The Vortex Lamentation: A Short Story

   Some places you work in are just that – work. Some places, though, turn out to be a vortex to Hell.

   Biggett Wood Products was such a place. It paid our rent. After my wife and I stopped pissing our money away in rent, it paid our mortgage. It paid my student loans, car payments, baby clothes, and utilities. For four years, it was a faithful paycheck which showed up on time, courtesy of direct deposit, every Friday night at 12 a.m., so long as I sanded table tops smooth for forty hours a week. Life was good, in the way a man who hasn’t started balding by age thirty-five can say life is good. So why was it a vortex to Hell? The first clue came with the rash of freak suicides that began some months ago.

   The first was Ausby Milworth. I was hired in January 2010, and he was hired the same day. He and I were among was the first wave of new hires since they stopped laying people off following the 2008 economic meltdown. He went off to the cushy dock detail (which I had applied for); I was sent to fill my lungs with mahogany dust in the table top department, where creativity is as welcome as a Nazi war criminal. What I remember most about Ausby, though, was our first chat.

   “Don’t have kids,” he said to me after eavesdropping on a conversation I had with my pregnant wife after the drug-screening.

   “What?” I asked.

      “You’re talking about wanting kids,” he said. “Don’t have kids.”

   “Why not?”

   “They ruin your life, man.”

   “We want them, though.”

   “Hey, it’s your health.”

   That was the extent of me and Ausby Milworth’s working relationship. From that point, I passed him wearing his Pittsburgh Steelers-like nightgown at knees-length every day without interaction. What can I say? For a man whose twenty-word sage advice was offensive to me in every way, a working relationship was best when kept distant. Ausby was a popular guy during his four-year tenure at Biggett, though. Quite a few women who worked the warehouse loved his flirtations. He was a natural, post-Drew Carey show Drew Carey. Whatever his philosophy on child-rearing, the man was adept at getting middle-aged women to feel beautiful again. Needless to say, they were pretty broken up when he took his own life. His story made the news and then some.

Local man self-immolates and leaps off Fessler’s Lane during rush-hour.

   “What the unholy hell?” I said out loud.

   Ausby didn’t just set himself on fire. Ausby didn’t just jump into traffic. Ausby set himself on fire, leapt off an overpass, and ensured he was hit head-on by an eighteen wheeler. There was no suicide letter. He was unmarried with a son somewhere. A few things resulted from this tragedy, though. First, there would never be a viewing. Second, counseling came in abundance for the drivers passing under Fessler’s Lane at 4:33 that afternoon in psychiatrists’ offices across the city. Third, the women of the warehouse were forced to seek compliments from their husbands. I’m not belittling the death of Ausby Milworth – I’m coping. To be fair, that’s not one we like to discuss.

   Ronny Curtain was next to go.

   I knew Ronnie about as well as the mailman who always leaves my damn mailbox door down. A twice-divorced father who spent ten years in the mill room, Ronnie looked like Ned Flanders with a receding hairline under a University of Kentucky ball cap. We would overhear him during lunch breaks give stories about how much better of a place Biggett used to be.

   “They used to pass out cash holiday bonuses,” he’d say. “During a good year, we’d get two raises. The lacquer room used to be filled with hot, young chicks if you can believe it. The CEO once brought us beer and we all got drunk at the creek. I dropped my pants there and no one cared.”

   I enjoyed Ronny Curtain’s bickering because at my job, bickering was like the free popcorn you get at the hardware store to help you forget you’re dropping a eighty dollars to get rid of a rat infestation in your attic. When he committed suicide, it was attributed to codeine overdose. It was sad, because bickering matters in a place filled with brownnosers and nonvoters.

   Two suicides in two months were unnerving for any company with less than five hundred people, so one can imagine what three suicides in three months would be like. That’s right. One month later, it was a guy I worked with – Travis Jones.

   Travis and I had things in common – similar looks, personality, tastes in music, political views, and tastes in TV and pretty actresses. We each had some community college under our belt. We got along fine. By the third day, though, I was ready to beat Travis unconscious with a four-by-four. Not a two-by-four, but a four-by-four. Travis pulled a Jekyll and Hyde by rearranging my desk before I got to my station on Wednesday morning. I can handle a joke the first time, but he did it again Thursday. After informing him that while it was funny, it caused me to delay my daily starting by a half-hour and that my supervisor wasn’t happy about it, therefore I wasn’t happy. In a nice way, I told him not to do it again or I’d report him. He became hostile, called me a profanity, and that was it. Friday, he didn’t do it again, but he did dump my trash can on my desk while I was away at lunch.

