Kyle landed in the plastic chair with a thump that rattled his spine.
The falling sensation still lingered in his limbs, but his feet were planted on beige carpet. His arms on a plastic gray table. He was in some kind of conference room. Off-white walls, a set of drab cabinets, and a chalkboard on one side of the room. The chalkboard was smudged and streaked, but he could still read the word in ghostly writing across the top: ONBOARDING. Most of the other writing was too distressed to read. Except one bit. PLEASE LIMIT SCREAMING.
A digital clock sat near the door opposite of the chalkboard. It read 6:55. Morning or evening? It was impossible to tell without a window. There was a little glass window on the door, but it just showed more of the off-white wall on the other side.
What was he doing here? He squirmed in the plastic chair. It wasn’t comfortable. It felt molded to fit something more rigid than a person, like it made him lean a little too far forward. It was warm and stagnant in the room and his arms were already sticking to the plastic table so that he had to peel them off.
He couldn’t remember how he got here. Or why he should be here. But, if there was one thing that Kyle could do, it was wait for answers. He crossed his arms and laid down his head. It was too hot in the room to sleep, but he could try.
He couldn’t.
He stood up to stretch, reaching his arms up and feeling his back crack. Then he saw the clock. It shocked him so much that he felt unable to move. He just blinked at the numbers on the wall, still reaching high into the air. The clock read: 6:66.
Something passed by the window on the door. He saw it from the corner of his eye. Then, came back.
It was a monster. Blue, leathery skin and horns that rose from its head at odd angles. Beady eyes and, Kyle’s mind tried to handle what it was seeing, black-rimmed glasses? The monster went wide-eyed and threw open the door. Kyle jumped back, putting his hands up to beg the charging monster to spare him.
“What are you doing in here?” the monster hissed, closing the door gently behind him. “You aren’t supposed to be here.” The monster, if Kyle could still call it that, wore slacks, a dress shirt, and a red tie pulled uncomfortably tight against its neck. It adjusted the glasses and flipped through pages of a clipboard in its hands. “This isn’t right,” it kept saying.
“Uh, hi,” Kyle said. The monster wasn’t threatening in the least. It just looked like a normal person, but with blue skin, horns, and beady black eyes. Those eyes flicked up from the clipboard. Something churned in Kyle’s stomach. Unsure of what to do, he reached out his hand.
“Where are my manners?” the monster laughed. It stepped forward and shook Kyle’s hand. Kyle yanked back his arm. The monster’s skin was as hot as sun-baked asphalt.
“My name is Kyle,” he said, blowing on his hand to cool the burning.
“Nergal,” the monster said. “I’m the trainer here at HellCo. Nice to meet you.” He went back to his clipboard, flipping papers quickly. Kyle caught sight of a couple of pages. They were all forms and memos.
“HellCo?”
“You’re certainly new here, that’s for sure,” Nergal muttered. “But you handle it better than most. When new people see a demon for the first time, there’s usually a lot of screaming involved.”
“Ah,” Kyle spoke in a shaky voice. “Sure, I get that.”
“Yep,” Nergal sighed, dropping into one of the plastic chairs and waving Kyle to join him. “HellCo is a new era of Hell.” He didn’t seem to find anything that he was looking for in the pages of his clipboard. He tossed the thing aside and tented his fingers in front of him.
Nergal dipped into a speech that sounded rehearsed and boring. “Long gone are the days of punishment and torture. No more eagles ripping out livers or pushing stones up a mountain. HellCo is disrupting the afterlife industry by incorporating progress, promise, and profits into the new vision of the underworld.”
He finished the speech with a grin, halfhearted at best. Kyle’s eyes were drawn to the sharp white fangs. He tried to swallow, but he was still so dry.
“I’m in hell?”
“You’re in HellCo,” Nergal corrected with a pointed finger. “It’s the afterlife, but not hell as you might have heard of it.”
“So no eternal torment?” Kyle asked hopefully. Nergal blinked his beady eyes. Then he burst out laughing.
