Float

This flash fiction piece was written as a story companion to the day 27 drawing prompt Float from the 2020 Inktober prompt list. Click here to see the drawing.

The way my old boss used to walk through the office gave me the heebie jeebies. It was like she was gliding. No, worse: Floating. Like her feet never touched the ground.

You’d be sitting there, working in silence, and then suddenly hear breathing in your ear. She’d float up right behind you, saying nothing, waiting for you to turn and ask her how she was doing, hungry for any connection she could make.

Her eyes were always so blank when I asked her about her personal life. Hollow. Haunted.

It wasn’t like Cheryl had anything untoward to share. Mostly she talked about her athletic adventures, the skydiving, the mountain climbing, the kayaking, on and on and on. There was excitement in her voice and a child-like smile on her face, but something strange about the way her eyes stared straight ahead, pupils too big. Like she was telling you about one thing but her mind was somewhere else entirely. When she talked about work, her eyes were fully present. I never understood the shift.

In her pictures, she was always alone. A kayak for one, selfies in the forest. Beautiful views that only she made the trip to see. It seemed to me maybe she was hiding from herself, seeking these outward experiences to plug up some hole inside, as if she could apply the outward beauty as a salve against the jagged, gaping wounds of ugliness she couldn’t even name inside herself.

Maybe that’s why I always talked to her. I could sense the loneliness bleeding from my boss’s heart, and I couldn’t help but try to suture the wound. But I should have listened to my gut that something wasn’t right.

It started small, the way she would float over to my desk more and more each week, the way her hollow eyes would linger, not on me, but on an area right above my head. Once, when I was walking to my car, I looked back up at the repurposed Victorian house our law firm offices were housed in, and she was standing in the window of her second floor attic, watching me. Just watching me. I waved at her, thinking maybe she was just looking out pensively on the street. She stared straight into my eyes, but she didn’t wave back. I tried to play it off, laughing as I turned and got in my car as if it was just her way of being funny, but as I drove away, a shiver went up down spine.

On my birthday, she gave me one of those cards with the two old ladies on the front, but with cutouts of our heads pasted on their bodies. I don’t know where she got the picture, but I tried not to think too hard about it, or about the fact that the picture of me wasn’t one I recognized, or about how it was glossy like a polaroid … or the fact that I never told her when my birthday was.

When I opened the envelope, she leaned in and whispered, “That’s us.”

I laughed and thanked her but her face stayed blank. Then she walked away from my desk without saying a word. In the weeks that followed, I went into full avoidance mode, not just of Cheryl, but of everyone in the office. I didn’t want her to know it was because of her, so I stopped talking to all the other paralegals and partners and just sat in my corner, filling out briefs.

It wasn’t better.

She didn’t talk to me, but she would float by silently, or choose the window nearest me to stare out of for half an hour. In meetings, she would sit next to me, but not look at me in the face, even when she directly addressed me.

I was starting to consider handing in my resignation when Cheryl’s assistant stopped by my desk to check in with me.

“Hey, Kelly, are you doing alright?”

I wanted to cry. “Umm, yeah, Chet, I’m doing alright. Why?”

“I just noticed Cheryl’s been acting kind of weird around you lately.”

I told him about the birthday card and he just laughed. “Classic Cheryl!”

“What?”

“She loves pulling pranks like that, didn’t you guys crack up over it?”

I tried to explain the way Cheryl’s eyes emptied out when I laughed and Chet just looked confused.

“She must have been joking, she always does goofy stuff like that with me and we laugh forever about it. But the way she wouldn’t look at you in the meeting today was weird.”

“Everything she does is weird. It creeps me out when she looks at me without blinking.”

Just then, I heard Cheryl clearing her throat. She floated in behind us silently and when Chet and I turned to see her staring from the doorway, my skin broke out in a cold sweat. She smiled warmly and asked Chet to come to her office without looking at me, before walking away, her shoes somehow making no noise on the linoleum floor.

“Do you think she heard me?” I whispered to Chet. He frowned and shook his head.

