I’ve been trying to get into contact with Chad, but it’s been hell trying to do so.
I haven’t been seeing him at work. Apparently, Sergio hasn’t seen him since the second week. If he quit, then that was understandable. But I decided to ask Winston about it anyways.
His response was… unexpected.
“Chad? I’ve never known a Chad before. I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about.”
He claimed that he’d never even hired a man named Chad. But… he did. I know this. Sergio knows this. I can’t understand why he would lie about something like this.
Well actually, I do. There’s an obvious answer here. But I don’t like to entertain that possibility.
In any case, it seems as if trying to contact Chad will only yield dead ends. I don’t know his phone number or anything, so fuck it. There’s more interesting avenues to explore here. Remember the woman who kept staring at the wall? Well, it happened again, this time with an older man. I remember driving around, when I saw him, motionless, eyes transfixed on nothing obvious. He was in the exact same spot that the woman was.
I decided to look into this myself.
It was about 1:30 AM, 30 minutes before my shift was supposed to end. It was pretty slow, so I walked over to the wall and tried to figure out what the hell was going on there.
Trying to be as discrete as possible, I looked and felt around the, trying to find something that resembled an anomaly.
At first, I couldn’t fathom what they could've been staring at. I mean, it was just damn wall. But… eventually, I figured it out. There was small spot that was a different shade of white than the rest of the wall. At first, I thought it might’ve been a stain of some sort. I crouched down in an attempt to observe it better.
That’s when I realized it almost looked… shiny. Hard to explain. I hesitated for a moment before feeling it with my thumb.
I can’t even begin to describe the texture. It was slimy, hard and rubbery all at the same time. In addition to that, my thumb began burning. It almost felt as if some caustic substance was eating away at my skin.
I looked down at my thumb, expecting something horrendous. Inexplicably, it looked fine. In fact, the pain had even subsided. I looked back at the spot on the wall, but…
It was gone, instead replaced with something else. A black spot now. However… it wasn’t a spot. It was a hole. Hesitantly, I put my finger through it, before quickly pulling it back out, confirming this.
So what the hell did I just touch? I got up and turned around, coming to the disturbing realization that all of the assembly line workers were now staring at me. It made sense. Everything had become quiet a while ago, but I was too distracted to think anything of it.
I decided to leave early. I had a feeling that Winston wouldn’t have cared. When I came in the next day, I tried to lay as low possible, in an attempt to pretend that yesterday’s events had never happened.
It seemed to work. I did my rounds, without doing so much as glancing over at the wall. Everything seemed alright. It was around 3 AM, and I was having a smoke break outside. I made sure to watch out for any figures standing in the cornfields beforehand.
Eventually, another guy came out and introduced himself as “Matt.” I was a bit jarred by this. None of my other coworkers had even talked to me at that point, save for Sergio and Chad.
The conversation started out normal enough. We talked mundane shit like the weather and what we ate for lunch. But then he dropped the bomb on me:
“I saw you go up to the wall. Was it there?”
“What was there?” I ask in response.
“The thing.”
He just stares at me as if that was answer was supposed to be descriptive enough. But I suppose that what he was talking about was obvious.
“Yeah. It was there. I even touched it. So what is it, exactly?”
“It’s the way outta here.” He tells me. “I’ve been here for 34 years.”
The expression on his face as he says this is beyond disturbing. This doesn’t make any sense. He doesn’t looks older than 30. I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Matt storms back into the factory and I follow along. He disappears into a room near the back, before coming out with a sledgehammer. Before I know it, he’s hammering away at the wall, putting absolute exertion into every swing. It isn’t long before they come out. What I can only assume was the security force that Sergio was talking about.
2 men in gear, both looking to be 6’6 or taller, rush down from the second floor, tackling Matt to the ground. As they drag him away to an unknown location, I can hear him screaming out: “Let me go! Let me out of here!”
And just like that, they were gone. I looked back at the now damaged wall. Through the cracks, I could see something moving around in there. But I have no idea what it is. A few moments later, Winston arrived, announcing that everybody was to go home early. But it was weird. Nobody moved as he said it.
They all just stared at me. Eventually, the feeling of nauseating discomfort overtook my initial shock. I felt my mind starting to regain its bearings, forcing my legs to make their way towards the exit.
Once outside, I started making a beeline towards my car. At that point, I wasn’t sure whether or not I was coming back. Matt’s words kept replaying in my head.
”I’ve been here for 34 years.”
It sent chills down my spine. Suddenly, going to back to school didn’t sound so bad. However, I nearly had a heart attack when I looked up.
Somebody was standing on the hood of my car.
I don’t know why I didn’t notice at first. Actually, I was pretty sure that they weren’t there when I’d left the building. I halted to a stop about 30 meters from the vehicle. Since it was dark, making out details proved to be a difficult task. But then the figure shifted slightly, allowing the moonlight to illuminate its features.
Oh, shit. I thought. It was the fucking Suit. It started walking towards me, almost floating off of the hood. As it got closer, it sounded as if it were talking. But not coherently. It was essentially just a rapid, low-pitched muffle.
I flipped shit and started running the other way. As soon as I did so, I saw Winston storm out of the factory and begin sprinting towards me, holding a shotgun.
At that moment, I thought I was fucked. As he got closer, Winston raised the weapon and fired off both the rounds. I closed my eyes for a second, preparing myself for the impact.
But it never came. Instead, the low-pitched muffle just got louder. Once my eyes were open again, I turned around to see Winston lunging at the Suit, who now had some kind of black substance leaking out of its chest, where the bullets had presumably hit.
As soon as I saw Winston throw the first punch, I scrammed. I started legging it out of there, away from the sounds of confrontation. As I got into and started my car, I took a peek through the rear-view, watching as the Suit crushed one of Winston’s tree-trunk sized arms.
I suppose that I felt kind of bad for flooring it out of there. But I couldn't have helped at that moment. I drove for about five minutes down the road before stopping and dialing 911. I mean, I had to do something. I just told them that somebody was being murdered at the factory address.
I got home and started pacing around my apartment.
Christ almighty, what the fuck just happened?
I picked up the phone again and called Sergio, asking him when his next shift was.
“In 20 minutes.” Was his response. “I’m driving there right now.”
“Look, you need to turn the fuck around-“
“What the hell?” He interrupts me. I can hear police sirens and some kind of inhuman roar as his phone cuts off.
It’s only been 30 minutes since then. I’ve locked my doors and barricaded my windows. I’m holding a Glock, but I have a feeling that it won’t be so effective.
But there’s no way that the Suit knows where I live, right?
UPDATE
Somebody just knocked on my door. It's Chad.
---
Credits
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