Interview (A Zombie Short Story)

A job interview can be terrifying...

Here's a short story I wrote for Hawk & Cleaver's 'The Other Stories' podcast.

I’d been sober for almost six weeks now and abstinence was something I’d come to enjoy, however much I was convinced I wouldn’t when I finally had the balls to admit I had a problem. My support network used to be small, but I liked it that way. When it eventually closed, like a door that bolted itself from the other side, I slipped into a catacomb. I lost everybody I had ever held dear, driven them away with my insensitivities and unpredictability.

But I got better. And I made it out of the hole with a rope I managed to weave all by myself (a metaphorical one of course). I beat the bottle when the bottle had me on the ropes (more metaphorical ones) for most of my adult life.

And today I had an interview for a job after being unemployed for over a year. It was just sales, but that didn’t matter to me. It was a well-paid role in the city and it would mean that I had a purpose every day and, even better, a pay packet at the end of the month.

I felt nervous as I waited to be seen, the kind receptionist informing me that I was the last applicant of the day. It was late and much of the office was empty but for a handful of employees who quietly worked in their cubicles, no doubt the ones who didn’t have partners or families to rush home to.

A man called Roger, who was to be my boss if my application turned out to be successful, called me in to his office and I felt instantly overwhelmed by anxiety.

What if he asks about my employment history?

What if he asks me why I haven’t been in work for over a year?

What if he likes me so much that he asks me to go for a drink after the interview?

As he asked me to take a seat I felt like I could faint, my heart trying to pull its way free of my body. He turned to take his on the opposite side of a cheap wooden desk when the receptionist called his name. He stepped outside to hear what she wanted and apologised before leaving me to attend a matter that was ‘urgent’.

I decided to take out my phone and find a meditation podcast that I regularly listened to when I felt a severe amount of stress. I did my breathing exercises and closed my eyes as the warm, soothing voice washed over me and made my limbs finally stop twitching. I felt my heart rate slow and my tight chest finally expand naturally, my lungs no longer feeling like they were filling with water.

I zoned in and out of the recording until I realised that it had been 20 minutes or so since Roger left the room to attend to the ‘urgent matter’. It was strange, but I felt relieved to have been given the time to focus.

I pressed pause on the podcast, took out my headphones and put them in my jacket pocket. I stood up, my legs feeling like jelly for a second. I walked over to the closed door of the office and pressed my ear against it, listening out for Roger’s voice or returning footsteps. Silence.

I stood and continued to wait for a further 10 minutes before deciding to open the office door slightly to get a look at what was happening and at least give myself an idea of how much longer I had to cling on to my confidence before it fell out of my grasp like tiny grains of sand (as it often did).

I couldn’t see anybody – not Roger or the receptionist or any of the other staff members I saw tapping away at their keyboards when I walked through the office. It seemed to be empty, the whole floor deserted. Confused, I opened the door further and stepped out of the office.

It looked like everybody had left but as I rounded a corner I saw somebody lying on the ground. The receptionist was face down on the carpet; her blonde curls thick with blood and her blouse torn to shreds. Her pale back was exposed but some of her skin seemed to be missing, ripped from her back somehow. Between the shreds of fabric I could see deep wounds, holes in her body beyond comprehension, leaking gunk and gore profusely. The stench of death filled my nose and blood had expanded in a bizarre shape around her corpse, soaking into the grey carpet. It looked black, not red, and made my stomach turn over and feel like it was going fall out of my ass.

I stifled a scream and looked around desperately for help or anybody who could explain to me what had happened to her, but there was nobody around. I fell to my knees, shaking my head in disbelief and took my phone out of my pocket with trembling hands. My skin was cold and I found it difficult to tap the numbers into it, but it had no signal and couldn’t dial out.

I ran to the lift and pushed the button to call it, and it was then that I heard a low moaning growl from behind me. As I turned around I hastily ducked behind the edge of a cubicle, the sound of laboured walking coming from the other side of the barrier. I heard the gnashing of teeth and a strange slathering like whatever it was may be licking its lips.

I waited until it had moved away and then managed to sprint to the bathroom and hide in a cubicle, locking the door behind me and climbing onto the toilet so that whatever was pursuing me couldn’t see my feet. It stumbled into the room and snarled like a beast, but a distant noise that sounded like a filing cabinet falling down the stairs caught its attention and it left, shambling along the tiled floor and out through the door.

I waited several minutes and made my way out of the bathroom, noticing a trickle of blood on the floor that seemed to lead back towards the lift and stairs. I knew I had to avoid that direction, so I headed went back towards Roger’s office. On the way back, I noticed that the receptionist’s corpse had gone. Dumbfounded and petrified, I ran into the office and jammed a chair underneath the door. Just as I did, something slammed against the outside of the door and howled as it tried to get at me.

As the door struggled to keep the threat out, I opened the window and climbed out onto the ledge, the wind nearly knocking me over and sending me plummeting to the ground below. I looked down at the street but couldn’t see anybody that I could call for help. I looked over my shoulder and saw the door was splitting, so I stepped closer to the edge and looked around desperately for somewhere I could jump or something that would perhaps break my fall, but there was nothing.

I tried to slow my breathing, remembering the calming words spoken by the podcast narrators and even the advice given by fellow alcoholics during dozens of AA meetings, but it didn’t seem to work.

The creature was inside the office now and as an ice cold hand reached out for me, fingernails nicking the back of my neck, I stepped off the ledge, choosing a leap of faith into the abyss over the bite of the unknown. I fell three floors down towards the ground below, the air rushing up around me almost as if it was attempting to slow my plunge. My legs broke like toothpicks and my head slammed against the concrete with a crack. I could taste blood and my body burned with intense pain as I looked up to see several figures shuffling towards me. My vision went milky as I began to fade away into unconsciousness, but as the people got closer I managed to spit out a word along with a mouthful of blood. “Help..."

As they closed around me I could feel their hands on my broken body, but they weren’t helping me, no. They were eating me.

Ben Errington

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