(Contains very strong violence)

Carl looked up at Jane from across the pulpit; she was wearing her red dress with white polka dots that she wore every Wednesday, the bottom of it rippling slightly under the A/C, revealing her lovely tanned legs. She looked over at him, and a little crook appeared in her smile that made him feel warm and sensual all over. As she looked back at whomever she was talking to, flicking her smooth chestnut hair over her shoulder, Carl wondered how nice it might be to bash her brains in, to spool in her skull and turn it into something resembling those glass bowls you put your keys in. Or maybe caving her chest in would be more satisfying; after all, there were more bones to break, more stuff underneath to play with, and she might live a little longer that way and he could enjoy more of her suffering. He couldn’t decide. He supposed he could try the chest thing this week and then the skull thing the next, but by then he might’ve moved onto someone else. Jane had used his coffee mug in the break room this morning, a crime forgivable under the right circumstances, but instead of cleaning it, she had merely left it in the middle of the sink. Not even the dishwasher! The sink! Anyone who hadn’t seen her using it would surely think of Carl as the kind of lowlife who not only doesn’t clean up after himself but also the kind who would cause an obstruction for others! It was diabolical! It was… 

‘Hey Carl.’ her words came through that curtain of sumptuous chestnut hair. ‘Is there any chance you could lower the A/C a bit? I’m getting a bit chilly.’

He should’ve told her that he worked in IT, and that controlling the A/C was not his job. He should’ve told her that if she was prone to getting chilly, then she probably shouldn’t be wearing a knee-high dress so early in the year. He should’ve even said that the A/C is on a small panel at the edge of the room and that even with a whopping three buttons, even she could probably work it out. Instead he said:

‘Yeah, sure thing Jane.’

‘Thanks. You’re the best.’

Their smiles were so stretched it caused a little pain in the corners of their faces, but it was okay, everyone was used to it by now. Carl found that removing the faces entirely usually got rid of the smiles. Jane wouldn’t be complaining about the A/C when she didn’t have a face, or a brain for that matter. But for now he would put up with it. He always did. Always put up with anything, as everyone in the office did, for they knew they’d get their downtime later, and that would make it all okay. 

Carl got up and turned the A/C off on the way to the break room down the corridor. During the walk, several people, including two of his bosses, nodded eagerly at him like old friends. There wasn’t a frown to be found in the building, and that made things very tiring by the end of the week. That’s why Carl always scheduled his downtime near the end of the week if he could. Thursdays were best he’d found. You’d think Friday, but Friday was kind of a non-day before the weekend anyway, and four days often felt like the limit. It’s funny; people had found more and more ways to survive existing in the workplace, but the corporate world hadn’t changed a bit. 

There were many people in the break room, standing around the table and chatting very pleasantly with each other, disturbed only by the odd glance at a watch or a phone to make sure they weren’t overrunning on break. It was someone’s birthday. It was always someone’s birthday here; today was the work experience kid who had already left the break room and gone home for the day, meaning the people remaining were simply celebrating a half-eaten cake. On his way to get himself a crumbling piece that had been hacked at by three others, Holly from Accounts accosted him like a friendly mugger. Her smile was so broad, her lovely pearly teeth reflected Carl’s receding hairline back to him.

‘Hey you!’ Carl’s break had started, he was currently being unpaid, but still he listened. ‘What was your funny email about this morning, huh?’

‘Oh,’ Carl murmured. ‘I just noticed something of a hole in the timesheet system. Since you don’t record sickness anymore I guess it’s a little more open to abuse now.’

Holly didn’t flinch. She smiled and nodded like a primary school teacher.

‘Anyway,’ Carl continued. ‘I just mean that people could essentially call in sick on their contracted hours and still work their overtime, but because there’s no record in the timesheets…’

‘Oh but if people don’t do all their hours, they won’t get paid overtime.’ She said it so confidently, Carl actually felt stupid.

‘I get that,’ he said calmly. ‘I just mean that if we don’t record it like we used to, there’d be no way of knowing…’ 

‘Don’t worry, it goes over most people’s heads. But if people don’t do their overtime, they won’t get paid for it. There’s a system.’ She actually giggled then.

‘But the contracted hours?’

‘Okay.’ She laughed, and the glare from her shiny teeth caught him in the eye. ‘Just let me sort that out, it’s all a bit technical.’ Yes, she had just really said that to someone in IT. Carl had decided that Jane was moving down the list after all, spared for another day. He would start first with Holly, maybe pull all those lovely teeth of hers out one by one with a pair of pliers. They both smiled at each other, before Holly broke away to talk to someone in HR. Carl had just used six minutes of his thirty minute break, and someone else had just taken the last piece of cake. Thank God it was Wednesday.

