07 Aug Just Another Meeting

I’m not sure if he knows how little respect I have for him.

He leans back in his chair, slowly placing his hands behind his head—making a meal of it—as though what is to follow is going to bring him great pleasure.  The two rings under his armpits are bigger versions of the circles that surround his sallow eyes.  Other patches of darkness decorate the rest of his pallid and pudgy face, as though his soul is seeping through his skin.

“Tony,” he exhales slowly, as though he is about to deliver the news that my mother has passed.

Centre stage on his desk is a picture of his wife and kids at the beach.  I wonder why they’re smiling.  At this moment in time, I want to know that more than anything else in the world.  The whiteboard above his head lists his duties for the day.  He could wipe that clean and scrawl the words ‘Be a prick’ across it.

He’s staring at me now with a look that suggests pity and disappointment.  I bet he’s rehearsed this in the mirror.

“You haven’t hit target in months, Tony,” he finally breathes out.

Was that a smile?

It isn’t a question, but he leaves it hanging in the air regardless.  I consider my response.  I could handle this with decorum.

“Geoff, you’re a dick.”

Nobody has stood up to him before, but I’ve had enough.  As the words land, there’s a sharp intake of breath and a noticeable tightening of his face.  His right eyelid collapses.  Stuck in a long, drawn-out wink, he finally raises his left hand, physically drawing his eyelid back with his finger.  It’s quite a spectacle.

“You’re a waste of skin, Geoff.  Everyone despises you—wishes you were dead.  The number of times I’ve sat at my desk squeezing that stress ball, pretending it’s your fat neck!”

Anything else would be overkill, so I pause, giving him the chance to absorb my words.  So much for going with grace, but this is bottled fury.  I’m well out of my comfort zone, hands shaking with adrenaline.  They still quiver even as I clasp them together.

He slowly brings his arms back down, and a nervous cough escapes the pursed hole between the downturn of his lips.  He crosses his legs, and his pants ride up, unveiling colorful Garfield socks—a futile effort to portray himself as one of us.

His right eye begins to twitch more aggressively as he opens his mouth to speak.  Nothing emerges.  He looks at me and snaps his head quickly to the ground before placing his finger behind his drab grey tie, wrestling it forward to relieve some of the pressure from the ripples in his neck.

I know nothing about this man, yet I despise him.  He came into my life and turned it upside down.  Things were fine; plenty of commission and talk of promotion as the company continued to expand.  I was top dog.  And then, the stroke of genius of employing Geoff to manage the expanding sales team, a man devoid of personality and with no respect for the staff he commands.  Multiple times I’ve daydreamed about lodging a pen into his brain.

“I was the best salesperson five years in a row!  You’ve been in this middle management role for six months, and in that time, you’ve stripped all the good accounts away from seasoned players, handing them off to incompetent juniors.  What is that?  Envy?  The only other explanation is that you are plain and simple dumb as dogshit!”

I’m on a roll here.  Geoff begins to squirm in his seat; the tailored suit likely purchased in slimmer times begins to look even smaller on him, as though it’s constricting with his ego.

“Tony, with all due respect—”

“Shut the fuck up, Geoff!”

I’m going down fighting.

The guy has made the lives of the entire sales floor miserable of late, canceling all holidays, getting us in early, keeping us until late with endless meetings of drivel.  And all to try and make up for the mess he’s made of things.  We’re all paying the price for his inadequacy.

The hair matted to his head that is too perfectly black starts to drip a viscous liquid that slowly rolls down his forehead onto the bridge of his nose.  There’s something strange going on with his eyes also—the dark surrounding rings seem to be growing, drawing his eyes inward.  He doesn’t look well at all.  But there is no going back now.

“Where did you learn to be such an asshole?  Is there a special school that allows you to specialize in being a turd?”

With a violently shaking hand, he reaches for the coffee cup on the table, but before he can grab it, I swipe it away, sending it smashing into the mustard-colored wall.  Momentarily, I imagine it’s his skull, pretending the dark streaks of splatter are his blood.

Through the blinds, I see others turn in surprise.  The faint murmur of gossip begins.

I’m on another level now.

He’s made my life hell.  Nothing ever good enough.  I haven’t slept well for weeks—the late nights, the ban on vacation days, insistence on coming in at the weekends—the relentless texts and e-mails.  Judy and I have done nothing but argue.  Even the kids have suffered at the mercy of this fat fuck.  No more!  I stand up, sending the chair falling behind me.  Instinctively I reach across, grabbing his tie, heaving him away from the protection of the desk.  The office shudders as I throw him against the wall.  I’m only inches away from his face now.  I can taste the fat on his breath, but there’s something fouler that permeates the air between us, a cocktail of cheap aftershave and rotting flesh.