“Oh,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “There’s one class clown in every onboarding class. Lucky me.” He got the last laughs out of his system. “Oh, Kyle. This is HellCo. You’re here for eternity.”
He was in hell. HellCo. It didn’t matter the name. Kyle’s breathing came faster. He looked around the room, anything to get his mind off the beady eyes of the demon, but there was nothing he could focus on. It was so bland. So empty. The grey table, the beige carpet, the off-white walls. Back to the demon.
“The interested thing,” Nergal muttered, picking up his clipboard again, “is that HellCo is completely full. Like packed to the brim. We aren’t really accepting new hires.”
“Does that mean-”
“Nope, you’re still stuck here,” Nergal shook his head. “Can’t get out of it that easy. HellCo has been filled up since that pesky Industrial Revolution.” He pointed a finger up to the ceiling. “You humans really started to suck since then, you know? Union busting, insurance fraud, pollution. It’s funny. We actually started picking up a thing or two from you guys.”
Kyle didn’t know what to do. He nodded.
“Yeah, you get it.”
Nergal picked up the clipboard again flipped through pages until he got to some form. He pulled a red pen from his shirt pocket and bit the cap off, holding it in those pointed fangs.
“Well, let’s get the formalities out of the way,” he said past the pen cap. “Name?”
“Kyle.” Nergal looked at him for more. “Crowley. Kyle Crowley.”
Nergal’s beady eyes widened.
“Ah, now it all makes sense. You’re a Crowley. Gotcha.” Nergal scribbled some information on the form. “Remember how you died?”
Kyle couldn’t find his voice. He couldn’t remember. He wanted to gulp. He wanted to cry.
“Do you need a water?” Nergal offered. Kyle nodded quickly.
The demon got up from the chair, went to the cabinets near the chalkboard, and pulled out a bottle.
“They have Nestle water in Hell?” Kyle asked, graciously accepting the bottle and chugging it halfway down. Room temperature. Which, down here, was uncomfortably warm. Kyle would have accepted boiling water at this point.
“Of course,” Nergal said, falling back into his seat. “It’s Nestle. We carry most of their stuff here. We’re big fans.”
“So,” Kyle said, rejuvenated, “what’s next?”
“Well, Kyle,” he slapped his thighs and stood up. “Now, we just follow the forms.”
“For what?”
“Placement. I have a checklist. We’ll have to make some adjustments. Most departments are already overstaffed. But, the checklist has never let me down before. This bad boy,” he tapped at the clipboard, “is foolproof. We just go from the top of the checklist to the bottom. It’s all ordered so that you end up where you’re supposed it. Let’s get cracking.”
Kyle followed him out of the room, taking the final sips from his water. His foot caught on the leg of the chair and he tumbled forward, throwing water all over the seat of Nergal’s pants.
The demon stopped and slowly turned around. Kyle’s eyes were wide and he was already stammering an apology.
“Lovely,” Nergal sighed, rolling his eyes. “Let’s keep moving, shall we?”
“Well, most of the first options on our checklist were packed full,” Nergal said, guiding Kyle through more beige and off-white hallway. They passed various doors with labels on them. Accounting. Security. That room was dark. They didn’t pass anyone in the hallway, but Kyle tried to peek through the small window of each door. He saw more demons, all similar to Nergal, with different colors and style of horns. They passed one glass door that said Legal. There were so many demons in suits in the room that they were pushing against the glass door like a bug on a windshield. One lawyer wiggled its eyebrows at Kyle as he passed.
“Where are we going now?” Kyle asked. He had to jog to keep up with Nergal’s brisk walk.
“The cafeteria,” Nergal said, reaching a double set of doors and pushing through. They entered a large room with shag carpet floors and lunch tables lined up from wall to wall.
“Carpet in a cafeteria?” Kyle scoffed.
“This way,” Nergal said, ignoring his comment. They walked down an aisle between lunch tables, through a set of swinging doors, and into the kitchen.
