The CassieLou Convention

Prologue

This was looking like it was going to be the best November of Cassie Samsons life. She had a confirmed start date for her new job in the marketing department of the County Tredmonds most popular daily newspaper, and Mitch from accounting (who she always had a bit of a crush on) had finally asked her out. His reasoning for taking so long was because he said it would have been an awkward working environment if she had said no, but Cassie felt that he would know that the answer was pretty clear with subtle but noticeable flirtations. She had also recently achieved her weight goals from dedication at the gym and a focus on healthy eating, and her car had flown through its MOT in for the first time since she bought it back in 2010.

Today was her official last day of the job, and she had carefully organised a week off to have for herself before the new role started. Originally it was just going to be for relaxation, but out of the blue, Jennifer and Rosie had come up with the idea of four days away in Crete from a last minute offer that they found online, and she jumped at the chance to join in. Her savings were in quite a bad way, but this opportunity seemed like something that she could not pass up on; even though she had plenty of holidays with her friends, Jennifer and Rosie usually went by themselves, and this chance felt like something she couldn’t pass up, not that she would have had wanted too.

It had been a rough couple of months, perhaps even year if she looked a little deeper at it; her Grandfather, of whom she was closest too in her family, had passed away from Pneumonia, and she had drunkenly lost £1000 of her savings at the Casino on a wild night out she had with her work friends. The idea that the work friends had not recognised that this was an out of character type of move, and had not intervened, made her feel as though they were setting her up to fail, and allowed her enough rope to hang herself with. It was challenging being in the office with them, all the time thinking that they were treating her as a laughingstock. She felt particularly uncomfortable since that night none of her regular work friends had gone, and she was just trying to prove that she was fun and interesting, but now, didn’t feel like she wanted to be seen anywhere apart from her desk.

Her last day at the office was just a regular workday of administration duties, the expectancy of her work rate was as high as ever, which was made clear by her Team Leader the night before. She initially thought she was joking, and half expected there to be some kind of surprise party for her when she walked in the door at 9AM. Instead it was the regular greetings and typical mentioning’s of it being her last day and questions of if she was excited. Coming back from her lunch break that she spent with Naveen and Kelly, her desk had three wrapped gifts, some flowers, and a card. She felt elated by this, but no-one really said anything. At 4:30PM she made the executive decision that she was done for the day, usually being a stickler to work hard till her 5PM closing, she decided she was going to go wild. She was readying herself to let her boss know exactly what she thought of her and the job itself, in a sharp, but measured sort of tone; in the shower last night she had a more direct way that she wanted to express her displeasure, but part of her had this a paranoid concern that she could still be fired with the ten minutes of the shift to spare, or that knowing her luck she may one day need to return to the company and did not want to burn any bridges.

She emptied her desk, not looking around too much, since idea of confrontation was getting less exciting the more realistic it was becoming; but when she took a chance and looked up to where her Manager was usually sat, a wave of relief washed over her realising that she had already left for the day. The relief quickly became more of a grudge since she had not even said goodbye or good luck to her. In fact, the only time in the month since announcing her resignation that she had mentioned to Cassie about leaving the job, was actually the night before, when she mentioned about her the expectations of her last day. There was a slight tinge of regret that she wasn’t able to get that closure that she had earned over her years of service, and even more so that she had still given the job more focus than she had any need to in the last few hours. She sat back comfortably now, knowing that all of the concern areas of the day were over. No final arguments, or pranks, and word of complication in regard to a final pay check because of tax codes and such.

“Cassie”, Mike said as he approached. Mike was another one of the Managers at the company who was more reserved and quieter, but certainly had less of a bad reputation than her Manager.

“Yes?” Cassie replied with a note of concern.

“Are you all packed away?” He asked with a smile.

“Just about, yeah,” She replied, “Just counting down the last few minutes before I log out of the system.”

“Really?” He said with a light puzzlement. “Typically, you can leave on your last day an hour or so before the shift ends, just as a nice going away gesture from the department. It’s not “official-official”, but it’s what everyone gets told they can do. Did Sharon not let you know?”

“No, this is the first that I’m hearing about it.” Cassie faked a laugh.

Looks like good ol’ Sharon had one last laugh at her expense.

