January Was an Office

There are thresholds in existence that refuse to declare themselves. Rooms that stretch farther than their blueprints allow, hallways that lead to nowhere, streets that seem to wait for someone who never arrives... 

. . .

The world felt sideways.

. . .

Something was approaching. Its steps were muffled yet heavy, each one resonating through the back of his skull. They halted beside him. A weight slipped into his right hand—cold. Then the steps resumed, fading no closer, no farther. Unchanged.

. . .

He kept his eyes shut, letting the carpet sink into his fingers, pressing against his palms—soft but deliberate, like it knew he was there. The fibers tickled the skin at his wrists—exact, alive.

The scent of paper and ink drifted in. Everything smelled new. Comforting . . . wrong. Why? The damp concrete. The iron rails. The sour tang of sweat and grime that clung to everything. Where was it? He needed to hurry. Another hour—he couldn’t wait that long. They were expecting him. He couldn’t miss this one; it was about to leave . . . Catch what?

He took a slow breath. The air was still, but not empty—patient. Something waited. Something watched. He felt it in the way the place seemed to hold its breath, beckoning him to use his senses. Yet all he could hear was a pitched ringing—sharp at first, then fading, drifting into a quieter note.

His mind was fogged and thick. He needed to be somewhere; he wasn’t sure where. He felt calm, but the calm itself was unusual—wrong. He tried to gather his thoughts, but they slipped away from his grasp, leaving him empty and raw. All he knew was that he was late.

No more waiting—he opened his eyes to a dull monotone of gray ceiling panels. Office lights flickered above him, a low buzz from the fixtures filling the quiet. Somewhere nearby came the soft click and clack of keys—faint at first, then sharper, threading through the air in a rhythm, while that ringing lingered at the edge of his hearing.

Beside him were lines of cubicles. The mechanical patter came from somewhere within them, a tempo he couldn’t place—unnatural. Chairs squeaked as bodies shifted. Papers rustled. Something moved just out of sight—it vanished behind a cubicle.

Everything felt off, but at the same time tranquil. It soothed him the way a lullaby might, sung in a language he couldn’t understand. And though he wanted to cry, he couldn’t—why should he?

He tugged at the fabric on his shoulders and looked down to inspect himself. An oversized brown coat hung over a red flannel shirt, with a cyan tie knotted at his neck. Dark jeans, nearly black, and scuffed loafers finished the outfit. The outfit felt absurd, ill-fitted to him. He doubted he’d chosen it himself. So why was he wearing it?

He rubbed his eyes and pushed himself up, only to stumble and drop to his knees. The pitched ringing was gone now, leaving only a quiet that pressed at the borders of his consciousness. He looked along the lines of cubicles, strange in a way he couldn’t explain—how they spanned on. Even though he could see the wall at their end, the space still felt . . . limitless.

He suddenly sensed the weight in his right hand, an object he hadn’t realized he’d been clutching. He brought it close, inspecting it with wary curiosity. It was a book, dark green, bound in a material that looked like leather—soft and pliant, yet somehow metallic under his touch, as if it were pretending to be what it wasn’t.

Etched into the center of the cover were words, though their meaning dissolved the moment he tried to read them. The letters formed the word “Rojif”—or so he thought at first—but the more he stared, the more this text fractured into crooked marks and alien shapes:

ᚱᛟ⧑⧠ϝ

Is what it read now. The figures shimmered, shifting in his vision. It felt almost familiar. Almost. Was that his name? Yes . . . yes, that must be it. He remembered now—his name was Rojif. Rojif? He shook his head to clear any doubts. There was no other explanation. This was his name, and this was his book. It made sense. Of course it did.

He opened it. The first page carried only a few lines of writing—unintelligible just like the cover. He tried to flip to another page, but the book wouldn’t let him, no matter how hard he pried. Closed it, opened it again. Same page. He did this six times—and each time it was the same. Unyielding.

