The short story collection Tales from the Threshold is being released this week in e-bookstores. It will be popping up in the next 24 hours for sale in e-book form at places such as Kobo, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
To celebrate, for one week only the short story A Maze of Cubicles will be available to read in its entirety here. Then next Monday half of it gets deleted so that it’s an excerpt instead.
This short story is PG-13.
A Maze of Cubicles: A Dorelai Short Story
L. M. May
Copyright © 2013 by L. M. May
Published by Osuna Publishing
This story is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogue, and locales are either drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, and locales is entirely coincidental.
February, Year 2
Mather, Massachusetts
There were days I felt ambivalent about my job at AOX Investigations. Especially on an icy grey Saturday afternoon, sitting at my workbench in the AOX computer lab in the subbasement of Knossos Tower, dealing with a filthy old computer desktop that reeked of cat pee.
O’Keefe (one of the founders of AOX, and a strange magical mishmash of human and cockroach) had carried the desktop into the computer lab with his four hands, and dumped it on my workbench with a curt, “Recover the deleted files, Trelton. Evidence.” He’d given the desktop an annoyed smack that made it shed cat hair.
As he’d strode off, he’d grumbled under his breath, “I may be a roach, but I gotta wash up after searching that crummy shack o’ cats.”
I eyed the computer. There were no magical glows from any part of it. It was just a regular desktop … except for stinking like a litter box.
So I took out the frame screws, trying not to touch the gunked-up bottom of the computer where the ammonia stink was strongest, and when I finally shoved the frame off, clouds of dust fuzz, cat fur, and dried catnip spilled all over my workbench and clothes.
AOX had a strict dress code for those on duty. Business formal.
Swearing, I brushed the catnip off my grey wool slacks, but I definitely now smelled like an ancient catnip mouse.
So when O’Keefe popped his head back through the lab doorway, he curled his two antennae into question marks at the sight of me frantically brushing myself off. “Aw, shit, don’t tell me there’s fleas.”
“No,” I said. “Not fleas. Just catnip, dust, and God knows what else sucked in by the computer’s cooling fans. It’s a miracle this machine even worked. Just how many cats did the owner live with anyway?”
“Ya don’t want to know. It’s—”
Ump-pa. Ump-pa. Ump-pa. O’Keefe’s cell phone. Last week he’d changed its tune to blare out the Cuckoo Waltz, because it irritated the hell out of all of us.
O’Keefe said into the mouthpiece, “AOX Investigations. O’Keefe speaking.” A pause. “Uh-huh. Yeah, Trelton’s here at AOX today.” He held his cell phone out. “Call for ya. An old friend, Stuart.”
I took the cell phone (with its silver-blue magical aura) from O’Keefe, and felt annoyed—as I always did—about how the magically shielded cell phones used by AOX wouldn’t work for me. My resistance to magic had reached the point that magical items acted as if they were broke when I tried to be ID’ed by them for access. I had to use a typical cell phone to make calls, and the only phones that worked down here in the subbasement were the magically shielded ones.
No telephone, cable, or internet lines ran to the subbasement, so those options were also not available to me. Security was kept tight in Knossos Tower. On the outside it looked like your ordinary office building, but in reality it crawled with magical shielding and various other forms of protection (magical and otherwise).
“Hey, Stuart,” I said. “How are you? How’s the job at Idealcode going?”
“Dorelai,” he said, “I need your help.” Utter panic in Stuart’s voice. “I can’t find my boss.” His voice rose. “I’ve looked everywhere Tabitha might be in the cubicles, but she’s nowhere to be seen.” Gusts of wind made static-like background noise on his phone. “I’m calling from the parking lot. Her car is still here, but I can’t find her anywhere. I’m really, really worried.”
This was bad. Stuart was not the sort of person to panic without reason. I’d become friends with him back when we both worked as programmers for Granite Hills here in Mather. After I’d been laid off last August, we’d stayed in touch, though only by email. Circumstances had made it necessary for me to drift away from seeing old friends and coworkers for their own safety. I’d told Stuart that I’d taken at job at AOX Investigations that required very long hours. He had no idea that AOX dealt with magical issues … actually, most typical people had no idea that magic even existed.
Lucky them.
I asked, “When did you last see Tabitha?”
“About thirty minutes ago.” Stuart’s teeth chattered. “W-we’re the only two left. Everyone else went home for the day at lunchtime. I won’t leave until I know she’s okay.”
