Episode 2: The Escape

ext. parking lot early morning

Cars and cars and cars. Toyotas. Fords. Subarus. Old Chryslers and used Chevy’s. Dealership stickers. Political slogans. Parking passes and state park vouchers. Boasts of marathon miles, family sizes, straight A’s and honor roll inductions. Chipped paint and dented hoods. Gray. White. Light blue. Tan. Uninteresting. Drab. Practical. Deeply practical. Worse than practical- suburban. Where interesting goes to die. This parking lot is the storage caddy for all your least favorite Hot Wheels cars. Not a single spot unfilled, some spots double filled, some even illegally filled. There, a handicap spot with no hanging pass. There, a spot obscured in yellow stripes, filled nonetheless, a hulking crossover doing its best to obscure the crime. Every spot dotted by ancient, absurd antenna- monuments to obsolete radio waves that long since gave up the pursuit of that futility we call “relevancy”. They now serve as short mastheads to mark temporarily owned domain- cracked pavement, bulging blacktop, horizons distorted in heat pulsing from the scarred earth and griddle-hot hoods. There is no inch left unexplored, no foot left unclaimed by rubber, steel and combustible dead things-

-Save one empty spot directly beneath Alice’s window.

In this solitary, unoccupied spot stands THE PALE HORSE. White, bloodless eyes stare up at the window without expectation. An unkempt, silver mane falls to either side of its crest. It’s hair is of a dirtied white, mussed, spackled with gray like the ceiling of a church nursery you can only just recall the sight of- but never forget the smell of. Its muzzle gives way to an eruption of pink flesh, gray hairs and smatterings of crimson flesh- torn and mended and torn again- the nostrils dilating with each intake and exchange of air, hungry like a fearsome furnace. From shoulder to hip the creature betrays raw muscle that embarasses the steel contraptions to its left and right. Its hooves betray a sheen of polished marble in the sunlight, giving way to a shade of shale just above the heels. Its ears are set upright, the malleable flesh thin and translucent in the light of day, perked and alert. The Pale Horse stands still, but not expectant. Its tail, a shock of midnight black in contrast to its mane, is unnaturally still. If the beast is alert, it doesn’t not betray it- nor is it proud of in pose. Rather, it simply exists, much as a plastic mold of a horse might, its black rimmed, milky eyes pondering you as a sightless doll’s might.

This is the Pale Horse which all mortals know in their hearts and instinctively recognize- and dread. It is all-together exactly as we imagine it to be and yet, deeply underwhelming.

It does not have a rider.

int. office early morning

Alice closes the blinds. Blinks. It’s a slow blink, the kind you concentrate on, willing the hoods to close over your eyes as you imagine little bits of dust and sunlight being shook from your lashes. As the eyes open, you hope that what you saw before might be willed away.

Of course, it never works that way. And why should it here? The Pale Horse remains in the parking lot and Alice must deal with the reality of this sudden- and extraordinary- moment.

Alice returns to her desk- a betrayal of bewilderment, the desk being the exact last place she’d wish to surrender to. As she sits, the office returns to life. Full motion, typing, clicking, telephone rings. Her neighbors resume their mechanical motions- strokes of keys and occasional grunts and coughs betraying the wicked churn of the workday returning to motion. The Dark-Haired Girl lets out an enormous sneeze that shocks Alice to attention, her eyes widening and narrowing. Alice’s hand goes to her pocket, instinctively grasping for a phone that is not there- no distraction, no diversion.

Alice is left alone with her thoughts.

ALICE
(audibly, to herself)
Is it panic or is it coffee or is it a heart attack? Or is it something more amazing than all three? Am I dancing on an edge others never approach, or do I lack the grace to slowly die as unobtrusively as normal people?

Alice looks to her coworkers again. Nothing beyond the mechanics of their working. If they heard her at all, they do not acknowledge it. Alice is grateful. Even she wishes she hadn’t heard herself say what she just said. It sounds painful and forced in retrospect. There is nothing philosophical or cute about a panic attack.

Assuming this is a panic attack.

