Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The city holds its breath before midnight.
I've worked the night shift longer than I care to count,
and I know all its meets. The faint rumble overhead
when subways pass, the oily sweetest of the ventilation when
the building settles, the strange ache of silence that falls
when even cleaners have gone home. But lately, what presses
its weight across these empty floors does not sleep. Is
a kind of hush that fields finally, difference so thin
you'd miss it unless you're the one left pushing a
cart through deserted corridors. My hands were rolled that night,
chap from bleach, knucklespecked with old coffee stains. I've rolled
my cart off the street and into the lobby, the
hum of mercury vaple lighting flickering overhead. The glass door
side is the close behind me, and the city surrendered
streets empty, the buses along gone, windows above pressed dark
as bruises. Only my own footsiped in. The slow clatter
of the utility cut echoed from marble to stairwell. The
cart was the same as every night, ragged cleaning caddis,
rolls of can liners, a purple mp with curled ends,
a battery lantern held together with tape and tucked under
the tray. My own small ledger, bound in cracked brown
leather pages, creased by relentless habit. A ring of keys
clanked against dumbrous plastic master keys, storeroom keys, service panel keys,
most lawn out of regular use. I collected things that
lasted their purpose, a library of the forgotten. At the
security desk, the on duty god nodded without really seeing me.
Her face, framed by two tight bun and blue uniform,
was half buried in a paperback and old security locks.
I signed an on aud a pilotly carver eleven fifty
eight p m each night, the same name, the same
half rush sharpe, worn from repetition. I rolled the cart
to the service elevator and let myself vanish into the
guts of the building. Fluorescents burned in sickly patches through
each hole. I passed disinfectant hun on the air, thick
as vapor, overlaying the quieter smells of dust, scorched wiry
and four wax. I flacked in the corridor light's first warning,
then steady dawn like glow, and the passageway hedge yon
toward the stairballs, file rooms and sub basements were moss spun,
freying webs. My feet found their habits, but in the
corners of the lowby shadows stretched lawn and form. On
this particular night, as I moved my car to the
lower landing, my ear caught as great, not the scurrying
of the row rat, nor the whispering shift of a track,
but something off My hand paused on the railing. Down
past the vending alcove, A thin line of light fled
up from under the metal plated door to the main
basement store room. The door was marked authorized, entried only
ad a joke, really, because rarely did anyone want to
spend extra time down there unless they had lost something vital.
And yet no one should have been inside. Just now.
On impulse, I pressed my shoulder to the door, a
mechanical click, as though some one was inside moving furniture,
and then it stood open half an inch, just enough
to spill warm and familiar yellow light into the corridor.
I pushed it open. That room never quite lost A
chill that comes from being three floors below the city's arteries.
Usually it was a maze of battered shelving and mismatched
off as chairs. But that night there was a desk,
not all, not anything I recognized, something recent, the kind
you rent by the month. Paperwork was scattered across it,
a bracket of black and white foot's thumbtacked to foam board,
a steaming mug so fresh I could smell the camel.
The desk lamp carved a clear circle in the darkness,
next to the blotter square metel nameplate and Coral. I
stood there at restraining car forgotten. I'd cleaned a store,
and for years no one named Coral had ever worked here.
The air vibrated, did not recall, but as if something
slid out of reach behind the old steel shelves, glancing
away just as I turned my head. I listened, but
only my own nervous in hail filled the silence, punctuated
by the distant cuff of an elevator car. Nothing in
the company's memory included this desk or its owner. And
yet I had the sense, row and absolute that something
in the room was aware, just out of that circle
of light, watching me with patient and friendly attention. I
closed the door quietly, keys clinking in my fists, the
chill riding back up the stairwell with me above, the
city's hush deepened, and I moved along, needing badly to
convince myself it was just another night. Rougine keeps you
from thinking. Floor by floor. I worked my circuit to
start at eleven finish near dawn, always the same procession
of task, stipple to clip, orb, with my initials filled
in like clockwork. My badge let me into the sow
as corridors that sliced invisibly behind glass warmed meeting rooms,
under the patternless beacon of green eggs its signs. I
emptied bins with the practice flick of my wrist, replacing
liners in a blur. Trash reveals everything that bent, handles
of cheap utensels from somebody's desk lunch, a lottery ticket
certain in the last Tuesday's rain, as crap of yellow
sticky note with sore eadincd. In a hurry, I vacuumed
around the wheels of abandoned chairs in every shape and earr.
Lights blinked on and often pulls ahead of me, and
every so often the silence broke with the softening of
the elevators, someone else finishing their own private rituals before
heading home to pretended's lips. I kept a ledger because
deep down I don't trust what sir to pass the
edge of vision. In these off fires, you start noticing patterns.
A module of left of his always half eaten in
the staff fridge, the faint scent of burnt curry from
the team that's always working late. The window shade that
never quite closes in finance. The ledger began years ago
as a way to track what loss and found turned
up drow up wallets, odd bits of jewelry, and endless
buried of half eaten snacks. But gradually entries started taking
on a softer edge. Who was staying late, Which doors
widened when they should have been locked, Odd stains and
vibes that need a maintenance nor cleaning had cause to mention.
But always remember, none the less, there's an art to
moving and observed through office it after dark. The night
reveals things. Once I startled at temp punched over microwave
needles at a cube near the stairwell. She hadn't heard
me approach, and when she looked up. Her eyes were
wide and wet. We changed and gnawed each a coast
in the other's world. She wore dark headphones, camped so firmly,
she looked as though she meant to block out the
truth more than the tiny music leaking through past accounting.
The only HR manager left for the evening waited for
the elevator, tapping their phone. I called us soft night,
got a half smile and return a brittle, jittery thing.
The elevator doors shut up between us, and she was gone,
just another after I respect to us swallowed up in
polished metal. Sometimes the chit chat in the break room
bled into my rounds. The cleaning crew, usually three or
four of us during the overlap, compared aches and shifts,
marking territory with thermosis and folding chairs. On nights like this,
they murmured about away, kick to the ad, lately unfinished tasks.
Let stay on with no calls, someone's voice echoing from
an empty stall. The fatigue was contagious, a sense he
could walk corner to corner in this building for years
and not quite count all the ways a change beneath
your feet. Remember old rays, Someone asked out of no
adjuring a sheer smoke funny guy can't remember the last
time I saw him, but when pressed, nobody could recall
which department res belonged to you, or if he'd left
coffee mud behind. The guess he got laid off, and
nobody bothered to raise his login. One woman offered sliding
her badge across the chip table. As I trudged rows
of empty cubes. Light from my headlamp glancing off glossy
conference room doors. The building's memory flickered and folded. Photos pined,
cubicle walls faded at the corners. Group shots with a
face or two blowed into the scene court mid laugh
plants not so much wolting as left to petrify. A
saw cracked stocks listing sideways. A single desk still bore
eight temporarily assigned posted, but I cleaned around it for months.