O’Keefe hovered nearby, listening in on my part of the conversation. “Stuart,” I said, “does anything seem different … or a little weird?”
“N—maybe … yes. There’s been these odd rustlings and scratching sounds in the cubicles. Probably mice.”
My stomach tightened into knots. “Stay out of the cubicles.”
“Why?” Stuart said. “Mice don’t scare m—you think someone is in there?”
“I don’t know.”
“It didn’t sound like someone sneaking around, Dorelai. It sounded like mice eating a pile of printer paper.”
“Just trust me on this,” I said. “Keep out of that area until I can join you. Where’s this place located?”
“Near the interstate exit, in the Mather industrial park.”
My mind began to race, thinking of what I would need to bring.
“Watch out for the ice patches,” Stuart added. “The industrial park’s road is slick.”
“Then I’ll drive slow. I’ll call you as soon as I’m within five minutes of pulling into Idealcode’s parking lot. We’ll meet at Tabitha’s car.” I handed the phone back to O’Keefe, who quizzed Stuart on the situation, then ended the call.
“Whaddya think it is, Trelton?”
“Cursed object.”
“Yup, that’s my hunch as well. Tabitha’s huddled up somewhere in that building, under the thrall of whatever thingamajig carries the curse, or I’m a goldfish.”
I smiled, despite my worry, at the thought of O’Keefe being half-human, half-goldfish. “Well,” I said, “I’d better go and get ready.”
“Ahem.” O’Keefe shook his head. “Go armed. Holster.”
“But—”
“That’s an order, Trelton.”
O’Keefe knew I’d lost my taste for guns and gunplay, and he’d guessed—correctly—that I would’ve conveniently “forgotten” to take my semiautomatic pistol if he hadn’t told me to do so.
I didn’t like to carry a loaded gun snuggled up against my side if I could help it. I grumbled under my breath as I dug the unloaded gun and its magazine out of my workbench’s drawer. I removed my shoulder holster from where it hung on a wall hook, put it on, double-checked that the gun was unloaded, and put the gun in the holster. The gun’s magazine I stuffed into the holster’s magazine pouch. Lastly, I yanked on my grey wool business jacket to hide the holster and weapon from view. “Better?” I said.
O’Keefe gave an approving grunt.
“I’ll get the usual supplies,” I said. “Do you want me to call this in once I get there?”
O’Keefe had to think about it. If I used the speakerphone on my cell phone, he’d be able to listen in to what was going on at Idealcode. The problem was that the lack of magical shielding meant my cell phone was open to magical attempts to tap into the signal. However, while my phone had no magical protections, it did have the best cryptohacks possible to keep my connection to Knossos private and secure. So even if someone succeeded in tapping the phone call, they were unlikely to be able to crack the scrambling being done that made it impossible to understand what was being said.
But the scrambling wasn’t a 100% guarantee of a secure connection. Magic was all about cheating.
“Yeah, phone it in,” O’Keefe said. “This ain’t no undercover gig.”
*
Stuart was right. The road through the Mather industrial park was slick. My car nearly skidded twice into the drainage ditch that ran parallel to the icy road.
Winter in Massachusetts was always the season where I wondered why the hell I wasn’t living in California or Arizona instead.
Idealcode was located outside the Mather city limits, in a sprawling industrial park of manufacturing companies, building contractors, and warehouses. There were also a couple of software companies sprinkled into the mix.
As I slowly drove into the ice-coated parking lot past the IDEALCODE logo sign, I noted that Idealcode’s office building was a converted warehouse. Little better than a giant rectangular box to work in, with a faux brick exterior, and no windows except for the front entrance.
Stuart (wearing a ski jacket) stood next to a blue compact car, frantically waving his arms at me as if he stood in a crowd instead of an empty parking lot.
When I pulled in next to the car, I was annoyed to see him goggle at my hearse-like black Cadillac.
I found the old company car assigned to me an embarrassment to drive, but it’d been magically and physically modified by AOX to protect the driver, so I had no good excuse to reject it.
As I got out, I said to Stuart, “Company car. I’ve nicknamed it ‘deathmobile.’”
Stuart’s mouth turned upwards, the skin crinkling near his eyes. He held up his fingers like a director to frame the view of the car and me. “All you need is a black suit. Dorelai Trelton, undertaker by day, detective by night.”