Carl stalked down the corridor as he’d done many times, a semi-automatic rifle slumped over his right shoulder, admiring the paintings he had created on the walls. He always thought the walls had been too white, too “hospital” for his liking, but now they had all kinds of colours on them. Granted, they were mostly variations on red, but sometimes you got the odd splotch of blue and white and brown. People had all sorts in their bodies that popped nicely against the white of the walls. He felt like some sort of corporate Jackson Pollock. 

He’d honoured his promise of removing all of Holly’s teeth, but got the idea to replace them with Mr Collins’ ugly yellow ones on his way in this morning. It had not been as fun as he’d expected, and was fiddly to tell the truth. He got bored about halfway through, and decided just to remove her head instead. He was now on his way to the roof to volley in over the side, and would only have three minutes to do this. He walked through the bloodied pulpit, casually stepping over the bodies of his co-workers whom he’d mowed down. When he stepped over Gavin from Training, he regretted not trying that blood eagle thing he’d been reading about. He hoped he’d remember for next week. Two minutes left. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make the elevator go any quicker – you needed engineering know-how for that and it wasn’t Carl’s thing, so he’d just have to hope he’d have time to enjoy the rooftop.

One minute. As the elevator dinged and opened up, Carl held Holly’s toothless head up to his to get another look. He felt nothing. As he stepped out onto the roof, the sky above grey and colourless, he said to the head:

‘Fuck you, bitch. You don’t know shit about timesheets.’ 

Then he took a deep, steady breath that came after a job well done, raised the head, threw it, and punted it over the edge of the roof. It felt very much like kicking open a melon, and more blood rained over him. He sighed. Ten seconds. He looked down at his hands, the blood now drying upon them, then looked out over the grey little world beyond the office building, and then, and then…

He was awake, and the pod started filling slowly with light. The machine said “Simulation ended. Thank you for using Downtime™.’ Carl sighed deeply and gathered himself before rolling over and opening the hatch. The pod door opened, and fresh air greeted his nostrils as he slowly climbed out. Denny, the other IT technician, was sitting at a desk in the far corner of the room. He raised his head from his monitor for just a moment, gave a nod to Carl, and then returned his attention to the screen. Carl stood up, closed the pod behind him, and stretched. He left almost immediately, and would return in a week’s time. Until then, other people would use the pods. 

Every employee was entitled to one hour a week of downtime; that was, in order to keep things civil, employees got to use a virtual reality pod once a week, to act out any fantasies they wanted, as a way of letting off steam. This time was private, and they could do pretty much anything they wanted – within reason. Simulating the workplace and any of its employees was strictly prohibited, but working in IT meant knowing ways of circumventing this, so Carl (and to his knowledge, only Carl) had been privately murdering his colleagues for the past year now, and without it he was sure that he wouldn’t have lasted long in this job at all. He was pretty sure that Denny was using it to fuck every attractive woman in the office, but he never asked. Carl didn’t go in for such things. 

The first time he decided to kill everyone in the office, he’d barely got past the rather blunt-speaking receptionist before the timer went off. The point of Downtime was to be as realistic as possible, and that includes how people beg and cry when you point a gun or axe (or one time, a bazooka) in their face. It affected Carl a lot that first time, and he swore he’d never do it again, but then the receptionist decided to be unhelpful in real life when his pass stopped working and sure enough, a couple weeks later, he blew her up and kicked her head down the hallway. If anyone ever asked about his downtime, he always just said he was sitting on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean, sipping rum from a coconut, when really he was more likely to be drinking blood from the skull of the CEO. Not that he would – he wasn’t crazy for god’s sake! In many ways, this was the healthiest way to spend his downtime, as it practically made him the nicest guy in the whole office. The rest of the employees were frankly wasting their time meditating in the Himalayas, or skiing in the Austrian Alps, or having romantic encounters with Marilyn Monroe. When the timer went off, they’d just be disappointed again, whereas killing your co-workers provided a catharsis unlike any other.

On his way out of the room, Carl’s phone pinged to tell him he’d received this month’s payslip. He noticed that he’d been underpaid again, and would therefore need to speak to Holly. Thankfully, he had just killed her so at least he’d feel a little more at ease. Her teeth shone like a lighthouse beacon from across her office as she beckoned him in with that phony smile of hers.

‘Hey buddy!’ she said like they were friends, and Carl made a mental note to refer to her like that the next time he was taking her apart. ‘What can I help you with?’

‘I just noticed that my payslip was a little under this month,’ he said calmly.

‘Oh really? My, my. Are you sure you’ve worked it out okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. Have you maybe miscalculated the number of hours you did?’

Her smile never faulted, she was treating him like a child but he continued to smile and speak softly. 

‘Yes.’

‘Well why would it be wrong?’

‘The salary is there. But the overtime is missing.’

‘Oh, okay.’

