by what he saw: his eyes had a wild look to them and were tinged in red, his rumpled suit had certainly seen better days, and his hair, usually so perfectly coiffed, was a rat's nest. No wonder he made the man so nervous.
“You'll have to forgive my appearance,” he said, “I'm usually more put together than this. I just had a bit of an ordeal with the elevator...” An ordeal? Perhaps more than that, he thought to himself, digging in his briefcase to find the neat stack of contracts he needed.
“Oh, of course,” the man's tone said he didn't quite believe Mr. Leron, but he was willing to oblige him, within reason, “Those old elevators can be rather treacherous.” Mr. Leron started to tell him more about it, about the shooting flight up, and the hideous fall, but thought better of it. After all, how dangerous could it have been if he was there, undamaged, worrying about contracts and deadlines?
The man had sat at his desk, his back to the door, and began to go over the paper's Mr. Leron proffered. “This all seems quite standard,” he mumbled, almost to himself.
“Oh, yes, quite standard. Just needs a signature.” A bubbling fountain opened up in Mr. Leron, a sensation of giddy joy he'd forgotten himself capable of. Finally, he task was to be completed. The feeling welled up, and he had to bite a fist to suppress a sudden laugh. He was certain he was going mad.
The man kept his nose buried in the contracts. “Yes, and there's just one thing I need.” His face swung up to look into Mr. Leron. Immediately, the elation he felt sank. The horror was not to end so easily!
“A-An-And, what is that?” Mr. Leron voice came out a squeak. His lip quivered.
“A pen. Might you have one? I seem to have misplaced mine.” An embarrassed blush colored the man's cheeks.
Mr. Leron could have cried with relief. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath. “Please, do,” he said, reaching into his briefcase again to retrieve a little pen with a silver leaf on the clip that he kept within.
The man signed, handed Mr. Leron's pen back, and, using a stamp, certified the papers. “There you are. All in order.”
Mr. Leron thanked him again, tucking the contracts and pen safely away into his case before the man ushered him toward the door.
He turned in the doorway. “Thank you again. You have no idea what a relief it is to have this over and done with. I'll get out of your hair so you can close up.”
“Oh, I'm not on my way quite yet,” said the man, a strange, uncomfortable grin on his face, “A few things to tidy up first.”
Mr. Leron stood perplexed as the man shut the door, locked it, and went back to his desk. He was moving oddly, in a stiff, almost mechanical manner. He had been closing up before, and had nothing in front of him at the desk where he now sat, staring down. Mr. Leron looked up, and into the mirror on the opposite wall, at himself. Of course, he thought, a self-deprecating smile forming, if he closed up now, he'd have to leave with me. I certainly wouldn't want someone as crazy looking as myself for company. He ran his left hand through his hair, and turned to press the elevator call button.
He hand stopped in mid action, his finger resting on the button without depressing it. Did he really want to go through that hell again? But the elevator had brought him to where he'd needed to go; maybe his imagination had exaggerated the experience. Fear could do that sort of thing, or so he'd heard. He steadied himself, pressed the button. Immediately, the door sprang apart. Mr. Leron marveled: the interior was as pristine and warmly inviting as it had looked when he'd stepped in on the ground floor.
“My imagination,” he said aloud, for the benefit of his unsteady mind. He felt the embarrassment of recollecting the terror of a nightmare in the sunshine. Stepping on, he was faced with another dilemma: the faceless buttons. He considered them for a second, then hastily pressed what he supposed to be the bottommost one.
The doors closed, dinged and reopened. Mr. Leron was faced with the office he'd just left. He blinked; obviously, there was some inordinate manner in which these buttons where arranged. He tried pressing another. The doors closed, and the car began to move. He smiled, tried to force himself to remain calm as the lights began to flick on and off at random again. Everything is perfectly normal, he told himself, So they have a screwy button panel. So what? Must be quite difficult on the employees. When he felt the elevator begin to slow, he had to remind himself that that was what was supposed to happen.
The doors opened, and there was the Office of Interior Affairs in front of him.