“Har, har. Very funny.” I opened the deathmobile’s trunk, and dug out my toolkit to slip onto my belt. Fiddling around with my belt gave me the cover I wanted to hit the button on my cell phone to dial in to O’Keefe. My mentor would listen in while keeping his own mouthpiece on mute. So far on the jobs that I’d gone solo on, I’d been able to avoid him deactivating his mute feature. The last thing I ever wanted to happen was to have a client hear my mentor’s voice bellowing through my speakerphone that I was screwing up a job big time.
I lifted out my backpack of equipment from the trunk, slipping its reassuring weight across my shoulders, then locked up the deathmobile.
Stuart pointed at the blue car. “This is Tabitha’s.”
“Let’s see what we’ve got.” I went over to the driver’s side, and cupped my hands around my eyes so that I could peer through the tinted glass at the interior.
My hands clenched, a chill that had nothing to do with the cold weather going from my spine to my fingers, at the sight of the empty gift box ripped open on the passenger side. The gift box was just the right size for a cursed music box … but Stuart hadn’t heard any music playing in the cubicles.
“You didn’t see my do this,” I said to Stuart as I selected a slim jim out of the toolkit on my belt.
I proceeded to jimmy the car lock.
Stuart gingerly stepped around so that so that his body blocked the sight of me from the road. He said, jokingly, “I didn’t know you’d once been a thief.”
“Picking comes in handy during an emergency.” It felt odd having O’Keefe’s words come out of my mouth, as if I knew what I was doing. I unlocked the car door, and put the slim jim back with a sigh of relief.
“I’m in,” I said for O’Keefe’s benefit. I knew he had to be grinning right that moment as he listened. I’d done the jimmying faster than ever. His training had really begun to sink in.
After I swung the car door open, I unslung my backpack and got out an evidence bag and tongs. I kneeled on the driver’s seat and its chill seeped through my woolen slacks as I bent toward the gift box with tongs in one hand, evidence bag in the other.
With the tongs I picked up the gift box and studied it closely, making sure not to touch it. There were no magical traces either inside or out. Flicking the evidence bag open, I shoved the box deep inside, then sealed the bag shut.
“Evidence,” I said over my shoulder to Stuart. “I’ll take it back for analysis.”
I put the bag and tongs in my backpack, then popped Tabitha’s trunk. Nothing was in there of interest—except that I could now confirm that Tabitha was compulsively neat. She had a plastic storage container for her folded oil rags and another container that had her car tools neatly stacked within it.
She hadn’t been neat about the present, though. She’d left the torn remains of the box on the passenger seat.
There had been no card, or note, attached to the gift box.
That worried me.
I slammed the trunk shut and locked up her car as quickly as I could. “Did Tabitha say anything about getting a present?”
“No. She was rather quiet today. Withdrawn.” Stuart furrowed his brow, concentrating, then jerked his head up as he snapped his fingers. “Wait! She had a small polished wooden box when she came in—from the color, I’d say cedar.” He frowned. “But I didn’t get a good look at it. She shoved it in a drawer.”
I jerked my thumb at the Idealcode building. “I want you to show me where she sits. I need to take a look at that box.”
*
The receptionist’s area was plush with thick beige carpeting and comfy-looking beige waiting chairs. The Idealcode logo hung on the beige wall behind the receptionist’s beige desk. Above the logo was the company’s motto … in dark beige plastic letters screwed into the wall: We Code Tomorrow’s Software Today.
“I see they like beige,” I said as I stared at the motto.
Stuart gave a derisive snort. “Silly motto, isn’t it?”
“It’d be more interesting if it read, ‘We Code Today’s Software Tomorrow.’ But then they’d have to change the company’s name to Procrasticode.”
We both snickered.
Stuart led me to the wooden office double doors to the right of the receptionist’s desk, and slid a key card through an electronic lock above the door handles.
He pulled open one of the two doors, and waved his free hand in a doorman’s gesture. “You first.”
I walked through, and when I caught sight of the interior, the first word out of my mouth was “Hell.”
It was the biggest, worst-designed cubicle farm I’d ever seen, and I’d seen plenty in my time as a programmer. But that sight wasn’t what had me upset. It was the view, under the fluorescent lights, of how all the cubicle walls glowed a malevolent burgundy—the sign of blood magic at work.
A faint stink of blood and cedar lingered in the air.
Tabitha was in deep shit.