At another the monitor blowed with an open chat only
the Hey, Karen, are you there? Visible? The Times damp
read three weeks ago. Invisible is what we are at
the cleaners. People forget us, but we notice what's left
when no one's looking. Which shoes remain under desks until
dust settles in the souls which fob still click after
promotion or funeral, which snax Rotten claimed. Passing an Alco
set aside for sales, I caught a glance of a
frame picture half out of a stand. Six people in
a line, two of whom I'd never seen, the rest
looking elsewhere, as if distructed by something beyond the camera.
I added a line to my ledger out of habit.
That night, I found myself repeating questions to the staff
on their way out. Did they know so and so?
Wasn't that off as supposed to have a temp? Sometimes
they shrugged, sometimes an inflicted on their tongue, then slipped
out of memory with a sheepish mile. And maybe she
left last week bah stranger. Yet nobody could account for
who tied the desk with a green potted fur And
even though the dirt still bore a moldy teebok shaped
to print, just keeping track of what persists requires something
more than attention. It demands you believe things can leave
without meaning to, while the traces they dried behind them
linger sharp and unwelcome. I broke for tea two zero,
a m led by the tiney warmth of breakroom lights
my ledger shared the table top with the thermost, steaming
into the angel and cool air. While my hands were
wrapped around the mug. I flipped back to old Interes's curiosity,
mass coorating his rest page by page, month by month,
My loops of blacking math A procession of minor anomalies.
Eight slash four slash twenty three. Lost wallet found by
elevator owner Dolls k blue scrubs, pink lanyard, chip, mug
farther back, Karen d lay again, nervous laugh bit its
pent caps always leaves lights on after closing. I winced
heron Dolls, not a regular, but a fixture, always wrapped
in cardigans, always moving piles of insurance forms from one
side of her gray cube to the other. Funny though
I hadn't seen her in weeks. Her name, where it
was written, blurred an ink smudge, like someone had coughed
over a wet sentence. But I hadn't spilt anything. My
fingers left no trace. The page was merely pale and greasy.
The name half eraised Page's father on repeated similar marks
in the margins. Karen Clain specialist, brown mug initial scratched
in now reed as kay s B and beneath only
the outline of her rectangle, where I must oppressed hard
as if I believed the muscle memory would keep her anchored.
I scan my recent entrant for evidence as zip pocket
and my cut held all lost and found offerings, badges, earrings,
expired fops. Among them the white and blue ID card
with a face I almost knew, short hair, white glasses,
the name underneath warped by sweat or tie. The badge's
photo was off kilt, her edges gone gray pixels in
a sort of dissolve. The printed letters were little more
than gos k D. I pressed the badge to my ledger,
half expecting the imprint to clarify, but only felt the
cold bump of plastic. Something or some one had tried
to wipe her out. I cross referenced last month's incident reports,
names of staff, food left after illnesses, stressed, transferers, layoffs.
But always there were a handful more faces I could
sketch a fast, but whose names wouldn't stick to my tongue.
My notes bolts with details, red sweater hums to herself
on Fridays, keeps death by the stairwell, no mention in
h old directories. Surveying the break room wall postings, I
found a welcome memo for a jay haavel and finance
stuck above a faded fruit pantry list, but no sign
of folder or desk. I hadn't realized how much deathicctre
was until I look for the signal. These is descried
voices remembered, but no hard proof of existence. A la
naard a photo, a mug with faded handwriting notes that
grew more illogical as time bore on. The margins of
the ledger felt suddenly deeper, as if Feachkim left less behind.
After break, I decided not to let it rest. I
brought up Karen at the next chance, sidling over to
the woman from Peril as she pulled on her coat.
Do you remember Karen Dawes, I asked, voice a little
but clear. Her brow pinch for a heartbeat. Then she shrugged, wash,
she attempt no weight, maybe she work forms. Never mind, Sorry,
I'm pretty fried, good night ed. She brushed past purse,
squeaking at her sigh. Soon after I dropped the question.
In the crew break room, Meel, the day shift janitor
stayed at the swollen knuckles of his right hand and said,
think I used to see that name on the sign out,
maybe before they fixed up the cubicle lanes. His tone
was uncertain, grasping after something under water. Following the thread,
I checked photos on staff notice towards crew shots culling
away at the corners, a few faces, discinctly staticky edges
rotted by what looked more like scanner errors in time.
One group photo in front of the Christmas tree, where
a broad figure stood between finance and chob but the
face was blurred and a third arm jetted outward, clutching
a cup that dissolved into the garland. Even in official
company images, the record what remained visible was drifting, the
details growing less tangible. In a cluster of desk Hadds
Karen's distinct chip mug blue painted with dazser stood a
mung pins and paper clips. No one remembered whose it was.
This place dangled askew, barely legible. The collective memory, even
a physical residue, was succumbing to a kind of rot.
I paused my rounds outside the far conference room and
mable name for a door that hadn't matched the room
for a decade, and let memory tried to fill the gaps.
All I heard was the building's sigh and the hush
where a name should be the next break. I combed
Ledger pages for other ghosts. Some names, once scrolled in
rush penmanship, seemed faint, their leaps barely clinging to the page.
While faces had been descried, I found only dell descriptors
of the night shift last two line out lanyards hung
in a row, each missing their visages. Even my attempts
at copping roster notes ended with the ink turn faint
of the copping scanners, betting out barred lines. At the
age of every photograph, new anomalies, a group shot with
no one in the center, faces starting to pixelate, soort
to sleeve spent at impossible angles, static crawled into the prints,
reducing human shapes into afterimages. My ledger, my memory, and
the buildings on paper trail were dying by degrees, groomed
by some patient practice surgeon me O. The day shift
janitor disappeared around this time too, at first just missing
a break or two, then not responding to texts, his
name dropping out of locker assignments. When I pressed the
others about him. I got shrugs, distracted glances, didn't he
move on, his full number stayed stowed, and my contacts,
but went straight to voicemail recording the cut out halfway through.
I logged his disappearance, but the note next morning appear faded,
as if ever. My memory of the axe lad away.
In another week, even the lock and screen for janitorial
staff bore no sign of Meel's ID. Objects persisted where
memory did not. A brittle set of keys marked lost
to slice of coal. Peats are left on a clean
plate in the fridge over an HR. A drawer held
insurance claim forms abandoned mid signature. Some unnamed as perried
had left a bright pink scarf draped over her chair.
No one claimed it. Memos from months prior taped to
a cabinet, reed contact k for accident forms, yet to ask.
No one admitted to knowing who signed off on the address.