This was getting him nowhere. He slid the book back into his pocket and turned toward the nearest cubicle, towards the sound of keys and fingers which hadn’t stopped not for a moment. He wasn’t fond of talking to strangers—least of all in an unfamiliar place. He didn’t work in an office, he worked . . . somewhere else. Don’t think, just move. Though putting this into action felt immensely daunting, he began walking toward the sound, each step measured, though unsure. Rojif stopped at the edge and lingered briefly. He had no choice but to ask for directions now . . . to the place where he wanted to be . . . place where he needed to be. This was no time to be nervous. He took a few cautious breaths and peeked inside—

A slim figure sat hunched in an office chair, back bowed, arms held stiff at his sides. He wore a white shirt and dark trousers—plain. Even seated, the man loomed at least a foot taller than Rojif himself; his body stretched beyond what seemed natural. To his right were towers of files and neatly stacked paper. He worked through them one by one—slitting open a file, leafing through papers, then typing into the glow of a computer screen far too small for him, almost comically undersized for his frame. His posture was unusually rigid as he typed. The arms never lifted, yet the keys rattled with mechanical precision.

Rojif hesitated. Was this normal? Perhaps the man was simply tall, efficient, and peculiar in his manner—even if somewhat . . . uncanny. He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a wheeze. The man looked very busy. Perhaps he should look around and find someone else, maybe someone a little less weird. Maybe he could just figure it all out himself. Or maybe . . . Damn . . . why was he always like this?

He cleared his throat and forced it out.

“E-Excuse me sir, can I have some… uhh, help? Yes, I uhh… I think I-I’m slightly lost. No well… actually I’m quite certain I’m lost…”

It was a pitiful little stumble of letters and words, but it was all he could muster in the moment.

The man’s neck snapped at an unnatural angle as he swiveled in his chair toward him, hands still at work, having not left the computer, still typing. Rojif drew a sharp breath when he saw his face—or what passed for one. Grey. Blank. Covered in lines and figures, just like the book. No features. No eyes. Just incomprehensible symbols scribbled into a dull void. And yet he had hair—black, neatly parted, disturbingly ordinary.

Rojif couldn’t look away. He didn’t move. Didn’t know how. The man stared back the same way. Silence stretched. Only the steady clatter of keys filled the air—unbothered, indifferent.

Rojif tried to say something but choked on his feeble attempt to find words, which turned into a fit of hacking coughs making him bend over in pain. When he was finished, he glanced up with teary eyes at the man, who remained in his seat, unmoved by this pathetic display of helplessness. Rojif opened his mouth once more, but the man sharply turned back toward his screen. He lifted one hand from the keyboard and extended an arm toward the stack of files at his side for a brief moment before gesturing toward Rojif with a rigid sweep of his fingers, as if to dismiss him.

Rojif lingered for a moment, then scurried back into the aisle between rows. This . . . was not normal. He couldn’t dredge up a single scrap of his own past—who he was, what he’d been—but he knew, with a conviction that came from somewhere deep within, that this man was wrong. However . . . he paused for a moment to think; perhaps everyone was like this, and Rojif himself was the anomaly—the odd one. He felt strangely familiar with this feeling, he did not know why.

He walked down the aisle, examining each cubicle as he approached the wall at the end. Others held the same figures as the one he’d first encountered—identical in every detail save for one: their shirts. Blue on one, red on another. One even wore pink, patterned with white lilies. That, it seemed, was the only distinguishing mark—everything else, even the haircuts, was the same. The sheer number of cubicles suggested the place should have been crowded, yet most stood vacant, their silence making the few occupied ones feel all the more unsettling.

As he walked, no one noticed him. Each was absorbed in their own perpetual labor. But at times, just at the fringe of his awareness, he caught what felt like a subtle discord in the workplace chorus—an irregular motion out of order. Just for an instant, he felt eyes on him. But when he turned, no heads emerged from the cubicles, and no faces met his.

The end of the aisle loomed closer, but his movements were slow. The distance shrank, the wall swelled in his vision—yet the walk felt impossibly long, dreamlike in its drag. At the edges of his sight, the cubicles seemed to be gradually creeping inward, narrowing the path—but the instant his gaze fell on them, they held steady, innocent. Beneath his feet, the carpeted floor writhed and contorted into impossible shapes, yet when he glanced down, it lay still.