Stuart couldn’t see the burgundy glow or smell the stink of magic at work, but he could tell that I was upset about something. “Everyone has a cubicle in here,” he said, “even the CEO. We all endure its awfulness together. My first two weeks, if I didn’t pay close attention to where I was going, I always ended up in marketing.”
As a fellow programmer, I understood why Stuart sounded appalled by this. Programmers and marketers were like oil and water—they didn’t mix, and they looked upon each other’s lives as a fate worse than death.
Stuart went to stand next to the nearest cubicle wall. “See how high the walls are? No one can see over them. There are no windows in this place, so we can’t use those as landmarks. Tabitha thinks the company should paint one of the warehouse walls navy, so that we can orientate ourselves that way.”
Getting lost was going to be the least of our problems.
I swallowed a couple of times. While Stuart couldn’t see the magical glow, he would be vulnerable to any magic in here. But I needed to find Tabitha’s cubicle as quickly as possible. “Please take me to Tabitha’s desk.”
Stuart led the way through the second opening before us in the long cubicle wall. “The whole place is cubicles,” he continued, “except for the receptionist’s area, the kitchen, and some enclosed conference rooms. I feel like a rat in a maze some days. But it’s cheap. And pranking the marketing department by moving their walls around keeps us amused.”
“Is there anyone who doesn’t like Tabitha?”
“No, no one. She’s a wonderful manager, everybody loves her.”
“How long has she been in her position?”
“Three years or so.”
It wasn’t sounding as if someone had gotten ambitious for Tabitha’s job. “What about her personal life?”
Stuart raised a finger in an “aha” gesture. “Bernard. Her ex-husband. They tell me it was an ugly divorce. You don’t think he … damn it, he’d bett—”
A shifting, rustling sound came from the cubicle farm.
“Shh,” I whispered. “Did you hear that?”
Stuart held his breath.
This time we both heard the noise. It sounded like papers being ripped up.
I put a hand on Stuart’s arm. “I know this sounds weird, but we’re going to run like hell for Tabitha’s cubicle.”
Stuart squinted at the cubicle walls, then raised an eyebrow at me. “Fine.” He got into a running stance. “Let’s go.” He broke into a run.
I ran after him, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t keep track of all the twists and turns as he led me deep into the cubicle farm. My arms kept squeezing themselves instinctively closer to my sides to keep from touching the magically glowing walls.
Stuart glanced over his shoulder. “Tabitha’s cubicle is only two more turns from here.”
We both froze at the vibrations felt through the office carpet, and a sound like … cubicle walls being moved around.
Oh, shit.
Stuart audibly swallowed. “There’s someone in here with us. Leave the walls alone! We know you’re in here!”
“Shut up and follow me,” I hissed at him. I seized hold of Stuart’s sweaty hand, and yanked him into the nearest cubicle, jumping up onto the desk, pulling him up with me.
Stuart was spooked enough to follow my lead without arguing.
Standing on the desk, I was able to see over the cubicle walls.
He pointed at what we could both see quite clearly: the cubicle walls had rearranged themselves behind us so that we couldn’t reach the receptionist’s area by the way we had come.
No walls moved as we surveyed the cubicle farm, but I could hear more rustling noises. “Do you hear it?” I whispered.
Stuart looked washed out under the fluorescents. He nodded.
“Help me figure out where the sound is coming from,” I said.
That’s when all the lights went out.
Stuart gasped.
Far away, there was a speck of a glow from an emergency EXIT light, but it wasn’t enough to light up this cavernous space. There were no skylights or windows in this giant box to help see.
I squeezed his hand, hard, to reassure him. I could still see the cubicle walls easily since their magical glow outlined them to my eyes.
Some of the walls were shifting around again to create a new maze for us.
Stuart said, “The walls are moving.” Both of us could hear cubicle walls scraping against the carpeting, and the rattle of stuff being knocked off desks as those walls moved around. He let go of my hand.
“THAT’S NOT FUNNY!” he yelled out. “TURN ON THE GODDAMN LIGHTS!” He triggered the light of his smartphone, so that it lit up the cubicles around us with its weak light.
The wall movements stopped. But the overhead fluorescents stayed off. Rustlings could be heard from a distance beyond which Stuart’s light could reach.
I checked my cell phone. No signal. The connection with O’Keefe had been magically broken at some point after we’d entered the cubicle farm.