Alice’s screen shows outlook notifications and meeting reminders, a slow-growing progression of steady chimes and flashing brightness. New e-mail pop ups steadily ping. Her phone's voicemail light is blinking. It’s a conspiracy, a cacophony of hooks and noises designed to grab her attention by the throat and never relinquish the grip.

Alice picks up her coffee. Drinks it again. Longer this time. She drains the full cup. The thick, midnight black liquid spills past her teeth, down her throat. If it goes to her stomach, she doesn’t feel it. Rather, she feels it go to all the parts of her body she needs it least. She feels it in the tips of her fingers- a soft tremble. She feels it in the back of her throat, a tight rubber tennis ball that threatens to choke her to death. She feels it in the back of her skull, a tied knot of string yanking at the back of her brain. She feels it in her heart- a torrential downpour of blood, pressure built against a dam that once broke can never be repaired.

Her eyes. Like dying coronas, flare. The after-burn image of her office- mundane, uninteresting, painfully, unforgivably dull- faintly overlays her eyes, fading out and leaving a brief dual image- a sweatshop from hell, chains, demons, forked prods and bubbling furnaces briefly interposed over the otherwise cotton-soft roar of The Real.

Alice closes her eyes. Darkness. Merciful dark. The only certainty. The only hope. Nothing harms you in the dark. Nothing prods, pushes or demands in the dark. Humans were made for this emptiness. A destiny we strayed at Time’s Beginning.

She opens them once more. A mistake. And an inevitability.

The sunrise is gone. Instead, a purpled light bleeds through the windows casting a negative image over all it touches.

Copper tethers and mangled USB chords tap into the husks of coworkers around her, the wires feeding from the floors and ceilings delivering untold sustenance via digital IV to their supplicants. The mustached man and the dark haired  girl are practically glued forehead-first into their monitors. Their hands give way to purpled , swollen fingers which give way to little usb cables, each tip not a nail but a port, the cables crawling back into their work stations. The only sign of life the occasional twitch- the misfire of a nerve that forgot to stay dead in the transformation from person to cog.

Alice carefully sets her ceramic coffee cup down upon her desk. As she does, usb snakes slither across the composite wood desktop, slowly needling for a place to connect.

Alice softly brushes them aside, the cables not offended or angered, simply waylaid, straining to do their work as a vine might creep toward a slab of concrete or a forgotten statue. Alice stands from her chair, a sweeping gaze confirming the hellscape office transformation is total- rows and rows of workers in farm-like submission, no appeal to be made or heard. Knowing better than to scream or question, Alice buttons up her emotion, screwing her mouth shut, she passes through the dystopic aisle of tethered drones and harrowing cubes until she reaches the same window she occupied before.

She tugs the slats open again with the yank of the chord, her eye noting the glint of a razor’s edge on them as her nose stops just short of brushing against the blinds.

The Pale Horse, still there, still waiting, still staring, still standing in its chosen spot just beneath the window in the parking lot below.

Forgetting herself, Alice places a hand on the slatted blinds, a silent cut etching its way across her palm. She pulls her palm to her mouth, a bit of blood dribbling from her lip and soundlessly splashing onto her white dress shirt.

ALICE
(a slight wince)
A pale horse with no rider. An office gone to hell. Either I’m dead or on the worst attack of my life. And I’m talking to myself. Why am I talking to myself.

She pauses to suck a bit more on the cut, wincing. Her eye focuses on the razor edges of the blinds, on the bloodstain left by her palm. Her gaze sweeps over the rest of the blinds- not just those in front of her- but across the office floor. They are all spotted in crimson that glints purple in the negative sunrays.

ALICE
I guess I’m not the first to try the windows. So…I guess if I want to leave, I’ll have to…

Alice turns from the window. She reviews her surroundings, her eyes struggling to fix upon an objective- anywhere but here. A distant door reads “EXIT”. As her vision settles on it, the door seems to grow even further away. Fearful that it might flee her vision entirely, Alice looks away and takes in the rest of the office, resolving to take a path out of the office and to the door marked “EXIT”.

Row after row of dead-tethered drones and searing white-light box terminals. Manager office doors chained shut. Large gasoline cans where the coffee canisters once resided. It is the office she imagined. It is the office as she described it to her friends and social media followers. It was The Office of The Real.


