I finally found a summer job. This morning was orientation, mostly a time to sign some papers and learn about the work I'll be doing. I pulled into the parking lot about 7:50, wheels crunching on gravel, then waited ten minutes and went in. The receptionist called down the hall, and a woman in colorful clothes toddled out, holding a Chinese-style fan. She kept flicking it open and batting it at herself while we walked.
She guided me to a conference room at the end of the hall and told me to take a seat, and to please wait a few minutes while someone else arrived. Then she left. She shut the door behind her.
I looked around. It was a standard workplace meeting room. A kamikaze housefly bopped repeatedly against a fluorescent bulb, the scratched table was empty except for a landline telephone, rigged up for conference calls. It was a large room with two doors: the one I'd entered through and a second one.
The second door opened.
The strangest, most wrinkled little figure I've ever seen scampered in on all fours, hands and feet scrabbling for purchase on the thin carpet. He whimpered -- an oddly high-pitched sound -- and dove under the table. I shoved my chair back, leaning down to stare, but then jerked upright a moment later as the door banged back again against the wall.
Two men rushed in, cursing. They were wearing white hazmat-suits with full plastic visors. One of the men carried what looked like a heavy-duty butterfly net; the other had a kennel-like contraption, and he opened it and set it up in the doorway. Then he took out a retractable cane, like a blind man's cane, and started prodding under the table.
The wrinkled little man -- or whatever he was -- dove straight for my chair. I drew my legs up and hugged my knees. He wrapped his arms around one of the chair legs and curled around it, whimpering something awful.
"Come on, Mowgli," one of the hazmat men said. "You know you have to come back."
The one with the butterfly net unzipped a pocket in the arm of his suit, and held out a handful of food. It looked brown and squishy. I know I recognized the smell, but couldn't quite place it. 'Mowgli' sniffed the air and slowly uncurled from my chair leg, then moved closer to the men, half-circling them. He looked so scared.
Finally, he stuck his nose into the mushy substance in the man's hand, and the man screamed "Gotcha!" and whipped the butterfly net over Mowgli's head. I confess, by this time I was kind of rooting for the poor guy. Mowgli struggled in the net, but the other guy prodded him with the cane, and finally they got him into the kennel and locked it up. Butterfly-hazmat dude gave me a little salute as they carried it out of the room. Mowgli was still whimpering.
A few minutes later, the woman with the Chinese fan returned. She acted like nothing had happened. Did she know?
"Shall we get started?" she asked. "First thing, we have some nondisclosure agreements for you to sign . . . ."
The Truth
Job orientation was today. The business group I'm working for isn't nearly as weird as the company I just lied about, unfortunately.
The only true parts come up until the second door opens. I think I stole part of this idea from a prank show I once saw. A girl had been set up with a fake job as a secretary in a sketchy doctor's office, and an actor came in pretending to be an embittered former patient. He had a large kennel-like box with him. The secretary heard him accusing the doctor of botching a surgery on his brother, then, to get vengeance, he "stabbed" the doctor with a syringe and opened up the box, setting free the dwarf-actor who was playing his brother. The dwarf scampered around the room on all fours, attacking the doctor before rushing at the terrified secretary.
Why does anyone watch those prank shows? Oh, that's why.
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