That meant O’Keefe would be on his way, but it might be too little, too late, for Tabitha. For even when help arrived, the cubicles would do their best to keep everyone out. “My phone can’t get a signal. How’s yours?”
Stuart lowered his phone, and checked it. “Dead,” he said in disgust. He bent down to try the office phone upon the desk we stood on. “The line is dead.” He kicked the phone off the desk.
I said, low, “Stuart, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think Tabitha was given a cursed object that is doing this.”
To my relief, Stuart didn’t scoff. Normally he would have, but the cubicles had him spooked enough to listen. He whispered, “Moving the walls is a favorite prank here, but there’s no way one person could do all this.”
I dug out a flashlight from my backpack, to shine the bright light around our position so that we could both study the layout. The walls had maneuvered themselves so that we’d run into dead ends in all directions when we left this cubicle. “You said Tabitha’s cubicle was near. Can you find it?” I handed my flashlight to him.
Stuart lifted the flashlight high, pointing the light around to peer into various cubicles. “Let me see … there’s our break area.” He lit up a chairless cubicle that had a coffee maker, sugar, and mugs on a desk. There was also a water cooler with several full 5-gallon water bottles lined up next to it. “From there,” Stuart said, “you go over a few feet and—right there. She’s the only one who has a fern.”
Tabitha’s cubicle was about twenty feet away from the one we’d taken shelter in. She’d hung a potted fern from a hook on the cubicle wall. The fronds shook gently, as if someone had just bumped into it.
He shone the flashlight around, taking in the changes to the walls. “This is weird.”
Crickle-crackle. Paper crumpling.
The noise came from the heart of the cubicle farm. I whispered, “Shine the light toward the center.”
Stuart swung the flashlight around.
There was what looked to be an open space in the very heart of the cubicle farm, but we were too far away to see more than a few inches down into it.
A soft whimper came from the center.
“Tabitha?!” Stuart cried out.
I couldn’t hear any sort of response from her, but there was the definite sound of paper ruffling and crumpling. My gut told me that she was there.
Hesitantly, he said, “You don’t think that Bernard …”
“I don’t know. I just hope we can get to her before it’s too late.”
I weighed the options. Unlike Stuart, I was immune to the magic of the place. If I took him with me further, I’d have to worry about his safety as well as Tabitha’s.
But there was the problem of the walls. If I found Tabitha unconscious, I’d have to carry her out of here, which would make climbing over the walls difficult.
Stuart swung the flashlight around. “What are you thinking?”
While Stuart was fiftysomething, he was also six foot one, strong and sturdy. He biked every weekend he could with his husband, Theo, and also lifted weights. That routine had clearly not changed since I’d last seen Stuart.
“I’ve got a job for you,” I said. I cupped my hands around his ear to whisper what I wanted him to do.
He did a double take, then bared his teeth at the walls. “You’re right. I think it would work. And I know exactly what is needed.”
I let Stuart choose out tools from my backpack. He grabbed the hammer and a long screwdriver, humming to himself.
“I’m off,” I said. “If our plan doesn’t work, try to use the desks to jump over the walls when you can. Once you’re out of the building your smartphone should work. Keep the flashlight.”
“How will you see?”
I pulled out the goggles from my backpack and slid them over my head. “Night vision goggles.” I adjusted them over my eyes. They blocked the sight of the magical glows, but it was a fair trade-off because now I could see everything else.
As I climbed over the cubicle wall to stand on the next desk, Stuart got to work.
*
I kept off the cubicle farm’s carpets, sneaking my way toward the center by using the walls, shelves, and desks of the cubicles. It was like an absurd office obstacle course.
My journey was punctuated by the triumphant yells of Stuart when a cubicle wall would crash down. One by one he was detaching the supports for chosen cubicle walls, then knocking them over to make a path of fallen walls that I’d be able to run on with Tabitha to reach the receptionist’s area.
The walls, for the moment, only paid attention to Stuart’s movements. They shifted to keep blocking the way, but their own fallen comrades made that increasingly difficult with each wall that Stuart knocked over.
The racket didn’t mean I could get careless. Something nasty might be lurking in the center.
I was getting close. Hunching down, I crept across a long desk toward the cubicle wall that could give me a view down into the central open space. I pulled the goggles off to hang around my neck, and peered over the wall’s edge to look down.
Against the dim magical glow of the walls, I saw a gigantic waist-high mound of papers glowing burgundy. The edges of the pile rustled in an invisible wind.
