Pandora-X2\N4 and other short stories

The world was full of bizarre jobs, but I think that the one I was about to enlist for was the most absurd and terrifying in the whole universe. I was a recent graduate who could not find work in the field of my studies and I was desperately looking for a way to achieve the economic independence I longed for. Surfing the net, through a banner, I spotted a mysterious job that intrigued me. The ad was brief, written in standard fonts and without pictures; nevertheless, I was struck by its text: “We are searching for attentive, scrupulous and fearless people for a job of fundamental importance to the security of the planet.” Wow! Seriously? The SECURITY of our planet? I immediately filled out the form and, unlike the other online profiles I had filled before, I was linked to another website to take some SATs. The website was as simple as the notice, it looked like a Word file, but it included hundreds and hundreds of questions: closed-ended, open-ended, displaying of images and videos… It seemed to be a very serious and detailed inquiry. The weirdest thing, looking back, is that I can not recall any of the questions or the content of the website, however, I distinctly remember thinking that it was a huge and highly sophisticated psychological test. It lasted several hours, I am sure about that. I started it late in the afternoon and ended it late at night, overwhelmed and exhausted. The next morning I was awakened by a Skype call on the computer I had left on; I rushed to my desk to answer: it was the Head of the Human Resources of the company who had submitted that ad. I had entered my account in the subscription form, but I had not accepted nor entered anybody else in my Skype contacts. That was funny. It was not time to think about such things, anyway. I rubbed my face in the first wrinkled piece of clothing I found in my room, to wipe the night sweat off and recover some semblance of professionalism. The interview was even stranger than the SATs: the person I talked to was standing in dim light, inside a dusty and crumbling room; he was wearing a dark green uniform and a beret and he was speaking with a distinct soviet accent. I thought that he was a man who had great responsibilities and that I had to impress him at any cost.

I remember hanging up towards the evening, so the interview must have lasted an eternity. It is a mystery why I do not remember anything from such a long conversation, but it is not the most mysterious thing I am going to tell you, that is for sure. The next morning I received an e-mail with all the instructions to get to my new workplace: they had hired me. The hardest thing was telling my parents and my friends that on that very same night I would leave for the former Soviet Union for a top-secret job I had been hired from on the internet. I think that 90% of the people wondered if I were an idiot and if I had not watched the dozens of horror films set in the middle of nowhere, beginning just like that. They even told me that I was not allowed to whine if I ended up inside a psycho’s lab, since I had been warned about that. Comforting words, indeed. But at that moment I had nothing on my mind except a wish to leave. Maybe that long enlistment test and that weird interview had instilled something that manipulated my brain? I can not tell, I just know that I had never been so enthusiastic in my whole life. I left and followed all the directions to my new workplace.

I found myself in a Latvian town, in a relatively new complex of buildings. I was given a duffel bag, with a deep red uniform and a number on it, some paperwork, and other necessities. Then I was loaded on a military-derived truck from which I could not see the outside and finally fetched to the workplace. It was a four-hour journey during which the idea of the psycho’s lab kept going round and round in my head. What was I thinking? Only a fool would do all of this. Luckily, before fear took over me, the truck stopped and they got me off. I was greeted by a young, blonde woman with wonderful light-blue eyes, something that clashed with the landscape behind her: a filthy and rusty metal bar led to a complex of crumbling and ruined buildings, kept under surveillance from an exceptionally tall boundary wall, adorned by razor wire, where some heavily armed soldiers were swearing and spitting on the ground. Looking at Irina’s pearly-white smile, I kept wondering if that was the real world or some sort of dream. The woman did not stop asking questions about me to get to know me better.

When I found out that my room was opposite hers, I felt relieved, I loosened up a bit and I started to get closer to her. She was a woman of my age, but she had been there for a longer time, approximately five years. Apparently, that site had existed for twenty years, but, currently, she was the person who had managed to remain the most time within it and she had become a sort of mentor for the newcomers. Was five years the maximum time somebody could resist there? Perhaps I was not ready to do what I had to do. After dining together we retired to our rooms.