At last he arrived, more drained than the effort should allow, and took a brief moment to rest while studying the space around him.

The wall stretched horizontally, the paths to the left and right flanked by cubicles on one side only. Farther to the left, a door gleamed bright yellow—jarring against the dull, pallid walls. With little else to occupy him—and memories of the last disaster cautioning him against asking another worker—he arrived at the door and stood in front of it. Rojif was uncertain if this too would deliver yet another absurd humanoid. All he wanted was to see something that made . . . sense.

He grabbed the handle, its surface glinting faintly with a golden hue, and began to turn. The motion was so smooth he almost doubted it had moved at all—until the door lurched forward and swung open in a single, abrupt motion, revealing the room.

Inside was a brown carpet, a few wooden tables, swivel chairs that looked new, some kitchen cabinets—and a vending machine. He stared at it and blinked a few times. The sight of it struck him hard—more than it should—and he felt something strange in his chest. Memory? Maybe, but it left him feeling intrigued.

The machine stood there in ordinary silence, yet it carried the weight of places he could not name and feelings he could not articulate. A pulse of familiarity rushed through him—dizzying, unexplainable. Somehow, impossibly, it felt . . . homely. It felt normal.

He walked up to the machine and stopped. Behind the glass were rows of packages, their labels scrawled with the same cryptic symbols that haunted everything here—this disappointed him a little. Right on cue, his stomach grumbled low and demanding, his mouth began to water. Had it really been that long since he’d last eaten? He couldn’t say. Memory offered nothing but static. Food first, then aimless questions, he bargained with himself as he fished through his pockets.

His hands came up empty—and that—for some reason, was the most familiar feeling of all. . though one he didn’t really like.

At the edge of the machine, his eye caught a small triangular slot. He searched around the room for anything that might fit, but came up empty. No coins, no tokens, or whatever was supposed to be used as a currency. He gave the machine a hard shake, but it stood there, refusing to budge. He no longer cared what the symbols on those packages meant, but they looked good. He braced himself and pushed again, muscles straining, but the machine barely even moved. At last, he dropped into a chair, defeated. Forget solving the obscure riddles of this place. Forget how he’d arrived. If he couldn’t feed himself, all else was meaningless.

Water, then. He remembered a sink tucked along the top of a counter. Surely that would be free of triangular tolls. Grabbing a cup he had found in one of the cabinets earlier, he marched over to the sink and placed his hand firmly on the tap—no slot in sight, this should work—before quickly turning the handle. Victory surged for a single instant, as clear, colorless liquid poured down—until it struck the bottom of the cup and betrayed him. It wobbled, quivering like jelly, as the tap continued spurting out this mockery. His mind stalled for a brief moment. Water wasn’t supposed to bounce, was it?

He turned it off and stared miserably at the stuff jiggling around in his cup. It looked so much like water in motion, only revealing its guise once caught. His stomach had fallen silent, but his throat remained dry. He shouldn’t have expected otherwise. Nothing here played fair. The clear gelatinous substance stilled in his cup, quivering once, then going flat—as if waiting. He stared at it, arguments dragging in his head. Drink it and risk whatever effects it may carry, or stay parched and weaken? In the end, thirst carried the vote.

He lifted the cup and downed it all in one go, bracing himself . . . It took all his willpower to not puke it all out right there. It slid into his mouth with the wobble of jelly, but bitter and metallic, scraping against the sides of his tongue like filings. He gagged, but forced the mess down in one brutal swallow. It slithered coldly into his gut, leaving behind the taste of rust and despair. He shivered, wiped his mouth, and sat down hard at the nearby table. Time would tell if this had been a mistake.

He buried his face into his arms. Now what? He hadn’t found answers—only more questions. The jelly-water dulled his thirst, but food was still a problem. For the first time since arriving, he felt tired. Not just in body, but in mind. Thoughts blunted, his limbs were heavy. Was this a side effect from that jelly? No. This feeling was closer to . . . blue. Rojif was isolated, he was missing someone, or some people. 

This world felt bleak . . .