   “Grow the fuck up,” I said to him as I cleaned it off. Those were the last words I would speak to him.

   The following Monday, he wasn’t there. Instead, our supervisor asked us if anything was amiss with Travis during his first week of training. Five of the six people in my work line acknowledged they couldn’t stand him. The consensus was that he was immature and created a hostile work environment and needed to go when his probation was up.

   “Okay,” our supervisor said. “But you guys should know he died Saturday.”

   “What the unholy hell?” I said out loud.

   This time, I sought answers. As it turns out, he and I had a mutual acquaintance on social media. When I asked our mutual acquaintance for details, he relayed quite the story. Thus saith the private message:

Travis and my sister dated for a year, but she broke up with him because she said he started getting all weird on her, like saying he found the gateway to Hell or some shit. He was serious, too. She dumped him when he wouldn’t drop it. We heard from him a month ago when he sent her a message saying he was trying to figure out a way to open the gateway to Hell at his job. After that, my older brother threatened him to stop contacting her, so I guess he did. That’s all I heard until yesterday when he was tagged in a bunch of posts. Apparently, he was found at a construction site Saturday night. It seems he rigged a bulldozer to accelerate before running back out in front of it. Fucked up, man.

   I was speechless. The truth is, I grew unsettled. Adding to my woes, my afternoon bowel movement was all fouled up and I was going at 11:05 instead of 1:15. Biggett became less and less of a normal job. Working in a place without flirtation is bad. Working in a place without bickering is worse. Working in a place where bowel movements are desynchronized is cause for serious reassessment of one’s life. But now we were talking about gateways to Hell.

   At the back of my throat, the question came like raw egg yolk. Could Biggett Wood Products be the gateway to Hell? The thought was discarded and I made a mental note to make further inquiry in case another suicide happened. How scary it is when a mental note delivers.

   The fourth suicide was a woman named Cat O’Malley, and it received more notice, but not much beyond a public acknowledgment by management. She hung herself from a maple tree in her backyard at midnight, we heard. Floor workers knew little about Cat since she worked in accounting. I did know she was an attractive older woman with red hair, and wore some damn nice perfume when I passed her in the hallway. Biggett Wood Products paid her well enough to own a Mercedes, apparently. Cat also had two kids in college, a twelve year old, was married and happy, and attended Briarton First United Methodist. I know all this because at the plant meeting, her obituary was read in its entirety with great emotion by the general manager, Robert (I could never pronounce his Slavic last name). A memo went around to all supervisors that a suicide awareness meeting would take place with individual departments in the next week, given the recent rash. It also stated that if anybody had any information about the four individuals who had self-terminated over the last four months which investigators might find useful, then it would be helpful. Rather than go forward, I did my own investigating – I used social networking again.

   Cat and I had five mutual acquaintances and her profile was public, so finding information was easy. She was from Illinois. She loved cats, disc golf, and playing piano. Her favorite music was classic rock and Motown. The list of movies included Pixar animated, vampire romance, and anything with Daniel Craig. When I came to the books, I was stunned. She enjoyed classics like The Grapes of Wrath, Anna Karenina, and Catch 22. But tucked away in between those literary gems were things like biographies of Anton Lavey, Alistair Crowley, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Walt Disney.

   “What the unholy hell?” I said out loud.

   I had to dig deeper, so I put her name in a search engine surrounded by quotations to narrow the logarithm, like any good online stalker. I also added some key words.

“Cat O’Malley” TN Biggett

   Boom! She had a blog. It was entitled Cat’s Litter Box. In spite of the title, the blog site was very professional. Cat was a skilled writer, it turned out. She had self-published three soft romance novellas online and had sold around three thousand copies, with rave reviews from her fans. The blog went out of its way to state in her self-description that she loved her job at Biggett more than anything.

   “Within my occupation, I have found the key to self-preservation and ultimately – power over life and death.”

   Chills went up my spine.

   I spent the night researching all things Cat O’Malley-related, going through two full glasses of wine as I proceeded down the jarring information. Her blogs were diverse. She wrote about everything from why it no longer mattered who was elected president, to why the church needed to experience a new Reformation, to why ratatouille should have taken off in North America years ago. I was in the middle of a paragraph on why putting celery seed in ratatouille is a cardinal sin when my power went dead.