“Nah, I’m sure it’s fine.”

Driving home that night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was coming. When I left work, Cheryl and Chet were still in her office and they both called out a sing-song goodbye as I passed. Maybe Chet was right and Cheryl just had a really weird sense of humor. Like … really weird. Either way, I was already halfway out the door of that firm. Just last week, I’d sent out resumes to seven other potential paralegal positions. I’d just have to keep my head down and deal with the weirdness while I waited to hear back from one of the other firms.

As I pushed open my front door with my foot and juggled the fast food I just picked up, I was too distracted wondering if Schuster and Kline would call me back first to realize it wasn’t locked—or even shut. It didn't register until I set the paper bags and soda down on my coffee table and heard the same chilling throat clear that was still ringing in my ears from the office.

There was Cheryl, sitting on my couch holding the cleaver from my knife block.

“Hi, Kelly.”

Hey eyes weren't hollow anymore, but whatever was filling them was much, much worse.

“What are you doing here?”

“Shut the door.” Her tone made me shiver.

“You need to leave."

"Oh, am I being too weird for you right now?"

"Is that what this is about? Some petty thing I said at work? I'm sorry if that hurt your feelings, but I don't think you really deserve any apologies when you break into my house."

She looked up at me, hollow again.

"I just wanted to be friends."

Sweat dripped down my back in a steady stream. She kept twirling the cleaver around on its tip like a toy and I couldn’t read her next move. What’s she gonna do, chuck the cleaver at me?

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and started to dial 911 when Cheryl abruptly stood up and started moving toward me. In response, I put the phone down and my hands up, but she kept coming, her footsteps making no noise.

“Why don’t you like me, Kelly?”

The bluster I felt moments earlier when I demanded she leave poured out of me in drops of cold sweat as she advanced toward me, hefting the cleaver in her hand.

“Uhh, I do! Cheryl, I … I do,” It didn’t sound convincing and Cheryl laughed, harshly.

“Don’t make it worse by lying to me, Kelly. I gave you your first paralegal job, took you under my wing, found out your birthday so we could be friends.”

My back hit the wall in the hallway, but Cheryl didn’t stop. Soon, she was close enough that I could feel her breath in my face.

“Didn’t you like my card, Kelly? You laughed … or is that just how you react when someone’s being,” She pressed the cleaver against my neck, “ … weird.”

Moments ticked by, my breathing getting heavier and heavier, panic welling up inside me. I had no idea what to do except silently mutter dying prayers in my head.

Then, out of nowhere, Cheryl started laughing, differently than before. Right in my face. Guffawing, even, like she’d just heard the funniest joke in the world. It’s scarier than when she was angry, but then the cleaver dropped from my throat and her posture relaxed as she pointed at my face.

“Your face! You … really thought … I was gonna …” She sputtered between laughs. Walking nonchalantly into my kitchen, she stuck the cleaver back into the knife block and wiped a tear from her face. Turning back to me she shrugged with her hands out.

“Gotcha!”

I was still sweating and breathing hard. I had no idea if she was joking then, or was joking before, or if Cheryl was just genuinely psychotic, and there was no way to tell. I was frozen in place, but Cheryl didn’t seem to mind. She opened my fridge.

“Girl, you gotta get some more healthy food in here. It’s all junk! Maybe we can go grocery shopping together this weekend?” She looked at me and I could tell she expected an answer.

“Uh,” I cleared my throat and swallow against the dryness. “Totally,” I croaked out.

Cheryl nodded, apparently satisfied, and grabbed one of my water bottles. Taking a sip, she surveyed my apartment with an air of mission accomplished and nodded once.

“Well, I better let you eat your dinner. Thanks for letting me come over.”

She’s completely insane, was all I could think.

“Yeah, um, sure,” I almost said any time, but caught myself. That’s when Cherly held up the water bottle as if to toast me, and, without another word, walked out of my apartment.

I called in sick to work the next day while I packed my apartment and was two states away by the end of the week.