Staffing Problems

Even towards morning, he still couldn’t drift off. The day wouldn’t let him go, wearing him down with the cutting remarks of Rosa Sanders, the new head of department. Edwin had wanted the position himself, but there it was. They had simply called everyone together and presented them with a fait accompli. Even the branch director, Mr Bunn — Bunny to everyone in the office — had looked uncomfortable. She had no portfolio, no achievements to speak of! She had simply been appointed. At least it wasn’t Molly, that talentless idiot who lived in denim and had been after the job as well.

Edwin kept jumping out of bed, pacing around the dark room, going to the loo, lying down again, while the same thoughts chased one another round his head. His projects had already made money for the company, and Rosa treated him like a schoolboy! The background doesn’t work! Why not? It matches the page header and the elements in the photograph! What’s wrong with it? And why does this element look like a skull? Where? Where did she see a skull? Pure Freud. No, he hadn’t said that last bit aloud.

He began to shiver. Somewhere outside, an owl hooted and a dog began to howl. A bad omen, he thought, sitting up in bed as an inexplicable unease filled him.

The headlights of a passing car swept across the ceiling and curtains, and then the oppressive darkness closed in again. But it seemed to move. Slightly paler patches appeared within it, drifting slowly across the ceiling, swaying, joining together, then breaking apart again. The curtain stirred, and the patches formed the pale image of a skull.

The skull was grinning.

Edwin leapt up and yanked the curtain aside. The image on the ceiling vanished, but when he looked out of the window, he recoiled in terror — a dark figure was standing outside.

A moment later, he realised it was his own reflection. He gave a nervous laugh, though his hands were trembling.

The faint, diffused glow of a distant streetlamp cast a little light into the room, but even the half-darkness seemed alive, as though something were stirring in the corners. His unease rose almost to panic.

Edwin rushed to the desk and switched on the light. He felt better at once. He poured himself some brandy, drank it, and for a few moments felt the warmth spreading through his body, followed by a slight dizziness…

He glanced back at the window and raised his glass in salute to his reflection.

His reflection didn’t salute him back.

Edwin shook his head, and the reflection corrected itself — the glass was now raised in its hand. Even so, it took him a few moments to recover.

He opened the project folder. Yes, there it was — the element in question. A bright sphere, well positioned. It created a focal point, drew the eye…

Wait. Why was it blood-red, like Rosa’s suit? Why did the shadow along one side look like a hollow cheek? And those patches weren’t where they were supposed to be…

For some reason, he thought the sphere winked at him with one of them, and suddenly the patches really did look like eye sockets.

Ridiculous! He had designed something completely different! As though someone had planted the image in his mind. And at once Edwin saw Rosa’s nasty smirk. What was this? Hypnosis?

He switched off the light and lay down again, but now the figure in red hovered directly before his eyes. He jumped up once more and took a swig of brandy straight from the bottle. For a long time, he paced from one corner of the room to the other, counting his steps.

Only towards morning did he finally calm down enough to lie down and drift off.

Then suddenly he was sliding down a slope into a filthy pit, where dogs were fighting over the carcass of something black and shapeless… something large.

He was terrified.

He tried to climb out, but spikes began pushing through the walls. He thrashed about as they grew longer. Mice were impaled on some of them — dead, yet staring at him, their shapes slowly changing into something… more human.

Edwin flailed around and backed straight into one of the spikes.

He woke with pain shooting through him. And understood. Rosa was evil. And he had to rid the world of her.

Pale and dishevelled, his eyes wild, he burst into his boss’s office. A figure in red stood motionless by the window. Edwin lunged at her, pulling an extremely sharp kitchen knife from beneath his jacket.

But when the blade sank into the body all the way to the hilt, the woman screamed, and Edwin staggered back.

It was Molly…

*

When the police had gone, taking the deranged Edwin and Molly’s body with them, Mr Bunn finally collapsed onto the sofa in his office and buried his head in his trembling hands.

It took him a moment to notice that Rosa had made herself comfortable in his chair, smiling like a predator.

‘I understand that head office sent you,’ Bunny said, his voice shaking. ‘But, you know, I wasn’t expecting… What was that?!’

‘You wanted your problems dealt with, didn’t you? You wanted them gone. Correct?’

‘H-head office said… redundancies…’

‘Exactly.’ Rosa placed a perfectly manicured hand on the desk, her nails blood-red. ‘And no unions, no tribunals. Everything nice and quiet…’

‘Y-you call that quiet?’ Bunny wiped his forehead.

‘Of course,’ Rosa replied. ‘A simple and elegant solution to two problems at once.’

‘Listen,’ Bunn said, his voice trembling, ‘you and I have very different ideas about the meaning of the words “simple” and “elegant”.’

‘Yes, I gathered that,’ Rosa said through clenched teeth, disappointed. ‘Oh, what’s this?’

She reached for the little rabbit figurine on Bunn’s desk.

‘Cute. Though it does look rather like a skull…’

And she walked out, her blood-red heels clicking down the corridor.

Mr Bunn stared at the rabbit in astonishment.

A sweet little face. A gift from his colleagues…