   “What the unholy hell?” I said out loud.

   I looked outside. It was clear and the neighbor’s power was on. No matter, because it came back on moments later. Besides, it was late Sunday night and I needed to go to bed.

   At this point, we move on from the suicides and onto the second clue which led me to conclude my job was the gateway to Hell. It was the next day, when I was called to Human Resources.

   Monday came and my supervisor came to me. “Jonathan, they need to see you in HR,” he said.

   “Why?” I said.

   “I don’t know. Just go.”

   I couldn’t recall having been to HR, other than to pick up vacation or personal day forms. My attendance wasn’t an issue, nor was my behavior. I never rinsed my Tupperware in the ice machine. I always paid for my coffee, even though I was forced to provide my own milk and sugar. I washed my hands like the safety notice on the bathroom wall said to do during flu season and never belched in public. My record was as clean as the Hilton sheets during an abstinence convention.

   Mrs. Chastain’s office was hidden behind a cubicle, so I went around to knock. I paused. There on the door was a note taped, written in crimson sharpie ink:

If you’ve been sent here, please meet outside the plant near the pattern shop door exit.

                                                            Signed, Mrs. Chastain.

   I couldn’t believe my eyes, not because of the note – but because of the most elegant cursive writing I’d ever seen in my life. The curvature of the capital ‘I’ and the conclusive ‘e’ in every word on the letter was as enticing as a whisper-relaxation segment by Donna Reed – that enticing. The crimson ink looked like blood, too. I considered punching out and going home.

   “What the unholy hell?” I said out loud.

   “What do you mean?” said a voice.

   I turned around. It was Mrs. Chastain. She had come in while I both admired the penmanship of her letter and became frightened of it.

   “Sorry, Mrs. Chastain,” I said. “I didn’t know you were here.”

   “It’s okay. Call me Wanda. I like to keep it informal with employees.”

      “Okay.”

     “Is everything okay, Jonathan?”

     “Why wouldn’t it be?” I said, forgetting the reference.

      “When I came in, you said ‘What the unholy hell?’ Does the note bother you?”

      I looked at the note on the door. Of course the note bothered me. I didn’t like the note. I detested the note. I loathed the note. I desired to take it into the bathroom at 1:15 p.m., which was the time I was supposed to go to the bathroom every day, and there I could do unforgivable things with it when I finished. It was telling me to meet outside at the back of the plant with no explanation, but I was a good employee who never was called into Human Resources, so I deserved an explanation. Four people were dead in four months and it had me scared. Whatever differences I had with them was a moot point. To make matters worse, I discovered the night before that Sweet Cat O’Malley was a witch, Satanist, or sorceress, and it freaked me the hell out, and my electricity went out with no explanation. Most of all, the crimson font before me was too beautiful to be written by a human.

     “It isn’t crimson,” said Mrs. Chastain.

     “What isn’t?” I said.

     “The writing. It’s human blood.”

    “Huh?”

     “It’s okay,” Mrs. Chastain said. “I hear your thoughts. To answer all your questions, it’s okay if you don’t like the letter. I’m pleased you find the writing beautiful, because it was actually written by the Lord of Darkness himself, Jonathan. As to your other thoughts, I wouldn’t be offended if you wiped your buttocks with it at 1:15 p.m., but we provide adequate toilet paper. Yes, you’re a good employee. Yes, you deserve an explanation. The fact that four people have committed suicide here in four months should have alerted the most dimwitted of employees, and quite frankly, there are just a lot of insensitive people here. And Cat was not a witch, Satanist, or sorceress, Jonathan. She was a devil-worshipper. The former three rely on magic, philosophy, and incantations. Devil-worshippers simply worship the devil, which is what Cat did. But all of these things notwithstanding, I still need you to go out to the back of the plant.”

     “Um…Mrs. Chastain?”

     “Yes?”

     “I don’t want to.”

     “You need to.”

     “I really, really, really don’t want to, though.”

     “You’re apprehensive,” she said if I were at a masseuse parlor. “Do you like coffee?”

     That may have been the sole question she could’ve asked which prevented me from running a hole through the wall. I love coffee. I quit quitting coffee because I love coffee too much. The world may be coming to an end, but be damned if I can’t pass up a cup of coffee. Deceitful devil, she was.

     “I do like coffee,” I said.