The room was enormous. As far as the eye could see in any direction. It was a maze of stainless steel, chef hats, and the varying colors of demons. Every creature had a station and was hard at work.
The sounds of the kitchen put a primal fear in Kyle’s chest. Yelling, ripping, dishes clattering and shattering. The kitchen was a mess of demons, smoke, and chaotic movement. Nergal had to lean close and yell to be heard over the noises.
“This is the kitchen. I told you that every place was full, but I might be able to pull some strings here.”
Nergal walked off and Kyle followed, mostly out of fear of being left behind. A small, thin imp-looking demon swung from the roof of the ceiling on a rope, yelling at the demons it passed and collecting a series of angry gestures in return. Its eyes stuck on Kyle and it lost balance and tumbled to the ground. A splash of hot oil shot into the air and a nearby group of demons erupted into argument.
They passed grills and stoves, fryers and vats, dishwashers and steamers. Anything you could have imagined in a commercial kitchen was packed into this never-ending room. They turned left and right and left again, through intersections and alleys and streets of culinary chaos.
Another imp swung over him, making Kyle flinch down and out of the way. It was only now that he realized the kitchen extended up just as far as it extended any other direction. The imps across ropes and lines with spoons and ladles and ingredients. Some sort of delivery system.
“We’re looking for Melchom,” Nergal yelled over his shoulder, pulling Kyle from his crouch. “He keeps this place running smoothly.”
“This is smoothly?”
Another assortment of alleys and intersections and Nergal found who he was looking for. Melchom wasn’t like any of the demons that Kyle had seen so far. He wasn’t shaped in some sort of human-like form like Nergal. He was a massive beast. Like a gorilla, but hairless and red, swollen with muscle and ten feet tall. He had a white chef hat that gave him another couple of feet of height. Imps had to dodge around it while they swung through the air.
The gorilla-demon had a mess of different size bowls in front of him. They were all filled with different colors of goop. Kyle didn’t know a thing about cooking. He decided not to mention that to anyone.
“Melchom,” Nergal called out, putting his arms out wide like seeing an old friend. “It’s been a while.”
“No,” Melchom said without looking up, “go away, Nergal. I’m busy.”
“You’re always busy. I’ll be out of your hair, I mean,” he cleared his throat. “I’ll be out of your way in no time. I was just bringing in your newest recruit.” Nergal stood to the side and unveiled Kyle like he was a prize on some cheesy game show.
Kyle gave a little wave. Then, immediately regretted it.
Melchom looked him up and down and shook his head.
“We’re full, Nergal. You know that. It’s probably on your little papers,” he gestured with a spoon covered in yellow goop. “All full up. Have been for decades.”
“You’ve got to have a spot here for Kyle,” Nergal pleaded. “Kyle Crowley.” That made Melchom’s eyebrow arch. “That’s right. Finding a spot for him would probably earn you some point with the big man.”
Melchom’s nostrils flared. Nearby, a plate smashed, and he glared at the offending cook, a pink-skinned demon with a flat nose. Melchom reached to his table, picked up a spoon, and flicked it at the cook. The spoon sounded like a bullet, making everyone flinch. It went straight through the cook, leaving a spoon-shaped hole in the demon. Instead of bleeding, like Kyle feared, the demon started to deflate and wrinkle. It thrashed around; the clothes becoming too small on it. Then, an imp popped out of the clothes. It huffed and flared its nostrils before climbing up a nearby refrigerator and onto some dangling ropes.
“An opening?” Nergal asked with a smile.
“No,” Melchom snapped. Another demon was already taking over at the vacant station. “We’re full.”
The demons broke into an argument. Kyle wrung his hands and stepped away. It was so hot in here. And so loud. He could barely hear himself think. He couldn’t do much about the noise, but he’d feel better with another bottle of water. The argument heated up. Melchom gestured around with another goopy spoon, making Nergal dodge out of the way and rear back with his clipboard as if he was going to hit the ten-foot-tall gorilla demon. Then he thought better of it.
