Falling Over

by James Everington

  He sat at his desk and watched the ‘new boy’.

  It wasn’t just that he looked like Jay Neuworth – he moved like him too. He moved in a way that was seemingly indolent, but also suggested speed and aggressiveness were there if needed, like a slow throw-back, a reptile. The boy didn’t blink enough, despite the fact that light was battering against the windowed walls. There was a faint noise of alarm from the manager’s computer as he made these observations, a reminder for a management meeting three floors down.

  He watched how the other temps interacted with the ‘new boy’ too, after all it was conceivable that some of them had been Jay’s friends. Surely they would notice? He didn’t know which ones to watch, didn’t understand the friendships and rivalries among his team, but none of them appeared to be acting in anything other than a natural way around the new boy.

  During the course of his observations he noticed some of his staff committing acts that were against company rules – one looking at a website while she should have been working, one who blatantly had twice as many fag breaks as anyone else, one who just sat and stared out the window without working for minutes at a time... No one could complain if he sacked them (the new boy didn’t put a foot wrong). He did the sackings face to face, in his small office, rather than just calling the employment agencies, and he made the sub-managers attend too. It was strangely calming, it reassured him that he could actually influence reality, rather than just watch its patterns and jumps in front of him.

  Still, every time he went into his office to fire someone he noticed how much it was moving, how much the building moved. He had never realised tall buildings could move before, with the wind, with the tremors. He noticed the movement out in the open plan part of the office too, but out there it was like being on a ferry in a rough sea; in his office it was like being in a dingy. Even the vibrations from his ringing phone seemed to set the movement off – he switched it to silent.

  One boy actually cried when they sacked him. The manager felt a moment’s pride as he watched the idiot scuttle away to collect his things and say his goodbyes. All the other temps were watching him out of the corners of their eyes. Including him, with the coldly amused eyes of someone who had just seen yet another arrow fall short of its target.

  “I’m going for a piss,” he said, not even aware that he had spoken aloud. The two sub-managers glanced at each other. The manager stood still for a few seconds longer, then walked off.

  It took a long time for him to relax and to be able to piss. He was in one of the cubicles, and there was a draft around his ankles, because the cubicle wall didn’t reach to the floor. The sliding bolt to lock the cubicle had a screw loose and was almost hanging off – it all seemed very fragile. He sighed and felt the movement of the air shuddering out of his body. He closed his eyes, listened to the welcome silence.

  The door to the toilet opened and he heard shuffling footsteps on the other side of the cubicle wall. The manager blinked and his trickle of coffee-clear pee dried up. He heard a cough, them someone spitting phlegm into a urinal. He heard unzipping then a stream of piss – something marking its territory, he thought.

  He told himself that of course there was no way of knowing who it was; and even if he did know what did it matter? Still, he hugged his knees up to his chest, so that his feet wouldn’t be visible in the gap beneath the cubicle wall.

  The sound outside stopped and he heard someone zipping themselves up. Then they moved to the sinks, which were even closer to his cubicle – he almost flinched in physical aversion to the person just a few meters away. He heard the sound of someone washing their hands, then the sound of the automatic hand drier – a roaring, wind-like noise that hid any sounds of the person moving outside. His heart faltered then sped up. The sound of the drier was on for a long time, then stopped. There was no noise from the other side of the cubicle. The person must have left. Still, the manager wasn’t sure that he wanted to unlock the door quite yet. For some reason he had the fear that he would throw open the door and see a slightly different world, or a different face in the mirror. But gradually he relaxed. He put his aching legs back on the ground.

  Suddenly the door to the toilet cubicle shook, rattling on its hinges. Someone was shaking it from outside, trying to get in! His mind convulsed and stammered the three syllables of Jay Neuworth’s name. He shrank back on the toilet and gave a cry of fear. The door rattled again, and the screw holding the bolt in place became even looser. Not that it mattered, for there was splintering wood around the other screws too: one way or the other it was getting in...

  The rattling stopped as suddenly as it had started. He remained still with his trousers around his ankles, but he didn’t hear anyone walking away.

  ~

  The e-mail was dated four days previous, and from his manager. The title of it was Re Our Previous Talk but he hadn’t yet opened it to read the contents. Before he finally did so he looked around, to make sure no one was behind him, watching. For he felt that there was, and worse than watching, they were moving forward with palms raised...

  The first thing he noticed about the mail was that it had been sent out to his sub-managers too. The sight of their names irritated him, and he looked around again. Then he read the mail, and he couldn’t believe it. The phrases swam before his tired eyes:

  ...obviously out of touch with your staff, old and new, since your absence... after what has happened, team spirit needs to be rebuilt and that is your... a team nigh out... out of the budget... For all three of the senior members of the team, attendance is of course required. The date for the proposed night out was four days after the mail had been sent; the night was tonight.

  The manager stood up, and felt his vision waver. He laid a hand against the office wall to steady himself, and felt it vibrate under his trembling palm. Outside, the wind howled; a siren sound raced far below him...

  ~

  Then someone had pointed upwards, and screamed.

