By Patrick Barb
The I.T. department is located on Sub-Basement 4. Button B4 on the elevator panel. The Temp rides the elevator down, all alone. He shields his eyes from the glare of the elevator lights reflected and refracted by the mirrored glass lining the three walls and ceiling of the cart. Being surrounded by two other versions of himself, plus a third hanging upside down by his feet is an unpleasant experience for the Temp. His head throbs, his eyes itch, and his throat is parched. He went out drinking the night before, never thinking he’d be called in for temp work on a Friday morning.
“But a gig’s a gig, right?”
That’s what his temp agency contact said. He doesn’t think she knows his given name. He figures that’s the best explanation for why the company doesn’t have his name in their computer system. Maybe the agency didn’t even give them his name. Or maybe they gave the wrong name.
Either way, logging into his temporary workstation, he found himself renamed TEMP. So far, no one’s asked him what his real name is or asked if he wants his name updated in their computer system. Nobody’s asked much of anything. Not Reception, not H.R., not the manager he’s assigned to—the one with a whiteboard on his office wall and uncapped markers that stink of rotting limes.
The elevator groans, and the Temp and all his reflected and reflective contemporaries shudder as the rattling machine bypasses the other basement and sub-basement floors.
B
B-1
B-2
B-3…
The Temp’s tongue moves across his gums. He tastes last night’s cigarettes—about half a pack of Parliaments. “I only smoke when I drink,” doesn’t mean much when you live in the City and go out every night.
He wishes he’d stopped to pick up an orange or a banana from one of the fruit stands lining the sidewalk between the train and his new temporary workplace.
Of course, he’s underground now, moving far from the light. Far from fruit trees, fruit stands overflowing with their slightly bruised offerings, the scent of citrus working overtime to battle the stench waves from overflowing garbage cans, spilled motor oil, and curdling vomit in storm drains.
The elevator shakes and rattles again, harder than last time. Back and forth, side to side, intense enough to make the Temp reach out and clutch the safety rail.
Ding.
And like that, it’s over. The silvered doors roll back and the Temp stares through the open doorway to the antiseptic light of the elevator lobby on this lowest of the floors. The flickering fluorescent pulses overhead, crackling with energy, reminding the Temp of the bug zappers hanging outside his family’s home. That first house they lived in, the one his dad built way out in the country. Every morning, the Temp and his brother would run barefoot and pick up the charred corpses of houseflies, mosquitoes, and moths, before engaging in a macabre summertime bug-ball fight.
He’s lost in memories evoked by the light, so he nearly misses when the soft ding repeats once, then twice more. Inch by inch, his field of vision narrows helped along by the elevator door sliding shut again. Then, there’s a savior, a hand, pale and white, soft but not clammy, wrapping around the poor Temp’s wrist, yanking him forward, separating him from his mirror-bound brethren, leaving them in a shared limbo of never-existence.
The Temp stumbles over the bronzed OTIS letters at the cusp of the elevator. Then, his slip-on docksiders scuff across flooring that appears to have last been carpeted around the 1970s. Finally, he pulls his hand free and brings it to his face. He’s unsure of what he expects to find, both on the wrist that was just touched and, more broadly, down, down, down on B-4.
* * *
“You’ve done some good work today,” his manager told him near the end of the business day. “You strike me as a real team player, pal. Is that right?”
The friendly nicknames were out in abundance all day long. Reception calling him “honey” and “dear,” and HR told him he was a “rockstar.”
Or was it “superstar?”
“But have you been down to the server room yet? You should go to the server room before the day’s over. I.T. will get you taken care of.”
The Temp assumed this suggestion was about his log-ins, about how he was anonymized in the flurry of emails and intra-office messages he’d received in just the six or seven hours he was actually at his workstation, one bobbing head in a sea of many other twenty-, thirty-, forty-something-year-old heads. All their blotchy-skinned faces illumined by the glow of their laptop screens. Each keyboard marked by a black vinyl label with the name of the company in white, slightly raised letters.
Whatever role the Temp’s manager performed for the company, it hadn’t earned him an office of his own. Instead, all he could claim was a slightly larger workstation compared to the one the Temp was assigned. A square foot—at most—of extra real estate. The Temp couldn’t help but think of the man, with his ruddy cheeks and frosted tips placed atop his head two decades or more too late, as a “poor sucker.”