Mr. Leron's facade started to crack. He chewed his lip. His eyes darted left, then right. He scratched at the injury on his right hand. This was becoming more than he could bear. He pressed another button, three more, at the same time. Again the doors closed, and he felt the car descend – at a normal speed – but when they opened again, he hadn't gone anywhere. He pawed at the buttons, took several trips on the malicious elevator, pacing back and forth as he felt it go down, down, down. But each time, all that he found when it opened was the same door, with his own panicked reflection beyond.
Finally, he dashed from the elevator, looking around wildly, nails digging into the back of his right hand, desperate to feel something other than desperation. He spotted the door marked stairs, tore it open and bounded down them two, three at a time. He was several floors down when his left hand, slick with sweat and blood from the reopened wound on his right, skidded with a burning squeal and he tumbled to a stop at one of the doors along the stairwell. Rising gingerly, he found he could not place much weight on his left ankle. Bitter tears had begun to flow down his face.
He went through the door he'd fallen before. Maybe the elevator would work from this floor. But when he looked up all he saw was the same hall with the same office door in it. Wanting, needing the familiarity to be false, he ran to the door, and saw with horror the fellow from the Office of Interior Affairs seated at his desk facing away from the door. He looked at the mirror along the wall to try and catch his gaze only to find the man's reflection was already looking him in the eye.
He pounded his right fist on the door, droplets of blood from his worsened scrape spattering the glass. The man did nothing. He screamed for help, yet the man sat, his arms on the desk in front of him and watched Mr. Leron in the mirror. He wept, knocking his fist against the glass more slowly as hope drained away. He watched as the man's hand rose and dropped in rhythm with his own, knocking on the desk before him at the same moment Mr. Leron knocked on the window. He looked again into the reflection of the man's eyes to see a wicked smile on his face. His gaze traveled higher to look into his own eyes in the mirror and saw the same smile there. Turning stiffly, he strode evenly to the elevator. The doors were already open.
He got on board, turned his new smile to the buttons. Spreading his hands, he ran them slowly, luxuriantly along the panel, feeling an electric rush as each went alight for him. The doors shuddered a little as they shut, communicating the intensity of the experience for the car, an intensity he felt too. It was a sensation that blocked out all others, the fear, the panic, even the ache in his protesting ankle, the sharp sting of pain from his dripping right hand...
He brought the hand up to his mouth, sank his teeth into the torn edge sensually and pulled. The skin came away with a cool, freeing feeling, as though the rough, calloused flesh underneath had never know the gentle caress of the air. The impulse to know such a sensation over every inch drove him to grab and tear away at the edges, more and more quickly, a new sense of frenetic need. Soon he stood, liberated from the prison of Mr. Leron's covering, a new squat creature, with a wide, reptilian grin. He gathered Mr. Leron's crumpled clothes, used them to wipe the gory remnants of that other man from his newly unveiled skin. He reached into the briefcase, retrieved his neatly folded coat, perhaps a bit over-sized, but it would hide his magnificent, deformed flesh from prying eyes. Finding his wide-brimmed hat, and he had to work for several minutes to smooth out the wrinkles before placing it on his head, turning up the coat collar to make a shield around his stran
ge, inhuman face.
He went to toss the briefcase aside, into the pile in the corner that represented all that was left of poor, perpetually-rushed Mr. Leron, when the light glinted off something metallic in it's depths. Reaching in, his thick fingers came back bearing the pen with the silver leaf on the clip Mr. Leron had kept in it. He brought it before his eyes, threw the briefcase aside, and grabbed the leaf clip, twisting it up, making it into the small, cruel little blade on the end of a long handle he needed to complete his task.
The elevator dinged and he strode out, walking quickly, but with purpose. The gruff guard smiled and averted his eyes at his passing, in awed reverence. He went out the door, down the street, turning here, there, and, finding a spot out of the way of the crushing multitude of pedestrians, waited. Soon, a figure came to the corner he was watching: a tall figure in a meticulous suit, thin, and moving with a rushed urgency, a tastefully understated briefcase in his right hand. He was waiting impatiently to cross the street, checking his watch in some desperate hope