Persi Writes Weird

Before you start the story:

This is, almost to the letter, a dream I had about two weeks ago. The order and pacing are a bit strange because this is the order in which things happened in the dream. This is the first short story I have ever published and I’m very nervous. It may not be my best work but it’s my most recent. It’s far-fetched and overdone, and in no way meant to be taken seriously. So enjoy! And remember… Don’t drink the coffee!

—

I’m not a police officer. I’m not even a private investigator, and calling myself a journalist is optimistic at best. I feel I have to point that out from the start, to ensure that you know that I was in no way qualified to do what I did. It might help you to understand how I was so easily taken.

I live in a village, not too far from the nearest city but far enough that it feels rural and detached. It’s located near a university, which means the population is a weird mix of locals who have grown up here and students who only live here because it’s cheap. It means that only certain people talk to each other, and if someone who isn’t a native leaves it goes completely unnoticed.

When children started going missing, you’d think someone would have cared. The thing is, the place from which they were disappearing was a nursery on the university’s campus, and so the  children were those of mature, mostly international, students. The individual parents noticed of course, but everyone else either remained oblivious or consciously ignored it. I should have done the same, I was born here so you’d think I would know better, but I guess I had a bit of a hero complex. I was convinced that I could go over there, find out what was going on and, if not fix it myself, then make sure the police knew exactly what was going on. I still don’t know what the situation with law enforcement and that place was, I assume people told the police when their children disappeared, but I never heard of a single officer trying to investigate. That doesn’t mean none did, I might have missed them, but missing children normally get teams of detectives and news coverage and there was none of that.

I think I became obsessed. I spent all my time scouring the internet for leads and harassing parents for information about their missing children. I even pursued those parents who had not been affected. I’m not sure if I was trying to squeeze information out of them or warn them of the danger. Either way, it accomplished nothing. I suppose the one good thing about the lack of police intervention was that no one took out a restraining order against me. Again, I don’t know if they tried.

I don’t think I would ever have achieved anything save to drive myself mad if I hadn’t seen the advert. It appeared on almost all my social media, and I just assumed it was something to do with everything having access to my location and search history. It was an advertisement for a job, the nursery was looking for administrators. I am in no way qualified to work with kids, and I never had any desire to. I couldn’t cope with the noise or the mess, I might even say I hate kids. That doesn’t mean I want them to disappear, though. I guess I wanted to save them without ever having to come in to contact with any.

Admin was something I had experience in and thought I could deal with. I would have my own office and it paid relatively well, but more importantly it would provide me with the perfect opportunity to do some recon. I’d listened to so many true crime podcasts by this point that I thought I was some sort of expert. Sure people were trained to do this sort of thing, but how hard could it be really? No one would ever suspect me, disabled people don’t do spying. Especially not blind people, I mean how on earth could we “keep an eye out”?

I got an interview for the job, the call came the day after I applied. I thought that was a little strange, but I just assumed they were desperate and wanted someone in place as soon as possible. If it was as dodgy up there as I thought it might be, I could understand why they might have a high staff turnover.

I went for a smart/casual look. I didn’t think it was the kind of environment where people wore suits, but at the same time I didn’t want to appear scruffy. I took the bus, arriving earlier than necessary because our public transport is atrocious, it was either that or be twenty minutes late. I had planned to go for a coffee beforehand, maybe a snack, in the hope that it would calm me down. As it turned out I was too jittery to eat or even drink, so I made my way straight there.

The doors were automatic, and as I passed through them I was hit with a wave of stiflingly warm air that smelled of baby powder and cleaning products. The woman behind the desk greeted me so cheerily it set my teeth on edge, but I responded as best I could without seeming too forced. She directed me to a sofa and offered me a drink while I waited. I wanted to decline but it felt rude somehow, so I agreed to a coffee and tried to sit still, at least until she was no longer looking at me.

The sofa was lower than I had anticipated, and I all but fell in to it. It was far too soft. The cushions seemed to pull me in and close around me like a cocoon. I knew I was over-reacting, they were just cheap cushions with bad stuffing, but I felt oddly closed in and suddenly breathing was a struggle. I blamed my anxiety at the time. I never had been able to deal with job interviews.