“I only came over because I was surprised that you are still here, thought maybe you were just waiting to be picked up by someone, or, as it turns out, you didn’t know that you could leave.” He laughed back.

“Well, I suppose I can just log off and go?” She said with a questioning inflection, still uncertain what the right thing to do was After all, it wasn’t her Manager that was giving her permission to leave.

“Absolutely,” He smiled, “You can give me your security card now if you like, saves you having to find someone before you go.”

She handed him her card and finished logging off. She kept her eye on the open corner of the office in case anyone that she knew would swing around before her final goodbye, but it appeared as though Mike was going to be the last person in the office that she would speak to. She tightened her lips to the side as a micro way of letting out her disappointment. Oddly, most of the people that she spoke to in the office on a regular basis, even people she would call friends, happened to be off today, whether it was sickness related, or took an emergency holiday. An odd coincidence that she may not have even picked up if it wasn’t the fact that last night she received several texts at spaced intervals wishing her luck and apologises for not being there.

She got up from the desk and almost turned around for one final look at what was basically her home away from home over the last few years, but decided against because she was really glad to see the back of it, and also didn’t want to be seen taking that one final look in case someone would think it was pathetic. She did, however, ultimately turn around upon hearing a squeaking noise, as Mike wheeled away her chair, clearly one of the undisclosed reasons of his appearance. ‘Good riddance,’ she thought. As she left the building she marvelled at how a few weeks ago when she heard about being accepted for the position, she almost turned it down, not because she wasn’t excited about the new job, but because she felt that maybe she was better off staying in the safe and familiar environment of the workplace she had grown accustomed to. However, since things at work seemed to be getting worse and worse recently, she felt extremely lucky that the opportunity had arrived just in time, and breathed a sigh of relief that she could comfortably close this chapter of her life with no regrets.

She returned home and ordered from her favourite Chinese Takeaway ‘Xìntuō Gōngsī’, which she loved dearly, but was never confident enough to say its name out loud. In her mind since she was preparing to leave her job (a feeling that she had easily 18 months ago), she pictured sharing the evening with her friends, since they took any opportunity to have an evening out, but she instead opted for a quiet night in, knowing that she would be spending plenty of time with some of them in the next few days, and was promised first-day drinks by some people at the paper that she got to know in the breakroom at her interview. She had bought some steal box blu-rays recently, as she preferred to have a hard copy of her media, and randomly picked a movie out of the short pile. As the movie began, a thought struck her, she still hadn’t heard from Clarissa, who she sent a picture of her new holiday dress to. Clarissa was usually quite quick to reply to her messages, and she had a concern that perhaps she might be jealous that she did not get an invite to their girl trip. She checked her phone, she was still on Clarissa’s message screen when she looked on the app, and the message was sent and not received. She pressed back on instinct to get back to the main menu of her message, and was puzzled to see that all of the people that she messaged last in the past few days all had sent, but not been received.

She imagined that there was an issue with the app, and went to her social media wall to see if there were any messages from anyone that she was connected to experiencing the same problem, or to see if there was a trending topic about the issue. Curiously there seemed to be no updates from anyone in the last day, nor had any of the news topics updated. She thought the issue may be with her phone, but then realised that is not how it worked. Perhaps it could have been her mobile data, or the Wi-Fi, but that would mean it would have had to have been both, since she had used both within the last day.

She didn’t think too much about it after that, noting that as long as things started working in the next day or two, it would work out. If not then she would have to make some calls, first to her friends, as a priority for the trip, then to the phone company to see if she could get this all fixed. She liked the idea that universe was telling her to stay off her phone more, and to enjoy her life a little now that she was unshackled. She ran herself a bubble bath with cruelty-free soaps and bath crystals and relaxed with a glass of red wine and listening to music. As she lay there with her eyes closed, she felt that she really should start opening her mind to more music, because she was getting particularly cognisant that she had been listening to the same 40/50 songs for years on end, and only seemed to add new songs to her playlists if they had been hammered in to her on the radio while she drove to work, or were on repeat in works canteen.