As in, “Get a load of this poor sucker…”
Mr. Manager had a small shelf drilled into the wall on the far side of his station—half lined with pill bottles and half covered with framed photographs, the price tags still attached and covering some loved ones’ faces. A throwback to a time when you couldn’t just swipe through memories on the phone, time-traveling backward and forward in seconds.
“You haven’t visited the server room?” his boss-for-the-moment asked again.
The Temp shook his head slowly in reply. Part of him wondered if he was being sent on a wild goose chase, some first-day ha-ha hazing, a ribbing for the new kid.
But then, he figured, What the hell? Better to get my name in the system.
* * *
The short, cherubic man, clad in a too-long black t-shirt, untucked and spilling past too-tight, over-washed blue jeans, with the black combat boots to finish his meticulously sloppy ensemble, gives the Temp a thorough study under the flickering illumination of the lobby lights on B-4.
A lip-wrinkling smile breaks out, dimpling the man’s cheeks. When he speaks, he sounds winded, as if he’d been out running laps moments before the Temp’s arrival. However, there’s no trace of sweat on his dark clothing or exposed skin—which is an off-white color reminding the Temp of cookie dough. However, instead of chocolate chips, the man from B-4’s skin substitutes long, stray, black body hairs. They stick straight out from his cheeks, his neck, and his arms. Porcupine quills, the Temp thinks, when he notices how stiff and pointy they appear.
For a moment, he’s tempted to reach out and yank one of the hairs. But before he surrenders to such an intrusive thought, he discovers the other man is already speaking to him. Has been for a few moments.
“…so I said, I’d never seen you here B-4. Get it?”
The Temp blinks, once, twice. It takes him that long to understand that the other man is speaking to him, engaging in banter even. Of course, the Temp despises banter, gossip, small talk, or water-cooler conversations of any kind. He told his roommate as much one evening. “I like being a temp because I put my head down, do the work, get paid, and go home.”
“Cool man. Whatever,” Roommate #3 (or maybe it was #4) had said. “So, are you gonna pay me back for last month’s rent or…”
The Temp isn’t interested in thinking further about Roommate 3 or 4. “I.T.?” he asks, checking to make sure he’s reached the right place and the correct person.
“You got it,” I.T. replies, still grinning.
Got it. I…T.
The Temp manages a slight smile and nod, acknowledging the joke. I.T.’s dimples sink deeper, cherry pits compared to the snow-slush hue of his cheeks.
“So, what brings you down here?” I.T. asks. Now, the persistence of his leering smile begins to itch at something in the back of the Temp’s brain. Some part of his gray matter that isn’t quite fight-or-flight, but close enough to it. An early warning, an alert.
“My log-in,” he says. “My name. It’s not showing in the system.”
I.T. shuffles around the Temp, sliding the worn bottoms of his boots across the carpeted floor. He heads for a closed door on one side of the lobby. But based on where he was standing and where he is now heading, the Temp is almost certain the new door is a different one from where the rotund man originally emerged.
I.T. holds a pudgy hand to a sensor panel beside the door. His skin is smooth and pasty, but otherwise unblemished. Following a loud whining beep and a blinking red dot of light flashing one, two, three times, the locking mechanism hisses and I.T. pushes the door open.
“What’s your name?” I.T. asks and the Temp almost gets to answer.
But I.T. holds up a hand, cutting the younger man’s would-be answer short. “What name does your computer, your email, say?”
Strange question.
Still, the Temp answers. “Temp, it just says Temp.”
“Are you a temp?” I.T. asks. The pair walk side-by-side down a long hallway. Cold air blows on them through vents in the walls. The walls are white, appearing freshly painted. Fresh enough that the Temp is certain he could reach out and have fingertips come back sticky, white.
He nods. Then, vocalizes his affirmation. “Yes.”
I.T. stops short and places both hands on his knees, emitting an echoing belly laugh that bounces off the white walls. The Temp remains a step behind the other man, unsure exactly of what it was he’s said that’s so funny.
* * *
The last time someone laughed so hard at something the Temp said was back home, back before his move to the City. His father laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks, just the same as the condensation beading down the low-ball glass containing the old man’s third scotch and soda. Less and less soda was included with every subsequent drink, of course.
“My son,” he’d said, gasping for air between his guffaws, “what is it you’re going to become in the City?”