The papers shifted, wafting a stink of fresh blood.
A groaning CRASH. Another cubicle wall falling over. Stuart had to be getting close to the receptionist’s area.
The mound shifted around, lifting a snake-shaped head made of crumpled and layered paper, to look uneasily in the direction of Stuart’s racket. It opened its blood-soaked mouth to make rustling noises—its version of a hiss.
It wanted to go after Stuart … but it needed to guard something that it was feeding on.
As the papersnake uncoiled itself to rise up in an attempt to look over the cubicle walls in Stuart’s direction, it exposed to view the unconscious body of a woman in its grip. She held in her limp left hand a small maze box that shone so bright with blood magic that it made the cubicle walls and the paper snake thing seem dim by comparison.
The missing Tabitha. She was silently screaming in her magically-induced unconsciousness. Blood magic was the weapon of choice for creating as much agony as possible in a victim, and I had a suspicion that her husband had commissioned the item thinking it was only a bad luck charm for his ex-wife … not that it would actually murder her. Those who dealt in blood magic loved to do that sort of trick to a clueless perp, for Bernard would then be vulnerable to blackmail. For if he didn’t get linked to his ex-wife’s death by the Mather police or the Magi (the Magi were the secret police in Mather who dealt with all magical matters), the dealer could threaten Bernard with exposure if he refused to cooperate with any demand.
Thin glowing burgundy tentacles of magic had reached out from the maze box to burrow into the bleeding gash that they’d made in Tabitha’s wrist. The source of magic in the box used the shedding of her blood to fuel the blood magic needed to create the maze and papersnake that guarded her from rescue; the gash was also to make sure that the papersnake got fed while she bled to death.
Whoever had created the maze box must’ve known that the intended victim worked in a cubicle farm, for the magic was tailored specifically to this environment. There was also an underlying message of contempt for the perp (Bernard?), the Mather PD, and the Magi in this situation: there were much more subtle ways to kill someone with blood magic.
This wasn’t one of them.
Tabitha would die if I didn’t get that maze box off her. But one false move by me in removing the box, and its magic would abruptly try to kill her off quick.
So I needed to destroy the papersnake first.
I eyed the thing, wondering how fast it could slice me open with paper cuts from its mouth and body. Shooting it would be a waste of time and ammo. What I needed was an industrial paper shredder. Or even better, a cordless weed whacker.
A nearby wham, of a cubicle wall striking another, and the desk rocked under me. I heard Stuart’s jubilant “Yes!” Too damn close for his safety.
The papersnake hissed and opened its mouth wide.
Fire might do the trick to destroy it, but it would take too much time for the papersnake to burn up. It’d have time to kill Tabitha or set her alight.
Then I had an idea. I looked up at the dark ceiling, trying to remember what I’d seen when I’d first entered the cubicle farm area with Stuart.
I slipped the night vision goggles back on. Yup, there was an inexpensive-looking sprinkler system for fires. Probably would deluge the entire cubicle farm if only one sprinkler got triggered. But the warehouse ceiling was too damn high for my taste: the papersnake would have time to murder Tabitha between the start of the fire and the sprinklers activating.
Well, I could speed things up.
As quietly as I could, I slipped out my semiautomatic and put the magazine into it. Then I took careful aim at the sprinkler closest to me, and fired.
BANG!
Perfect hit on the sprinkler … but instead of the expected warehouse rainstorm from the sprinklers, there was nothing.
I holstered my gun and fled for the break area that Stuart’d shown me, hurtling from cubicle to cubicle, because I now had a furious papersnake after me as Stuart cried out to me in a panic about the gunshot.
There was no time and no extra breath to call out to him that I was okay. Nor was there extra breath to curse out the cheapass culprit at Idealcode who’d shut off the sprinkler system in case the pipes burst.
From the rustling and hissing noises from the ground behind me, the papersnake was in hot pursuit. I didn’t dare look to check, and I ignored Stuart’s confused shouts.
My breathing came out in wheezes, but the enforced workouts by O’Keefe over the last six months were saving my butt, since I was able to keep up the fast pace.
I knew it would be death by a thousand paper cuts if the thing caught me.
Hurtling over the last cubicle wall between me and the break area, I landed on my feet before the water cooler.