     Three minutes later, Mrs. Chastain and I stood in the hallway to the front office, which I had never seen before. She was sweet enough to bring me a Styrofoam cup of steaming hazelnut with the perfect amount of milk and sugar. I was about to ask her how she knew I liked milk in my hazelnut.

     “You like milk and not cream,” she said, sipping her cup of black coffee that smelled like boiled, salty kool-aid from where I stood. “You like it that way because it subtracts just enough of heat to keep from scalding your tongue.”

     “How do you possibly know that, Mrs. Chastain?”

     “I know lots of things about you. Remember, I hear your thoughts.”

     “Are you psychic?”

     She smiled the smile of seeing puppies attack a man with peanut butter in his ears. “Somewhat.”

     “Mrs. Chastain, can I ask you something?”

     “I already know what it is, but ask anyway.”

     “Is that coffee you’re drinking?”

     “Yes. What you're smelling is the blood of virgin schoolchildren, which I’ve mixed in as the creamer. They're from another part of the world, so no one you know.”

     “Are you the devil, Mrs. Chastain?”

     “That’s a bit too personal.”

     “So is my coffee also…”

     “It’s just coffee, I promise. I don’t do things like that to Biggett employees.”

     “Okay.”

     “Excuse me,” she said, covering her mouth as she yawned. I whiffed the air and scrunched my nose. “It’s just brimstone. Jonathan, I’ll ask you to speak your mind; otherwise I'll have to speak it for you and I doubt you want me disclosing everything that’s in there.”

     “You’re probably right,” I said. “I suppose the past four months have got me in a fix.”

     “Because of the four suicides?”

     “Not just that.”

     “Then what?”

     I thought, knowing Mrs. Chastain could read my thoughts. I stopped thinking so she wouldn’t know. Then I realized she would know I stopped thinking, and would point it out. I just spoke.

     “Suicide bothers me,” I said, “but also the way this place regards it.”

     “Give an example.”

     “Well, I remember Ronny Curtain talking crap about this place all the time, but he also talked about other things, like how proud he was that his daughter finished Marine boot camp. He loved antique cars. He was a little bitter, but who wouldn’t when you’d been cheated on twice by your wife? Then he overdoses on codeine, and this place doesn’t even give him a moment of silence. That’s cheap and a man’s life isn’t cheap, Mrs. Chastain.”

     “I would agree.”

     “Okay, but then there was Ausby.”

     “What about Ausby?” she said, yawning away from me so I wouldn’t smell the brimstone again.

     “We never said more than a few words, and they weren’t even good ones. But he lit himself on fire and jumped off a bridge and hit a truck. Pardon the language, but that’s just fucked up, Mrs. Chastain. That’s a painful, sick way to go and an even sicker thing to do those who love you. You know the way those women in the warehouse loved him. And what about the trucker who hit him? He probably has to get coked up now just to go to sleep at night.”

     “Go on.”

     “And Travis. We were a lot alike. Didn’t know him well, didn’t have much time to. But the last interaction we had wasn’t a good one, and it turned out nobody else liked him either. But I had no idea he was going to crush himself with a bulldozer! Just like that trucker, I can only assume some poor construction worker found his pancaked body and got stuck with an image. I can’t even stand the sight of my own blood, Mrs. Chastain.”

     “And I’m guessing you have thoughts on Cat now?”

     “Yes, ma’am. I guess I didn’t know her well. She seemed nice – good writer. Now you tell me she was a devil-worshipper. But why’d she go and hang herself? It’s all of them, really. Four people in four months, and Biggett Wood Products doesn’t even seem to care. Then I find little tidbits of info that the gateway of Hell may be somewhere in the vicinity. I can only assume you’re Satan.”

     “I understand your concerns,” said Mrs. Chastain, “but first off, don’t assume. Yes, I’m Satan, but still don’t assume. That’s unprofessional. Secondly, let me clarify some things concerning these people to put your mind at ease. Ausby was actually high on bath salts when he jumped off the bridge. You would be, too, if you being chased by miniature Pink Panthers with pick axes. So technically, he didn’t kill himself. And the truck driver who was traumatized was a woman, Jonathan. Like I said, don’t assume.”

     “I’m sorry.”

     “That’s okay. In Ronnie’s Curtain’s case, yes, he has a daughter who recently joined the Marines – to get away from him.”

     “Huh?”