Kyle stepped away. He moved slowly and deliberately. Demons rushed around him carrying various dishes and ingredients. With all the commotion, Kyle couldn’t really tell what anyone was cooking. It was all more goop to him.
A girl, looking more human than demon, was whisking something in a big bowl. Kyle gawked at her. She wasn’t like the demons. She looked like him. Her skin had a pallid green color, but she had freckles on her arms and brown hair. Two little horns were just poking through the skin around her chef hat.
Kyle wanted to say something. He was surprised at how relieved he was to see someone who looked more human, more like him, than like a demon. Maybe there were more humans around.
But Kyle had never been good at breaking the ice with people. Even in hell, he couldn’t make himself talk to her.
There was a fridge nearby. Kyle looked over his shoulder at the girl and thought about asking if he could open it. Then he shrugged and reached for it anyway. Cool air wafted over him. It was like stepping into a cold pool on a hot day. He sighed and enjoyed the moment. A row of Nestle water at the top caught his eye, and he picked one out.
He shut the fridge door and chugged down half the water bottle. Maybe it wasn’t so bad here. The water was cold. Maybe he could whisk some goop. He stepped back, turning to the girl to ask a question about if she liked it here.
A demon tripped on him carrying some large platter. The blow knocked Kyle off-balance and he tried to catch himself. His water spilled across the floor, a puddle that covered the aisle. Another cook, moving from one workstation to another with a towering plate of layered jelly, slipped in the water. The plate, and the demon, crashed to the floor. Another slipped. Someone crashed against another fridge. It toppled over, knocking against the fridge behind it. It dominoed against another fridge.
Kyle slowly stood up as the crashing sound of kitchen equipment continued into the distance.
The kitchen, so loud before, came to a halt.
Everyone stared at him and his half-filled water bottle.
It was Melchom who broke the silence.
“Nergal,” he roared, “get your damned human out of my kitchen.” Nergal hid from the roar behind his clipboard and backed away slowly. He grabbed Kyle’s arm, searing him, and ran for the exit. Spoons spun through the air around them, pinging off of the counters and ovens with deadly pops.
“Not a big deal,” Nergal laughed, but it sounded like was trying to convince himself more than trying to convince Kyle. “We just move to the next things on the list. We had to skip these, we tried the kitchen, I know that these are completely packed. No chance there.”
They sat at a lunch table in the cafeteria. Kyle dug his toe against the shag carpet and watched the demon fidget. Nergal marked the form a couple times, scratching out a chunk of the departments on the sheet. It looked like he was supposed to just keep going down the list.
“Ah,” Nergal said in a chipper voice. “Here we go. IT. Information Technology. Are you good with computers, Kyle? I might be able to get us in there.”
“Um,” Kyle said, drawing the word out. “I mean—”
“Don’t worry about. I’m sure that they can teach you all that you need over there. You’ll have eternity, after all.”
Nergal stood from the lunch table and walked away at that same infuriating pace. Kyle scrambled to keep up.
“I feel bad for what I did back there,” he admitted to Nergal as they slipped out of the cafeteria and into the hallway again.
“Don’t be,” Nergal shrugged. “This kind of stuff happens. We can order replacements.”
“Order?”
“We get everything here from Amazon,” Nergal said, looking over this shoulder and winking. “The big guy over there cut a deal with our boss. Three-day shipping, no matter what.”
“Wow,” Kyle said, distracted by one of the upcoming doors. It was Security. They had passed it before. Kyle lingered a step to get a look through the little window. An enormous eye stared back at him, slitted and yellow, flecked with amber spots like a snake. He shivered and caught up with Nergal.
“Here we are,” the demon announced at an unmarked door. He brushed a hand through his hair and checked his breath. Then, with a flourish, flung open the door and stepped through.
Kyle followed and was surprised at the cool air conditioning in the room. It was comfortable. No, it was perfectly nice. The room was segmented into two parts. One part, the side opposite of the door, was separated by a wall of glass. Big metal boxes, flashing lights up each side, trailed cables that coiled on the ground like snakes. The rest of the room was fairly comfortable. There were two desks pushed against the walls and covered with tech. Piles of laptops, lobotomized desktop computers, and a laughable amount of monitors. Another desk was pushed against the glass wall. It was the only one that wasn’t covered in computer parts. It had one small machine on it.
