DoorWorld

When a woman fresh out of college takes a new job at a quiet company, things take a turn for the worst...

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*** Apply Now! DoorWorld!***

Full Job Description:

Door Quality Assurance Associate

Part-time/Full-time hours available

Make BIG money at DoorWorld!

• Extra $3 per hour on Sat/Sun and overnight shifts

• Generous Store Discount

• Profit Sharing

• Flexible Scheduling

• Dental Plan

• On-the-job Training

• Fast Growth Potential!

Start building an exciting and rewarding career as a Door Quality Assurance Associate at DoorWorld, a healthy and growing company! Immediate openings available!

Our Quality Assurance Associates play an important role in verifying our products are compliant with all FBCC Standards! Checking and maintaining new Doors, ensuring daily quotas are met, and assisting with keeping our warehouse clean and ready for Customers are just a few of the ways you get to make a difference every day! The best Quality Assurance Associates are self-motivated and ready to take responsibility!

Apply today! We are hiring immediately and are excited to talk to you about the great opportunities available with DoorWorld!

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It didn’t seem like the most glamorous job, but Nat had applied nonetheless. After endless rejection letters, uncomfortable virtual interviews, and a plethora of non-responses, Nat decided to give up the career hunt and take whatever she could find. All she really needed was to pay her bills on time, which were mounting quicker than she could keep up with.

Nat had graduated six months ago with a microbiology degree and a zeal for entering the workforce. She was ready to finally make a change in the world. Only, the world had been none too eager to accept her into it. It turns out that you need experience to find a good job, and most jobs weren’t willing to help you get experience unless you already had it. Nat had forgone an internship in college (a fatal mistake, she now realized) and all the internships she had looked at after graduation weren’t willing to pay her. Useless.

That left her with DoorWorld.

It wasn’t a bad gig on paper. Extra pay on weekend shifts, flexible scheduling, and a dental plan seemed like a godsend. Besides, the title of Quality Assurance Associate had a nice ring to it — an air of importance — and would undoubtedly look good on her resume. All she had to do to apply was fill out a questionnaire online. No resume, no work experience, no cover letter. Just a questionnaire that asked four questions: Did she have a family? Were they living with her? What did her social life look like? Could she handle being alone for long stretches of time?

She’d completed it in under five minutes.

Yes. No. Not ideal. Yes.

She’d gotten her letter of employment not even twenty-four hours later. A sweet old man had delivered it to her loft door with a box of chocolates. A kind gesture, which she only found odd after the fact. The questionnaire hadn’t asked for her physical address, only her email. Surely such a thoughtful gesture wasn’t enough to raise concerns, right? The old man really was sweet, even if he might have been missing some teeth… and possibly an eye. It was hard to tell. Besides, chocolate covers a multitude of sins, and student loans don’t pay themselves.

DoorWorld’s warehouse wasn’t far from her apartment. In fact, it was just two city blocks away. Nat found that curious. She knew the city well and had never even heard of DoorWorld before, nor could she recall ever seeing its building. Surely she would have if it was less than a mile from her house.

Nat walked to work on her first day. She was worried the place might not actually exist, but it was right where the address had said it would be.

The warehouse left much to be desired. It was a large, flat box-shaped building made of concrete blocks that had been plastered with a shiny white paint, which kind of bothered your eyes if you stared too long. The only entrance was a heavy steel door under a royal blue awning on the street-facing side of the facility. The identifier of the building was the DoorWorld logo that had been plastered on the door, alongside what must have been the company slogan: When one door closes, another opens!

For a company that manufactures doors, the one at the front gave her quite a fit. It was a heavy thing that fought you as you opened it and had a real mean squeak to it. It took more effort than she would have liked, but eventually Nat slipped through and was rewarded by a blast of cool air.

Nat shivered as she stood beneath the air conditioning duct. She hadn’t thought to bring a coat with her. It was the middle of the summer. The room inside was just as bland as the outside. White walls, white lights, carpeted floor, and an industrial desk with a concrete countertop. Plucky piano music played over the intercom speakers in the ceiling.