     “Ronnie was a registered sex offender in Ohio. For some reason, it never showed in the background check and he was about to be fired for vandalism of company property anyway. And he didn’t just like antique cars – he used them to actively transfer illegal prescription drugs at auctions. And he only overdosed on codeine because he put them in a blender by accident when he was making an alcoholic smoothie.”

     “Well, that sucks.”

     “For him, yes.”

     “What about Travis?”

     “Travis isn’t dead, Jonathan. I know your supervisor told you guys that, but that happened to another Travis Jones who lives in this city and we made a regrettable error when one of the office people saw a news report and told your supervisor first. I apologize for the lack of clarity on our part. He was actually let go because he accused your department of workplace hostility, which I verified to be untrue.”

      “What about Cat?”

     “Cat did hang herself. She said the devil was telling her to do it in the accounting office and was frightening one of the new girls. I not only assured her the devil was not telling her that and I ordered her some time off. She went home and did it anyway. What can I say? Cat was an idiot.”

     I felt stupid around the devil suddenly. “So…there was only one actual suicide?”

     “Yes. Something’s still bothering you, though.”

     “There’s something else about this place.”

     “Do you not like Biggett Wood Products?” she frowned, which conjured a guilt pang inside of me. “You’ve always been a model employee.”

     “Well…thank you, first of all. No, I like Biggett fine. It’s kept me employed. I like my coworkers and the insurance.”

     “Then what is it?”

     “Well…”

     Mrs. Chastain laughed, but ceased as it turned baritone and demonic – probably because she knew it scared droplets of urine out of me. “What is it?”

     “Is this place really the gateway to Hell?”

     “No. It’s a vortex to Hell.”

     “Is there a difference?”

     “Yes,” she said. “A gateway can be any opening. A vortex has a flow, kind of like a whirlpool.”

     “I see.”

     “And it’s not the only one. There are other vortices on the earth.”

     My mind clicked with interest. “Like where?”

     “All jobs where people undergo decognition, like here. Places where people have sacrificed the potential for creative output and reasoning in exchange for a stable paycheck, or – don’t’ take this personally – benefits.”

     “I see.”

     “At the risk of lecturing,” she said, “just understand that the vortices to Hell are most common in industrialized areas and not dark forests or enchanted mountains. Individuals like you are most at risk of entering, since you waste your talents in exchange for the placebo of stagnated, but automated dependency on something other than yourself. Simply put, a wasted mind is a one-way ticket to Hell.”

     “So if I work here, I go to Hell?”

     “That’s not what I said at all, Jonathan.”

     “Whatever you said, I feel stupid for even working here. To be honest, I feel kind of shitty now.”

     “Good.”

     “Good?”

     “As long as you feel degraded, you’ve gotten the entire point. Now, are you ready to come outside?”

     “I think so.”

     “Jonathan, you won’t burn in the Lake of Fire if you follow me outside. Why not just come with me now?”

     I decided Mrs. Chastain had no sinister intentions toward my soul – as long as I was a Biggett employee – so I went. “So what’s really outside?” I asked, moving alongside with my coffee.

     “Salvation for your soul,” she said. “The vortex to Hell being located here at Biggett Wood Products is both figurative and literal.”

     “How so?”

     “It’s figurative because of everything we just talked about. You, Jonathan, are a sympathy-capable individual who is not only considerate toward the misfortunes of others, but you have a good work ethic.”

     “Thank you.”

     “Sure,” she said, taking a sip of her virgin-blood coffee. “But in the literal sense, this place actually is a vortex to Hell. It’s located in the fourth stall in the men’s restroom in the main hallway. The space-time fabric beneath the toilet bowl will be broken open on Judgment Day. When God rejects them, the damned of the earth – both living and dead – will be swallowed up, beginning there.”  

     “The fourth stall?” I was stunned. “That’s my favorite one, though. The light is dim and it’s the most relaxing.”

     “Yes, well it’s the main vortex to the eternal Lake of Fire.”

     “Wait,” I said. “Doesn’t the Bible say the devil will be damned, too?”

     “Would you like to talk about the things you masturbate to?”

     “No, ma’am.”

     “Then don’t bring up sensitive subjects.”

     As we drew near the exit, she placed her hand on the latch but paused and looked at me once more. “As I said, Jonathan, salvation lies beyond. Go out with the others who are out there, stay your present course, and seek your literal salvation so you can avoid the fourth stall that fateful and damning day. You escape your figurative damnation here.”

     “Salvation, huh?”

     “Yes. You’re being laid off.”