Two women sat in the chairs. Each one fiddled with something on their laptops. They looked up when Nergal and Kyle entered.
“We’re busy,” the woman on the left growled. She had a husky voice and glared up at them with eyes of black. Not an iris or pupil in them. Just black. She had a short haircut and a trail of small horns above each eyebrow.
“Lilith,” the other girl chided. She sat at a desk that was just as messy as the other, but in a different way. The longer you looked at the mess on her desk, the more it made sense. The more that it seemed to have some kind of order to it.
“Don’t start with me, Prosperina,” Lilith grumbled, turning back to her laptop. She starting fiddling with it again. Kyle leaned forward to see what she was doing, but she angled her body to block his view.
“How can we help you?” Propserina said, putting her laptop down. She had long blonde hair and skin the color of a peach. Her horns were long and curled, poking out of her hair and curving back behind her. “And have you already submitted a ticket?”
“Oh, not here for that,” Nergal said, putting his hands up. “I actually have someone new here and I was hoping that you’d have room for him in IT.”
“Oh, really,” Prosperina said, clapping her hands and smiling. “How delightful.”
Lilith scoffed. Kyle didn’t think that he liked Lilith very much.
“Unfortunately, we’re full,” Prosperina sighed. “There’s only the two of us.”
“Two people in IT for all of hell?” Kyle asked.
“I know,” Prosperina said, shaking her head. “You’re telling me. But, there’s only two desks.”
“But—” Kyle started, pointing at the third desk against the glass wall.
“Don’t start with us about the other desk,” Lilith said, holding a finger up. She grumbled something and finally leaned back from her laptop. She tossed a little USB flash drive on the laptop and stretched her neck to the side with a series of cracks. “We know it’s there. But that’s where our tickets come in. That the ticket desk.” She said the last words with a stilted voice.
“You don’t think you could use another set of hands?” Nergal asked. He sounded dejected. Already turned away.
“I could help you plug the USB in,” Kyle offered, pointing at Lilith’s laptop.
She gave a look at Prosperina and burst into laughter. Lilith rocked back in her chair, holding her stomach as her whole body rocked. It seemed a bit excessive. What hurt more was the chuckle that Prosperina hid behind a curled hand.
“Okay, champ,” Lilith said, standing from her desk. She gestured for him to sit. When he took too long, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the chair. He could smell the singed hair from where her touch burnt his skin. “You get the USB in the laptop and you can have my spot here. Deal?”
He didn’t answer, feeling a trap.
“Make a deal or stop wasting my time,” Lilith growled. Her eyes, if it was even possible, darkened.
“Deal,” he grumbled. He was turning red. He knew it. His face burned even in the cool air of the room. He looked between Lilith, who sneered at him, and Nergal, who gave him a nervous thumbs-up. Prosperina watched from her desk, lounging back with a small smile.
Kyle picked up the USB drive and looked at it. It looked like a normal USB drive.
“What does it do?” he asked.
“Nevermind what it does—” Lilith started.
“It logs us into the laptops so we can start handling tickets,” Prosperina said, cutting her off. Lilith glared at her and she shrugged.
Kyle flipped the laptop around and went to insert the USB. It didn’t fit. He wiggled it around and tried again. He flipped it over. It didn’t fit. It must be the other way. He flipped it over. It didn’t fit. It must be the other way. He flipped it over.
“Okay, okay,” Prosperina said, standing up from her desk. “Don’t let him waste his time. He’s stuck in the loop.”
“I can get it,” Kyle muttered.
“You must be new here,” Lilith said, pulling him out of the chair and falling back into her spot. “This is HellCo, buddy. If it’s supposed to be easy, it ain’t.”
“Sorry,” Prosperina said, standing up and walking them back out the door. “We’re really busy.”
