The floor was so damn sticky.

That was the first thing Gerald noticed as he traversed the hallway in the darkened office. He had started at the company not too long ago. It was a dead-end job, but he supposed he was a dead-end guy. 

At the very least, he seemed to be putting his life back together. He had been sober from drugs and alcohol for about four months now, and he had finally secured this tedious office job to pay the bills and pay off the creditors that constantly hounded him.

When he started at the company, his manager told him that the west wing of the building was off-limits. It was an unusual thing to say because he knew other people worked in that part of the building. Nestled in a featureless office park, their building was about as bland as possible. So, naturally, the curiosity got the best of Gerald, and he wondered what could be hidden over there.

“You get a thirty-minute lunch break every day, but make sure to clock out on the computer,” said the manager, Ernest. “And I should say, stay away from the west wing of the property. That’s bad news.”

Ernest was a chain smoker who reeked of tobacco and wore a faded leather jacket over shabby, similarly faded Hawaiin shirts most days. Gerald imagined these shirts must have been brightly colorful at one point, but years of usage had worn them down like the lines on Ernest’s face.

“Bad news? How?” Gerald asked.

Before he could speak, Ernest broke into one of his coughing fits, which were violent spasms that sometimes forced him to turn away. This time, Ernest put his hands to his mouth and coughed viciously for a few moments.

“Fuck!” Ernest yelled, out of breath. “Just … don’t go there. That’s where we keep all the data servers and the specimens. It’s not bad news … I shouldn’t have said that. Just … fuck, just listen to me.”

Gerald silently agreed and turned back to his cubicle. What a strange place this was. The company at least paid on time. It was a bio-pharma firm that did laboratory testing, so he knew specimens had to be somewhere. But what kind of specimens? Gerald was in the dark about how the company made its money and how things worked. He was still new.

After he clocked out one night and no one was around, he felt creepy as he forced open the entryway to the west wing. The narrow hallway was dimly lit because many overhead fluorescent lights had burnt out. But the stickiness of the carpeted floors creeped him out the most.

With each step on the dirty gray carpet, his cheap dress shoes got caught momentarily, and the thick, humid, and musty air made his stomach turn. He could swear he saw cockroaches climbing the walls, but the light was so dim, and they scattered so quickly that he couldn’t be sure.

The persistent hum of the old, rusty HVAC system created a droning white noise that made him uneasy. Why was he doing this?

As he slowly walked down the hallway, he couldn’t tell where it ended because of the lack of light. Visibility was low. But it was then that he noticed a dark figure about twenty feet ahead, walking toward the spot where the hallway dissolved into darkness. It appeared to be a woman with long black hair wearing a tattered blue sundress and black heels whose steps echoed in the hallway.

Though the dress’s blue was slightly faded, the color still blazed in the dimness of the corridor. Gerald felt a knot in his stomach while looking ahead toward the mysterious woman. Still, he began to feel so entranced by the strange quality of the hallway that he kept following without pondering possible danger.

He noticed there were windows in the corridor, but there didn’t seem to be anything visible outside. Peering through the windows as he walked, all he saw was total darkness, the kind of darkness that didn’t seem possible.

After glancing at the windows, Gerlad turned his gaze back ahead, and the mysterious woman was gone. However, he heard a door handle turn and the creak of an old door open, so he continued to follow.

“Hello?” he said weakly.

No response. The oppressive air seemed to negate the words coming from his mouth like it sucked them up and destroyed them. The humidity felt unbearable now, and Gerald could feel himself sweating and could hardly breathe.

Then, he could see a faint glimmer of flickering light ahead in the darkness as if it were from an old television. He heard the echo of voices from the television, sounding like broadcasters on an old football game.

Before he knew it, he stood at the threshold of the opened door. The mysterious woman was gone, but the room was not empty. It was his childhood living room, and his father sat in the recliner before the TV, beer and cigarette in hand.

His father – who had died in a house fire very long ago – turned to him with his badly burned face and said, “There you are. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Gerald stood wordless and dumbstruck. “Get me another beer, will ya?” his father demanded. “And grab one for yourself.”

“I don’t drink anymore,” Gerald replied.

“I said get the goddamn beers!”

Although Gerald was forty-one years old, he felt like a boy again. Small, weak, helpless, and angry. As if on instinct, he moved to the refrigerator, retrieved the two cans of Budweiser, and returned one to his father. 

Gerald’s hands shook as he did so, but suddenly, it didn’t feel strange anymore. Not the endless hallway or the sight of his dead father sitting there before him.

He looked at his father’s pink, burned, fleshy face and watched him crack open the beer can and take a sip. A dribble of alcohol spilled down his disfigured mouth and soaked the upper part of his sweatshirt.

He looked around the living room and noticed everything was as before the fire: the filth of the stacked garbage in the kitchen with the buzzing flies, the dirty dishes caked with food piled high in the sink, the overflowing ashtray on the living room table, the empty pill bottles.

“Dad,” Gerald said in a soft voice. “It’s so dirty in here. You need to clean up. You need to clean yourself up. It’s a mess.”

His father had fallen asleep, though. The cigarette still burned in his hand, so Gerald took it and stubbed it out in the ashtray. He also took the beer can from his father’s hand and placed it on the table. 

The football game continued on the television, but Gerald didn’t pay any attention. For a second, he recalled he had been walking down an endless hallway just a few moments before, but now that seemed like a fleeting and far-away memory. 

He was so absorbed in caring for his father that he couldn’t remember anything, such as how he got there or what he had been doing before. He left the TV on, put a blanket on his father, and began cleaning the kitchen. He had to take care of his dad. Someone had to take care of him.

The End