I was about to fall asleep in the darkness of my room when Irina knocked at my door and gave me a bracelet. She told me that it belonged to a very special person, somebody who had worked there long ago and that the small conversation we had had for the few hours we spent together, made her realize that I was the one who had to keep it. I admit, I should have questioned things, but seeing Irina in skimpy pajamas while she was giving me something, looking at me straight in the eyes, got me flustered and I could not pronounce a single word. I was stunned, I barely pronounced a “thanks a lot”. She realized everything, since she smiled at me and she turned around to go back to her room; her seductive gait increased my confusion.

The day after, Irina and I went to the place where I would perform my tasks. Then she delivered me into the hands of some frowning soldiers, who made me sit and watch a training video on a projector. The title read “Project Pandora-X2\Site N4”. What followed was the most absurd thing I could have ever imagined in my whole life. My duty was to sit in a chair for ten hours. At the stroke of each hour, a siren would sound and, for exactly four minutes, I would have to observe what was happening in the next room, through a peephole placed on a door in front of me. When the siren stopped, I would have to get away and sit again. Whatever was happening inside that room, it was of vital importance that I never looked away, in any circumstances. What was taking place beyond that door could not hurt or harm us in any way. On the other hand, looking away could have caused terrible damage to the world population, meaning the end of the world we know. My perplexity was evident, I thought it was a joke, but the seriousness with which those soldiers were looking at me inside that dilapidated closet, made my heart go down my throat. I broke into a cold sweat.

“What… What do you see through the peephole?”

“You’ll see.” They answered, and they led me towards the main hall. It was old and stinky, the wooden floor was rotten, and so were the doors. The chairs were made of steel and I could see four doors, placed in a strange wall, which was not straight but made of different sides, one for each door, as if it was part of a much larger facility, which spread beyond the room we were staying in. They immediately put me to relieve a young man sitting on the right. He was pale, he seemed to have lost his hair recently, and he was skinny as a rail. He looked ill.

“All clear, I hope. You don’t want to break the world, right?” Said the soldier looking at me.

I answered “All clear” and I sat down.

“To go to the bathroom, to eat, drink and everything else organize yourself with the others and with the guys at the back of the room; remember, you must be here when the siren goes off. It’s not a tough job, make sure you do it right.” And he went away.

After a few minutes of embarrassing silence, one of the other guys asked me what my name was and we started a conversation. I relaxed a bit, but shortly after something came to my mind.

“Guys, if we talk, don’t we risk forgetting to watch? Can we hear the siren?”

The guy from the other side burst out laughing.

“Don’t worry, when it sounds, you’ll hear it.”

After a little while, a deafening sound made me jump out of the chair, and an intense red light pervaded the whole room. It sounded like an alarm of war, it was terrifying. The mere sound caused me indescribable fear and restlessness. I looked at the others, who nodded at me and gave me thumbs up to boost me. I got close to the peephole. I was frightened, but I was in a rush to watch for fear of the consequences. I leaned my face on the wet, wooden door in front of me and I watched for four minutes. I saw nothing. It was all dark and I realized I was watching another room just because I was able to glimpse a ray of dim light on the floor, which appeared to be made of wood. After the siren went off I sat down.

“So, are you all right?” Asked the guy who was closer to me. The one who was laughing from the other side of the room had fallen silent and looked scared.

“The room is empty…”I answered tentatively. “The room…” but the third guy stopped me immediately: “Didn’t you watch the video? You must NEVER talk about what you see in there… to anyone…it’s vital.”

I turned deathly pale. I had assumed that the starting point where everybody had to watch was a room. I was so wrong… in any case, I learned the lesson and the day went on in the same way for ten hours. I befriended Mark, Julius, and Henry, who would be my “colleagues” from that moment on.

The first weeks went by and I saw nothing but an empty room. My mates were watching something completely different, I supposed, because they looked disturbed, upset, or frightened by what they were viewing. It did not happen every time, just every now and then. The thing that impressed me the most was seeing Julius clinging to the door, vomiting profusely, making inhumane noises, while he was attached to the peephole. It was a really disturbing scene, luckily, I noticed it out of the corner of my eye, and I eavesdropped on his moans, since I had to stay attached to the door.