I knocked the water cooler over to gush water all over the carpeting right outside the cubicle’s entrance. Then I frantically rolled around a 5-gallon water bottle until it was right next to the entrance, and got ready to ambush the papersnake by removing the bottle’s cap.
Through my goggles I saw the papersnake slither into view outside the break area, and hesitate as it crossed onto the sopping wet carpet, its paper underbelly softening from the water.
Fear gave me strength to lift the 5-gallon bottle up to douse the papersnake, the water pouring out in cascading glugs to soak the papers of the head and neck and upper body.
It whipped back, its paper mushy, trying to pull itself back together, as I slammed the emptied bottle down upon its head.
Paper, softened by the water, clumped and tore.
I dropped the bottle to grab hold of the papersnake’s neck, grasping hold of the wet paper to yank it out in soggy clumps, forcing the snake down, tearing at the soft paper as it writhed under my hands.
Once I got my knees on its back, I shoved it hard into the sodden carpeting, continuing my severing of its head, the wetness of the carpet making it soften and weaken underneath as I attacked it from above.
The dry center of its neck ripped under my clutching fingers, the head rolling away to become just a mess of wet torn paper. The body fell to pieces, scattering into loose paper under my knees.
Feeling paranoid, I waited a few seconds, crouched and ready to rip the thing apart again if it tried to reform. I became aware that Stuart was still yelling my name in a panic.
“I’m okay!” I yelled back.
The papersnake made no movement. I got up, backing away, keeping my eyes on it, and rolled over another water bottle, removing the cap to soak all the papers in more water, until I was certain the entire snake was too soaked to move or put itself back together.
After sliding my goggles down to my neck, I saw that the burgundy glow lingered around the papersnake’s severed head. I grabbed it and tore the mushy papers apart. I reached a small core area soaked with Tabitha’s blood, and within it was a sliver of ruby with the innate glow of blood magic.
I could handle the gem with impunity since its magic couldn’t affect me, but I dug out the tongs and used them to place the sliver into one of the small magically-shielded containment containers in my backpack.
Then I hurtled back over the cubicle walls toward the center. But Stuart had already knocked down enough walls to reach Tabitha, and was kneeling next to her with his flashlight, staring at the blood-encrusted maze box in her hand.
As I came over the wall, he snapped out of his shock, and flashed the light over me, moving it up and down. “WHO DID YOU SHOOT?”
“No one.” I kneeled next to Tabitha. “I’ll explain later.” The box’s walls moved in and out, as if it beat in time to Tabitha’s heart.
“I can’t wake her up,” Stuart said. “And I can’t get that maze box out of her hand.”
I slid off my backpack, and dug out my medkit. “Here,” I said, handing him a package of thick bandages. “As soon as I give the word, I need you to press hard on the wrist gash to stop the bleeding. Raise her arm high once you’ve applied pressure. But whatever you do, don’t try to stop the bleeding until I’ve destroyed this box.”
Stuart nodded. “Got it.” He adjusted the flashlight on the carpet so that it lit up Tabitha and the box. “Oh God, look at all this blood.”
“She’s going to be okay once we get it off her.” I laid down my toolkit next to the box, unzipping it to expose the delicate tools to view. I also dug out of my backpack a magically-shielded containment container big enough to hold the cursed maze box.
Stuart readied the bandages above her blood-soaked wrist.
It was at times like these that I felt grateful to be resistant to magic. There were things I could get away with that a magic wielder or typical human couldn’t. What I was about to do was one of them.
I wormed my fingers between the edge of the box and her palm. The magical resistance from the box made it feel like I was digging into gelatin as I wriggled my fingers in deeper, slowly separating the contact between the box and Tabitha’s skin.
Once Tabitha was freed from the box’s touch, it shuddered in my palm, but it did not sense the danger it was in. The only connection left for me to break was its magical tentacles that had wormed themselves deep into the gash in her wrist.
Stuart seized hold of Tabitha’s wrist, pressing hard.
“No!” I cried out.
But it was too late. The box, alerted by Stuart’s attempt to stop the bleeding, flared bright red along its tentacles that led into her wrist.
No time for finesse. I put the box on the carpet, and stomped on it as hard as I could, cracking it open. I squatted over it, yanking and twisting the cracked cedar to expose to view the hidden compartment with its ruby—the source of the tentacles. I pried the gem out, and closed my magic-immune fist around it.
The tentacles collapsed, their connection with the ruby broken by my hand so that the magic to keep them going was cut off. They dissolved away from Tabitha’s wrist.