The Temp hadn’t wanted to answer. Had very much wanted to sleep, to catch a ride with a friend to the airport, and to never think about home again. But there was an angry insistence read between the lines of his father’s chuckling interrogation.
“A writer,” he’d finally answered.
“A writer? Is that so? Gonna make a name for yourself then? What’s so disappointing about the one we gave you?”
* * *
“Everyone calls me I.T.,” I.T. says.
The Temp understands. After all, He’s already called the other man I.T. (and I.T. alone) in his head for the whole length of this moment—their first encounter. Hasn’t even considered that the man might have—must have—another name. If he were to think about it long enough and hard enough, the Temp would realize he’s received no names, no proper names for Reception, H.R., Security, Mr. Manager, and now I.T.
But he doesn’t think about it at all.
Instead, he continues following I.T.’s boot-scuffingly slow march through the bare-walled, narrowing passage. Narrowing because somehow the space seems thinner with each turn they make. Plus there are so many turns taken that the Temp becomes convinced they’ll end up right back where they started.
A gag. A joke. Any second they’ll jump out from the walls with cameras and lights and microphones. This will all be for a show.
If it was going to happen to the Temp, it wasn’t going to occur at the exact moment when they reached the painting.
Not the server room. But a painting. The Temp’s confusion must make for a good fit on his features, seeing how I.T. immediately recognizes that the younger man is wearing it.
He presses a stubby corpse-pale finger to the placard attached to the bottom of the maple wood frame.
“Our C.E.O.” Black letters on bronze.
The Temp moves closer to get a better look at the man he first sees depicted in swirled oils, with a body seemingly made from snow-peaked mountaintops and crashing waves on seashores, golden sands of beaches, and jagged emerald green triangles representing bordering pine trees. When he steps back, however, the pieces coalesce and a man’s smiling face is so clear it almost projects from the wall, each paint smear and stroke on the finished canvas enhancing his tone and texture.
But man doesn’t strike the Temp as the right term for the painted C.E.O. The subject has more of a child-like aura about him. A vitality that invokes a sharp pang of nostalgia in the young would-be worker. It confuses him, unsettles him, the longer he stands gazing at the oil painting of the C.E.O. wearing tight clothing, his lean, fit body visible through sheer fabric and his hair styled like it belongs to a runway model. Black hair atop his head, too. Not a speck of gray in sight.
No wrinkles either. Not even around his eyes.
“Cool,” the Temp says.
Questions feel inadequate at the moment.
* * *
All the other workers he’d met during his first day on the job, all just seemed so…oh what’s the word?
Old.
Yeah, that’s it.
Everyone sat hunched over keyboards, pecking away with their long, thin, crooked fingers. Confronted again and again by darkened reflections in their screens, showing them all squinting to read the words in documents, emails, and spreadsheets. And, to a man and woman, each one breathed heavily out the sides of their mouths. Deep breaths in, deep breaths out. Fogging up their screens with breath stinking of coffee and despair.
No, not despair. Despair implies some sense of hope still present, even if it’s inverted…perverted. Everyone working upstairs seemed to have let go of hope long before I checked in.
The Temp thought he was lucky. By virtue of his name—no, his title—he was temporary. Passing through. The end of his contract would mean the end of his time on the job. Then, there’d be another office. Another Reception, another H.R., another Mr. Manager, and maybe—but hopefully not—another I.T. to help him get his name back in the system.
* * *
The Temp manages to step to the side, averting his gaze from the oil-painted C.E.O. He doesn’t have the desire to ask why such a painting would be below ground level with only the sloppily dressed I.T. for companionship. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe it’s the painting that keeps I.T. company down here.
It’s all foolish, idle speculation as far as the Temp is concerned. When he steps away from the painting, leaving I.T. still pointing his chubby finger at the plaque, he finally notices the other door. A small door. An unremarkable door. Not even the full size of the other doors they’ve already passed through. More broom closet-sized by way of height and width.
The only thing remarkable about the door is the sheet of lined college-rule writing paper torn free from a spiral-bound notebook and scotch taped to the center.
