Pasadena, Calif. July 23rd, 2014
A woman sat at her desk in a dark build. Night flood the empty offices and cubicles. The only sound was the occasional turning of a page, the soft scratch of pen against paper, and the hum of the air conditioning unit as it kicked on and off. A desk lamp poured yellow light onto the books in front of the woman. There were four all haphazardly splayed across the surface, while others were stacked, tilting dangerously
Tapping the end of the pen against the desk, she leaned further over one book. It was a large tome with pages faded to yellow by oxidation and fray at the edges from ears of different moths and bugs munching on the old paper. Symbols and paintings that were quite faded were etched onto the paper, soft and worn with time.
Nodding, the woman added something to her notes.
On the lines of paper, there were letters and things written in slanted, messy handwriting. Smudges from where she hadn't let the ink dry arched across the parchment. Things were crossed out and rewritten. The same symbol was written all over the pages; it was in the margins, on top of the paper, crammed anywhere that fit her fancy.
Behind her desk, the clock ticked. The hands marked it at thirteen minutes passed midnight. She paid the clock no mine, continuing to flip the pages delicately to read. She didn't even turn when the minute hand began to slow, ticking slower and slower by the second.
Tick. Tick….Tick…Tick.
Still, the woman didn't turn around. Several minutes later, she looked up suddenly, as though she had been torn from a dream. She looked around her office. Her large lights weren't on because she sat in a complex maze of cubicles where the overhead light wasn't under her sole command.
Finding nothing, the woman glanced at her watch. Her mouth twisted down and her brows pulled together. She tapped the glass face of her watch a few times. It did nothing, the minute hand frozen. Undeterred, she spun in her chair, craning her neck to look up at the clock on the wall. Her frown intensified.
Pulling the rolling chair towards the clock, she reached up and tapped the face. It didn't move. She continued to stare up at it for a moment, but was distracted as a shadow fell over her. Her heart sped up, noticing that the shadow was distorted on the walls. It wasn't her own. An eerie feeling crept up her spine as she slowly began to wheel the chair around.
The chair only spun a quarter of the way towards the owner of the shadow. There was a sharp scream of terror cut off by a guttural, choking sound. Then, there was silence.
The clock moved no more.