“But you aren’t even logged in to your computers,” Kyle said, his voice raising. The heat out here was immediately noticeable. He wanted to be back in there. He could plug a USB in. “You don’t even have tickets.”
“Good luck out there,” Lilith sneered. The door shut.
“Well, we knew that would be a long shot,” Nergal said, grimacing and marking things from his form. Kyle noticed that most of the form was scratched out now. There were just a couple things left at the bottom of the form.
“Does this form even work?” Kyle said, leaning against the wall.
“It’s never failed me before,” Nergal said with confidence. But his expression didn’t match the voice. His face was washed with worry.
“There’s a first time for everything,” Kyle grumbled.
“It’s foolproof,” Nergal responded with clenched teeth. “Come on. This one is going to sound weird. Just,” he sighed. “Just trust me.”
“CEO?” Kyle stammered.
They were in a conference room. Kyle had been given a white shirt and a blazer to change into. Someone had even come to the room and brushed at his hair, but Kyle knew from experience that it was a worthless cause.
“You said that you’d trust me,” Nergal sighed.
“I certainly did not say that.”
“It’s on the list.” Nergal tapped absently at the clipboard. “I made some calls and the current CEO wants to take a break. This could be your chance to really land in a cushy spot. You’d be the Chief Executive Officer,” Nergal said with a wild smile. “I mean, your name kind of helped us grease the wheels, but think about it!”
Kyle did like the sound of that, he had to admit. Bits and pieces of his life were coming to him now. He didn’t want to say it, but the furthest that Kyle ever got in a big company like HellCo was the front desk. And that was just when he was delivering food.
“What does a CEO do?” Kyle asked.
“That’s just it,” Nergal said, thumping him in the chest. “No one knows. It’s a mystery. They just talk in front of others and get paid a gazillion dollars. You’re basically a figurehead. It’s the easiest job in the world. You just talk and say the things that make the stakeholders happy.”
Kyle didn’t believe him.
“Look, here’s all you have to do.” Nergal moved to the conference table to a stack of notecards. While Kyle had been changing, Nergal was frantically scribbling on the cards. “I wrote down what you need to say on these notecards. You just have to go out there and read it.”
He pointed to the other side of the room at the door. The room was totally plain, but for the door they entered from, the conference table, and the other door. Kyle had a nervous feeling about that door. If a door could be ominous, then this one was.
He flipped through the cards and read the scratched writing.
“The core competency of HellCo is to employ blue sky thinking, increasing equity and EBITDA through disruptive thinking and synergistic planning?”
“Perfect!” Nergal said, clapping his hands. “Oh, wow, I think we can really pull this off.” He took a deep breath and nodded to Kyle. “Yeah, we can totally do this.”
Kyle didn’t feel the same confidence. He still didn’t quite know what was happening.
“Where am I supposed to read this?” he asked, wiping his brow. He was sweating so much in this blazer. He just wanted to rip it off. “I don’t follow.”
“Oh,” Nergal slapped his forehead. “Right. You’re new here. We have a town hall meeting every Wednesday where the CEO speaks. We say that it’s for everyone here at HellCo, but it’s really for the stakeholders.”
“Who are the stakeholders?”
“Right?” Nergal laughed. “You get it.”
“No, I don’t,” he grimaced. He was getting frustrated. He wiped his brow again. It really felt like he was pouring sweat. He wanted another water. “Just tell me. Who are they?”
“The stakeholders?” Nergal asked, still smiling. Then, when he realized Kyle wasn’t joking, his expression fell. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Kyle, what do you mean? We got this whole idea, this whole corporation thing, from you humans. The CEO? Synergy? That dumb notecard? Wearing a blazer? It’s all meaningless. You guys made it all up.”
“I don’t get it,” Kyle said.
