Not Yet Corpses. Still, We Rot.

February 8th, 2024.

Alain walked into work, seeing Eliza sweeping the floor with her back turned to him. He smiled as he saw his beautiful girlfriend, barely being able to wait to see her smile along with him. Alain misses that smile, even if it had just been since the shift of the day before. He realized that Eliza had not actually noticed him come in, and his smile turned into a grin. Alain slowly creeped up behind his charming partner that he oh so adored. Quickly wrapping his arms around Eliza’s waist, he yelled out; “Hi! I missed y-” Unfortunately, he couldn’t get any further in his sentence before being hit in the shins with the broom Eliza had been holding. Eliza whipped around, ready to hit again, before realizing her boyfriend was the one kneeling before her, clutching his shin in a sort of half-laugh, half-cry. Eliza immediately dropped the broom and started apologizing about what she’d done.
“I’m so sorry! I didn’t know that was you I swear! I just- sorry I-” She said in a strangled voice, her eyes started tearing up, not realizing how Alain was just smiling, just happy to see her, even in this less-than-fortunate way. He rolled up his trousers, and luckily he only had a scrape, it was barely even bleeding, so he just looked Eliza in the eye, which made her look away. “Good to know your reflexes still work properly. How are you doing sweetheart?” Alain said to Eliza, who wasn’t really listening, but instead she pulled him up and led him to the break room.
“We must have some kind of first aid box somewhere!” Eliza said in a panic, millions of scenarios of Alain’s leg being amputated flashing through her head, like this was the middle ages. She pushed some boxes aside, stopping dead in her tracks when she saw a little door behind one of the boxes of papaipema cataphracta, a species of moth that hadn’t been in stock for as long as either of them could remember. “What’s this door?” Eliza questioned, completely forgetting what she was doing. Alain got up and came over to her, his interest piqued. “Wayoo, I’ve never noticed that before! What do you recon is behind it?” Alain’s mind was racing with what could be behind it, slightly hoping for a portal to another world.
They started theorizing on what could be behind it, Eliza coming with the more logical options, like storage, nothing, boxes of butterflies et cetera. The wildest thing she thought of was the possibility of some rats. Alain, on the other hand, was throwing the wildest suggestions out there, a Coraline-esque world, a human who had been living off of rats for years, some magical land where they’d have magical powers and could be the magical royalty. Or maybe a family of opossums. He kind of hoped there’d be opossums, since they are fluffy.
“There’s nothing behind it.” Mr. Clifton stated harshly, startling them both out of their thoughts. Neither of them had realized he had come in, and they were so caught up in theorizing what it could be, that they had fully abandoned their work and Mr. Clifton was not happy with them. A long speech about the importance on working hard, and how in his generation, people still wanted to work. How they put in effort, but how this younger generation had had everything handed to them, and how their brains were melted from years of happy go lucky TV-shows. Eliza was about to tell him about how a show she had on DVD as a kid got canceled because a serial killer confessed to getting inspiration from a particularly dark episode of that show, but she decided to just let Mr. Clifton get his frustrations out and to not take it personally. She had to take a second calming herself, assuring herself that Mr. Clifton was stern, but he had never shown a true dislike to her, and he does give her baked goods for when he goes to see his crush, so her probably doesn’t despise her. All the while Alain was still thinking about the magical worlds that might be behind that door.
“Do you think we could find the keys somewhere? I really want to know what is behind that door.” Alain asked Eliza, knowing that she pays enough attention that she might be able to find it. Eliza looked at him and sighed, smiling as she caught his gaze. She broke eye contact to continue what she was doing, still smiling at his utter lack of not-knowing-capabilities. “Why are you so adamant on figuring out what’s behind that door, Alain?” Eliza said, “It’s not like there’s a million pounds behind it.” Alain put his hand on Eliza’s shoulder, as to not startle her this time, before wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on top of her head. “Well maybe there is! What if Mr. Clifton is a- a bank robber or something, and that’s where he hid his stash! We could be rich!” Alain theorized, which made Eliza laugh. Alain realized how unlikely that was. “Okay, yeah. That ancient fossil could never. But still, I want to know if there’s something behind there.” Eliza laughed. “That’s mean!” She giggled out, before looking around to make sure Mr. Clifton wasn’t around. He wasn’t, but Eliza had the feeling they would get lectured on ‘professionalism in the workspace’ due to this.
“I’ve looked through every drawer and box, I wouldn’t be able find the key if my life depended on it. With every passing moment it nags at me more and more.” Alain ranted. He obviously was not the best at not knowing things. This came in handy from time to time, like at trivia rounds at bars, but in this moment it was his worst enemy. Moss had not been paying attention, having listened to this rant on and off for the last half and hour, kind of thinking it was funny. Alain always knew everything. He did good in class (beside handing in a lot of his work late), and whenever there was a question he didn’t know the answer to, he would go out of his way to find the answer. Moss looked at him mischievously through their phone. Not like they looked at him differently all that often, but today it seemed even worse. That might’ve been the bloodshot eyes though. Their name may be moss, but they smoked grass like it was an Olympic sport.
“I can pick the lock for you?” Moss mentioned as casually as asking what’s for dinner. Alain looked at his phone, a bit taken aback, and said; “You know how to pick locks? I don’t think you’ve mentioned that before. I’d think you would show up out of nowhere in my room more often.” He could very much see that happening. He isn’t really all that surprised though, since Moss was the kind of person to know how to do that.
“Nah, but I’ll figure it out.”
Alain rolls his eyes. Moss had a case of ‘starting a new hobby and then forgetting about it, causing them to have a fuck ton of skills that they never use because when the fuck does “The warning signs of sneezing 101” ever come in handy’, so Alain wholeheartedly believed that they could learn that just fine. The sneezing thing was actually pretty scary, they always say ‘bless you’ right before you sneezed, which really freaked them out the first couple times. The book was absolutely not worth #50,- though.
“Go for it.”