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.

In an attempt to disperse these thoughts, he pulled the book out from his coat pocket and laid it before him. The cover sat still under his gaze, the title no longer squirming. That, at least, was something. An improvement, maybe. He couldn’t tell if anything here was good or not.

He got up and left the room, the door swinging shut on its own behind him, as though eager to erase him from the place. He began walking along the perimeter of the office, down the path beside the wall. It wasn't nearly as hard as navigating between the cubicles in the aisles.

The place was shaped like a square, with neat rows of cubicles running parallel across the space. All the walls were bare, but on the side opposite the vending machine room—the break room as he now called it—stood a machine of another kind. It was a printer, or something like one. It loomed in a hideous shade of green, humming with a gravelly tone that never wavered. A tray at the center sagged under the weight of brown paper bundles—files stacked one atop another. Each bore the same twisting script he was already sick of seeing. There were no buttons—no panel. Nothing to press or push. It sat there, shuddering now and then as new files continued to slide onto the pile of its brethren. He didn’t bother opening them, knowing that whatever lay inside would be jargon to him anyway.

He made his way back to the spot where he’d first arrived. The white-collared man remained at his station exactly as before, working. The only difference was the stack of files beside him—it had shrunk. One after another, the man tore open a folder, extracted papers, copied its contents onto the glowing screen, then tossed it into the bin at his side. Rip. Copy. Toss. Over and over.

Rojif edged closer, peeking at the blue-lit screen. The same cryptic writing seared across it, a barrage of symbols that filled space but carried nothing. The man didn’t acknowledge him—not once—though his face seemed to flick toward the pile of files now and then. At one point, Rojif thought he heard something, a low, annoyed grumble spilling past that blank visage—and for some reason—he felt it was directed towards him. Frustration? Maybe.

He couldn’t keep putting this off. If he wanted answers, he’d have to talk to someone again—just not this one. Never again.

The man in the pink shirt with lilies came to mind—why, he wasn’t sure. Still, Rojif thought he looked a little more approachable compared to the others, and so he set off down the aisle once again, scanning each worker in their exclusive attire. It was the same situation all round; rigid arms, shuffling papers, rattling keys. The stacks of files were thinning everywhere—once imposing, now reduced to a fraction of their size. The work seemed to be ending. He wondered what they’d do once they finished.

At last, he reached the man in pink. Only one file remained in the pile. Rojif pictured him standing up afterwards, stretching, and leaving the office. There was a strange comfort in the thought. He stepped inside, steadied himself, and announced loudly, “Hello, sir. Can you help me out? I’m kinda lost, don’t really know where I am.” He marveled at his own gallantry compared to the last attempt. Surely this time his request was intelligible.

No reaction. The worker ignored him and tore through the last file, moving quicker than before. Rojif waited obediently. Finally, the man punched in the remaining words and tossed the last paper into the bin. His hands stayed on the keyboard, but they were still now. For anyone else, it may have been nothing. For Rojif, who had grown accustomed to the ceaseless hammering of keys, it was like the air itself had gone wrong.

The man turned, first to the empty table, then to him. No eyes—but somehow Rojif felt his gaze boring right through him. The moment of being properly acknowledged—at last—was strange. He had expected it, yet expectation did not prevent his thoughts from scattering, desperate to escape that hollow stare.

“Th-thank you for finishing your work, now can . . . uhh, well if you’re on break then I-I guess I’ll just find someone else?” No—not like this. He should be seizing this moment, wringing answers out of it, not tripping over apologies.

Pink One rose from his seat. The movement alone was jerky, erratic, but what truly unsettled Rojif was scale—his face reached the level of the man’s waist. Seated, his figure had already been formidable; now, standing, his height felt unnatural, the ceiling itself bending in submission to accompany this transformation.

Pink One raised a hand, pointing toward the empty table, then leveled it on Rojif. He held it there. He didn’t move. Rojif shifted in place, uneasy. Something about this was off. This was a mistake—he shouldn’t have provoked him.

"Uhh… o-ok, I’m sorry. I shouldn't have disturbed you . . . look I’ll leave now, alright?" Rojif stammered, backing away. He blinked once—and when he opened his eyes he saw outstretched fingers inches from his face.

A hoarse scream tore from his throat as he stumbled backward—barely avoiding the grasp—and began sprinting down the aisle. The mere sight of these abnormal men had terrorized him, but now—now one was chasing him. The aisle seemed to stretch, the cubicles bending and twisting around him. His heart thudded in slow motion, each pulse rattling his ribs. Sweat poured into the corners of his eyes. Every second stretched. His legs felt frail, threatening to forsake him at any moment.

Rojif couldn’t think. Breath hitched, thoughts scattered—he couldn’t remember how to inhale properly. He choked on his spit as his legs finally gave way. He collapsed, rolling along the floor, the world spinning violently around him. Through blurry eyes, he saw Pink One advancing. He wasn’t even rushing—more so strolling with leisure. It would have been less horrifying if he was running, but each step was three times his own, effortlessly closing the space between them.

Desperate, Rojif threw himself into a nearby vacant cubicle, scrambling under a table and pressing himself against the carpeted floor, gasping. Eyes wide, body shaking—the pounding of steps grew closer as he tried to stifle his cries.

From where he was, Rojif watched as Pink One’s legs stopped just outside the cubicle, lingering for a moment before his feet turned towards him. He held himself tighter, but an involuntary gasp slipped past his lips. The man stepped into the cubicle and crouched, lowering his face to meet Rojif . . . he couldn't hold it any longer. His scream broke through the tense silence as slender fingers made their way towards his face.

A shrill ringing blasted through the office, cutting off his scream mid-breath. The sound consumed him—so piercing, that for a moment, he forgot the thin, dead fingers wrapping around his throat. Then the pounding began. It was in his skull—small, insistent thumps that quickly swelled until they drowned out thought itself. His head seemed to fracture like glass, little needles embedding themselves in every corner of his mind.

He no longer knew what he was doing, where he was… what he was. It was hurting . . . his head was hurting . . . his head was hurting him. He wanted to die—die now. His eyes rolled back, he let out a soft groan, and the world collapsed into black.