There was a moment of silence in which Carl wanted to smash whatever was nearest over her desk, just to get some sort of reaction out of her that felt genuine. 

‘So, I haven’t been paid for my overtime,’ he reiterated.

‘Right, okay,’ she sounded a little off now, like he was being unfair to her. ‘Which manager approved your overtime?’

‘Stephen.’

‘Stephen?’

‘Head of Operations.’

‘Oh, Stephen. Yeah, of course. He’s nice, isn’t he?’

‘Sure. Anyway, he asked me to do overtime to work on the new software patch.’

‘Well, it doesn’t say he’s authorised it. And we need a manager to authorise it.’

‘Well, I’m sure if you just ask him…’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t do that, it’s not my department.’

‘Right, so if I ask him, will you update the timesheet?’

‘I can’t do that, I’m afraid. The timesheets have already been done.’

‘Can I get it next month?’

‘If you work overtime next month, then it will appear on your timesheet. Provided that it’s approved by a manager of course.’

‘That’s not what I’m…’

He took a moment to look into her confused, fluttering eyes and wondered how she even found her way to work in the morning, let alone hold down a job.

‘Okay, how about I just take it as TOIL and save everyone a job.’

‘Oh, well I can’t personally authorise TOIL. That will need to be authorised by your line manager, but you’d need to prove that you worked the hours.’

‘Right, can you send me my last timesheet then? The hours will be on that.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry but the timesheets are confidential. We can’t just let anyone see the hours people have worked.’

‘But they’re my hours. It would only be the ones I’ve worked.’

‘Yeah, no, I don’t know.’

‘Look, just fucking…’ he cut himself off but it was too late. That broad, beaming smile of hers had collapsed like a tent without poles and she was looking worried, threatened even.

‘I apologise,’ he said at once, in the calmest voice possible. 

She nodded awkwardly. 

‘Listen, I have another meeting now,’ she lied, nervously shuffling nothing in particular on her desk to look busy. ‘Would you mind?’

‘Of course,’ he relented, and picked himself up.

‘If you’re feeling stressed, then maybe you should speak to someone. We have some wonderful resources available.’

‘It’s fine,’ he said curtly. ‘Maybe I just need some downtime.’

‘Oh yeah!’ Suddenly her smile was back, like that word activated something in her mind. ‘What a great idea.’

And use it to drive a railroad spike through your head, he thought. He left the office with both fists balled tightly in his pockets, and couldn’t believe he’d have to wait a whole week to work this out. Just gotta make it to Thursday, he thought. Just gotta make it to Thursday.

On Monday, after dodging a fair few “how was your weekend, mate?” and “is it Monday already?!”’s on his way to the pulpit, he barely had time to sit down before he was called to HR. Presumably, it had to do with his “altercation” with Holly on Thursday, and they’d likely chastise him about his tone of voice and encourage him to seek counselling. He walked through the long stretch of hallway to the HR office, the white walls begging to be painted, and saw Laney, a sweet blonde girl, hired more for personality rather than experience, grinning at him before he entered the room.

‘Hi,’ Carl said to her sheepishly.

‘Good morning, Carl!’ she said like those annoying guest speakers in a school assembly. ‘How was your weekend?’

‘Yeah, good thanks. Yours?’

‘Amazing, thank you. Shame it’s over. Can you believe it’s Monday already?!’

‘I know right.’

‘Anyway, take a seat.’

He obliged, and at once noticed how plush and comfortable the chairs were in here.

‘Am I in trouble or something?’ he asked.

‘Oh my goodness, no!’ she said, almost embarrassed. ‘Sorry to make you think that. We just wanted to have a little chat.’

‘About Holly?’

‘Holly?’’

‘Never mind. Please continue.’

‘Anyway, we really appreciate all the work that you’ve been doing lately…’

Oh my god, he thought. Are they promoting me? Giving me a pay rise? Are they finally…

‘But have you heard of ITX?’

‘The agency?’ 

‘Very good! They do a lot of computery stuff.’

‘Sure. What about them?’

‘Well, as you know, our budget’s a little thin at the moment…’

Yes, probably because of all the money you piss up the wall with things like company credit cards and having birthday cake every single day. 

‘And Stephen – he’s so clever – has worked out that essentially we could get an agency person to come in a couple of times a week, and the rest we can do in-house.’

‘So you’re limiting my hours or something?’

‘Well, no.’ Her smile faltered for a moment, but it seemed more like she was annoyed at having to talk about anything difficult. Carl realised and did it for her.

‘Are you firing me?’

‘Oh, we don’t really like that word. Think of this more as an opportunity for growth.’

‘But just not here?’

‘Precisely!’ She looked at him as if he had come up with the idea himself.

‘But what about the Downtime system? You need IT to maintain them.’

