was unaware of. Yeah, that was probably it. The last time he’d gone to the break room was about a month ago, and most employees didn’t use it anyway. And maybe the maintenance office was now in the more accessible first span of halls with the executives. If he just proceeded through the door at the end of this hall, he’d be back there since it looped around. When he did go through that door, he turned right, and let the door fall shut behind him. A confused grunt escaped him when his eyes fell on a placard with the number one-hundred-fifty-one emblazoned upon it. The scribbling beneath it where the name should be was illegible. 

He shook his head in disbelief, then turned around and re-opened the door he entered from. Through it, the hall continued once again to the right, and when he poked his head through, he could see another placard with the number two-hundred-one upon it with another illegible name below. He retracted his head and allowed the door to close once more while his trembling hands fell to his sides. Where the hell was he?

Merely thinking about continuing to the end of this hall was enough to send a jolt of adrenaline throughout his body, but what else could he do? Dreadful as it was, there was also curiosity bubbling up inside of him, much like bile. So, he continued to the end of the hall, and as the voice in his head told him it would be, the next span he found himself in contained offices two-hundred-one through two-hundred-fifty. Without letting the door fall shut behind him this time, he peered back through and let out a gasp when he saw office number two-hundred-fifty-one. 

Whether he continued back the way he came or continued down the next hall, he would find himself in hallways with ascending numbers of offices. The thought of that was enough to make him consider giving up wandering already in favor of waiting to see if he’d wake up from whatever nightmare he found himself in. He tried pinching himself, screaming and shouting until his throat became dry, and resorted to banging his head against the wall. Nothing roused him to consciousness, and what he settled on was that nothing would. This was his reality now. 

While proceeding through the halls, he wondered how many before him experienced what he was going through at this moment. Would he encounter anyone else wandering as he did? Thus far, there seemed no way to go back, so he’d spend however long chasing others who may not even exist. He’d go mad doing so at any rate. How long would it take for insanity to set in? Was he already insane? 

Would he find decomposing bodies of coworkers lying in the halls? Much as be doubted the possibility, he also never considered there’d be a chance that his workplace would become an infinite corporate abyss. Still, as he continued, he couldn’t help but experience shreds of anxiety when opening more doors. The way he saw it, he could either continue on in hopes of finding someone else, an exit if he was lucky, or he could wait in place for a slow death of his own. What was the rule of thumb again–three days without water, three weeks without food?

Not that he’d know how close he got to the former, or the latter if by some miracle he found potable water somewhere. He couldn’t dismiss anything as a possibility yet, though the chance that he’d be able to survive in an infinite series of corridors was more torture than comfort. All he’d have to measure the time would be how long his hair grew. There were no clocks in the halls, nor did the gold-plated watch on his wrist function beyond being an eye-catching accessory.

If there was any solace, it was in the fact that he could reliably count the offices he passed in their numerical ascension. Around the five-hundreds, he started trying all the door handles to see if any of the offices could be opened. Each rattle was an anthem to desperation. One after another, he tried until tears that he fought back began pouring down his face, and by the time he reached the span of offices that ended at one-thousand, his wails were those of a specter forced to wander through eternity.

He barely pressed down on the handles anymore. It was useless. 

At the end of the hall, he rested his hand on the handle for office one-thousand. Without applying much pressure, it moved. It let him turn it all the way until it was perpendicular to the floor. He swallowed, trying to suppress the minute pang of hope welling up in his chest. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he pushed the door open, and out came another involuntary wail. Through the door was another hallway that continued on to the right, and on the wall beside the first office within was the number one.

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