“Hello! You must be Natalie,” said a voice.

A man of middling age and stature had appeared from behind another door in the corner of the room. Nat hadn’t even heard him come in.

“Oh, yes! And you are?”

The man approached and stuck out a hand, which was built like a hockey puck and covered in hair on the backside. “Matt,” he said as they shook.

“Huh. Matt and Nat. That’s kind of funny.”

“Excuse me?”

Nat flushed. “Oh, nothing! It’s just, your name is Matt and mine is Nat, so they rhyme. I like that.”

“Ah, I see. Well, call it a happy coincidence then.”

The two of them shared an awkward silence as the music overhead reached a crescendo. The pause gave Nat just enough time to read the nametag pinned on Matt’s chest.

Matthew Schneider:

Level 5,000 Supervisor.

“What does level five-thousand mean?”

“I’m sorry?” Matt asked.

“Your badge, it says you’re a level five-thousand supervisor. What does that mean?”

Matt grabbed his pin and looked down at it, as if he’d forgotten what it said. “Oh, it means that I’ve surviv— erm, completed five-thousand door inspections! Once you cross that number, you get promoted to supervisor.”

“Oh! How long did that take you?”

“A few months, I think.”

“Cool.”

Another brief pause passed between them. Nat was just beginning to think that a few months wasn’t a lot of time when Matt turned and gestured for her to follow him. “Come, let me show you where you’ll be working.”

“Yes, that would be great.”

The door behind the desk led to the greater portion of the warehouse on the back side of the building. Nat was quite surprised to find that the room did not grow taller when they stepped through, but deeper. They stepped out onto a catwalk overlooking the warehouse floor below, where hundreds and hundreds of doors in their frames stood rank-and-file.

“This,” said Matt, “is the Door Floor.”

“You’re not kidding!” said Nat. “How many are there?”

It was dead-silent in the warehouse, and very poorly lit. Their voices echoed and trickled off into the distance as they spoke.

“Uh, there’s only one Door Floor,” Matt replied, then headed down the stairs before Nat could clarify. She counted forty-seven steps before they reached the bottom, where Matt had stopped next to a terminal on the wall. “And this is the timecard station. Each day when you arrive, you will take your designated time card and punch yourself in. And when you leave for the day, you will punch out.”

“That’s a lot of punching,” Nat said as she studied the cards on the wall.

There were only two time cards. One was for Matt, which had his name proudly printed in type-writer font. The second was for Nat, which must have been hastily prepared for her, as her name was scratched in black marker along the top. The number seventy-two was scrawled beside her name.

“You’re a funny one,” Matt said, if not a little skeptically.

“I come by it honestly,” Nat replied. “Hey, are we the only two people that work here?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There are only two time cards here. Are we the only people here?”

“Of course not,” Matt said.

“Well then, where are they? The others.”

“They work on the… other floors.”

“So there are other floors besides this one? Will I get to see them too?”

Matt hesitated, allowing Nat’s question to fade into the warehouse beyond.

“No.”

“No? What do you mean, no?”

“There are no other floors. Just the Door Floor.”

“But, you just said there were other floors—”

“None that you need concern yourself with. Now please, punch yourself in and let’s get started. We’re already five minutes behind schedule.”

“So… I just open the door and watch it?”

Matt nodded as he checked his stopwatch. “Yes. For five minutes, then you move on to the next.”

Nat’s skepticism only grew at this revelation. This was turning out to be quite a boring job, and they were only on the third door of the day. Was DoorWorld seriously willing to pay her to sit around and watch doors all day?

“And what exactly am I looking for while I watch these doors?”

“You know, anything strange,” Matt replied as he jotted something down on his clipboard. He then pulled a label gun from his hip and marked the door with a yellow sticker that read: SAFE. “That and the usual stuff. Squeaky hinges, knobs that don’t turn right, doors that don’t close flush…”

“And how will I know if I see something strange?”

Matt stopped so abruptly that Nat almost ran into him. “Have you ever seen anything strange before, Natalie?”

Nat wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “Sure, I guess. People are strange… they do strange things.”