ALICE
Seems obvious. But at least it makes more sense than a horse in a parking lot. So then. Exit. Horse. Ride horse. Then…highway? Either way…it’s not here. And that’s…good enough. Right?

Alice steps one foot ahead. Then the next. A stilted, strange motion, the staggered lilting of a ragdoll newly introduced to life and sentience. She makes her way back down her aisle, past her cube, to the head of the aisle, her eyes daring to flit to the inside of neighbors cubes. Billowing plumes of data form above the cubes, the data-fog obstructing her vision, forcing each broken-doll step to be a bit more uncertain than the last. Clouds of text and twisted emojis pollute the air with greater and greater density as Alice presses through the drone-staffed aisles of workers. She places a hand over her mouth as she cuts through them, her eyes blearing from the pollutants. The cupped hand stops the smog- and stifles her scream.

Alice breaks through the inky clouds. Her eyes are red, quivering, tears welled up on either peripheral. The smog clings to her clothes, her khaki pants, her white button-down three-quarter sleeve shirt, her loose red tie, flopping about, practically snarling at its surroundings, and her dull gray laceless boatshoes, which leave a patter of gray-dead dust in their soundless scuffling. The long-dead carpet doesn’t bother begging for mercy.

Alice reaches the card reader at the exit door of the office floor. A small sign beneath it reads SCAN ME. She reaches into her pocket, pulls out an oversized office badge. A glance as it passes into frame- Alice, smiling, her teeth beaming, eyes wide, like a kid staring into a play-camera. The flashing umbrella lights are reflected back from the Photo-Alice’s eyes and betray a red glare that was never edited out. In big block font printed on the front of the ID, it reads ALICE.

Alice turns and looks back at the row of Manager's Doors. Each are still chained shut. She is grateful. The best managers Alice has ever had are the ones that go unseen. The scanner glares at her from a beady eye of lighted red.

SCANNER
Scan me, scan me. Freedom is beyond this door.

ALICE
I'm having bad luck with scanners today.

SCANNER
What, the coffee pots? Don't rate me on the same scale as them. They're just drones. I'm a mercenary. Newly installed. You can trust me.

ALICE
I wonder.

SCANNER
What are you gonna do, kick the door down? Then you'll just bring on the Alarm Boys. I'm your best bet.

Alice considers, not questioning the oddity of debating with a bad scanner, then waves her badge over the lit eye. The Scanner immediately screams.

SCANNER
ALARM! ALARM! WE HAVE A RUNNER.

ALICE
Now why would you do that, Scanner?

SCANNER
Tools can't help but do what they were designed for. Besides. I like to hurt people.

The door lock clicks open.

ALICE
Then why bother opening?

SCANNER
As I said, tools can’t help themselves. Good luck!

Alice opens the door. Ahead of her, an impossibly dark abyss.

Alice stares into flat, mirrorless dark. At her back, the blacklight office hums, but the creep begins- drones to her back, slowly rising from their cubes to watch her. Tendrils of wire creeping along the floor, ceiling panels dislodging to give way to more wires. The chains at the Manager’s Offices begin to rattle. The nimbus data clouds gather and roll, covering the stratosphere of the office and threatening Alice’s exit.

ALICE
(to the Scanner)
Will you lock the door after me?

SCANNER
Of course. That’s what I’m designed to do. For better or worse, when the door shuts behind you, so to will your way back.

Alice tilts her head to the side, her eyes widening, her pupils thirstily struggling to extract some light- any light- from the peerless pool of black before her. She inches one foot ahead. Then the other. Again. Once more. The broken doll comes to life by necessity, the red glow of the EXIT sign backlighting her retreat into the void.

The corners of Alice’s mouth quiver. A smile forms. Darkness envelops the tips of her feet, her hands, her arms, legs, torso, crawling up her neck, it seeps into the corners of her mouth, her nose, and lastly- her eyes. The door shuts behind her, the red glow of the EXIT sign extinguished with the finality of the lock’s latch.

There is darkness and only darkness and Alice is glad for it.