Work Text:
“Stanley was so bad at following directions, it’s incredible he wasn’t fired years ago.”
The man huffs indignantly, and continues forward.
If this really is Stanley’s conscience, speaking to him from the ether, perhaps he ought to listen…but the niggling suspicion that it isn’t writhes incessantly in the back of his skull.
Besides, the employee isn’t typically one for giving in to his own reservations. He’s more of a “leap before you look” kind of guy, and that philosophy hasn’t failed him in life thus far.
At least, he can’t remember a time it has.
The cargo lift is just ahead. He understands what it does, but can’t quite cobble up what it’s meant to be used for. Oh well. If he can hop on, get a better angle so he can drop toward the relatively ample cushioning of the cardboard boxes below, he may be able to exit through the open garage door. It’s not the smartest idea, he reckons. Certainly not the safest. But it’s better than being stuck here without any clue on what’s happened to his co-workers. He needs to file a police report, get some semblance of what happened, right before—
…right before…
His co-workers. What were their names, again? Stanley cards a hand through his coarse hair as he approaches the lift, struggling to recall their faces. Their job descriptions. The relationships he had with them—all of them—before coming to in his office, only to realize they’d vanished. Where were they? Who were they? He knows he has a connection to them, he knows, but it feels oddly blunted, obscured by some mental block he can’t place the reason for.
His initial panic at their disappearance makes way for abject confusion. As far back as he can recognize, his life has been so monotonous that he can barely distinguish separate minutes, much less days. Maybe he came in to work on the weekend by accident; no wonder the office is empty.
But if that were the case, why were queues arriving on his monitor just an hour before stopping entirely? There’s a glaring hole in this theory. The orders had come in, they had, in an impeccably steady stream this morning. He knows it. How or why he understands this with such conviction, he can’t say. But he knows.
Wait…wait a minute. The orders. The orders, they were telling him to—
Stanley steadies himself with a hand against the railing. His face adopts a sickly pallor and his forehead moistens with the sheer effort it takes to simply remember, to put the pieces together. What on earth happened? Why does the space between his ears feel as though it’s been stuffed with thick cotton wool? Why are his thoughts so formless and slippery? His memories, they—they’re there, but he—he can’t—
…
The orders. They told him to push buttons. That’s right.
Straightening himself a touch, Stanley peers over the chain link fence toward the warehouse below, attempting to stabilize his train of thought. What kind of office job entails pressing random keys for random increments of time? From an objective standpoint, the nature of his work seems superfluous at best. What is he being paid for, exactly?
And for the love of God, where the hell is everybody?!
He heaves a sigh, screwing his eyes shut so tightly that he sees stars.
Focus, Stanley. Focus.
The warehouse. The garage door. Step onto the cargo lift, jump down into the boxes, shake it off. Get out. Find help. Do what needs to be done.
He inhales deeply and purposefully; sets his left foot over the precipice. Then the right.
“Look, Stanley, I think—“
Anything the Voice is attempting to lecture him over is drowned out in an instant as the cargo lift shudders to life.
How—what the—this thing is weight activated?! What a ridiculous feature! OSHA would have an absolute field day with this garbage!
—is what Stanley would’ve thought, had the sudden commotion not caused him to lose his balance. His sweaty palms clamber for purchase as the podium juts forward, fingertips barely finding the nearest beam and then the edge of the cold steel platform and then open air.
shitshitshitohhhhhSHIT—
A sickeningly wet CRACK rings throughout the warehouse upon his impact with the ground, echoing lightly in the cavernous space.
It’s truly unfortunate, in the employee’s humble opinion, that he hasn’t managed to land head-first. Quite the opposite, in fact. As he realizes with dull shock (far eclipsed by crippling pain) that he’s slowly bleeding out on the concrete floor, the Voice returns.
“But in his eagerness to prove that he is in control of the story and no one gets to tell him what to do, Stanley leapt from the platform and plunged to his death,” it drones mockingly, in that deep, lilting baritone. “Good job, Stanley! Everyone thinks you are very powerful.”
Fucking…cunt…! is the last phrase to meander through Stanley’s battered mind, before the world fades to black.
…
THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS [LOADING]