The building kept leaking evidence despite every effort to pluve
the holes on a whim, I started leaving deliberate marks,
folding Napkins's indistinct patterns, placing coin's heads up in brakerims,
scratching tind stamped notes on cupboard walls. Some stayed, but
each time I checked back, a fraction vanished, as if
the very presence of too much memory triggered a quiet
automatic erasure. Midweek, I found myself wandering empty rooms, searching
not for dirt or desperate for cent and residues. They
temporarily assigned officer allegedly held for a new direct to
wreak faintly of expensive flour perfume paper stamped only with initials.
A memo left behind, tipped under the desk read, if
you're reading this, trust nothing in hr of records. Scroll
below it a name I barely recognized, Karla, then a
series of blacked out letters. My own anxiety sharpened as
the staff grew thinner and the remaining crew's faces settled
into an knees. They couldn't explain. Even Linda, the overnight
security guard, flinched when I asked about old friends. Funny,
she said, rubbing her forehead as she let me past.
It's like I can remember the faces but not their names.
It's not just me, right. Her tone, bottomed by fatigue,
made us seem smaller than her uniform suggested. After that,
I began deliberately cataloging objects anything inclaimed, any memo referencing
a person no one would admit once walked these holes.
By then the oddest things started happening in the camera locks.
One grainy night, while logging out in the security booth,
I broached a conversation with Linda again. Ever see any
one justice appear on camera? I asked. She studded me
with a steady, drye blue beneath layers of insomnia. You
want the tape or the scare? She slid over a fat,
minilal file of digital logs. Both of us crowded the
little screen with bad coffee and ancient ships between us.
Old through timestamp footage IRA after iro of workers fidgeting,
packing up, then heading for the elevators. At two eleven
UM one featured office insurance Maybe, where a mid level
woman sip lucorn coffee. Frame by frame she thumbed through papers, paused,
then in a skip was gone midsip where she sat
only a shimmer at the coffee, splashing faintly to the desk.
In the next day's footage, two masked men wield out
the contents of the office. The security logs described it
as routine maintenance, no complaints logged, no forwarding address. Linda
stadded her voice, weird right, and look at this another clip,
this time in the same office being cleared. At first,
it was as though the chemauflicker, but on closer inspection,
the room itself was subtly different. Nameplits gone, the paint
shade shifting duller, the light itself had agreed dimmer than before.
I watched transfixt as she moved to the logs for
my shift, skimming to see if my own nighty rounds
revealed similar voids, my own ledger, sitting between us on
the counter was no longer clear in the camera's view.
The title page, so black with my original shopping signature,
blurred into nothing as on the screen. Keeping the ledger
with me at all times became an obsession. I began
doubling my note's handwritten the same interest twice, but each pass,
even my own loops of ink looked thinner, the pressure dimmer,
as if the ledger itself resisted being a carrier of memory.
A copy made of the Kopekios came out wrong, half striped,
the names in the margins and comprehensible glyphs. I sped
the duties with Linda. She keep watch in the main
booth while I checked rooms twice and three times, always
expecting that any moment another desk would go empty and
my record of it. Soon after, somewhere in that haze
of late nights, I started sleeping in the break room
during the day between shifts. It was easier than going home,
easier than facing my own shrinking bed and the echoing
dread that followed. Even sleep wasn't clean. I dream of
walking the holes, pushing my cot past blank face people,
only to wait, gasping, clutching a ledger whose pages were
gently coming loose, fluttering to the floor like so much
dead snow. One night, in the cleaning supply closet used
by all staff, I knelt to reach a fallen soap
box under the lowest shelf, deeply gouged in the press
wood a message the storeroom nose twilst last seven open
with care. The day did no immediate significance, but it
matched the de Karen doors vanished from sign in. The
numbers prickled across my brain, do out older than me,
Ring the edges of their closet and scribn Underneath, I
found a crumpled envelope filled with slips of paper. They
were all in different handwriting scroll notes referencing policy numbers,
strange insurance claimed codes, and corridors whose numbers didn't match
the master maup one read ye are not alone. If
you find a ledger, don't write your own name. Another
was a list stairwell e Office twenty three, a desk
under window, safe keys trust, no emails after midnight at
the bottom, stamped in block letters, do not query hr
after incident reports. I saw suddenly the patent stretching back years,
names fading, people vanishing, and those who noticed leaving warnings
concealed just out of busy reach. There were codes for
phone extensions that led to nothing, and still another no
detailing a path through boiler rooms to the old serverbray
where allegedly they store what they wanted you to forget.
The next night as a corridor clocks gruntitude in the morning,
I press Linda into helping me check if you can
find out who logged in asen coral, I said. She
searched old sign and records, coming up blank except for
a single after IROs badge scanned five weeks ago with
the file attached, redacted, then deleted. The signs grew more urgent.
Some nights, half the cleaning crew didn't show. Cart sat
idle in odd corners, vacuum cold, spoiled neatly, but with
no name attached. My interest for me il faded. Then
my own signatures started to look for and I fished
for proof, but only scraps and static would hold. I
carried the store room message with me all night. It
felt hot in my pocket, as if the warning was alive.
After three more nights of restless rounds, I stood in
front of the basement's storeroom door again, a light cloud
Beanie pale at his time, as if someone in side waited.
I caught Lind after her patrol, and she nodded grimly,
if you want to see better now, before we both
lose the nerve. Security logs sure, this room is empty,
but my gut says different. We made a plan to
me with my keys, Linda keeping watch, ready to radio
back if things went sideways. The building was hush, the
kind of silence that draws out your mistakes, and while
I tried to feign calm, my hands shook as I
fitted the master key the lock resisted like a mechanism
grown brittle with age, then turned with a bone deep click.
The storm beyond was empty that I had ever seen it.
The unfamiliar desk, the one with that coral on it
was gone, as though it had never stood there. The
shelves was grubbed clear, dustless. Only the lingering shape of
the lamp on bell linnoleum told me memory was not
entirely gone. Three darker squares where legs had pressed the
flooring flat. I turned to leave, fighting disappointment, when my
boot caught on something small and crumpled beneath the radiator.
A bent yanked at free, A battered manilla envelope warped
with moisture, stuffed inside old insurance statements, some stamphoid, A
sheaf of handriton notes referencing blackmail, chain of command threats,
hush mailings from a benefit's administrator. A pussannel file, black
bar after black bar drawn over names and reasons for dismissal.
Linda's face blanched at the first page. This is old
policy numbers from last year. These signatures, half of them
match people I can barely remember. Her lich pole tight
as returned to the bottom of the envelope. A polaroid
picture slipped out FFAE party, a row of employees clinking
plastic cups. Half the faces were smeared into the background,
ditgits and mouths dissolving into the wallpaper, as if some
one had painted them white and let the color of bleed.
