Overtime: Part 1
An office slasher
Kalo handed the keys the way you hand someone something you’re happy to be rid of.
“Lock up whenever, dude,” the janitor said. “Nobody cares about this anyway.”
Nobody did, in truth. The office was a rathole. Seventh floor, a tangle of staircases, a converted floor of a Soho building with shoddy light, shitty plumbing, and no facility manager to speak of. They’d call a well-dressed walk-on when the audit guys arrived. The rules around hours were loose as hell. On most days, that was a Godsend. You could have a pint or two at three if the work wrapped up.
Other days, it demanded a tax for the Overtime God. Tonight the tax was Aidan’s to pay. And he hated every goddamn minute of it.
The cursed project was due Friday, and Aidan was its lead. Staying here was his call. He’d have made it even if it hadn’t been. No wife, no kids, no cat, nothing to care for, waiting at home. Just a radioactive laptop screen in a studio room. He liked being ahead. He liked the building when it was empty. The hum of the lone fridge, the server fans, the desert. He cracked his knuckles, rolled his neck, and let the rest of the bloody world bugger off.
He typed damn fast, he always had when the thing was flowing, and tonight it did. The analytics events were there, the last of them, the culprit, now… dispatched to the data team. Twenty-five minutes on, five off, the Pomodoro style. The little red veggie app on his glassy phone. The only interruption he’d allow.
He sank to the kitchen for a latte with two sugars.
After two minutes, he came back to his desk.
His chair was gone.
Not pushed away. It was simply not there.
He stood with the latte smokin’ in his hand, smelling of fairtrade Brazilian brew, hints of fruit and citrus. He listened. The fridge. The fan. Nobody else was there.
Kalo, he thought. Must be a damn joke. He hasn’t left after all.
He went around the open space checking everywhere.
In the janitor’s closet. In the janitor’s office. In the storage room. At the balcony.
“Kalo? You there, mate?”
Nothing but cricket silence.
He waved it off and took Fran’s fancy-ass chair instead, the COO’s, the only other ergonomic piece in the venue. Back problems. Those he had. Sitting on just any chair wasn’t an option. He wheeled it back to his desk and sat down, slouching. Back to work again. It took a while for the screen to swallow his mind again. But it did. It always did. He loved his work well enough.
Twenty-five minutes later, and the Pomodoro alarm didn’t go off. He reached for his phone, but… it wasn’t there.
He felt his pockets and then the rucksack. Not there.
Then the kitchen counter where he’d made the brew. Then Fran’s office. Not there either.
First, the chair, and now this!?
He grabbed the office key, his stuff from under the desk. He shut the laptop lid in one move. He slung it under his sweaty armpit. He didn’t run. He walked fast, the way you walk when you’re not one hundred per cent about anything. He dove for the lift and mashed the button a few hard times. Took a few seconds for it to come to life. He held his breath. His lips had gone dry.
The doors opened wide. He stepped in and slammed the big G for Ground Floor.
The doors closed. Silence. The car began to drop down.
Then, clunk. A jolt put his body against the glassy wall. The lightbulbs went on and off, dying, then back to life. Like Lazarus. Then they died down. Total, close blackness.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” the pulse going in his throat now.
He slapped at the bell-yellow panel button. He fingered it, again and again. A few times won’t hurt, after all. A high, ugly buzzer went off, the sound of electrical fury.
Seconds passed. No one answered.
He slid down into the corner and made himself breathe. Worst case, someone finds you in the morning. Just wait it out.
Then the speaker crackled like an elderly TV unit.
Right on his feet he went. “Hi… Hello?” he hesitated, “I’m stuck in the lift, mate. Between floors.”
Nothing.
“C–Can you hear me, mate?”
He could hear someone breathing on the other side. That’s all.
“Hello. I can hear you breathing. Just say something.”
The speaker hissed off and went kaput.
The lights came back on, and the floor dropped. The car ground its way down with a screechy noise and banged, bottoming out the lift on the spring. The doors opened. A dark street-light view through reinforced reception glass.
He felt relieved.
He dashed to the front and put the key in, turning it. He’d used this key a hundred times. He knew its weight, the chip around the metal ring. It turned a quarter-inch… and stopped.
So he tried again. Either the key had failed — which it doesn’t, keys don’t choose a night — or the lock had been changed, or the building was on lockdown.
The front was reinforced glass and steel, the kind built to keep people out, which meant tonight it was built to keep him in.
Maybe he could find something to smash the glass.
Or maybe he could phone someone up.
Or maybe he could climb down from the balcony somehow.
The last was the best of the three.
Time to get back up, he thought. He didn’t take the lift back up. He took the stairs.
Behind him, on the ground floor, the lift doors opened again.
No light came on inside it. Something in the dark of the car shifted its weight, and then was still again.
*
He imagined the balcony, but the balcony talked him out of it. He stood at the rail, contemplating the cold coming off the city, did the maths, and stepped back in.
Seven floors down. The drop straight to the delivery alley — concrete, a row of rusty skips, smashed up crates, some jagged metal. No ledges, nothing to get a foothold on. No pipe to climb.
Then he thought of the fire exits, and felt stupid for not thinking of them first.
The fire staircase had the green running-man signs glowing at each level. He went down fast, skidding the stairs, one flight, two, three, following the arrows.
But not a door down there.
Just fucking brick. No fire exit but the old, mortared and solid wall. He put his palms flat against it and curled up, sighing.
He felt the real fear for the first time today. Fear of a building that had stopped obeying rules.
There was a distant rattling at first. The AC unit? No. Another sound. A… a pounce.
Steps? Dull sounds. Another one, closer now.
Bam.
Coming. Someone’s coming down the stairs.
Closer and closer. He turned his head towards the staircase, heart pounding, about to blow up. Hands and arms paralysed. Pins and needles.
Bam. Thwack.
Something crossed the stairwell above him. Faster now. One foot after the other. Around the corner. Almost there…
Bam.
The world narrowed to instinct.
Something landed in front of him, heavy enough to shake the floor, and went still.
Third Eye Horror
© Mac Sitko, 2026
All rights reserved.
You keep the thing offstage the whole way and it costs you nothing. The lift opening on its own, the weight shifting in the dark, never shown. The reader builds the worst of it without you. Curious how much you'll reveal in Part 2, or whether you'll hold.
Love the use of darkness and weight here 🖤