The Inferno

It started with a circle.

Nine stacked on top of the other like a yawning pit. Until it filled everything. Until I was certain my sanity had left me. 

“What the hell are you drawing?” A voice hissed in my ear. 

I turned so quickly I knocked my notebook to the floor, the loose paper scattering until it resembled a funnel. Chad loomed over me, his form too large for my office space. He smelled of lust masked as cologne. 

I tried to grab for the drawings, but he stepped on them, blocking my view. I looked up at him, a sneer punctuated by his canines. I glared back, but it held no heat. 

“Nothing,” I stuttered. 

He bent down, picking up the paper, his hands stained with ink. 

He stood over me, flipping through my nonsense. “It doesn’t look like nothing,” he clucked. “Maybe I should show Chris.” 

I stood up, my chair nearly toppling over. “No.”

The word was rough. Sharp, like a serrated knife. It almost didn’t sound like me. As though something had crawled its way in and decided to wear my skin. 

Chad narrowed his eyes at me. Perhaps he felt it too. “Just get back to work.”

He threw the pages in the trash as he left. I waited until his office door clicked before I dug them out. Then, I placed them on top of each other again, staring into its void. 

My finger hovered over the lines before I shoved them in my bag, the paper slicing my finger. The blood welled, then dropped on the pages. I could’ve sworn it sighed. 

There was a growing tackiness to my thoughts. A dark hunger I felt writhe beneath my skin. Even in this tiny cubicle, under the flickering lights, I felt it gnawing. Consuming. 

“Something’s not right,” I whispered, rubbing my temples. 

I tried to work, turning on my computer, completing my mundane tasks. Yet still I saw it. The circles. Always in my periphery. 

I slammed my eyes shut. “Go away,” I hissed. 

“Hey, Des, are you coming?”

I startled, jerking upright. “Coming to what?” I turned in my chair, facing Beatrice. She was an older woman, squat, with a ruddy face. 

Her kindness had been a balm in the office.

“To our team meeting,” she replied, her brow scrunched in worry. 

I tucked my hair behind my ears, wetting my lips. “That isn’t until four.”

She narrowed her eyes. “It is four.”

“I…” How could it be four? I had just started the day. Just closed my eyes. “I lost track of time.”

Her gaze was weary. As though I were some wild thing. Maybe I was. I lifted my hand to tell her I was coming, when I saw the etchings on my arms, my hands red with ink. 

I gasped. 

“What?” she asked, stepping into my cubicle. 

“Nothing,” I hissed, pulling my sleeves down. “I’ll be right there.”

She nodded once, her eyes raking over me. It felt as though she were pulling me apart. Unraveling me. I sat still as she left, her hand scraping against the hard plastic of my walls. I held my breath so long I was certain I’d pass out. 

Only then did I get up, standing at the mouth of my office. 

My head whipped between the conference room and the bathroom. The floor was empty, yet anxiety had become its own type of hunger. The lights flickered above, shadows stretching like monstrous teeth. 

I ran from my spot to the bathroom. My feet slammed against the floor, my palms slick with sweat. I swore I felt a breath against my ear. The smell of wet, decaying things wrapped around my neck. I threw myself into the bathroom, my chest heaving as I pressed my back to the door. 

I waited until my heart slowed before I walked to the sink, leaning into the cool tile. There was something about my reflection that was surreal. Almost like a fever dream. 

I looked forward, but it wasn’t me who looked back. 

I pulled up my sleeves, sucking in a breath as I stared at my arms. I had drawn circles, yet I had overlapped them until they formed a funnel. Tiny, writhing bodies filled the spaces. When I leaned down, I saw one move. 

I gasped, and it screamed in response.

I stumbled backward, falling into the wall. I screwed my eyes so tight I could feel my pulse in my skull. “You’re okay,” I repeated until I almost believed it. 

I didn’t dare look at it again, instead pushing my arm under the sink. I scrubbed until the skin was raw and tender to the touch. Then I pulled my sleeves down to my knuckles and ran out. 

I wasn’t insane, I told myself. Just tired. Beaten down by the corporate grind. An idea I was sold on. I just had to keep it together. Pretend. 

I was halfway down the hallway when I heard something to my right. I turned, but there was nothing; the office was unnaturally quiet. I swallowed my unease and walked faster. 

Behind me there was a sound. Like bees. Like a great and terrible wind. 

I spun around, yet there was nothing. 

I kept moving. 

Then there was snarling. Gnashing teeth. The smell of blood. 