The back was label Company Dinner twenty twenty two. Always Forward.
In another time, I might have thought at a cammer malfunction,
but I felt something else, like the air itself pressed
a fertio toward dissolution. I pressed the vorided paperwork into
my pocket. The very fabric of record was being worn away.
The company, whoever was orchestrating this, had figured not only
how to remove his favorite employees, but how to corrupt
the memory of the physical present in the memories of
those around them. This isn't just layoffs, Linda murmured, It's
like like they want to erase the idea you could
ever have been here, like eurovirus. They need to cut
out before the group remembers what's real. I didn't answer.
I kept my ledger clothes, suddenly aware, painfully, irreversibly that
what had happened to Karen, to Meael, to name the
others was already blurring at the edge of my own
sense of self. The stickiness in my mind was familiar now,
a world always resetting, pushing us out, one memory at
a time. We need to show this, I said. My
mouth felt dry, the words awkward and soften, hollow stillness,
even if it means I couldn't finish. The echo from
the radiator felt full of hunger. Whatever lingered in the
recesses of this building, it was not quite finished. The
ledger was heavy in my hand, its surface warm against
my skin, as if daring me to record the truth,
even while daring me to forget. I left that night
knowing absolutely for the first time that I might not
just lose my job but myself entirely. And for the
first time I resolved I would risk it if the
patent could be exposed, If I could leave behind something undeniable,
then would have a foreshad hollowed at this place, would
have to contend with the stain I'd made, even if
I vanished with the rest. I didn't sleep when I
got home. I dropped my clothes in the bathroom floor,
barely remembering to lock the door behind me. When I
closed my eyes the details I braided in place. I
could almost feel the manilla envelope fluttering inside my coat pocket,
a hot weight, like a fevered secret. The documents were evidence,
except it wasn't evidence if no one could remember who
had signed, what if all the names were programmed to
dissolve in the retelling. The next evening, I arribbed an
hour early and found Linda in the booth, rubbing her wrists,
flicking her eyes over the monitors as if she half
expected them to blink off or display some new, unexplainable void.
She didn't say hello. I just lifted the mug I'd
brought for her, cracked, old thing and blazoned with a
faded mascot, definitely not company issue, the kind of thing
you couldn't order from procurement, which made it feel safe.
I keep thinking about that file, she said, that dinner photo.
It's not just your rasure for the records gets like
the people in it, un people like your staring through
a memory with holes burnt into the film. She gripped
her hands into fist until the knuckles lost their color.
We can't leave this alone. I can help at but
you need to promise we back each other up when
it comes to it. I nodded, I'm sure I deserved
that much, faith, but holding fast to the exhaustion that
had replaced fear. No one else on the cleaning crew
came in that night. Phones were set to do not
distob The only other person I saw was a temp
hairsliked with sweat typping double quick in the silver alcove.
Her eyes darted away when I passed by it, a
kind of deliberate avoidance that said she didn't want to
be seen by anyone. I spent an iron copy in
everything from the crumpled envelope on to new paper in
stiff block letters, then photographed the photo with my flip
phone through its tiny and focus screen. The camera almost
seemed to resist. Faces in the snap shot drifted sideways,
blocking out at the edges, turning pale as if the
phones lends it inherited the building's allergy to proof. Linda
and I met at the supply closet just after two.
She handed me a walkie. We stick to annalock anything
digital it gets eaten, right, she grinned, and it was
all nerves. The corridors felt stranger than usual as we
made our rounds offord steps, echoing every squeak or rattle
stretching out across the empty floor. The elevators ding sounded lower,
off key, and as we passed the main corridor toward
the legal department, I glanced up at the ceiling cameras
something gnawed at me. Despite the amber indicator lights, the
lenses looked opaque, as if an all film covered their eyes.
As we cleaned, I looked for new notes, Mark's signs.
Someone else was still resisting. In the supply shed. Tucked
behind the mops was a paper scrap sub basement bird boiler.
Don't let them see your badge. The writing was sharp, urgent.
I tried to recall the last time I'd heard anyone
talk about the sub basement. Not maintenance, not id, not
even the old head of security who used to complain
about keeping it dry. But there it was a place
half remembered, properly forbidden, pressing at the edge of understanding,
where all the trouble started and ended. I wrote the
boiler clue in my ledger hands, trembling. Linda did the
same in a batter note bed. We didn't talk much
where it seemed dangerous. The very air weighted under the
humming buso of something waiting for us to name it.
Near three eh m, Linda stopped beside a vending machine
and leaned in so close I could smell the metal
of her keys. Did you notice the staff cork board?
A two more gaps in the group photos? It ch
opened in but no paperwork to show for it. She
fumbled in her pocket for a lighter, flicked it on,
peered at the glowing sled at the machine's corner, and
you saw the sign in sheets on the guard's log
names blackbard, just lines like the pen rejected their existence.
What happens, I whisper if we try to put ourselves
on a list to write in, I mean, like leave
a message that we're here. In case, she looked at
me as fixed, no one finds it, or if they do,
it's blank, or worse, the name's blur. They'll know we tried.
All round us. The unlet office felt as if if
it braced itself against revelation. We finished the rams, badge
entries echoing with each door of security systems still online,
but every green light less trustworthy than before. The cleaning
supply caused its gouged warning felt colder, the scratch date
pressing at my skull. Before leaving, we checked the basement
store in one last time. It was just as empty
as before, the desk absent and no trace of magua lamp,
as if en Coral had been a fever dream between shifts.
But there was something new. The circle of light had shifted,
as if the overhead bulbs had been moved at the
far corner, down near the modeled floor and beneath the
shelving unit. A single scuff fall remained. Then you reached
for her hand, shaking another of or bait. We opened
it together, inside only a half torn business card, edge's
wavy with old water stained, a phone number, and a
single line of type coral discrepancy hand lane on the
back in pen meet it in a location indecipherable, as
smeared as any other trace. I stuffed the card into
my ledger, which by now felt swollen and fallen in
my hands as we locked up, and not a fear
pressed beneath my carbone. We were inside something that had
no intention of letting outside his or truth linger. I
didn't know how long my own record would hold. Each
entry faated as soon as it was made stubborn only
under the weight of real physical ink. Back at the
security desk, Linda and I sat, not speaking for a moment,
then agreed to meet again, to document whatever we could,
whatever means would still hold fast. Tomorrow. I'll print everything twice,
she said, a tired half smile on her lips. We'll
see who blinks first us of the policy. As dawn
bled between the city's towers, I caught my reflection in
the lobby glass for on, blurred by the brightening day,
detail leaking from the corners of my face. I pressed
my pond to the cold glass, just to feel something old,
steady beneath my skin. We left, as we always did, quietly,
with nothing behind us but the feeling of being at
the edge of something huge and hungry. To witness what
was being u dumb required a kind of faith I
hadn't needed before, or belief that if I made each
mark enough times at least some trace would outlast. But
ever forso called the edges of this place. Linda flashed
me alas haunted grin before she disappeared into morning. I
lingered on the street, watching the windows lose what little
light they'd carried through the night. If memory was being
written and unwritten all at once, then I would make
myself the blank page. The stubborn scull deemed to fade,
but determined to be read no matter how hard the
erasers worked, And somewhere far below the circle of light
in the storeroom hovered on a patient wound, awaiting our
next intrusion. I woke from a flat ail, asleep, with
the largest cracked cover sticking to my forearm. The surface
was damp, where my hand had sweated against a tink
blotting into the lines of my palm. Pages swelling unevenly.