When the coffee arrived I was pleasantly surprised. I’d been expecting instant crap with far too much milk, but this was definitely the real thing. A decent sized mug, too. I didn’t plan to drink it of course, I didn’t trust this place, but at least it smelled good.

It was only a few minutes before my prospective employer called me in to their office. I was unsure if they were a man or a woman (or neither), and I was too embarrassed to ask their pronouns, so I’m going with they/them just to be safe. They were just as cheerful as the receptionist, even offered to carry my coffee for me. I allowed them to do so, hoping they would put it down without telling me where it was so that I had an excuse not to drink it. It really did smell good, though.

They sat behind their desk and I was directed to a chair opposite. Again, it was much softer than I expected, and it seemed to go back further than it should have. They apologised when I slumped back, surprised, and made a point of telling me exactly where my coffee was and encouraging me to have a few sips to calm my nerves.

I really did mean to refuse, tell them it was too hot or something. I wasn’t a good enough actor to fake taking a sip, never having had any sight I couldn’t be sure it would look convincing and I did not want to raise any suspicion. And they wouldn’t drug the coffee, would they? That would be far too obvious.

It was the best coffee I’d ever had. Strong, sweet, the tiniest drop of milk… I couldn’t have made it better myself. It was like they knew what I wanted without asking me. That was frightening all on its own. It did help, though. I’m not sure if it was the warmth or the flavour or just the familiar action, but when I placed the mug back on their desk I felt better.

The interview was like any other. They asked why I wanted the job, and I said something about wanting to use the skills I had to shape the next generation, even if I was doing it indirectly. They asked about my qualifications, and when I talked about not being specifically qualified to look after children they shrugged it off. They said that, while my job was mostly admin, I might be expected to help out with other things if they were stretched. Apparently qualifications didn’t matter as much as people assumed, it was good intentions that mattered.

Well that was the basis for an article in itself! A nursery full of unqualified staff? I was so going to close them down!

I managed to mask my excitement throughout the rest of the questions, talking about my degree, my previous work experience and of course what I thought my weaknesses were. I think I was even cheesy enough to say my biggest failing was being a perfectionist. The more I talked, the more confident I felt. I had this. I was going to get this job, and I was going to find out everything I needed to destroy this place.

I must have got the bus home. Obviously I didn’t drive, and the walk would have taken me half an hour. I must have, but when I tried to think back to it there was just a gap filled with a vague, peaceful kind of joy, like the memory of a pleasant dream. I knew the last few minutes had gone well, and that the journey home had been a happy one, but the details were vague and far away.

When my senses fully returned, I was sitting on my sofa, watching the news. I was a little confused, it wasn’t normal for me to lose time like that, but it had been an anxious kind of day and I didn’t want to examine it too deeply. I just needed sleep, that was all. Everything was fine.

I don’t normally watch the news, my best guess was that I put something else on and zoned out, but at the mention of the university I lived near my ears pricked up. It was a piece about accessibility, they were interviewing some blind woman about a job she’d got and how helpful her employers had been. I was surprised I didn’t know her. While the assumption that we all know each other is a myth, you tend to have heard about other blind folks who live near you. She sounded young too, maybe she’d been a student and never left? I’d have to keep a lookout for her, so to speak.

The voice was familiar in a way that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I knew that voice, but there was something not quite right about it. It took me far longer than it should have to realise. It was my voice, and it sounded wrong because I normally heard it coming out of my own mouth. It was as if I was hearing myself on tape, like I’d recorded this earlier and it was  being played back to me. Except that it was saying things I had never said to a reporter I had never met.

The panic was immediate and almost overwhelming. I scrabbled for my phone, but after searching the room from top to bottom I conceded that I must have left it in that office. The idea of going back there made me feel sick, but I needed my phone and I needed to know what they’d done.

The door didn’t open. It was a cheap wooden thing with a handle that had always had a tendency to stick, but this was something else. The handle flopped uselessly in my hand, and when I ran my fingers down the frame there appeared to be no definition between it and the wall. The longer I touched it, the smoother the surface became, until there was no door there at all. Even the handle began to shrink, dissolving in to a weird, oily slime that trickled across my palm. I shook it off, disgusted, but the stuff clung stubbornly to my skin and suddenly all I wanted to do was wash it off. 