She put on her comfy pyjamas, feeling quite good about herself, thinking about how at peace she was with the quiet life that she had built for herself, and no longer felt that remorse of not being out and about partying at every opportunity like she was earlier in the year. She felt mature and happy. Then she started to think about the movie she had just watched, or tried to. For whatever reason she had no idea what she had spent the last two hours watching, or the fact that she didn’t remember if she had eaten. She felt full, and had already brushed her teeth, so any trace on her breath would have been washed away. A wave of panic rushed through her as she started to question whether or not she had brushed her teeth. Something was wrong.

She got to the doorway to check the Blu-ray cover to jog her memory, and to check for evidence of the food she ordered when she was hit by a great dizziness. Her head was spinning, and she pushed herself in the direction of her bed, luckily landing in the middle. From muscle memory of coming home drunk, she positioned herself under the blankets, and cursed herself realising that the light was still on. She worried that she had left the kettle on as there was a screaming noise in the distance, then realised that she had an electric kettle, so that couldn’t be the noise. She rubbed her eyes hard as the noise got louder, and she was seeing the static patterns of when she pushed her eyes to hard, thinking she could concentrate on these in the dark of her closed eyes. She let go and opened her eyes, but the static was still there, and the light of the room had not returned. Seconds passed and she still couldn’t see anything.

‘This is it,’ she thought, ‘I’ve died.’

She lay still, as the static turned to darkness, as the noise subsided, and waited to see what would happen next. If anything would happen next.

Chapter 1 –

Cassie didn’t know if she had fallen asleep or not, but she definitely felt as though she had a restless night. She thought perhaps she had eaten something off, or was spiked as a joke by a cruel kitchen staff member from her takeaway. She didn’t want to have to force herself to throw up, but she knew it would be the sensible thing to do. She tried to push the blankets off herself, but there was only a small amount of resistance, and she heard a sploshing noise. She realised that she had still not opened her eyes. She then realised she couldn’t. She let out a whimper of panic, and tried to touch her eyes, but instead banged her hands on what felt like hard plastic.

“You didn’t restrain her hands!” A voice whispered angrily from somewhere in the room.

“You didn’t tell me too! You said only to do what you told me to do!” Whispered another voice.

“Well she is awake now, so press the eyes button there, the tank adjustment button there, and about halfway up its incline, start the orientation video. Is… Is the sound dampener on? Seriously? Oh my f-“ The first voice cut off.

Cassie started to panic. Was she drugged and passed out in the bath and now some men had broken in to her place and restrained her? Clearly if they were here to rob her, they would have done that already, why are they still here?

She then felt a rush in her head, like someone had turned a tap on directly into her skull, and her eyes opened sharply. This wasn’t her bedroom, or her bathroom, she didn’t recognise this place at all. All she could see was the ceiling of the small dark room with dull red neon lights around the trim of the ceiling. She couldn’t see the plastic barrier that she banged her hands on, realising that she had been encapsulated entirely, apart from her head. She tried to lean forward but she had no motion from her neck.

There was a slight whirring noise as whatever pod she was in started to tilt up from its horizontal angle. The lights dimmed further, and she could feel the liquid in the tank falling away, like staying in the bath when the plug was pulled. As it was going down, she was getting sprinkled by several jets of water, as if the fluid was being washed off her. When the water stopped, it was replaced by a comforting warm breeze drying her off. When this stopped, there was a long pause of nothing, though she was certain she could hear shouting from somewhere nearby. Then the empty wall she was facing brightened up as if it were being projected on, and the video started:

A title card read ‘Welcome Cassie Samson’ with floating love hearts to the music of what Cassie would usually call ‘whistling indie’, something that would often be heard in the background of adverts or instructional videos. Then a little Asian girl, no older than six, appeared on the screen while the music still played.

“Welcome out, Cassie!” The little girl cheered from her bedroom.

Then it transitioned to an old black man on a park bench.

“Welcome out, Cassie Samson!” The man smiled.

“Welcome out, Miss Samson!” Said the female Indian Dentist.

“Welcome out, Cassie! Such a babe!” Said the white male Firefighter outside the station.

“Welcome out, Cassie Samson!” Cheered a classroom full of children in Africa.

“3-2-1!” Counted down a musician on stage at a sold-out arena.

“Welcome out, Cassie!” Both the musician and the entire crowd cheered.