The memory of the night before threaded against my breastbone.
Every yemmage raw, unsteady, the empty storeroom, that manilla envelope
pushed under the radiator, the way Linda's trembling voice sounded
in the echoing hall. I expected, somehow that dawn would
bring relief, as if sunlight couldn't tangle whatever had been
done in the dark. But my head ached, and nothing
in my own apartment looked familiar. Even the keys I'd
set by the sinker ring of doll brass marked for
lost doors felt too heavy for such a small act.
By nine, I was up staggering into the kitchen for
two SIPs of coffee that tasted of cardboard. The city's
hush was gone. Now came the wine of garbage. Trucks
in the cuto of recycling bins, Traffic come in under
windows painted shut. I screwed together a passable sand which
and tucked the ledger back into my jacket. Linda had insisted,
don't leave anything at your place, not phones, not evidence.
That was the kind of advice he followed without question.
I hid the envelope, a void of files in the
outside pocket on shore who I was protecting them from mothers,
myself or whatever. Silent erosion work through the city's bureaucracy
liked helmue and plaster forout that morning, I kept waiting
for my phone to buzz. For some one from the
cleaning creary tried to call, even if only to tell
me I was late. Only silence greeted me, and beneath
it annwing awareness that my own grip on things felt brittle.
Vazes hovered at the edge of Recommiel Cairn Dawes, the
light chief manager, with peppered hair, and receded details slipping
away faster than I could write them down. Each time
I opened the ledger, the words looked faded, luster drained,
some lines vanishing entirely between one blink and the next.
No matter how hard A pursed with my pen, something
oily seemed to smear the ink, as if the page
wanted nothing to do with the memory. By noon, I
nearly convinced myself to call and sick, but inertia one out,
I made my way back to the building a little
before dusk, passing the usual knots of smokers from nearby
offices clustered in the corner. The block looked and changed,
seemed shuddered a delly, same flicker of broken kneon across
the street. Yet to me everything felt poised, brittle, as
if the world waited a stitch to come and done.
I entered through the rear staff entrance, nodding at the
courrier with no badge, pressing myself against the wall so
he could wheel past me into the alley. No one
met my eye. Inside. I expected a crowd or a scene,
maybe police tape or at least some kind of holoup
from management. Instead, the lobby lay vacant, fuorescent bulb's bleeding
tired light into a room entered of tension. I sidestepped
to the security booth, where Linda sat in the tall stewel,
hands cradling a takeout coffee. She didn't flinch when I
tapped the glass, but the motion of her hand toward
the buzzer it was slow, mechanical. The air inside was
barely warmer than outside. She nodded and malt. I come
around back. The inner corridors felt stretched, as though the
square footage of the place had quietly expanded overnight. At
each closed door or a vagant desk, I felt a
thumber hesitation before moving on that left me more winded
than climbing the stairs. My badge still beat at the
service entrance, but the reader hesitated. It's green light flickering
for too long before clicking open. I found Linde alone
in the brick room. The wall clock stuck on four zero,
though the light through the sided blinds was unmistakably dusk.
You get any sleep, she asked, voice of raw, as
though she joined me in an easy dreams Not much,
I admitted, sliding into the creaking vinyl chair across from her.
The ledger thudded, and the tabletop between us. It's changing
Lind's even now. I gestured to the page where Karen's
name had been. Now mismarged the rest of the entry.
Culling at the edge. She reached for the ledger and
turned a page, fingers pausing at each faint word, as
if willing them to remain. Paper almost has a memory
of its own, she said, quietly. But you feel it,
don't you. Everything's thinner. I tried to pull up old
security logs this morning, and half the files are gone.
The restige is static, even the main desk computer. I
swear the login screen showed my own face yesterday, only
out of focus than to day blank. I remembered the
empty storeroom, the vanished desk, that polaroid with their raised
faces pressing up through the gloss. We need some kind
of anchor, something This process can't add it. She held
out her on an old foot model, battered and blunt.
Been taking pictures on this not connected, old memory card.
If anything sticks, it'll be this, not the server's. I nodded,
scroby my palms. The idea of physical proof gave me
a jolt of hope. Then, as it was, I'll do
the same, walk the building room by room, write it out.
Snap it if I can, Maybe there is still time.
She washed me for a beat. Keep your badge on
you even if it stops working. If nobody can write
us out, maybe they cump pull us under. It was
a child's logic, but I clung to it as I
rose again, reshouldering my batter it's actual, and feeling, for
a moment almost like myself. We set out separately, each
aiming to cover a different flour. Before the crew scattered arrival.
I began in the lowest corridor, threading through rows of
dim cubicles, The stale air pressed against my face. Every
step met a soft resistance, coppet hath amp, as if
the building had begun to sweat. I snapped photos with
my own ancient cell, aiming at each nameplate, each disk
stack with paper detritus. Time after time, the photo saved
his blood smears with only the near surface and focus.
The rest drifted, melting into a wall texture of shadow.
Only once, on the League of Flower did the likeness
of a face cling to pixels. A young woman, hand
pressed flatter, cheek frozen mid reach for her mass. I
tapped the screen, but even that image flicker, resolving into
noise before settling back into the correct frame. It was
as if the entire infrastructure was waging a deliberate sabotage, writing, flickering, erasing.
My nerves toldened with each step down. Near the elevators.
Outside the Maple conference room, I found a coil of
extension cord I had never noticed before, twisted into a
near perfect kno tipped to it a note word form
benefits back up drawer toal, a marker, a broad black X,
a cautious optimism of paperwork left for someone else. At
the end of one hallway, I saw to hear what
sounded almost like footsteps of pair slow and even as
accounting sealing tiles. When I rounded the corner, there was
no one in sight. Only the echo lingered carroed through
empt of a space and the building should allow on
the upper executive bank, barely used in remote work at
Gutted Middle Management, A found doors propped open with paper
weights on a soft scent of ozone. Beyond the pane
of frosted glass, the old break crim door rattled on
its hinges. Inside, dust had settled over everything but the
ten clock, which still ticked on out of sync with
the iyir tip. Beside it was a printed staff list,
rows of names, all ending abruptly at the half remark
below harringon loose. The ink faded into white, the rest unrendered.
