I suppose that this will serve as a follow up to my original post. I’ve realized some stuff. Things that weren’t immediately apparent, but after a bit of introspection, seem quite disconcerting.
Winston is weird. Not personality-wise, though. I don’t know what to call it. In a metaphysical sense, maybe? I mean, he's always there when I am. I don’t have consistent hours, either. They range from 6-10 per day, but usually aren't in the same window of time. What I mean by that is sometimes I could be working 9-5. Other days would see me go from 7-2. Others from 11-7. You see what I mean?
The thing is… Winston’s always there, both when I clock in and out. Unless he inexplicably has the same hours as me (not likely for a man of his position), this is not normal.
But there still could be an explanation for this. He’s a workaholic. Those exist, don’t they? But I just don’t see anybody working that much. I met up with Sergio at a bar after work one day (we’ve gotten quite close, by the way), and we started discussing this. Now, I’d just finished an 11-8 shift. Sergio had essentially just woken up, after finishing one from 1 to 10 AM.
Could you guess what he told me? Winston was there the whole time. He was also there the whole time for me. 1 AM to 8 PM. That’s 19 hours. Don’t tell me that anybody works 19 hours a day.
What was weirder was that after all this time, we weren’t exactly sure what Winston even did there. I mean, he really didn’t spend that much time in his office. He’d either be walking around the ground floor, going up to the second, or simply disappearing completely somewhere in the back, only to come back a few hours later.
Now I’d never worked a managerial position, so I can’t say for sure what he should’ve been doing. But it sure as hell must involve phone calls or paperwork, or something. But he never seems to be doing that.
Our conversation moved onto other things that we found questionable about our respective situations. I told him about the inventory room and the man in the suit. However… those paled in comparison to what he told me.
He was having a smoke by his car one day, when he saw a woman coming out of the factory, seemingly bawling her eyes out. He called out to her, but she just ignored him and continued running away, right into an adjacent cornfield.
He decided to go after her. After a few minutes of trying to track her through the crops, he stumbled into a clearing. There was a singular, run-down shack in the middle. He could still hear the woman crying.
With his guard all the way up, he walks in there. He finds the woman crouched in the corner, seemingly looking for something on the ground.
He calls out to her. “Scuse me, ma’am? You alright?”
She turns around, face absolutely drenched in tears. “Who are you? Just… just go away!”
A few seconds later, she pushes downwards onto a section of the floor, revealing a set of stairs. Before she starts climbing down, she turns around to face him and says “Don’t look at the man in black.” And just like that, she was gone. The floor returned to its original form, and Sergio was left standing there alone, not knowing what to think.
He didn’t try investigating further. He considered mentioning it to Winston, although that never came to fruition. But here’s the really fucked up part…
The woman was back at work the next day. Sergio said that they made brief eye contact, but that there was no reciprocation of familiarity in her stare. Again, he thought about talking to her about it. But he didn’t.
There was another instance where he wanted to talk to Winston about changing one of his shifts. Since Sergio couldn’t find him anywhere, he tried his office. He knew that somebody was in there, because he could hear what sounded like a muffled conversation through the door.
He furrowed his brow as he told me this part. “It was muffled.” He said. “But a bit too much.”
Anyhow, he knocked on the door for several minutes, but nobody bothered to answer. In fact, the conversation seemed to be getting louder with every knock.
At some point, he simply walked away. He bumped into Winston a few minutes later.
He wasn’t terribly surprised. I mean, there was a tangible explanation for something like this. Some supervisors from a different branch could’ve been using his office for some kind of meeting. But… that didn’t seem to be the case here.
Sergio told him that he’d tried knocking, assuming that Winston was there. But the guys inside never answered.
He told me that Winston’s face instantly morphed into one of horrific anger upon hearing this.
“How many did it sound like were in there?” Was his immediate response to this.
Sergio answered with “a couple” and Winston took off storming.
That sounds… familiar, doesn’t it?
But that wasn’t even his worst experience. That came on one of his night shifts. It was about 3 AM, and he was getting ready to leave after a strenuous 10 hours.
At that point, the place was pretty empty. He started heading out towards his car when he spotted something out the corner of his eye. It was partially obscured by the cornfield, but it looked like a person.
Obviously, the features were pretty much impossible to distinguish from that distance and at that time. But he told me that it almost looked like the person was wearing a mask.
They briefly stared at each other, before the figure started fucking running towards him. Sergio freaked out and bolted towards his car. He got in, fumbling around for his keys, before finally managing to stick it in his ignition. But by that time the “person” had caught up to him. He said that they launched themselves onto the hood of his truck, slightly cracking his windshield. That’s when he got a better look at the guy.
Now, he couldn’t exactly tell whether or not the guy was wearing a blank mask… or if he had no face. Again, it was dark. He told himself to believe the former.
Sergio was in sheer shock, unable to function or even think. The person started banging on his windshield, producing more cracks and also a bit of blood. It was at that point where a group of extremely large men in security gear came out of nowhere specific and yanked the guy off. One of them told Sergio to sit still, while the others dragged the attacker away… back into the cornfield.
They told Sergio that they were the nighttime security for the factory, and that the man who’d charged at him was a mental patient that escaped from a nearby hospital.
“But there were two things wrong with that.” He told me.
“First of all, there is no nighttime security. I’ve worked these shifts before, you think I would’ve seen them by now. Second, there is no mental hospital within 500 miles of here. So who the hell was that guy?"
During his following shift, Winston came up to him, apologized for the incident and told him that he’d personally pay out of pocket for his windshield repairs. But he didn’t seem to want to answer any more questions about it.
All this, just from a few weeks of working here.
“So why don’t you just leave? This shit is beyond fucked up.” I told him, as we were getting ready to depart.
He responded by giving me a solemn sounding chuckle. “I think it’ll be alright. I mean, it has to be. I got no other options. Nobody else is gonna hire me after what I’ve done.”
In the kindest way possible, I tried asking him what that was.
“Something bad.” Was his only reply.
Guess that was a subtle message for me to not press any further with it.
It’s weird… during the entire time we were sitting at the bar, I could’ve sworn that somebody was watching us. I couldn’t narrow it down to a single person, but the feeling was there nonetheless.
That feeling persisted on my walk home. But this time, I could see him. It was a man, hood up and head downwards as he trailed me. I stopped, getting ready to confront him, when he simply brushed by me. But not before slipping a piece of paper into my hand.
On it was a phone number and a message:
“The Dolus Company isn’t real. Call me.”
When I got home, I considered doing so. But I couldn’t come to a personal consensus. I mean, what if calling him would only introduce additional problems? I decided to refrain from doing so. For the time being, at least.
When I clocked into work the next day, I was approached by Winston. He called me into his office, gushed about how good of an employee that I’d been, and offered me a 3$/hour raise.
I was incredulous at this. I mean, he’d literally caught me dicking around on multiple occasions. None of this made any sense. But I just thanked him and went along with it.
During my break, I decided to send the guy who had bumped into me a text. He never responded. After work, I decided to give him a call, but was directed to an automated voice stating that the number was not in service.
Things are getting weird here. Trying to find a method to the madness of this place seems like a daunting – and admittedly horrifying task. But… I’ll stick around for now. Maybe look a bit further into this.
I mean hell, maybe the Dolus Company isn’t real. But the money sure is.
I think I’ll talk to Chad next. See what he has to say.
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Credits
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