“Yes, because there’s nothing to get,” Nergal groaned. “Who are the stakeholders? Who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? It’s just some boogeyman word that someone made up to blame corporate decisions on. Layoffs? The stakeholders made me do it. Working from home? The stakeholders won’t like that. The stakeholders, Kyle. It’s all meaningless. A facade. That’s why we took it and turned hell into HellCo. Up there,” he pointed above, “you work your whole life away for a group of people who toss you to the wind because of the stakeholders. The CEO is just a talking head for this same meaningless drivel. That notecard? I took that from the CEO of Boeing, verbatim. Read that card again and tell me that it means anything. I dare you. You can’t. It’s all bogus.
“But,” Nergal said, wagging his finger. “But, down here, you get to be CEO. You get all the benefits. Just go out there and read that card. Maybe you’ll find out that HellCo ain’t so bad when you’re on top.”
Kyle didn’t know what else to say. What else to do. He just sighed, wiped his brow again, and went to the door. He swung it open and stepped out into bright lights.
It was a stage. Kyle took little steps forward, putting his hand up to the glare. He couldn’t see very far off the stage, but he could tell that the room went on too far. It felt unnatural. He looked to each side of him. There was no one else on the stage with him. He stepped forward towards a lone microphone, fidgeting with the notecards as he walked.
A polite applause rippled out from the audience. The microphone was on a thin stand, the wire cage of the received bulged out at him like the eye of some metal bug. He tapped at the microphone to see if it was on and a squeal made him flinch.
“Sorry,” he said, causing another squeal. “Sorry.” Another squeal.
“Get on with it,” Nergal whispered from the doorway behind him. Kyle turned around and gave a little wave. When he turned back, the stack of notecards clipped the microphone stand. The cards tumbled to the floor and Kyle scrambled after them.
He cursed under his breath and wiped his forehead. He was drenched in sweat. Someone in the crowd coughed. He picked up one notecard, but the others were flat against the floor and he couldn’t get a hold. He stood up, ramrod straight, and tapped the microphone.
“It’s on,” Nergal hissed from behind, rubbing his hands down his face.
Kyle looked at his notecard. It was the same one from before. He blinked his eyes a few times, but everything still seemed blurry. He wiped at the pen on the card and the ink smeared even more. It was his sweaty hands.
Unsure of what to do, Kyle read the card as best he could.
“The core incompetency of HellCo is to avoid blue guy thinking,” Kyle stammered. “And to increase equality and Edna through disturbing drinking and energetic panting.”
The crowd was quiet. Then, a murmur of whispers turned into a roar. Laughter, cheering, booing, and jeering. It all turned into a wall of sound.
“Get back here,” Nergal hissed, waving for Kyle to come back. A chair came hurtling out of the dark, smashed into the stage. Kyle ran.
Back in the conference room that he started in, Kyle peeled himself off of the table. He was sweatier than before. Damp all over. He wanted more water, but there wasn’t any. Nergal, sitting across from him, looked at the clipboard with exasperation.
“It’s never failed me before,” he muttered.
“You keep saying that.”
“It’s always been true.” He took a deep breath and ran his fingers across the page again. “We’ve looked at every department. Every job. They’re all full.”
“You could always send me to the other side,” Kyle chuckled weakly. “Over to heaven.”
“Har har,” Nergal grimaced. “Like I haven’t heard that before.” He switched to a mocking voice. “This isn’t fair. I don’t belong here. I belong at the other place, on the other side,” he trailed off. His brow wrinkled.
“What is it?”
“The other side,” Nergal whispered. He flipped the page of the clipboard, turning the whole thing around to see the back of the paper.
“Is there something?”
“There is,” Nergal said, jumping out of his seat. “I’ve never had to check the back of it.”
Nergal pulled the paper from the clipboard and flipped it around so that Kyle could see. There was one small line of text at the top. One lonesome line of ink.
“What does it say?” Kyle asked.
“Kyle Crowley,” Nergal said, breaking into a laugh. He stuck his hand out and pulled Kyle out of the chair with a handshake. “You might not have fit in anywhere else, but we forgot the final department. The place where for people who can’t do anything else.” He slapped Kyle on the shoulder.
“Welcome to middle management!”