I photographed it three times, blinking to wash the gull
shapes from my vision. Lynda met up with me on
the third floor, frowning. I think I found a blueprint
print up from before the last renovation service. Elevator supposed
to have four stops, she murmured, showing me a crumpled sheet.
Here one, A be three, but the pennel only shows three.
No call button for it. I counted the levels sub basement.
I guessed nobody has keys for that. Not in the roster.
I checked. But access locks show badge entering between two
and three a m. The last five nights, no name recorded,
just a string of numbers. Anything in the footage. She
shook her head, mouth twisting. Last night the camera angle
changed like some one moved the lens, but when I
rewound there was no gap, just to jump. I played
it again and the frame after mint is all white.
She tapped her chest. I kept a list half the
doors marked storage for those fours don't line up with
the actual building plans. That's where they're going, I breathed,
where they move everything they want to erase With split signments,
I would work the service corridors, trit access storage in
the lowest four I could reach. Linda would keep watch
from security, patching me through with spare radios. We both
snapped analog forto us scrolled everything in ink, knowing little
could be trusted to last. At each door, I met hesitation,
some panels off right, refusing my badge key sticking. I
had to force myself to write each room down before
memory thin to name desk time light. Only the columns
and the page seemed to resist fading, growing more stubborn
with every repeated entry, I finally pressed into the sub
basement corridor just after three. The light was dimmer blue white,
with the faintest hum beneath the linoleum. The air tasted
metallic coppery, as if the vents led somewhat deeper than
the earth. The storms here appeared twice as large as
th is above, yet only half were filled. In one
I found an old safe for the number scratched above
the dial, flanked by an empty clipboard. The digital panel
read VYE before going dark. I forced the safe slid
heart racing inside all back up discs labeled in desperate hand.
One marked benefits d B legacy. Others bore strings of
zeros or words that led off the label, the rest unreadable.
I pocketed them, ran fingers over the steel, half expecting
the disks to disspate into vapor. Up Stairs, Linda radioed
in whispers found something list of badge swipes. Look this
through static. She recited badge ID numbers that didn't fit
any staffless left. It's all wrong. There are too many
entries and most no corresponding names. That's them. My voice
sounded raw, older. Whoever it is this they still need access.
I met her in the mainbery crom Dropping the discs
under the table, she plugged in a battered sand alone laptop,
not copper issue, just a relic of the last upgrade.
The drive word then buzzed inactive on the screen. Folder
after fold or full of nonsense, the only thing legible
was a text file. Those who ask or amy, we
read it together, not speaking. I scrolled through more autofa
act files, fragments of names, numbers, insurance claims flagged but
never processed. Each sounded half familiar, slippery in the mouth,
as if I'd known these people once but couldn't cun jehiel.
Linda's face was drained of color. Why would you keep this?
It's like a warning or a record for someone else
to find. Every company needs compliance, I said flatly, the
fat settling on my tongue like a foreign object. But this,
this is a culling, not people, not just layoffs. Dislike
they need to clean out the story so I can't
infect the rest. Maybe that's how they stay aflow, she whispered.
Any time someone pushes too far, asks the wrong thing.
They were written out. I found myself looking back at
my own hands, half expecting them to blur against my genes.
Over the crackling radio, the last crew member still in
a building coal for us. It took me a second
to place her voice attempt Mraine, who was rarely included
in anything important. Her message came in Jacks panic, leaking
through the static. This summoned down here in the sub basement,
they said, there from h R. But at the transmission
snap to silence her cry cup midward, leaving only a
hispe behind. Linda looked up by slip by something close
to fear, close to faith. We go now, she said,
whatever they're doing, it's finishing to night. We hurried past
the empty cubicles down into the maw of the basement.
Steps passed walsdorb with years of soaked and hands. The
hum grew sharper physical, as if the lights themselves strained
to keep hold. The lowest corridor ran coal, the only
heat radiating from the bundle of files and disuppressed against
my ribs. At the end of the hole, a heavy
metal door waited, badge reader glowing a sickly amber. I tried.
The budget, started, flickered, denied. On the second try, I
leaned into the reader, hot knocking. The light blinked off,
then sparked green. The door shuddered open on a breath
of air that tasted of coolant and lost years. Inside.
The room was both larger and smaller than it ought
to have been, a contradiction that pressed at the back
of muscull. The walls were lined with gray, foul cabinets
that stretched up beyond sight, ceialing aust in darkness in
the scent out about. A desk turned its short edge
toward us. A top of a ledger that looked strikingly
light my own, but darker glossir far heavier. A monitor
on the discloathed blew through a haze of static cycling
images of faces each blared, eyes secluded, maths open as
of trying to shout at the far wall. Some one waited,
A face clad in the uniform nanimity of mid level management, neha,
expression featureless, a badge clipped to and iron lapel. Their
eyes met mine, then Linda's, as of checking a roster.
You aren't on shift, the h R manager said quietly.
Their voice was neither friendly nor cold, just an yielding
All losses are accounted for. You weren't supposed to see this.
The monitor's flicker showing faces a half remember of car
and meel that temp, even myself. Their image of cycle
wavered then were gone again, replaced by others whose names
no longer rose to the surface. You write them out.
I set barely more than a whisper, protect the company,
fulfill the contract compliance demands. Any risk be voided. The
manager's words were sharp, sterill. This place throws because it
does not remembered, It cannot be sued, cannot be held
to account for what it never registered. Linda stepped half
way behind me, face pinched with dread. You can't just
undue people. Memory isn't paperwork. They leave things behind. She
gripped the discs, knuckles white. The HR manager's feast did
not change. That's why prode calls exist. Records or erase
objects disposed. Even you are not exempt, we have your
signatures on file or compliance on record. In that moment,
I felt my voice slipwards, catching in my throat, as
if some silent cold had shotted the muscles in my jaw.
My own hands trembled leda heavy and slick as I
pressed it into my chest, trying to shield whatever was
left of my memory. A machine hum behind the manager's share.
Its surface sparkled cables running to both the desk and
the thick ledger device with a single red button, tiny
digital dial spinning pointlessly, as if measuring in a marked matric.
The manager pressed a switch, and I felt the air
dream out of my chest, as if every sinats was
being plucked, each memory plucked gently but meaningfully away. Linda's
badge flicked to the led, blinking up mids sendants. She
tried to shout no, but her words ended in a croak.
