Strange Things Happen in High Places

“Did you say s-seven decades?”

“Listen new guy, we have quotas to make here.” Eyebrows struts into my cubicle, acting as if nothing, even remotely scarring, had just happened. In fact, his composure is so fully regained, he casually gestures for me to get out of my chair so he can take a seat in it.

“That looked exhausting,” I comply, unwillingly.

“What did?” He bobs back and forth in my chair, forcing its functionality to dangle before my eyes “This one’s nice!” Then he switches positions, straddling it like a kid on a rocking horse. “Real nice!”

“It’s probably just a newer model,” I say, not knowing why I’m allowing this to go on.

“Probably,” his voice gets sharp as he readjusts to a normal sitting position. Ding. “Oh, boy.”

“What?”

“You know, you can’t be lollygagging like this, or else you’ll end up like him.” He points to a man trudging away from his cubicle, who is so slouched that he looks headless. I cock my head to the side, not remembering that man nor the massive hallway he is about to enter. My vision gets spotty as I try harder and harder to make out his figure while he walks deeper and deeper into it. Did he just disintegrate into a cloud of dust? I blink my eyes a few times and realize this must be a bad trip. A nightmare. Punishment for all the bad things I did and all the people I hurt. Eyebrows waves his hands in front of me, bringing me back, though I wish he hadn’t. “Just know, you’re lucky you weren’t here back in the days when I first started. Yeah, back then, this was all done by hand. Lots of paperwork. Lots of mistakes.” He looks to the empty hallway and shivers. “Even though we’re just monkeys clicking buttons now,” he shivers again, “it’s still better than that.”

I drop my head, not knowing how to, or if I want to, agree.

Eyebrows shakes me off and rubs his hands together, then starts clicking buttons on my keyboard.

“Wait, what are you doing?” I panic, gripping the back of the chair, contemplating a violent yank to get him as far away as possible.

“You worried I’ll mess up your progress?” he laughs, pausing his keyboard clicking, then flinging a wad of spit into my trashcan.

I wish I’d put a plastic bag in that.

“Watch, this is how you take a soul that’s stuck inside a dead body and put it into a new body.” He moves a red dot over to a green dot and they both disappear with – you guessed it – another ding.

“How do you know which one goes where?”

“It doesn’t matter. And the faster you go, the better your stats are.” He moves red dots to green dots so fast I can barely keep up. “I’m making you look real good.”

“T-thanks. But what about all these leftover green dots? Why are there so many?”