Overtime: Part 3
An office slasher
Darkness.
At the end of the tunnel of all desks—a green EXIT sign. Glowing still. Despite all lights dying down. The same staircase he’d come from. Thinking about it turned his stomach upside down.
Aidan scanned for a black shape. It wasn’t there. Or wasn’t there just yet.
Fuck. Think, think!
The CTO’s room to the left had a balcony joining the old wing with the new offices. The wing had been shut off a long time ago, full of junk and otherwise just dust bugs, but maybe another fire staircase was there. Or another way out.
He got out of Jenny’s room and ran leftwards as speedily as he could, seeing very little. His eyes hadn’t adapted to the blackness yet.
He clocked the door handle to the CTO’s room. It shone, about the only thing in the dark, and he grabbed it.
Open. By a miracle.
Inside, he captained right to the balcony gallery. He peeked back and saw nobody. Nothing behind the goddamn glass. Nothing after him. No sound either.
The door was locked, but there was a fob reader next to it. He hunted through the clicking, clacking keys in his pocket for the fob. The reader bleeped at its touch. He slammed the door open.
The balcony was out there in front of him, wide, stacked with rows and rows of benches. Potted plants, beer parasols. Stuff. The far end was inhabited by a strange (and shoddy) revolving door leading into the ancient canteen. The old wing.
Soho streets below him were awake, with folks raving and partying drunk. He bolted for the rail, seizing the prospect. The delivery alley was down there. But it wasn’t the normal street. None of the drunk crowds revelling elsewhere in the noise of the city centre. But maybe a yell could do. Maybe someone would hear it.
What the hell, let’s try it!
He leaned over the glass terrace and held the metal rail hard. He drew a single breath to shout out at the top of his lungs.
But what stopped him was the steel rail’s reflection.
Something shifted. A movement? He looked down at the rail. In the weird, distorted metal lens, a bulbous black shape moved a few metres behind.
Fuck.
He turned his head at that instant.
Nobody and nothing.
“Huh.” He sighed with relief.
Then something else. A… a vibration, a humming, something… with the damn handrail. Bursts of it. Pins and needles of shivers mounting up his fingers, wrists, forearms, nearly numbing his elbow.
Then a sound, first faint…
…thud, thud, thud…
Then full on:
…Thud, Thud, THUD, THUD, THUD…
Someone’s whamming against the railing. But where?
…THUD, THUD, THUDDDD.
Aidan glanced around one-eighty, seeing nothing, nobody.
“Who’s doing that? Is that you?!” he yelled.
THUD, THUD…
The thudding started again.
“Show yourself, you bloody coward!”
THUD.
He looked back down the alleyways of London.
Where was I before? Shout for help. OK. Now’s the time…
Just then, the searing pain.
“AAaaaar…” he groaned.
His leg, his fucking leg!
He fell to one knee. A stinging, smouldering jolt shot down the thigh. A blade pinning the meat of his leg. It had been thrown low, almost skimming the ground.
The blood came pooling out, turning his sock fiery red in winks. He spun backwards and saw…
Black. A hood.
Crossing the balcony. Step by step closer to Aidan. Long, lagging strides.
“Help — anyone — please!” Aidan finally shouted, but the alley gave nothing back. And it wouldn’t. Not in time anyway, not in those few seconds.
Aidan gritted his cracking teeth. There was just about one thing he could do, but it needed guts. Guts or death, he concluded, and tore the knife fuck out of his damn thigh.
His vision whited out and clouded at the perimeters. Painfully stricken, adrenaline pumping into his blood, he hurled the sharp thing with all he had.
It spun across the dark space, pinwheeling in the air, and by luck—nothing but pure luck—landed straight in the hooded head with a stout sound.
A knife right through the black.
The killer did not flinch. No groan, nothing. It paused, and the blade handle stuck out as if from a dartboard.
Aidan wasted no time. He was already limping towards the door, his leg lagging. To the old wing. He pushed through the revolving door into the trashed canteen, manic breathing roaring in his ears, his chest pulsing like a piston engine.
A rose-red line ripped across the foil-covered, slippery floor. Dripping and dripping and dripping.
Buried under a pile of opened cardboard boxes, by the empty, busted PEPSI MAX machine, a gleaming rectangle caught the dim light of the moon.
A metal fucking toolbox, it was. Could he make time to snatch it?
He looked back, turning in a jagged, stuttered motion full of pain. Yet nothing was behind him. He had to take some chances, and he lunged for the toolbox, grabbing its handle, lifting it up.
Heavy. Good. Stuff was inside.
The smell of iron was in the air. His blood. His lifeline, running away. No time to patch it up, not now.
So he limped again. Stillness was the one thing he couldn’t afford. A death wish.
He recalled some facilities rooms downstairs. Simon managed them, sometimes sharing some responsibilities with Kalo.
Kalo, I swear… thought Aidan. If that’s you, behind all of this. But it didn’t quite add up all the way: the Tech leadership, finding a file. What’s in it for the old bastard? Why play those games?
And the voice over the phone, no, that wasn’t Kalo. Couldn’t be. Very different. A torrent of the craziest thoughts was running through his brain like electroshocks. Hundreds, thousands of smaller and larger possibilities.
He knew the old wing by hearsay. Down the service stairs, he hobbled, down and down, heading to the basement where the building kept its dead and forgotten things. Step by step, painful, his thigh bit him. The toolbox dragged at his arm and knocked against his leg. The knife had missed an artery by some miracle. He had read somewhere that it was a myth that a leg is the safest place for a gunshot—or any wound, really.
Suddenly, Aidan felt rather odd.
Running downstairs was quite discomforting… in a new way. And it wasn’t because of his wounds. Aidan’s chest was somehow fuller. It was bothering him. Must’ve been fluid, something odd happening to his organism because of the repeated blows or the shock. Water retention, something of the sort.
Ranks and ranks and ranks of stairs led Aidan downstairs, to the facilities storage. Like he remembered.
The storage floor was cold, damp and lightless. One emergency bulb flickered red, painting the room in slow colours. Metal shelving drooped by the walls under cable spools. Dead monitors, bricked laptops, broken hoovers, sacks of road salt for wintertime.
But chest, let’s check the chest first.
He ripped the shirt open, and the buttons hit the ground with little click-click clicks.
His eyes looked down.
God—what the fuck is this?
Third Eye Horror
© Mac Sitko, 2026
All rights reserved.
Oh boy! Great final hook!
I really enjoyed it. The pacing and atmosphere kept me hooked the entire time and Aidan's desperation felt incredibly real. The ending completely caught me off guard and made me excited for the next chapter