Room 202

They never had any trouble making up scenarios. But they could never decide what to do once they were in them. 

There were four in the group assigned to Room 202 - three girls and one boy, all of them at that age where they had applied for the job and, upon getting it, still carried with them the bright and shiny hope that the work would be anything other than utter boring drudgery. 

It was an odd assignment, to be sure. There was very little paperwork involved. The company had given them no fixed end date for the project. They had simply been assigned to Room 202 and told to devise customer scenarios and then find ways to solve them.

For some reason, the conversations always came around to ways to dispose of the bodies. Charles would frown and back out of the conversation at this point, not sure how it had (once again) come to such drastic measures. The girls would go on arguing about the best methods of disposal until the clock buzzed at four pm. 

There were no windows in the room. It was on the third floor (they called the ground floor the main level, so the first level was the second floor and second was actually third – it bothered Charles that nobody had applied logic to the situation but there was little he could do about it) and situated centrally in a typically boring office tower. From what Charles could tell, the entire building consisted of the company's offices except for a florist and a dry cleaner who rented small, outward-facing shops at ground level. 

The furniture in Room 202 was very basic – a dark brown conference table made of plastic wood, and metal tubing chairs with thinly padded seats. There was a small side table in one corner with a coffee-pot and four chipped cups. It was dusty. Charles did not drink coffee; the girls brought their own venti-skinny-dolce lattés in the morning, sometimes with an extra shot of espresso. They occasionally mixed it up with a frappuccino on Fridays since it was the end of summer and the weather was particularly nice. 

They had each been supplied with a medium-thick pad of paper and a blue pen bearing the company logo. The girls had covered nearly half their pages in handwriting that looped the l's and used little circles to dot the i's. Charles had not used his pad of paper at all. He had a superstition about blank paper. At home he had a shelf of notebooks, all blank inside. Whenever he found a notebook with a beautiful or quirky binding, he bought it, but he could never bring himself to marr the pages. 

On this particular Friday, the frappuccinos had congealed into cream-colored cold coffee. The clock hands crawled like a dying man in the desert to their final destination of four pm and the girls' gazes hovered like vultures. Today was payday; the four of them would join a line in the dull white room on the first level (second floor, Charles amended) to pick up their paycheques. Charles was seriously thinking about tempting fate by doodling in his notebook. Something. Anything to pass the time. 

"I still think incineration is the way to go," Sarah was saying. Today's scenario had devised a number of clients who were unhappy enough to commit suicide, and it was agreed that (in addition to measures to prevent similar future unhappiness), the bodies would have to be quietly disposed of. "It's clean and it doesn't take up very much space." 

"It's just so power-intensive," said Chantal. "I think traditional burial is a perfectly acceptable way to go. It just depends on how it's handled."

"But it leaves evidence behind," Mandy pointed out. 

"Anything does," said Chantal, "unless they're never found. You just have to find a plausible way of getting them buried deep enough. And that assumes someone's looking for them in the first place. THAT is the real problem that needs to be dealt with."

Charles excused himself, saying he needed to go to the bathroom. 

The door to Room 202 closed behind him with a soft click. Cheap as the furniture may be, the doors of the building were heavy and the walls thick. After the click came a blessed silence. Charles seriously considered whether he should show up to work on Monday. 

The bathrooms were just down the hall to his left. But he wanted to kill some time, so he decided to turn right instead and take the long way around. He assumed the hallway was a giant square ringing the inside of the building, and he would get to the bathrooms eventually. 

After ten minutes of walking, he realized the halls were much longer than he thought they would be. He turned right, and right again. The hallway made a partial left and curved to the right before straightening again. Charles was beginning to feel lost and now he really did need a bathroom. Perhaps there would be one on this side of the building, he thought. It would be a long walk for anyone with an office over here to the bathroom by Room 202. 

As if in answer to his wishes, a small side corridor suddenly opened. The hallway's plush dark carpet gave way to mint-colored 1950's floor tiles that climbed a short way up the wall where brass trim and wood paneling took over. It was such a contrast to the rest of the sterile office decor that Charles stared a moment before the two doors at the end of the corridor registered. They each had a sign – "Gents," said one in a brassy cursive script, and the other, "Ladies." 

They looked odd – executive bathrooms perhaps – but Charles didn't care at this point. There was no one around to see him anyway. The door to the Gents' room swung silently on well-oiled hinges. The door was so quiet, in fact, that it took the men in the bathroom a moment to realize the door had opened. 

Charles was quite sure he had walked in on something he was not supposed to see. Two men in black suits and sunglasses were stuffing what appeared to be a third man down a chute in the wall. Charles had walked in in time to see black pants, white socks, and limp black shoes disappear with a clatter. There was a rumble of tin, which faded away as the door to the chute swung shut with a slight whooshing sound. A few seconds later the chute belched out a puff of heat that glowed with a dull orange light. Then it was quiet. 

One of the men tapped the side of his sunglasses twice. 

"Do you work for the company?" he said. 

Charles nodded. 

The men nodded back at him. The man who had tapped his sunglasses smiled, a genuine, friendly sort of smile that Charles found likeable in an odd sort of way. They relaxed and moved to the sinks, turning the brass taps, washing their faces and hands. One of the men brought out a straight razor in a small leather case and began to shave. They started chatting about the weather. 

Charles, not wanting to look suspicious and desperate to go to the bathroom, walked to the urinal and carefully unzipped his pants. He tried not to look at the door of the chute sitting innocently just down the wall from him. When he was done, he washed his hands. The men nodded to him as he left. 

Charles hurried back to Room 202. Though it was not yet four pm, the girls were gone. They had taken their notebooks with them. Three discarded frappuccino cups sat on the table. 

Charles considered his options. He could pick up his cheque and not come in on Monday. That would be the safe thing to do. He could find another entry-level office job... one with a real company, that didn't appear to be hiding any bodies. One that involved paperwork, or sales calls. 

The next thirty years stretched out from Charles to infinity. Paperwork, sales calls, real estate, stock market, heart attack. Perhaps with a Mexican holiday here and there, if he was lucky. That was it. The clock hands moved into place with an audible click. Charles made up his mind. It was finally four pm. 

He wasn't surprised to see the two men in black suits standing in the hall when he opened the door of Room 202.

"I'm in," he said. 

They nodded. 

"Excellent," said the man who had tapped his sunglasses. "Come with us."