  He turned to look. His eyes travelled up the office block, looking for flames or billowing smoke, looking for a red sky lit behind, heralding disaster. But its walls and windows were as grey and meaningless as ever, and his eyes strained over its dull surface looking for something that might have caused someone to cry out like that. The screaming continued behind him, but he saw just the building stark and sharp-edged against the clear blue. But then his gaze swung right to the very top, above the twelfth-floor windows, to the roof, and he saw what he had been looking for.

  And here it had started, for the building started swaying in his vision.

  At the top of the building was a figure. And the manager took an involuntary step backwards, for it felt like he was on the roof and looking down... But instead, the figure was looking down, and it was familiar to him. He could see the slouched posture, the lank hair being whipped by the wind into an unruly and wavering mane. He didn’t know exactly who it was, but he knew it was someone for whom he was responsible. The screams and shouts increased; the manager could sense movement and sounds of fear behind him.

  How had Jay got up there? By one of the fire-escapes? Of course, the manager thought with an odd calmness, he had opened one of the fire-doors to get up there, and that was what had set off the alarms. What was he doing up there? Logically, he could be preparing to unfurl an anti-CO2 banner or make some other kind of protest, and part of him was yet again planning to call the temp agency... But equally, the part of him that was absorbing all the fear and panic of those behind him knew this was no protest. And this double-vision of the brain persisted even as the figure took its first step towards the edge of the building.

  It took three steps – they didn’t appear to be dramatic or decisive, just shuffles, like someone dawdling to a job that they didn’t like, and then the figure was falling. Just three everyday steps, and the figure had looked behind him whilst taking the last one... As easy as walking into the road looking in the wrong direction. The figure had been up on the roof for only a few moments; no
t long enough for the firemen to be halfway there; not long enough for any negotiations or explanations. The boy’s fall seemed drawn out and insidious, falling in the manager’s vision slowly and even lazily. There seemed to be little momentum; the fall didn’t seem irredeemable but something that could be reversed even at this late stage.

  And then the boy hit the ground and then there was very little left to see. Time sped up again. The firemen rushed forward, both blocking his view of what now lay on the pavement, and turning to avoid seeing it themselves. How dare he? he thought idiotically. The manager stepped backwards, and almost tripped. His clipboard fell to the floor. Turning around, he found that it was his manager that he had backed into. She had been looking at him; they had all been looking at him, his sub-managers and the whole pack of the rest of them, swaying in his vision like landmarks glimpsed from sea. He had wanted to look away from everyone, but the clear and bright day that engulfed him when he did so had been somehow worse....

  Attendance is of course required, he thought, with his hand against the office wall. So that was when it would happen, whatever ‘it’ was. He walked out his small office and looked at the ‘new boy’; and Jay Neuworth looked back at him with the same blank look in his eyes that he must have had falling... The manager went back into his own office, and tried to work late.

  ~

  Instead he looked out the window at the city below him which seemed to grow sharper in his vision as he watched – the light from the setting sun was clear and highlighted the differences between things, the jagged edges. It was like looking down from cliffs to the rocks below. I’m on the top-floor, he thought, Jay was on the roof. It’s pretty much the same view.

  It took an effort of will to draw the blind and turn away. He heard the temps and the rest of the staff leave, but he stayed hours after that, managing not to work. He left the building to go straight to the team night out, still wearing his creased and inappropriate day clothes, the company swipe-card the manager needed for access still clipped to his belt.

  A team night out? His mind felt incredulous at the suggestion. It couldn’t be that he was going to spend voluntary time with his staff. He barely knew them after all; and more than that, the new boy might be there, that skin-crawling doppelganger...; he should just go home, but his mind felt incredulous at that suggestion too: your attendance is of course required etc. ...He went out into the evening light still not knowing exactly what was awaiting him, which punishment he would choose. The streets seemed crazed, the traffic murderous. People dashed to cross the road at the scantest opportunity, while he scuttled back and forth across the curb not daring to cross. It was a new fear for him, of stepping out into the road; the green man took an age coming and people walked passed him and dodged traffic, except for the old who muttered beside him. When he crossed he felt as slow as them, and felt too like he only just made it across before the lights changed and the engines revved. It didn’t help that while he had been waiting to cross it had felt like something was urging him, almost pushing him, forward. Just a few steps. The streets felt crazed; but he realised they had always been like this, too.

  He noted his destination with blank surprise – so he had been heading here, after all. In front of him, across another treacherous road, was an ugly modern building, all fragile glass it seemed, containing gyms, multiplexes, bars. Even from this distance he could see the innards, the people inside. When he finally entered, he found that the bar that he wanted was on the third floor, and he had to get an escalator which was glass sided and at a steep incline. It felt like it was tipping backwards and he felt sick; his vision bobbed and doubled as if he were already drunk. When he reached the third floor and headed towards the bar the manager felt like the escalator was still carrying him forwards.

