Comfort

Thriller Stories | Sep 22, 2012 | 6 min read
16 Votes, average: 3 out of 5
It was a useless job. Daniel knew it, and for a while it didn't bother him. He sat and kept "under the radar," as his close coworkers called it, alone in a cubicle playing games online and reading through multiple fantasy novels each week. On Fridays at 4:00, he collected his paycheck and went home. His responsibilities included about an hour of real work every day. On Tuesdays, it was even less.
His title at National Sports Media was Assistant Multimedia Producer, but his responsibilities made him the top editor for the Web site's professional hockey coverage. Serving in such a role for NSM would sound like a dream job to many people, and many people used to include Daniel. But four years of sitting on corporate cruise control is enough to sour anybody.
It was on a Tuesday that Daniel decided enough was enough. Reading was no longer getting him through the boredom and, after all, it was his grandfather who always insisted that boredom could kill a man. It was his explanation for keeping a busy social life, going out to clubs at night, and introducing to Daniel every few weeks a new woman who would be his "future step-grandmother." That was all before the sudden heart attack that killed him a day before his 72nd birthday.
On this particular day, Daniel couldn't even hear himself think. He was attempting to write a short blurb about the New York Rangers, but coworkers' voices crept into his headphones and forced the blinking cursor to remain in exactly the same spot on his blank, white screen. Fed up, Daniel opened the Web browser. He navigated to Monster.com and applied to every available job he was qualified for in the Stamford, Connecticut area. He even stayed past 5:00, not that anybody noticed. And by Friday early morning, Daniel was on an interview at AmeriSports.
Mrs. Rose, the woman Daniel interviewed with, described AmeriSports as a startup company. Their plan was to start small and to one day compete with the likes of NSM and CBS Sports. Of course, her very first question to Daniel was why he wanted to leave an already-massively successful sports-entertainment superpower like NSM. He had a thousand answers. He wanted to tell her about the building he worked in, where he was stuck in a cubicle that had to be half the size of regulation. There was no lunchroom and the kitchen only earned that label because it contained a sink. The refrigerator was a tomb that held the remnants of hamburgers, French fries, and spilled fruit punch from employees who worked there during the Reagan administration. And the bathrooms were monstrous. There was the eyesore general store next door, which virtually towered over their dirty edifice that they called headquarters, and how it didn't even matter since the office had no windows to allow them to see it. He wanted to tell her about how he was treated, stuck in the same position with the same title for all four years he had been there. There were the broken promises of advancing in his career – all fantasy tales that his bosses loved to tell. He wanted to talk about how every one of his coworkers complained about their jobs and how they've spoken about moving on to other companies like an immigrant fresh with United States citizenship would speak of the American dream. So many reasons pushed at the inside of his lips, but Daniel censored himself. Through gritted teeth, he spoke highly of NSM, and then strategically added that he was looking for a new challenge like helping to get AmeriSports into the conversation as a top sports network.
Allegedly impressed with him, Mrs. Rose hired Daniel as Managing Editor of hockey coverage, promising him assistant editors who would work below him. The position included a $20,000 raise from his current salary, a near-impossible accomplishment at a time when graduate students were taking jobs flipping burgers at McDonald's.
In his final two weeks at NSM after giving his supervisor notice, Daniel gloated. Part of him hated playing the role of braggart – it wasn't in his character to do so – but the other part of him understood that after four years of paying his dues, he deserved to enjoy this moment. Countless coworkers pulled him aside to congratulate him and tell him they could never do what he was doing. As much as they complained and were mistreated, they were comfortable. And comfort was a hard thing to sacrifice no matter what the reward might be.
Daniel accepted their good wishes and shook their hands, but he felt sorry for them when he did. Comfort and boredom were inseparable sisters. And comfort didn't allow for prospects or aspirations to materialize.
His tenure at NSM was finally over and Daniel was taking a different route to work for the first time in four years. As he arrived, he found himself looking up at an elegant office building, standing directly across from other bright structures. Inside was even more impressive. The lobby was large and clean. A security guard greeted him at the door and escorted him to the elevator, which offered his choice of six floors. Eat your heart out, NSM, Daniel thought with a Cheshire Cat grin.
The guard pressed the B button. Daniel was a bit taken aback by their path to the basement out of all of the choices of levels, but it didn't matter. The basement office probably boasted twice the glamour that NSM's had.
When the door opened, Daniel felt a push from behind and he went tumbling to the ground. It was pitch black. His eyes began to adjust only in time to watch the security guard wave as the elevator doors closed between them. Daniel climbed to his feet and felt around. He walked forward until he reached a wall. He bent down, sliding his hands over the area, when suddenly his feet were taken out from under him and his body was thrown onto a hard, rising surface. When he caught his breath, he realized he was in a small cage, hanging from the ceiling with his feet dangling at least eight feet above the floor.
Daniel heard a door slide open and then a light came on. He put his hands over his eyes until the stinging passed and he could see again. Mrs. Rose walked toward him, clanking her heels against the cement floor and smiling. He put his hands on the bars in front of him and noticed that the right sleeve of his brand new suit had torn. Mrs. Rose came to a stop and looked up.
"I'm sorry," she explained. "You know, it's nothing personal."
"What?" Daniel managed.
Before he could comprehend what was going on, Mrs. Rose pressed a button that opened another doorway, revealing an unspeakable beast exploding in his direction. It was so large that it only needed three steps to reach the cage. The creature snapped Daniel's dangling leg like a pencil, devouring it in his shark-like mouth while Daniel pulled the rest of his body inside. He looked and the creature stared back at him, its eyes large and red and half-covered by the snout of a wild boar, its mouth extending nearly across its entire body, sweat glowing on its putrid, brown skin.
"There you go, Gruesome," Mrs. Rose said. "You've had your snack. Now, go rest before dinner."
The beast obliged and returned to its room behind the door.
"Nothing personal," she repeated without a shred of apology in her voice. She took one last look at Daniel and then walked away, turning off the light, and leaving him.
And there, Daniel remained. His body shook every now and then and was rapidly growing colder, but there wasn't much pain. He thought about what his former coworkers at NSM were doing at that moment. He thought about what he would be doing if he were still there. There was nothing much else to do as he hung in his small confines, overcome by shock and boredom, waiting for the inevitable.

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Reviews

Deasha Oct 18, 2012

You're a good writer but I don'tthink horror is your thing. It was very well written until the horror part started.

Velma golden Sep 23, 2012

a horror story yep, good yep, makes you kinda feel sorry for him NOT.scary you bet!! thanks!!

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