That seemed to satisfy Matt’s question, because he gave her a curt nod and made for the next door. “You’ll know it when you see it. Now, I want you to do this next one.”

Nat took the stopwatch and the clipboard from her new supervisor and approached the door. She couldn’t quite explain why, but something about that door made her more nervous than anything ever had before. What if she messed up? How could you mess up opening a door? What if she did notice something strange? Then what? She was spiraling. Stupid.

The knob was cold as she took hold of it. She felt the latch bolt slide as she turned it, moving smooth as any new door should. Nat backed away as the door swung free, giving it space to open completely just as Matt had told her to.

“Make sure you start your watch.”

“Oh, right!” Click.

The two of them stood there for the next five minutes, completely transfixed on the open doorway before them. Nat watched that door like a hawk, hoping, begging for something interesting to happen. Anything to prove that this job wasn’t a total dud.

Nothing happened.

A shrill beep—beep—beep notified Nat that five minutes had passed. She closed the door with a sigh and marked it SAFE with her tape gun.

“Is this really what I’m going to be doing all day?”

“Yes, it’s what you signed up for,” Matt said. “Is that going to be an issue?”

“Well, no… but is this really what you want to pay me for? I mean, surely there are better things we could be doing.”

“I can promise you, Natalie, there aren’t. The role of a Quality Assurance Associate is vital. Without you, DoorWorld could not operate as it does.”

“You truly believe that?” Nat asked.

Matt stopped to consider. It took him a moment before he found his answer. “I do. And I need you to as well if you’re going to be successful in this role.”

Nat wanted to say so many things, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. Something about Matt’s sincerity stifled every quip or snide comment she could make. Instead, she settled for, “Sure. I’ll give it a shot.”

“Good, then I’ll leave you to it. Quota is seventy-five doors a day. Anything past that is overachieving, but you’ll get paid extra. You get an hour lunch and two fifteen minute breaks that you can use at your discretion.”

Thirty-seven doors; thirty-seven SAFE stickers.

Nat had begun to find her rhythm. Handle, turn, open, click, wait.

Had Matt really done five-thousand of these? Nat had done the math, and if that were true, then it would have taken him something like two months to reach the supervisor role. It wasn’t a long time, but could Nat really do this for two months? Why not? Surely there were worse jobs out there. Maybe she could convince Matt to let her bring her headphones so she could keep herself entertained with podcasts. That wouldn’t be so bad, but Matt seemed to be a bit of a stickler.

Beep—beep—beep.

Handle, turn, close, sticker, clipboard, next door.

Nat was beginning to wonder when would be a good time to break for lunch. She was just over the half-way mark and her stomach was beginning to pester her. There were no clocks in the warehouse, and Matt was nowhere to be seen, so there was no indication of when he’d be taking his lunch break. Nat really didn’t want to eat alone, and she hoped that maybe she could corner Matt in the breakroom and try to pry some more information from him about DoorWorld. This place certainly was strange.

Handle, turn, open, click… Wait, what was that?

Something was off about door number thirty-eight, that much Nat could tell. It started as a niggling at the back of her mind, like someone had taken a feather and begun to tickle her cerebellum. Then the taste of static filled her mouth, and her sense of equilibrium began to waver. She had to use the edge of the doorframe to keep herself steady.

A tiny speck appeared in the center of the open doorway, floating, like an ink stain on the fabric of reality. Nat leaned towards the spot to get a better look. It began to warble, spreading itself over the open space. Before long, a portal of black sludge stared back at her. Nat stepped back and rubbed her eyes, worried that all these doors might be making her a little stir crazy.

The anomaly was still there.

She could just make out subtle variations in its darkness. It almost looked as if the door led to another room… Yes, yes that was it. There was a room on the other side that appeared to be drenched in midnight from floor to ceiling.

Without knowing why, Natalie poked her head through the doorway. In fact, she couldn’t have done anything else, for she was so transfixed by the odd appearance of this dark portal.