I ran for the kitchen, but that door was gone too. My living room walls were smooth, disturbingly so. If I could see them, I imagine they would have been shiny, glistening with that same oily substance that now coated my fingers.

I stumbled around the room several times, my breathing becoming faster and more laboured with every circuit. Eventually, though, I had to sit down. I couldn’t breathe, my head was light and I suspected that if I did not sit I would fall.

I can’t say exactly what triggered the flashback. Maybe it was the panic, or the sudden stillness, or maybe it was the constant droning of my own voice on the television. Either way, as I sat there, trying to control my breath, the events that had brought me here began to come back.

By the time the interview was over I had been filled with a heady confidence that was completely out of character for me. I have never been a confident person, the last job interview I had resulted in me freezing, leaving without having answered all the questions and spending the bus journey home in floods of tears.

I should have known something was wrong, that I wasn’t acting like myself, but all I could think was that it had gone brilliantly and I was looking forward to starting, and holy shit that coffee was so good! Maybe I could ask if they had more, I’d be willing to hang around if I could just have another cup.

I was getting ready to leave, draining the last few drops from my mug, when the person on the other side of the desk gently took it out of my hands. They seemed to know what I was thinking, because they assured me that if I just waited a moment they would make sure I got another coffee.

They leaned over the desk as they spoke, their face uncomfortably close to mine. For one irrational moment I worried they might kiss me, and while I in no way wanted that I felt sure that I could rebuff them if I needed to.

Except that they did not kiss me. Not in the way you would imagine, anyway. I suppose you could call it a kiss, if you were being really perverted about it.

I couldn’t work out what they were doing at first. The face retracted from my immediate vicinity, and for a moment I was relieved that I didn’t have to have any awkward conversations. The wet, sucking noise was the first thing that ate in to my unrealistically good mood. It was a strangely drawn out sound, like an army of squid having a wrestling match. Whatever it was slapped on to the desk, sending papers and the mug flying across the room. I reached out in a desperate attempt to limit the damage, but my hands were caught by cold, moist tentacles.

It was not slimy, exactly. When you touch a jellyfish, provided you don’t get stung, the feeling is of something smooth and wet rather than something oozing. But jellyfish don’t do anything, they just float past you, they want to be left alone. This thing had a goal, though at the time I had no idea what that might be.

I would like to think I struggled as the tentacles crept up my arms and over my shoulders, wrapping around me in the world’s most unpleasant embrace. I’d like to say I flailed around, punching and kicking and screaming, but truthfully I don’t know what I did. I certainly intended to fight, but wherever the thing touched my skin I felt a strange prickling sensation, followed by no feeling at all.

By the time it reached my face I was almost completely numb, held in place only by the thing’s grip. As it wound one of its seemingly infinite limbs around my throat I thought it might squeeze the life out of me. I almost hoped it would, any other conclusion to this would be much worse. In reality it was simply holding my head in place while it rose up to cover my face, its body engulfing mine entirely.

I’m not sure how long it was before I lost consciousness. I remember struggling for breath while simultaneously trying not to open my mouth, hearing my heart pounding in my ears and knowing I was suffocating. And then a voice that did not speak out loud told me to relax, that everything would be fine, and I had no choice but to obey it. When the world faded I was unnaturally calm, and while I knew in theory how terrifying that was I did not have the capacity for fear.

And so I sit here, on a couch that isn’t mine in a room that may not even be real. I don’t know what this is, exactly. Maybe that creature has taken my form and is keeping me in a disturbingly organic prison. Maybe one day it will find someone else and let me go.

Or maybe this place is in my head. What if it has inhabited my body, and rather than being dead I’m trapped in my own mind, seeing what it’s doing as if from the outside?

I should panic. I want to panic. I should be angry and scared and devastated, mourning the loss of myself, the life I had and the future I will never know.

I do not panic. I’m not scared, I’m not angry, and despite knowing what I have lost I don’t mourn. I feel nothing, in fact. Nothing but that unnatural, empty contentment. Nothing matters. Everything will be fine. There is a mug of coffee in my hands, and it’s the best coffee I’ve ever had.