The scream from the floor below was not the only distraction Charlotte found irritating that day, but it was the event she found most amusing.
"I have to see this," she penned on a note to her colleague, who was still cursing under his breath at having been disturbed in the middle of an important phone conversation, during which he had been about to make one of the most successful deals for the company that year.
The rabbit warren of an office outside was virtually empty, and the few heads that Charlotte could see were bowed, heavily engrossed in whatever work their owners had to do. Proceeding towards the elevator, she caught sneaky glances at the various photographs plastered to the corkboard separating the office cubicles. Some were rather sweet, others not so. Once she was inside the enclosed space, she pressed the button but for the ground floor instead. When the doors refused to close, she sighed, rolled her eyes and aimed a sharp punch at the panel of buttons.
Having taken longer to reach her destination than she had hoped, she sprinted across the lobby and into the room clearly signed 'NO ENTRY.' The rickety stairs were the worst part of her journey and she hated how her footsteps clanged on the grated metal, the spiral downwards too narrow for her own liking. Once she had reached the ground, however, she felt much more comfortable.
"We saw you coming," came a voice from the corner and she grinned as she approached its source. In this basement dwelled the security for the building, and the wall covered in CCTV screens never ceased to be a constant source of amusement.
"I'm glad, would mean you needed to get the electrician in again if not. Is she still freaking out?"
Charlotte slumped into an empty chair next to Arthur, the security guard, and grabbed one of the donuts from a box in front of them.
"She's been freaking out ever since she walked into the building, but the spider's still there if that's what you mean," he replied, munching through his own Krispy Kreme. "It's been terrorising her for days. Shame you weren't in yesterday- that was a spectacle to behold."
The scream from the floor below Charlotte had emitted from the company's deputy-manager, Beverly, who had developed arachnophobia over the summer due to a particularly nasty experience with a poisonous spider in Brazil. Every little insect had been at her mercy ever since, and none had lasted long, until the little fellow terrorising her today. This specific spider was huge, at least twice as big as the usual victims, and with much more courage than its predecessors. It had such determination that many of the building's workers had taken to capturing it whenever it appeared purely to keep it safe from Beverly's wrath.
"Shouldn't you be working now?" Arthur grinned, brushing some crumbs from his crumpled uniform and running a hand through his greying hair. His feet rested on the control panel and occasionally he had to stop himself resetting the entire system as his feet slipped when he fell asleep.
"What I should be doing and what I am doing are two completely different things," she replied casually, stretching her arms out in front of her and enjoying the action camera 4 had to offer; Beverly, all manic and flailing arms, was knocking over each item on her desk in an attempt to find the spider that had crawled up the wall on the other side of the room and was presently camouflaged in the shadow of the light-shade.
"Christ, he's a big one," came Arthur's voice from Charlotte's left ear, and she smirked to herself.
"I know, shame she's learnt to throw things, mind…"
"No, not the spider. I mean him."
Shaken from her entertainment, Charlotte missed Beverly realising where the spider was and chasing it out of the room with a desk tidy. Instead, her eyes were fixed on screen number 1, which was focused on one angle of the lobby.
A huge example of a man had appeared through the doors, swaggering up to the front desk with a tremendous amount of pride and confidence considering he had never set foot in the building before- if he had, Arthur would have remembered him.
"He's hairier than the average bear," Arthur chuckled to himself, shaking his head. "Some of the raff you get in here is beyond me."
All Charlotte managed was a "hmm…"
There was something not quite right about this man- he didn't seem exactly…human. If anything, he seemed quite…animal. With an uneasy feeling, Charlotte bid goodbye to Arthur and returned up the rickety stairs and out of the door. From where she stood, a little way behind the desk, she saw the strange man smirking and the secretary looking somewhat intimidated. Poor girl, Charlotte thought. Shame the new ones always get someone scary.
As she stared through the glass panel separating the desk area from where she stood, she thought, for a moment, that as he straightened himself up, the man had looked directly at her. A little shaken, she continued on her way, glancing curiously back at him every so often.
When she reached her office, after, once more, having to fight with the elevator, she sat back in her chair and sighed. Peter had finished his phone call and was now working on a computer spreadsheet, attempting to fill in numbers and letters that looked, to Charlotte, foreign. "She went nuts down there," she told him and Peter looked up, startled, and she wondered how much more excitement he could take- the slightest thing set him off.
"Oh! She was? Oh dear, that won't be good. I've got a meeting with her and the rest of the floor in ten minutes. That's why I'm trying to fill this in. We got the deal though," he beamed proudly, giving himself ten seconds of egocentric pride before returning to the task at hand. The moments rolled by with Charlotte obsessing over the Newton's cradle and Peter clacking away on his keyboard, until he stood and printed off the document.
"Bollocks!" he snapped as his phone rang and he grumbled, thrusting it in Charlotte's direction. "Can you take that? She'll kill me if I'm late again." Without waiting for an answer, he hurried away and Charlotte lifted the phone.
"Hello? Charlotte?"
"Yes? Who's speaking?"
"Oh, I'm Lauren, the new secretary in the lobby. Uhm…there's someone here for you. Is it alright to send him up?" She lowered her voice and Charlotte got the distinct impression that whoever it was was still there. "He's sort of…demanding. He won't leave. I'm not sure what to d-"
"Yes, that's fine. Send him up." The poor girl probably had no idea how to handle important businessmen. "Did he mention his name, by any chance?"
"Uhm…Hold on…"
There was a pause.
"He says his name is Victor Creed."
This time it was Charlotte who fell silent.
"Hello? Charlotte?"
Fuck.