  Sunlight – the bar had, of course, huge glass windows to share the view of cambered rooftops and climbing spires. He closed his eyes instantly, but red and green shapes like another reality danced behind his eyelids when he did. His ears detected a phantom rattling; he felt he could feel the wind blowing through the windows. Was it really only three stories up? Had he really come to this bar at all? In another universe, he thought, I went home and never came here.

  In amid the doubling shapes of evening light that baffled his vision, people were beckoning him – he didn’t know their names. Out of work the temps looked different, dressed funny and with uninhibited faces. His sub-managers were sitting in among them, with the same naked smiles, no doubt encouraging insurrection. But the manager didn’t care for he saw that the new boy wasn’t there and it didn’t matter that his senses were telling him that there was someone behind him reaching out because there wasn’t and...

  There was a tap on his shoulder. He gave a little cry, turned around. He was so used to seeing Jay everywhere that when he saw him his mind waited for the face to dissolve into someone else, before realising that that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Drink?” said the new boy. “My shout?” His voice was exactly the same as Jay Neuworth’s slurred voice, and full of threat. The manager took a step backwards, away, into the sunlight that was pouring through the windows. People were looking at him. Behind the new boy he saw his manager come into the bar, dressed as straight-laced as ever; she paused, searching for a second, then headed towards him.

  “Drink?” the boy repeated stubbornly.

  He wondered why, since he had spent the last few weeks looking for Jay Neuworth everywhere, he had never given a thought to the circumstances of his life, only the manner of his death.

  “Bitter?” he managed, his voice a strangulated gasp. “Bitter?” The new boy gave a smile – “Yes,” he said, “bitter” – and headed away towards the bar.

  The manager felt trapped – he didn’t want to sit down , for he felt if he did then the temps on the sofa would pen him in, keep him pressed down if he needed to rise urgently. Instead he remained standing, pretending to look around the bar; a nerve jumped in his eye. The bar was modishly characterless, glass-top tables lit up like mirages in the sun from the large windows; the bar itself set back in the murk. He could hear the new boy talking to the barmen there but couldn’t make out the words. To the right of the bar, also in the dark light, were three doors: Ladies, Gents and...

  “Nice to see you here,” his manager said; she had somehow moved right behind him without him noticing. He felt like reality kept twitching and changing with no prior warning. As he traded polite clichés with his manager, he felt like he was in fact saying something else, to a different person.

  “You’ve obviously had a few before you came here,” his manager said, with a professional expression of humour and tolerance. But she sniffed as if she could smell the alcohol on him – when he hadn’t even had a single drink yet! The thought reminded him that the boy – that Jay – would be returning from the bar soon.

  “Excuse me,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry.” I have to get out of here, he thought. The new boy was handing money over at the bar... The manager turned and hurried towards the door marked Gents.

  The window was open in the toilets (which were about three times the size of his office) and he could feel the cool air creeping in; hear the sounds of the city below him. He didn’t know why he had come in here, it was nothing more than a temporary reprieve. A hot terror was rising in him; he stuck his head under the tap but the water was warm and didn’t wash away the feeling. The mirror in front of him was cracked and doubled his reflection; made him think someone else had entered the gents behind him. He turned around, his eyes blind and full of water, and walked directly through the space where he’d thought he’d seen someone. In another universe, he thought, I never came here, and this isn’t happening.

  He exited the toilets cautiously. Looking around he couldn’t see the boy anywhere: not at the bar, not sitting in among his colleagues. The temps were silhouetted against the window; his manager was standing to one side and looking at him. The feeling that he had to leave before he did something terrib
le increased. Where was the new boy? He looked to his left, at the signs on the other two doors: Ladies and Fire Exit. Only to be Opened in Emergencies.

  Until he pushed the bar to open the door, he hadn’t realised his exit would set off the building’s alarms. The familiar sound caused him to pause – he was still on the verge of being able to claim it was an accident, to go back and sit down. But the pause was mental only, like the gap between jumping and landing, because he was already rushing down a rickety metal fire-escape. The ground looked a thing impossible to reach; the view was like he was falling. The alarm rang above his head, and he heard noises of protest, the beginnings of pursuit. As he fled down the fire-escape his steps were panicked, but cautious, like an old man’s, shaking as the metal shook beneath him. Even when he set foot on solid ground it seemed to be shaking.

  There was an angry shout above him – he looked up and saw a black figure looking down at him. He could see nothing more because of the white light above him. The manager lowered his gaze and quickly looked around his surroundings.

  The alleyway was a dark, hot corridor, between what seemed to be two walls of light at either end. The way back to his house was to the right; so was the sun and the still blue sky. Turning left was darker. Above him he heard the fire-escape start to rattle again, whether with the wind or because someone was coming down after him he didn’t know. He turned left, and ran.

  There was a road at the end of the alley and he found his fear of traffic returning. There was nowhere to cross, and the traffic seemed a constant flow, a tidal movement of speeding metal (it didn’t occur to him why he wanted to cross, why he didn’t just turn left or right and flee along the pavement). But concurrent with his fear was the feeling of someone pushing him, urging him forwards into the road...