“SERVR ROOM”
Except someone came along and noted the spelling error, using a black ink pen to add a carrot and the missing “E” between V and R. The Temp tilts his head, regarding the sheet as if it were some butterfly pinned to a museum collection, on display for posterity and the admiration of future generations. Squinting, he can almost pick out other markings on the sheet. He wonders if those show earlier attempts to correct the spelling. Or perhaps they’re the bleed-through from whatever pages were written on before this one particular sheet was loosed from its moorings.
Whatever it is, there’s something compelling about the paper and its misspelled label. The Temp can’t put into words what happens inside him, when this sudden feeling, this temptation, grabs hold of him. All of a sudden, without thought, without planning, without prep time, he becomes action, reaching, running his fingertips down the sides of the torn-out piece of paper.
“Hey! Don’t touch that!”
I.T.’s exclamation slams against the Temp like the sonic boom of a passing fighter jet.
* * *
His family would take him to air shows when he was younger. A grandfather, great-grandfather maybe, maybe both, flew in the Air Force. The old man/men, sagging-jowled, eyes forever crying but never spilling tears, wore his/their uniform(s) to the shows. He/They snapped off salutes as flying machines roared overhead.
He’d/They’d reach down and take the boy in his/their arms. Those arms shook but didn’t drop the boy. And he/they pointed to the sky and said, “Look, Temp, look at the way they fly. Isn’t it beautiful how they’re all lined up just so just for us?”
That’s not my name though.
* * *
I.T.’s shouted warning comes suddenly, without preamble. Surprised, the Temp draws his hand back from the paper at the exact wrong angle. Its thin edge catches his skin, peeling back a thin layer of fleshing, carving out a miniature pocket in the space between his thumb and forefinger.
Just enough to draw a tiny pin-prick’s worth of blood—a crimson dot soon smearing across the paper.
As before, with I.T. and his hand on the electronic sensor, there’s the gasping yawn of hydraulics before the door to the server room swings open.
The Temp starts to turn around, looking to I.T. for answers. He has several questions for the man from B-4. Some are more urgent than others. His questions are:
- what the hell, man?
- do you have a first-aid kit down here?
- why are we here?
- what’s in this server room anyway?
But he can’t say for certain if those questions are in ascending or descending order. He just knows he wants, no, he needs answers to all of them.
Instead of getting to ask them, however, he feels I.T.’s hand on the small of his back, a gentle nudge but electric all the same, charged-up energy flowing from the dough-handed homunculus and through the Temp’s shirt before rocketing up his spine. The effect’s the same as if he were jabbed with a cattle prod, driven forward to the slaughter pens.
No pens wait ahead though. No blood or cow shit coats the floor. No slabs of dressed red meat hang from hooks. At least, none that the Temp can see.
Instead, he finds rows on rows of black-boxed machines, all humming in near unison, a droning chorus of information processed and re-processed. These machines are the hub through which all the work done on the floors above is transformed and made productive. The server room is where the company’s real work takes place, of course. Not above, where so many people spend countless hours—day in, day out—working on…something. Whatever it is they make. Whatever product. Whatever services they provide. Everything runs through the towering structures arranged in rows and columns along the unfolding confines of the server room.
The Temp walks slow and steady, as if he were in a church, navigating the pews. Or better yet, on a beach, walking along the edge where the receding tide kisses the first half-inch of hot, dry sand.
He halts his forward progress, sensing I.T.’s hand is no longer at his backside. Free for a moment, the Temp turns around, trying to get a sense of how close the door might be. After all, it’d appeared so small and the Temp can’t imagine the room’s very big.
Yet there’s no door to be seen. At least none within immediate view of the Temp and the now giggling I.T.
“You don’t remember coming here before?” the small, ugly man asks between his hiccupping guffaws.
His question makes no sense. It confuses the Temp as if I.T. just shared some lewd joke about his mother. The hot sticky breath against the back of his neck only makes things worse for the Temp. Clouds of fog-white steam roll out from between massive black towers. Each red and green light contains a tiny pouch of data, a pin-prick star in an information constellation. The Temp takes quick gasping breaths, trying to right himself, trying to remember why he’s there in the first place.
Running a hand down the back of his head and stopping at his neck, he lets the sour sweat splash from his hair down to the collar of his shirt. He counts the digits resting against his bare skin. One, two, three, four, five…six.
One of the flashing lights displayed like Christmas decorations on the monoliths might contain his name. His real name. The one he had outside the building in the time before. I.T. grabs for his hand, urgent, insistent.