That day he remained silent for the remaining eight hours, he went to the bathroom occasionally during the breaks, presumably to vomit one more time, and he had me worried sick. What terrible things could have he been watching? And in case it occurred to me, would I be able to watch?

That night I spoke about it to Irina. We had become friends after all, and since we were next-door neighbors, we often ended up spending some time together. It was strange because in a godforsaken place like that you could not dine in a fancy restaurant or have a coffee in a chic bar to impress a girl, so I simply thought of being myself and living my crazy adventure at best, without worrying too much. She was gorgeous, playful and easy-going, therefore, besides spending time together because I genuinely liked her, I would spend my evenings with her happily, because she was able to change my surreal days with a fair amount of cheerfulness and pragmatism. We used to watch TV, play cards or play with an old console of video games she kept in her room. That day I needed to talk about what had happened. She explained to me that before her current management role, she had performed the same job and that she knew well how we felt. She told me that when the day I felt like Julius would finally come, she would stay by my side, but she implored me to remind to NEVER tell her a word about what I was seeing.

“It’s horrible, I know, but it’s a burden we must keep to ourselves, for good. That’s why we are here.” She came closer to me and she hugged me tightly. It was the first time it had happened, and her perfume inebriated me to the point that instead of being sad for the uncertain future waiting for me, I was happy like never before. How strange life is.

Another week went by and finally, I began to see something beyond the peephole. I said finally because the tension and the fear of what I could see were consuming me from the inside, even if, today, I regret my anxiety to see what was waiting for me. I started to notice weird shadows moving on the floor, where the wood could be visible in the dim light, infiltrating from who knows where. The shadows were fast and sneaky, they were moving spasmodically. It went on like this for three days. Then, the morning of the fourth day, I flinched. Suddenly a candle was lit in the back of the room. Then another and another one: apparently they lit on by themselves. The room was as I had imagined: small, rotten, and empty, with only a steel chair in the middle. The candles remained lit all day, they seemed to never consume. Then, at the last shift, the last time I had to watch before the end of my ten working hours, something that should not take place happened: I watched inside the room and I saw a person tied to the chair, bound and gagged. Judging from what he was wearing he looked like a manager: suit and tie, leather shoes, and a stylish cut. He had a showy stain of blood on the chest as if someone had punched him and the blood had dripped up to his shirt, but his face did not seem to be tumefied or swollen. What the hell was going on? I looked at the whole room to figure out where the door from which he could have come in was. There were no other doors, but, since the last time, I had not gone away. Where had he come in? Was this my actual job, perhaps? To monitor prisoners, possibly prisoners of war? Thousands of questions popped in my brain and that evening Irina noticed my sad mood and she hugged me repeatedly, stroking my head tenderly. The following morning the man was still there and he stayed there all day. During the last shift, something changed. A candle on the far right went out at once. Then the one in the middle, and, in the end, one on either side. Suddenly I saw a huge eye beyond the door looking closely at me and obscuring the view. As the eye was turning away from the peephole, the face appeared less and less human. A devilish grin of sharp little teeth seemed to be slashing a slightly hairy face, with a greenish complexion. It was a monstrous and repealing being, but very small, so much so that the kitchen knife it was holding in one hand looked like a medieval broadsword. It moved like an ape towards the hapless manager in the middle of the room, never looking away from me, and it cut the man's throat from side to side, smiling. I had a retch of vomit and I shrieked, but the racket of the sirens drew out my screaming, and I doubt that somebody heard it.

Finally, I understood what those loud and annoying sirens served as. Initially, their noise sounded fearsome and unnatural, but it probably helped to protect and isolate ourselves from the others during the shift. The thing that struck me the most was that in the last days, whatever was inside the room, appeared to know when it was the end of my shift, and it left me more doubtful and terrified every time. I did not dine that evening, and, again, I got Irina’s attentions, which, I must admit, cheered me up. I was not remotely prepared for what was going to happen shortly thereafter.

Nothing appeared inside the little room for a couple of days, then, all of a sudden, a blonde woman in an elegant dress showed up. She was motionless in the middle of the room and she seemed dazed. Shortly after she suffered the same treatment as the man of some days before. But I had already seen that woman somewhere, so I searched on the internet and I found out that she was a quite well-known actress in the world of TV series.