The manager did not flinch. Its policy. The HR manager
said again, and their hand hovered over the red button,
drawing a slow circular movement through the dust. All record
must be incompliant. The devices hummed deepen, and I felt
the warmth in my legs slip away. Colors faded Linda's jacket,
the cheap linoleum square as the streak of ink around
the ledger's edge. It was not pain, but an absence,
like falling into a memory that had never been written
in the first place. But still I resisted, forcing herself
to press the crack cover of my own lager father
forward out and into the pulse of the machine's light.
The ladger, my ledger, the one that at tracked every
vanished name, every duplicate coffee cup, every desk left it
temporarily assigned and met the device's arc. Just as they
h a manager thumb the button in earnest there was
a jerkinaudible pop. My ledger sparked, the machine's dial, spinning out.
The room filled with the wreak of burning plastic in dust,
a sensation like pressure dropping in an airplane cabin. The
faces on the monitor stattered, flash white and glitched. Karin's
image for a half second, sharpened, then burst into fractal light.
With the machine's buttering, Linda and I lunged for the
far cabinets. She wrenched two drawers, grabbing handfuls of clip files.
I snatched a stack of avoided dossiers, one fold or
so old. The paper side crackled like leaves. The HR
manager a rose behind them. Other figures shifted, faceless, uniformed,
each clutching a rin of keys, their features as blank
as wax manequins, night shift staff or echoes. Of them
passed into the room and slow mechanical steps. Lindian the
door open, alarms, hull a low bow, and joined Clackson,
More in the mirror than the ears. We sprinted back
up the hallway, the managers and this island assistance, pursuing
an eera gliding formation. As we shot through the stairwell,
I felt memory fighting itself. Each door we passed, tried
to erase where we'd been over where we were going.
Only the pain in my knee, the scrape of metal
against knuckles, the feel of the old ledgerhot against my
ribs assured me I was stole myself for Nah. In
the lobby, we found every cart abandoned, cleaning supplies dump
on the tire. The security monitors flickered, some screens looping
images of empty corridors, others showing us running over and over.
Linda pulled me out onto the street, just as the
outer doors clicked shut. Behind my larns burned. My body
felt stretched and spoiled. Somewhere between here and the vanished
floor below. We spilled into the pre dawn, dragging the
box as mudge files behind us. The building itself seemed
to bend as we heard wake, corners growing, indistinct, windows
blanking into cold reflections, the footprint receding a memory even
as I watched. We drove together, though only fragments of
specific streets of traffic lights clung where they show. Linda
asked where I wanted to go, but my unso slipped out, nerveless,
replaced by a shrug. The names of streetspled away, turning
into fragments of syllables. At a red light, I caught
sight of my own reflection in the passenger window, eyes older,
details blurring. I tried to recall what my handwriting looked like.
On page one of a ledger. The answer wouldn't form.
Even the ink on my knuckles pressed eff iars of
frantic writing looked more like dust. When we finally stopped,
it was somewhere beyond city limits, at a hollow rest
area anonymous as any company basement. The sun was coming
up gray pink. Then Linda twisted in her seat, hand
shaking the stack of corrupted philes stack solidly in the
blanket behind us. Gee remember their names, she asked, And
the question seemed to slip out of the air before
it reached me. Some, I said, but the answer was
a lie. The syllables were already gone, lost to the
daily sweep. We may calls to the city, to the press,
to any one listed on the bat of formless scavenged
from the company servers. Each time confusion on the line,
Who is this? We have no such property on record, sory,
I can't hear you. Even our own names sounded false,
hollowed out by overuse, or perhaps by a much quieter
forgetting them, we'd feared. By the time the car ran
out of gas, the building was little more than a memory.
We found that week in the newspaper a single port
the street held a for lease sign topped in blue
and orange, but no company was listed underneath. Later, even
that would vanish from the records. The box of corrupted
files lingered for days in the trunk, each page greasy
with loss, nxious, mirroring. With every touch, I tried to
reconstruct the order. Who was lost, when, what complaints were filed?
Who dared ask which question? But handwritings slipped from sentence
to sentence. Type lines devolved into meaningless text. Names opened
into syllables, then quiet, then nothing. The stack thinned, as
if self censoring pages, thusting to pulp when light struck them.
Evidence I made by exposure to the world. Linda's number
faded from my phone, Faces of the cleaning crew wouldn't
come together when I shut my eyes. Even Linda herself
became slippery in person, her edges drawing inward for his horse,
as if she'd spend decades breeding only filtered air. We
showed a kind of half life for as long as
we dared, huddling over the dwindling box of files, every
attempt to anchor what was left, Names written and new ink,
forts pasted a paper, badgers pressed into plastic vanish before
purpose could route the city unconcerned, folded back over itself,
the world kept moving. I'd pass familiar corners, only to
realize the Vanish building no longer registered in its streetscape,
its outline eraised in the shift of taxi cabs, dog walkers,
lunch eire chatter. Each day. It was as if we'd
never swept there, never spilt chemicals, never filed a missing
person to port, spent in hope and futility. The only
thing that persisted was the battered ledger, depleted now pages,
yellowed surfers, almost blank, memory leaking from the corners. I
tried once to write my own name on the inside cover,
as if that would force even a scrap to survive.
The ink refused to take the page, buckling, tiny shods
pealing up into the voided air. One morning, shuffling through
what was left of the written entries, I realized I
couldn't recall which letters belonged at the start of my
own surname, or whether Meal ever had a locker in
the city, or if Karen ever drank from her chip
blue mug, or if she'd been invented whole cloth. A
trick memory seated in the ledger spine. Linda looked at
me and smiled, faint loss, the echo of some one
who might always have been there, or never at all.
I locked the ledger away and walked the city's edge
until darkness were ten, the press of anonymity at my shoulders.
When I finally sat lone in a dim stair well,
ledger opened on my knees. I stared for IROs at
the palimpsis, to ventures, ghost marks, lost syllables, the silent
warning not to write my own name. And somewhere else
life continued. Streets widened, buildings changed tenants, the missing remained missing.
I rose again, as dust pressed in the single final entry,
stuck like a splinter beneath the skin, in a different city,
under a new sky heavy with indirect light, another janet
of pushes a batter cut through a glass lobby, among
sprays and keys and freshkined liners. A battered old ledge
ride atop a pile of rags. It slocks, warped, itspine,
fraying the building around it, gives off the familiar sleepy
exhale of evening's end. But somewhere in the machinery, a
storm lamp flicker is briefly to life. Her eyes pause
in the first page of the ledger, where only a
single line is legible, Remember, don't write your own name
far below a door notches in the dark. Footsteps echoed
down a corridor, as though someone unseen is already a
writing for a work. Footsteps echoed down a corridor, as
though someone unseen is already arriving for work. In the
days that followed our escape, the world itself seemed subtly different,
as if the edge of the city had eroded in
the night and no one else had seen it go.