As I stare into his lifeless eyes, the dark liquid continues to run down the side of his face.  He opens his mouth and utters sheepishly, “I—I need your forecast, T-Tony.”

The laughter comes immediately.  I can’t control it.  The whole situation is absurd, and my sales projection request is the icing on the cake.

“Geoff, what the hell is wrong with you?”

The twitch in his eye is getting worse; he’s winking at me with unfathomable speed.  He reaches for his throat as if he is struggling to get enough breath, and I’m immediately drawn to the ring on his wedding finger.  Encrusted in the middle is a large red jewel, perhaps a ruby.  It begins to glow.

“F-F-Forecast.”

The damp patches are springing up everywhere, including a large one quickly spreading on the crotch of his pants.  Random blotches of black liquid are popping up across his shirt, as though each of my words is puncturing his skin.

Is that gasoline I can smell?

I feel out of depth, the hairs on the back of my neck prickling, and an involuntary shudder rattling down my spine.

His shirt is saturated now.  Dark rings continue to consume the entirety of his face.  Streams of black work their way down his face like wax down a candle, and I can feel their heat as they gentle fizz on his cheek.  Slowly, he begins to slip down the side of the wall.

“He said it would be easy,” he croaks.

Veins in his bulbous neck are turning to a fiery orange in front of my eyes, and there’s a sizzling sound accompanied by small wisps of grey smoke.  My heart pounds wildly, and my throat suddenly feels so dry.  I was in control, but this is throwing me.  My knees feel weak.  My stomach is churning.

He clutches at the ring, trying to rip it from his finger, but it doesn’t budge.  “No, I don’t want to go back!” he screams.

There’s a sudden and horrific crack as his nose twists out of shape, a black treacle-like liquid oozing from the wound.  It drips onto the carpet and begins to smolder.  As he reaches for his face, more bleeding lacerations break out across his cheeks.  His hair is no longer jet-black but a mousy grey, and it’s starting to frazzle and fall out.  The number 666 appears to have been branded across the flesh of his scalp.

Some of my colleagues are at the window peering through the blinds.  Jake looks to me as if I might be able to offer an explanation, but I shrug, turning my attention back to the smoking man.

All I can do is watch, stunned, frozen to the spot as his body continues to smoke in front of me.  I wonder how anything so damp can burn, but then I remember the pungent smell of petrol.  He begins to moan, violently kicking his legs and writhing on the floor in a series of spasms.  Smoke emanates from all parts, and his shirt and pants are disintegrating into ashes, floating surreally towards the dirty fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

With a gentle whoosh, he erupts into a ball of flames. The liquid that was oozing from his body only seems to fuel the fire, and all I can do is watch as the fire begins to consume him.  The scream that emanates is unworldly—thousands of blood-curdling howls rolled into one—and I shiver involuntarily and contrarily to the heat he is emitting.

Our eyes lock, but I can still make out the intermittent flash of the red jewel on his finger.  His skin peels away, and the smell of cooking flesh permeates the air.  I double over and dry heave, but I can’t take my eyes away from the unfolding carnage.  The whites of his eyes are still prominent through the flames, standing out against the veiled shades of red and black.  A gentle popping sound occurs, and one of them begins to ooze down the side of his cheek like a freshly cracked egg.  It bubbles and chars, blending in quickly with the slab of now lifeless meat that was once my boss.

I hear urgent voices and footsteps outside.  The door swings open, and I see Kate, face as white as a sheet, holding out a fire extinguisher.

“It’s a little late for that,” I mutter.

We both watch as the body impossibly disintegrates into nothing but a small pile of ashes.  More of my colleagues start to gather around the charred carpet tiles and all that remains of our boss.  After a lengthy stalemate of confusion and shock, Jake finally utters, “Should l get the vacuum?”

I bend down to explore the neat pile of ashes on the floor, and it isn’t long before I find it.  I lift the ring, rotating it in my fingers, to find an inscription written on the inside: Congratulations on graduating from our middle management school, Geoff.  Now get out there and bring hell to their day.  Yours, Lucifer.

* * * * * *

I’ve since followed the press coverage.  There are people on the other side of the world claiming they recognise the person that I saw turn to ash.  But this man didn’t go by the name of Geoff. ‘John’ tried to kill his wife and two children; poured gasoline all over the carpets and curtains before tossing the match and then getting into his car and driving head-on into a tree.  They lived, but he died of massive head trauma.

Where else would such a failure end up but middle management?

The picture of the family on his desk was cut out from a magazine we later found in one of his drawers.

These souls that walk the office floor, bringing gloom, despair, endless meetings, and circles of sweat, are here to make our lives hell.  They’re the Devil’s minions, hiding under the guise of middle-management, and they’ve all walked this earth before, but on the wrong path.  They’ve been recruited and sent back to do his work.

They’re not one of us, and they must be stopped.