The Temp ducks down so the other can put lips to ears and share a secret. “Server,” he says.
Six fingers. But that’s impossible.
Not only does that realization come but also its slower dawning cousin: that I.T. is simply too short to have been the one to touch the Temp. And not just that. The touch of the extra finger seems imbued with a near-erotic power. Something imitating love and lust.
“Server,” I.T. repeats.
The Temp mutters protestations. “Yes, yes, server,” he says, “I know, I know.”
Finally, he turns around to find out who’s touched him. Then, he stares up past the ebony towers of information, information, and so much more information, and he finds her.
She hangs from the ceiling, strung up with wires where her flesh isn’t already molded into the cracks between tiles. Red cables, blue cables, green cables, all sparking and crackling with energy. As though she is tapped into the server towers and all the data within.
Hair is scant atop her head. There are more deep crimson scabbed-over wounds than follicles. Her eyes glow orange. Like the light of a surge protector, or, at least that’s the first thing that comes to the Temp’s mind when her eyes lock onto his.
Actually, the first thing that reaches his head is I.T.’s word repeated over and over. “Server. Server. Server.”
Her teeth hang past her lips, all canines. Yellow fangs with brown rot marks. Shiny thanks to the drool and spittle leaking over her cracked white lips.
“Server,” I.T. repeats, more droning alarm than man. An eager, teasing reminder to the Temp, showing the younger man—a boy practically—that he’s now stuck, bound to this fate.
Her long arms wrap around the Temp. She pulls him close and sinks her too-many teeth into his neck, his chest, his shoulders, wherever they can penetrate and tear. And once he’s opened, she drinks his offering. Feeding herself, gorging.
Crow’s feet wrinkles appear to match the new dark circles under the Temp’s eyes. His breathing comes in ragged bursts, his heart beats too fast to overcompensate, and his hearing grows much worse—though he’s sure she’s said something, talking with her mouth full and telling him his name. Gray hairs emerge, turning white in spots—mostly around his temples.
And then, she lets him go. Slack-jawed, drooling, broken inside and out, he looks down at I.T. still dimpled and giggling. The little man speaks even slower, enunciating every syllable so that even the liver-spotted, wrinkled, elderly Temp can understand.
“Serve her,” he says.
All the Temp has the strength to do is nod. Chin goes up, chin comes down. Bleary eyes are slow to clear, but finally reveal the others, stepping forward from behind the machinery. The Temp’s brain aches from thinking too hard, but even he recognizes the C.E.O., how the man almost looks like a mirror image of his oil-painted stand-in. He takes his place at the front of the line. Not standing, like the Temp assumed a leader would do, but down on his knees. A penitent.
He crawls to her. Her breasts are now full, swollen, black veins popping out around engorged and wrinkled nipples. The C.E.O. takes one oversized teat between his lips and drinks. Ruby-red blood droplets squirt from her dugs and splash against his tongue, between his teeth, and trickle down his throat.
He drinks his share. Then, the others follow.
Somehow the Temp knows one thing: That’s mine. My blood. My life. My years.
As the upper management feeds, time strips away from their features. It turns back for them and them alone. These are the conquerors, the heroes of history, the Alexanders, and the Caesars. Vital, essential leaders for the future.
The Temp watches it all, but he’s so, so tired.
He wonders how they brought her down to B-4. Or perhaps they built B-4 and all the floors above around her. He wonders how many years she’s stolen and gifted back to those in charge. Mostly, one question remains for the Temp, an inquiry scratching to be let out.
In the end, he whispers it, unsure whether he wants it heard or not.
“Will I get overtime for today?”
I.T. laughs. She laughs as well.
Even the Temp has to laugh. It’s such a funny question after all.
End.
Patrick Barb is an author of weird, dark, and horrifying tales, currently living (and trying not to freeze to death) in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His published works include the dark fiction collection Pre-Approved for Haunting, the novellas Gargantuana’s Ghost and Turn, as well as the novelette Helicopter Parenting in the Age of Drone Warfare. His forthcoming works include the themed short-story collection The Children’s Horror from Northern Republic Press and the sci-fi/horror novel Abducted from Dark Matter Ink. His 2023 short story “The Scare Groom” was selected for Best Horror of the Year Volume 16. Visit him at patrickbarb.com.
