The Revolving Door

Kelly looked through at the hotel. The historic Patrick Henry, home to a million and one ghosts, as she was told.

The lump in her throat thickened. She rifled around in her messy purse and sucked down two more cough drops.

It wasn't the ghost stories she minded.

Somewhere in there was her boss.

When Kelly had started her job as a software engineer ten years ago, Mr. DeVille had seemed nice; sickeningly so. After a decade with him, Kelly had decided he was the closest thing to the anti-christ.

She'd been tempted to call up the crazies bashing the President as the almighty Damian and tell them to cast holy water on her pudgy little frog of a boss.

How many anxiety attacks was she up to now? Six hundred and twenty-four, Kelly sighed. The last one had been so bad that she'd honestly been amazed she still had a job. They'd been at another hotel, this one in Phoenix. Mr. DeVille had pulled her aside while she set up her aging laptop for a presentation and blasted her with phlegm as he screamed. Screamed for an entire hour before the group showed up to listen to her present their messy, overpriced pile of shit accounting software.

Halfway through, and she thought she was fine. Then she got a glimpse of him staring her down and burst into tears.

What was it about the software industry that made people act like machines?

The business group had stared blankly at her and shuffled out at Mr. DeVille's urging. He had insisted that she was suffering from the "lady issues" that come after a pregnancy. Never mind that she'd lost her third child. Never mind that her husband had walked out on her his hands thrown in the air at her "neurosis".

Women problems. Sure.

Kelly looked out on the road where it seemed like a perpetual game of Frogger for anyone who dared used the crosswalk. Everyone in a hurry, no time for humanity.

No time for her to eat some cancer sticks. She had to go and give her soul to the DeVille (she almost cracked a smile at the coincidental hilarity. Almost).

Maybe she would get lucky. Maybe some ghost would swallow him whole or trap him in a bedroom, like in The Shining. The thought of a rotting old lady coming after his sallow turkey neck did make her smile.

Oh well. Emotions off. Face blank.

Kelly turned and headed through the revolving door.

Her mind went blank with her face, and she found herself pushing a few times in a complete circle. Maybe if her inner child hadn't died a long time ago, it would have been fun. Now, it just felt hollow. With a sigh, she turned to her stop.

But, instead, she stopped dead in her tracks. The glass had to be playing tricks on her eyesight. Fuck, she did really need glasses -- the doctor hadn't just been trying to line his pockets.

The guests, the staff, every single one of them looked as though their face had melted. Their ribs had opened like butterfly wings escaping a cocoon and their hearts dragged behind them on the floor.

Kelly tried to make a sound, but it only came out a whimper, like when she tried to sleep but saw only the spittle flying out of her bosses face. The door was no longer turning.

The things inside had begun to look up at her. Some of their eyes had rolled down their cheeks. She gaped at them, they gaped back, as though a woman frozen in the revolving door was the weirdest thing about.

Then, she saw Mr. DeVille. Oh God, did she ever see him. 

He practically poured out of the reserved conference room like a gelatinous slug. Kelly was sure he was yelling, but all that came out was the sound of someone drowning beneath a bubbling ooze. His grotesque form slithered her way, waving the tiny limbs she supposed were arms.

When he got close enough, she saw his mouth open and screamed.

It was a gaping maw, not unlike a lamprey. Two pincers on either side of his mouth wildly jerked towards it, as though directing her on where she should jump. He only stopped his beeline for the door when a bag boy got in his path.

The bag boy was sallow, more of a skeletal corpse than a melted mutant. He looked up blankly as Mr. DeVille crammed him in his enormous mouth and swallowed him whole, screaming the entire time. His face was still visible against the translucent gut; he looked unaffected.

"Kelly," he garbled at her. "You fucking idiot, get your ass in here, now!" 

She looked at him and pressed back against the door. It wouldn't move.

She could see the veins in his face as he pressed it to the glass, trying to prod his comical appendage of an arm through to grab her.

Every rant, every curse, every scream he uttered spewed a sickening black ooze over the glass.

Oh, god, it was melting through! 

The dead face of the bag boy stared out at her and Kelly swore that he was mouthing, "Go."

With a wild shriek, she rammed into the door with all of her might. The revolving door spun her around several times until she practically collapsed outside. She glanced back for a brief moment, only in time to see Mr. DeVille flailing his arm around wildly and screaming loudly enough to shake the glass.

Kelly felt the world lift from her shoulders. She lit a cigarette, flipped him off, and hailed a taxi. The historic Patrick Henry could have him. The business group that would have to watch his mealymouthed presentation and how he didn't know how to work a basic projection screen on their own.

It didn't matter to her. She saw some of the horrors inside nod at her, some even smiling a bit.

For the first time in a decade, she smiled back.

The taxi driver was the most handsome slob she'd ever met.