The lights flickered. Went out. 

Heat scorched the back of my neck. 

I screamed. 

The lights flashed on, and I was in a deep wood. The trees reached for me with gnarled fingers. I tried to back up, but they held firm to my clothes. My hair. 

All I could make out through the dense trunks was that the land sloped upward. So, I pushed through, up and up. The sound of growling beasts at my back. 

I could not make out their shapes, but I heard them. Their thoughts were loud, as though they were screaming into my own mind. 

I heard how they starved.

How my skin would feel between their teeth. 

How easily my bones would give. 

I heard every vile thought until I was sick with it. I cried, and I screamed. I pushed harder, but there was no end in sight. No safety. Just skeletal trees and ravenous beasts. 

Then something grabbed my shoulder, and I pulled away, shouting so loud I was certain I had no voice left. 

“What the hell is wrong with you, Desdemona?” Chad balked.

He stood a head taller than me, his thin lips turned down. 

I pointed behind me, but there was nothing. Just the office. Just him and the team in the conference room. Staring at me. 

I said nothing, biting my tongue so hard I tasted blood. I pushed past him, sitting in my spot in the back corner of the room. Chris eyed me, his anger something I could taste. When anyone messed up, his violence was the only thing you remembered. 

The room was hot from all the bodies pressed together. They either looked at their phones or looked at the floor, but they rarely looked at me. Or each other. 

I can’t recall when we all became mindless sheep. 

Sweat rolled down my back. 

I swear I could still hear the wind and smell the rot. 

“Alright everyone,” Ciara said, as she stood at the head of the room. 

She was a tall woman. Imposing. Her eyes bulbous and tongue sharp. She was the type of person who stood on your back to get a look over the wall. 

She was also my boss.

“We have a deadline to hit. I know I said a month, but I need it next week.”

“But…,” Beatrice started.

Ciara held her hand up, silencing her. “There are no buts here. It has to be done.” Sweeping her eyes across the room, she said, “It came from the top.”

I’d never met the ‘top’. I wasn’t confident they existed. 

Then Ciara went around the room, one at a time, picking apart our projects. I tried to listen, but I could feel Chad’s eyes on me, leering. I had the insatiable desire to pluck them out to see what he’d do.

And there, in my periphery, were circles. Always nine. Always a funnel. I couldn’t make sense of it. The wind howled, taking up space in the room until I could hear nothing else. 

I willed it to stop.

Begged for silence.

Then…

“Desdemona, are we boring you?” Ciara spat.

Finally, every eye had turned to me.

“What?” I asked.

Chris stood, his voice a bellow. “Why do you keep her around? She can’t even be bothered to listen.”

“What would you have us do?” Ciara asked, still standing at the center of everything. 

“Promote me and fire her. My work is better anyway,” he sneered. 

Chad stood, because he thought his voice mattered. “I saw her drawing pictures in her cubicle today.”

I felt like I’d enjoy doing more than just taking his eyes. 

“Worthless,” Ciara said.

“Pathetic,” Chris agreed. 

Round they went. Each word a barb. Their tongues intent on drawing blood. Cutting me until I was consumable. 

I felt their disdain on my skin. Between my toes. In my hair. 

And still there was that howling wind and rot and circles always in the periphery. 

I could not take it.

I was going mad. 

So, I stood up and screamed. “Enough!”

The room exploded around me, blowing apart everything. Ciara hit the wall first, then everyone else followed. Glass shattered, people screamed, and I became the only thing still standing. 

Slowly, painfully, the floor cracked open. Darkness clawed its way out, tiny, probing fingers curling around loose arms and legs. I saw the darkness draw blood. Taste it. Sigh as though famished.

And from it, rose a doorway. 

It was carved of stone and as sharp as a razor. I walked up to it tentatively, stepping over Chad and his clearly broken leg. I sucked in a breath and waited.

I knew it wanted me. I felt it in my marrow. Yet, I did not know why. And so, I stood frozen. In fear or uncertainty. 

From the darkness grew a man. His form hunched and crooked, and then, as by design, he stretched and formed into something real. I could smell the spice on his skin. I could feel the heat of his gaze.

He was darkness, yet he was something else. Something more. “Come,” he beckoned, holding his hand out to me. 

I still stood in the office, and him in the doorway. I could turn around. Get help. Except there was something calling to me. 

I looked up at the doorway, and at the top, carved into the stone, it said, Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

I sucked in a breath, grabbed the man’s hand, and walked through.