I shoved my fist into the containment container, and only then let go of the ruby so that it could fall to the bottom with a faint click. Then I sealed the container.
The burgundy glow of the cubicles faded out, the overhead lights flickering on.
“The bleeding’s slowed,” Stuart said. He held Tabitha’s arm high in the air, his hands pressing blood-soaked bandages against her wrist.
I scooped up the smashed pieces of the maze box to stuff into a different container.
Tabitha’s eyelids fluttered, and she opened her eyes to stare at me in terror.
“It’s all right, Tabitha,” Stuart said. He leaned over so that she could see his face. “You’re safe now.”
“So it wasn’t a dream,” Tabitha whispered. “I really was bleeding to death.” She shivered, and feebly moved her legs. “I could hear Bernard laughing at me. His voice spoke to me in the dream I was having. He said he secretly left the present in my car since he knew my curiosity would make me open it. He said I was under a curse.”
“Stay still,” I said. I stripped off my wool jacket so Stuart could wrap it and his ski jacket around Tabitha to keep her warm as we waited for help to arrive.
I checked my cell phone, and found several text messages. O’Keefe was on the way.
Then my cell phone buzzed with a new message from O’Keefe that read: Magi cordoned off Idealcode. Demand complete control over crime scene. Their jurisdiction. You are to leave as soon as they go in, or face detainment.
My stomach churned. Where the hell were the Magi when Tabitha and Stuart needed them? I thought. Just like them. Let me do the dirty work and take the risks, and then come in afterwards when it’s safe to clean up.
Very soon, Stuart and Tabitha would have their memories wiped by the Magi about what had happened here. They would not even remember that I’d been with them. The Magi would see to it that the evidence of Tabitha’s near murder by magic got completely covered up, since part of their job was to make sure that magic was kept a secret.
I became aware that Stuart was staring at me.
“What is it this time?” I said.
“You are carrying concealed?”
“Yeah, so?”
“A year ago,” Stuart said, “I’d have never believed it if someone had told me that I’d see you packing heat.”
“Are you a detective?” Tabitha whispered.
“No,” I said, “a programmer. I just work for a place that does PI jobs.”
Stuart laughed at me. “You’re in denial, Dorelai. You’re as much a PI as a programmer. Look at you.”
My slacks were wet and dirty at the knees from my fight with the papersnake. And there were dried bloodstains on the sleeves of my shirt. Bits of paper clung to me all over. As for the cubicles area itself …
“Crud,” I said. “Look at this mess.”
All three of us surveyed the bloodstains on the carpet, the knocked over cubicle walls that led from the center all the way to the double doors for the receptionist’s area, and the general chaos of the cubicle farm around us. The Magi would have their work cut out for them in cleaning up … just as they would have to work hard to scrub my visit out of Stuart’s mind. The closer the relationship, the harder it was to magically wipe out a memory of that person.
Stuart caught sight of my depressed look, and said, “The wreckage doesn’t matter. You helped me save Tabitha’s life. Isn’t there a Jewish saying about that?”
“Yeah,” I said. I looked at Tabitha, and she smiled at me, and I realized that Stuart was right about the mess not mattering.
But being forgotten by Tabitha and Stuart hurt like hell, though. I would simply have to endure it. I could hear Magi voices on the other side of the reception area’s doors.
I said, “My mother quoted it as, ‘Whoever destroys a soul, destroys an entire world. And whoever saves a life, saves an entire world.’”
Today, I’d saved a life. What world came after, only Tabitha would know.
************** End of A Maze of Cubicles *****************
A Maze of Cubicles is part of the short story collection Tales from the Threshold, which goes on sale the week of November 25, 2013 in various e-bookstores such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. The collection includes all eight short stories and novelettes that have so far been published.
You can read more adventures about Dorelai in the novel Cubicles, Blood, and Magic, and in the upcoming sequel Lies, Magic, and Nightmares. Cubicles, Blood, and Magic is available in e-book format at places such as iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Diesel, Sony, and other e-bookstores.
You can also purchase A Maze of Cubicles by itself in e-book format at places such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Sony, Smashwords, Diesel, Kobo, and other e-bookstores.
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Until next time, L.M.
Filed under: A Maze of Cubicles, Cubicles Blood and Magic, Dorelai Chronicles, L. M. May, News, Soul Cages, Story Samples, Tales from the Threshold