The change in atmosphere was palpable once she crossed the threshold. The air had a weight to it, heavy-laden with an oppressive moisture that slathered itself in every nook and crevice. Light was sparse, which made it difficult to see much at all. There was in fact a room inside, but it was unlike any Nat had seen before. There were eight walls that weren’t symmetrical at all, and some odd, blobby furniture that hung from the ceiling and dripped black gunk onto the floor.

Craning her head to the left, she spotted a source of faint light. Several, actually. It wasn’t coming from a lamp, but from the dim glow of eyes in the gloom. Nat counted four sets of those pale, white eyes and found they were attached to four, slender bodies coated in the same grime that dripped from the furniture. Two of the figures were tall and slender, while the other two were much, much smaller. To Nat’s mind it appeared like a family of four sitting around a dinner table, only, the table was hanging from the ceiling and they were sitting on the floor.

They hadn’t appeared to notice her yet.

Nat gawked for a moment longer before she remembered herself and realized that this would certainly qualify as something strange. She needed to report this to Matt and make sure this door was marked accordingly.

Nat turned to go, but the biologist in her wouldn’t let her leave. Those creatures were just so fascinating! Surely she could stay and look a while longer? What would be the harm in that?

When she poked her head back in, she was surprised to find the creatures were standing now and gawking back at her. Nat was half-pressed to say something to them, but some unseen force had taken her tongue. The creatures approached her, seeming in that instant infinitely more terrifying than they had just previously. If Nat had any sense left, she would have bolted out of there and shut the door behind her, but she didn’t. No, she was now transfixed, lost in the embrace of those endless, glowing eyes.

The leading creature reached a hand for her, and from it came a fleet of black tendrils, thin and spriggy like newborn branches stretching out towards the sky. The tendrils caressed her face, and she had the thought that it felt quite pleasant, and that perhaps this wasn’t such a bad place after all.

Oh, but it was.

Once those tendrils got the idea of who she was, they turned sharp and pressed into her skin like thorns. Nat tried to pull away then but could not, for she was now hooked. She had half the mind to scream for help, but no words escaped her, only a faint, whimpering cry.

Everyone has quite a different reaction to death when it comes for them. Some stand bold and try to fight against it, while others turn and flee for the hills. Since running wasn’t an option for Nat, she tried to fight. She began to kick and claw at the arm that had taken her, digging up its flesh beneath her fingernails. Again she tried to scream, but more tendrils had filled her mouth and her airways.

It was hopeless. She’d been caught like a fly in glue and was unable pull herself free.

All she saw in her last moments were the creature’s curious eyes as they peered into her soul. She felt weightless as she drifted into that ocean of black, and the last thing she ever heard was the sound of her stopwatch beep—beep—beeping, and a door slamming shut behind her.

“Employee number seventy-two did well,” said Director Black. “You should be proud.”

“Certainly,” Matt replied. “Thirty-eight doors. We haven’t seen numbers like that in quite some time.”

“Not since you came along, I would say.”

Matt wanted to share in Black’s optimism, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He could not shake the site of poor Natalie struggling for her life in that doorway — the way her legs kicked and trashed as whatever was on the other side took her. It’s a terrible thing to watch someone die.

“Are you alright, Matthew?”

“Hm? Oh, yes, I’m fine.”

Black gazed sidelong at the supervisor. “I’m sorry, I know you had high hopes for that poor girl. We all hoped she’d not meet such a fate. If it’s any consolation, I’ll see to it that the Board hears of her success.”

“Success? Is that what you would call this?” Matt shouldn’t have said it, but trauma does weird things to people.

“I certainly would. She made it further than any of the other candidates, and all under your tutelage. We’re getting closer to an answer, Matthew. I can feel it.” Black placed a hand on Matt’s shoulder then. “Don’t let it weigh on you. Such things are unavoidable in our field of study.”

Matt glanced at the Director’s hand. “I suppose so.”

“Good man. I’ll see to it that HR sends a consolation package to her family, and we’ll have the job reposted by the morning.”

Matt’s heart dropped. “Does that mean–?”

“Yes,” Black said. “I’m afraid you’ll need to step in and run Quality Assurance now. At least until we hire another replacement.”

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And if you want to check out my previous work, you can find my full archive here.

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