Grumpy Best Friend

I grinned and he laughed, and we walked together through the office—our office, even though I didn’t love to admit that he had a fairly big hand in its creation—and headed out into the parking lot. I let him drive, let him choose the place, and let him pay.

And it was surprisingly comfortable. We took our time, and for a few hours I forgot that I hated him.

We headed back around four, much later than I thought, but I felt good. I was floating on a cloud of a decent cheeseburger, a glass of wine, and too many French fries. Bret held the door and climbed the steps together. He stepped in through the office door first and froze.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, coming around him, and stopped in my tracks.

Sitting in the middle of the hall that separated the waiting room from the main open office area was a single chair with a knife shoved into the seat.

“Stay here,” Bret said, and walked forward.

“Wait,” I hissed. “If someone’s inside—”

But he stooped over the chair, grabbed the knife, and pulled it out. The blade was long and serrated, and the handle was thick and heavy, like something from a videogame. He gripped it hard and moved further back toward the cubes.

I felt my tongue tingle as I followed him. I knew I shouldn’t have—if someone was back there, some crazy person shoving knives into chairs, I should probably stay back near the door. But I didn’t want to be alone, and barely a few hours before, the place had been full of workers. I was feeling so good, like nothing could bring me down, and suddenly my world was spiraling again.

The cubes seemed somehow menacing, like each one could hide some attacker, ready to spring out and murder me. Bret disappeared down the far row, checking inside each partition, and I stopped by the back windows, my mouth hanging open.

All of the chairs were rolled to the end of their respective workspace instead of tucked up under the desks. Their seats were torn to pieces, and the foam on the inside was ripped out. The backs were ripped and destroyed, and two of them looked like they’d been smashed by hammers.

The chairs sat there like wrecked sentinels, staring at me. I wanted to scream. I didn’t know how this place had gone from happy and incredible, to suddenly terrifying and ominous, in the space of a single lunch.

“They’re all like that,” Bret said, still holding the knife in one hand.

I stared at it and felt my chest thumping rapidly, and my hands began to shake. He followed my gaze then cursed and put the knife down on the windowsill before coming closer. “It’s okay,” he said. “There’s nobody else here.”

“What the hell happened?” I asked. “I mean, the guys were here when we left. They wouldn’t do this, right?”

“No, they wouldn’t,” he said. “I’ll call the company we used and see what they say.” He hesitated, eyes darting to one of the chairs, then back to me. “But you know who did this.”

I didn’t say anything as he walked away. I watched him go. He took his phone from his pocket and lingered in the waiting room. I couldn’t hear his conversation, but I didn’t need to.

I walked to my office and lingered in the doorway. I stared in at my desk, at the chairs, at the couch—and they were all untouched and pristine. I checked the other offices, but they’d all been hit. I came back to my space and felt even more violated, like Zeke had come into our place, destroyed everything, but left my things alone.

It was some sick message, and I had a feeling I knew what it meant. I stood near the window and stared outside, trying not to think about the destruction behind me. They were only chairs, after all— they didn’t matter, and we could buy new ones.

That wasn’t the point, of course, and I knew it.

Bret returned after a few minutes and stood in my doorway. His eyes took in the undisturbed scene and his lips pursed as he shook his head.

“Spoke with the foreman,” he said. “When they left, everything was fine. And they were gone about an hour before we got back. So whoever did this showed up in that little gap.”

“God damn it,” I whispered. “We could’ve been here. You know that?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I doubt it.”

“What do you mean?” I felt a little tremor in my hands and clasped them together to hide it.

“We both know this was Zeke,” he said. “Probably sent his goons out here to watch us. I bet they waited for everyone to leave, and then took a risk and came up. They probably didn’t think they had enough time to do serious damage, so they stuck with chairs.”