Memory became more of an act than a faculty, determined,
stubborn but compromised, like writing for sam paper. I kept
the batted ledger inside at all times, but when I
opened it, writing was harder. Pages bore the indent of
old words, yet the actual interest dates, names, complaints grew indistinct,
sentenced by sentence. My own looping signature fractured, vanishing midstroke,
as if I'd learned a cuss if that race itself.
Linda and I settled at the edge of the city,
half exel, driven more by instinct than by fear of
pursued a condition harder to name like a person who
needs to keep moving to retina shape. The box of
files we'd rested out of the basement's storeroom lived beneath
her battered passenger seat, ringbouand misapen, growing dim even in
the sparse daily she checked it compulsively, sometimes saying there
is still enough here without conviction, I stopped trying to reply.
We attempted to make sense of the materials. The backup discs,
most scratched or labeled in frantic block letters, failed demand
on our aging latop Instead, when forced, they spun up
a discordant wine file's resolving as corrupted or opening to
pages of disjointed symbols. With every attempt, I felt more
of myself slip. If I'd known before that retrieval could
be dangerous, I was convinced now that even recollection had
a cost. Linda began sleeping with a slip of notepaper
under her pillow, a list of things she wanted to
keep her own name, her mother's, and addressed that didn't
match any city I could find on a map. Try
as we met to be out witness forcemails to local reporters,
emails to investigators, even anonymous tips left through public complaint portals,
nothing yielded so much as a request for further detail.
Phone calls to city officers meant forty minutes on hold,
only to be told the building had never been there,
or had changed hands years back, or more frequently, sorry, ma'am,
could you receive the name for us? I don't see
it anywhere. At night's sleep was always shallow, flickered by
dreams of descending metal staircases, each step heavy and sticky's
shadows massing at the turn of every corridor. When the
dreams grew too vivid, I'd wake with the shape of
a desk press into my mind, or the hissing rattle
of a radio, or the feel of burning plastic lingering
in my lums. Sometimes I checked the ledger in the dark,
pages gun trance loosened, previous night's tyle reduced to a
legible script. Consequences crackled through small things. My bank card
failed in the fourth morning, though I'd seen a balance
the night before. Lunda's phone dropped numbers from its memory.
When we stopped by gas, the attendant apologetically told as
there was no record of our cause plate, and the
manager came out waving a clip ord did stopped listening
the last few characters halfway through. No one pressed the issue. However,
the world let us pass avoid it. The records we
take in, those precious pieces thin die by ire. We
tried placing them with people who might care. A friend
in local media is this performance, ought Linda's old union contact.
I'll run it up the chain, But who exactly are
you again, Eddie? Even an envelope left at the police
station's anonymous tip window. Later, the envelope would reappear at
a mutel door of the flab loose papers, rearrange some
substituted for blank sheets. Its return became simple, with teen
a ritual message that we had not left whatever circle
the company had drawn. However much the world would pretend otherwise,
what truly said was the feeling of a slow, dignified
in doing. Our remembered connections grew faint. First, the cleaning
crewis joking, complaints, the names of shift supervises, even snippets
of conversation from Linda's early career, all drifted until they
felt like Lyne's read in a half forgotten play. I
began to wonder if the blue mug Karen once carried
was something I'd invented. If me ail's locker ever held
that faded sports pennant, if someone pressed me, I'd inevitably stumble,
not through lies, but a thinning of conviction, the way
a retold story becomes less anchored each time. Linda, always
a little more pragmatic, adapted quickly. She created a new structure,
wrote her own version of a log, receipts, licensed plates.
We passed details about the color of our rendered car,
low weather patterns. None of it mattered, but the word
Because crept in driving her to attach more purpose to evidence,
she started each entry, page after page with I am real,
I am writing this down. I stopped asking if it worked.
Everything about the city faded. Our old building was quickly converted,
theorefo lease banner gone it Its place had deadly expanded.
Then close them May emerged as a tax preparation office
for one week before standing blank faced once more. The
official property side redirected her parkate lot forty two monthly only.
But when I walked by in late evening, I saw
only whechirt concrete and a locked service gate. I stopped
expecting to see anyone I knew by name, tasks at
once felt urgent slowed. I drove down town to try
and file a missing person's report for Karen, for me,
l and even for Linda, testing the solidity of things.
The officer who took my statement wrote notes, but his
brow furrowed more deeply with every detail, and by the
time we'd reach the point about the insurance ledger at
his hand hovered over the form as if he'd forgotten
what question came next. He apologized, then told me we
have no such file. Then do you mean a different building?
It was always the same loop, courtesy confusion erasure. I
left with nothing. Linda and I grew wary of lingering
in public species, as if what we'd carried out of
the basement, that unique silent infection, could live in us
and thin the air around others. She stopped calling her
old friends, I stopped checking from messages. The equinox came
and went. Parking meters were calibrated, and we slept through
the end of the lease boxes stacked anonomas. The fall
up from our final descent blood into everything. Any attempt
to gather ourselves to communicate what had happened failed. Administrative
support numbers, the hotline for the city's umwardsmen, the Union
Rep's forcemail all when unanswered or connected to strangers. At
one point, Linda reached her own voicemail, heard her a
going message, but couldn't convince herself it was her own voice.
When she replayed it for me, it was nothing but static.
The last time I opened the box of files, my
hand trembled. Most of the folders inside had become indistinguishable
from one another, labeled tabsticky and impenetrable, their contents reduced
to the texture of pulp. The polyrooid from the storeroom
of mouse one final time image thanking so much that
the outlines of the faces what was left had become silhouettes,
like the memory of shadows loss in the carpet of
a too clean hallway. The caption Company Dinner twenty twenty
two always forward, was now just Company or two a dy.
It was then that Linda announced, gently, but with dry finality.
I think we've lost it, Eddie. It isn't just them,
it's us, the ledger, the files. This was meant to
be kept. She was right. I felt it, a pressure
behind the eyes, a dead and muscle at the back
of memory. The urged to re record, to shore up
what little we had, was replaced by a numb acceptance.
The ledger had lost almost all of its heft to
half empty shell. My own name, once inscribed boldly on
the inside cover, was now ghostly initials, solving into cul
of paper. At the binding, the warning don't write your
own name stood as clear as ever, shadowed by the
frantic dig of the pen. No matter how many times
I pressed newing slid away. I handed the ledger to Linda.
She turned it over page after page, pausing at the
blind places she'd hope would at last the rest. Then
she closed it, held it a moment, and set it.
Upon the night's end. When we checked out of the motel,
it laid us still, the only record, perhaps that we
had ever slept or scoured, cleaned, or remembered within its
small orbit. And that is the end. Thank you for listening,
and I will see you in the next one.