‘Stephen reckons that once you show us how to do it, then we can just do it along with our own jobs. I mean, not me specifically, but you know…’

Carl was perplexed, he wanted so much to scream and destroy everything in sight but for some reason his body had forced him to stay calm, as if the fatal blow had already been delivered and he had nothing left to do except fall down and die.

‘But,’ he murmured, ‘You said I wasn’t in trouble.’ 

‘You’re not.’ she said caringly. ‘We are so, so grateful for all your hard work.’

‘But I’m fired?’

‘We are going separate ways.’ she corrected him. ‘And of course, you still have until Friday. You’ll need to show a few people what to do with the Downtime system, and of course we can’t let you go without having cake.’

Cake. Three years in hell for a piece of cake.

‘Right, okay.’ he said, defeated, like he’d just used his last breath. Then, without even realising, he got up and started to leave.

‘Thanks for everything Carl,’ she called after him. ‘Best of luck.’ 

Carl stood outside the glass façade and stared blankly down the corridor, watching all the people mill about like fish in a pond, laughing, chatting, doing anything except for work. He’d find out later that Denny was also for the chop but had elected not to finish out the week, unlike Carl. After all, if he left now, he wouldn’t get his downtime on Thursday, and he had the feeling that next week’s would be the best he’d ever had. 

From Monday afternoon onwards, Carl thought of nothing except what he was going to do to his co-workers. Even when he showed the pesky little socialites that qualified as office workers how to do basic IT, he smiled and spoke calmly, all while imagining every little thing he would do to them. This was the last hoorah, the final opportunity to do anything he could think of. On Wednesday lunchtime, he had the fantastic idea that he would even get a few of his most disliked colleagues to kill each other, just to see the pain in their eyes. Maybe he’d get some of their kids to come in and make them watch as he pushed them off the roof (served them right for having pictures of them on their desks and letting him see). In truth, there was too much he wanted to do, so he decided he would just see where the blood lust took him when the time came. 

On Wednesday night, he could barely sleep with all the excitement. He was thinking that maybe he’d even turn off the timer on the Downtime pod, just as Denny had shown him once. He might as well spend as much time as possible getting his final revenge, and if he got caught, then what were they going to do? Fire him? He went into the office on Thursday with a spring in his step, daydreamed through his meetings and friendly conversations with co-workers, and counted every minute from 14:00 until 15:00, when his downtime period finally started. He went loping through the long hallway he knew would be painted with blood in a few minutes’ time, and for the first time in years, the smile he wore upon his face was completely genuine. 

He reached the Downtime room and took a moment to admire the pods that lined the wall at the back, making sure to savour the moment. He saw that Denny had been replaced with some part-timer from downstairs, who was scratching his head over the lines of code in the computer. Carl didn’t bother talking to him, and instead marched over to his assigned pod with his security pass in hand. He hovered the pass over the scanner on the pod, and was devastated when it beeped harshly at him and the light flashed red. Access denied. Carl tried again, and again, trying to keep calm, but the pass wasn’t working. The other pods were in use so there was no point trying them. Carl went angrily over to the guy at the desk and waved the pass in front of him. 

‘My pass isn’t working.’ he told him bluntly. 

‘I’m sorry?’ the young chap said to him anxiously.

‘My pass,’ he repeated. ‘I can’t get into the pod.’

‘Oh, okay. Let me look you up. What’s your name?’

‘Carl Jenkins,’ he said, annoyed. 

The kid’s fingers moved slowly across the keyboard as he stared into the screen.

‘Says here that you’re leaving the company,’ he informed him finally. ‘All permissions to be removed.’

‘But I won’t finish until tomorrow.’

‘Sorry, they just told me to wipe the permissions. They didn’t tell me when you were leaving.’

‘Can you reinstate them?’

‘Sorry, mate. No can do. I wouldn’t even know how.’

‘But my downtime. I need my downtime!’ 

‘Please don’t shout at me. I’m only doing my job.’

‘I… I…’ Carl stammered, completely lost for words. 

His mind was in a blind panic; all week he’d been waiting for this, and now some pesky kid had denied him. They had already taken away his job unceremoniously, and now they had taken away the only thing that had made it all bearable. The final insult. The gun was loaded and now couldn’t be fired, but it had to be. It just had to be! And then Carl got an idea, a terrible idea, that if he couldn’t take his revenge in virtual reality, then he might just have to take it in real life instead. He started to imagine just how he might do it, where he’d start, and then he saw the IT guy’s eyes go wide and stare at something behind him. When he turned, he saw Denny standing there, fire in his eyes and a semi-automatic rifle in his hands. Their eyes met, and a devilish smile appeared on Denny’s lips as the part-timer started to scream.

‘Denny?’ Carl asked him, ignoring the noise. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Downtime,’ said Denny calmly, and locked the rifle. ‘Care to join?’