"Aw man. The bathroom floor? Did you wash it? Shoot...," Jimmy wiped his hand on the thigh of his khaki Dockers, then plucked a wet-wipe from a dispenser and had a vigorous rub.
"No I didn't wash it. What is it? Is there a camera in there? Do you have any in the women's restroom?" Virgil entered the Information Technology room and stood next to Jimmy. The work desk was an jumbled mess - computer parts, cables, disks, used coffee cups and wadded up food wrappers everywhere. A picture of Shia LaBeouf in a heart shaped frame sat off to the side. The silver disk rested on an almost clean area. Jimmy flipped his used wet-wipe away and tapped the disk.
"I have no idea what this is," he said. "It isn't mine."
"Don't bullshit me," Virgil said. "These things have been popping up all over the office. I know y'all are spying on us. Personally I could give a shit; but in the bathrooms? Creepy, Jimbo. Tres Creepy."
"I'm telling you, this isn't mine."
"It isn't yours?"
"I don't even know what this shit is," Jimmy held the disk between thumb and finger and turned it around. Smooth silver, maybe twice as thick as a quarter, with no visible marking or stenciling on the surface whatsoever. He held it to his ear and shook it back and forth.
"Okay, come on then," Virgil lead the way. They left the IT room and went towards the elevators. Virgil was tall and fat and Jimmy, even being a small man, had to walk slightly behind him as the hallway was rather narrow.
"Where are we going?" Jimmy asked when Virgil entered the lobby and pushed the button to call the elevator.
"Nowhere."
"Then what are we doing here?"
"I just want you to see something."
The elevator arrived with a ding and opened to an empty cab. Virgil placed a hand to stop the doors from closing then leaned in and pointed to another one of the disks, exactly the same, that had been affixed to the control panel. It was in the bottom corner, unobtrusive, where a person wouldn't normally look to notice. Jimmy scrapped his finger against its edge. It was stuck firm.
"Bizarre," Jimmy said. "Has this always been here?"
"No," Virgil answered. "Last week it just kind of showed up."
"How can you be sure?"
"Follow me, faithful companion." They left the lobby and went to the break-room. Virgil directed Jimmy's attention to the side of the refrigerator, top back, where there was another nondescript, unobtrusive disk.
"Whoa," Jimmy said.
"There's more."
The complete tour took them to the copy room, conference rooms, perimeter halls and cubicle farm. In each area, Virgil pointed out another disk attached to a vent, cabinet, or metal frame where it would be hard to notice.
Back in the IT room, Virgil explained, "I don't mind being spied on. They want to hear me pass gas or watch me pick my nose while I'm putting in my eight hours, fuck it, let them. But when I found that one on the floor of the men's...."
Jimmy had cleared off a section of the desk to give the mystery disk a respectable amount of space. It sat there, doing nothing.
"I don't see how it could be a camera or even a microphone," Jimmy considered. "Too small and there's nothing... to it." He tapped the surface with a screwdriver.
"Are you going to open it?" Virgil asked.
"How? There's no ridge or seam that I can see."
"Maybe it's hidden?"
"I still wouldn't know how, or if, it can be opened."
"Smash it with a hammer," Virgil suggested.
Jimmy thought for a moment, then said, "No, it probably belongs to the building. Maybe it's some sort of motion sensor to track how often areas are used?"
"You asking me?" Virgil replied. "I still think it's some sort of super spy pervvy camera. Well, whatever. I've nothing to be ashamed of; somebody wants to watch me hold it steady while I fill up a urinal, that's their problem. You going to be at McCarthy's tonight?"
"No. Can't tonight."
"Another thing with your wife again?"
"Yeah...."
"Bring her!"
"Yeah, no...."
"Come on man, you can't hide her forever." Virgil went to Jimmy's personal desk and picked up a framed photo: Jimmy and his new bride in their formal Indian wedding attire. Jimmy looking stunned; the bride looking scared. Pretty, but scared. "Eventually she's going to learn what a big mistake she made. I might as well be the one to tell her."
"After I fill her with babies," Jimmy replied.
Virgil nodded. "Then what can she do about it? Makes sense."
"Five thousand years of culture, we've learned a thing or two."
"Namaste." Virgil looked perfectly ridiculous as he bowed out of the room, hand's clasped in front of his huge belly, bent at the waist.
With Virgil gone, Jimmy paced the room; scanning every vent, cabinet, box, and desk for one of the disks. He ran his hands over the backs of the computer racks, feeling for anything out of the ordinary but found nothing. He rubbed his chin, shuffled around nervously, then dropped to his knees and looked underneath the office desks. Still nothing.
He stood over the disk. Tapped it with the screwdriver. Whistled low. Then, in a flurry of decisive action, grabbed his keys and unlocked the equipment cabinet. He went in for the toolbox and noticed it: another silver disk; affixed to the roof of the cabinet.
Jimmy reached up and touched it; cool, metal. Nothing out of the ordinary. He tried prying it loose with his fingers but it was good and stuck.
"...fuck this...," Jimmy muttered and grabbed the toolbox. He set it on the worktable, opened it, and took out a hammer.
***
"Oh fuck this," Jimmy reiterated ten minutes later. He'd been trying to hammer the disk open with no success, not even a scratch. He shuffled through the toolbox until he found an awl; placed the tip in the center of the disk, held it firm, then brought the hammer down hard.
The awl gave a fraction of an inch. The disk was penetrated.
Jimmy set the tools aside and studied his handiwork. The disk now had a pinprick sized hole in its center. He leaned down to have a closer look and a thin vein of grey smoke rose from the disk. It smelled like electricity; like lightning.
Jimmy fanned it away.
Tiny black bubbles emerged and hissed around the hole. They popped and spread out in a slimy ooze. Jimmy almost touched the disk with his finger, then thought better about that, and retrieved a screwdriver. With it, he poked the disk. It collapsed on itself; becoming two separate pieces. Still using the screwdriver; Jimmy separated the pieces.
There was nothing between them; only a thin glaze of black slime and the smell of ozone.
"Fuck," Jimmy concluded. And then he swept it all into the trashcan with a wet-wipe.
***
Jimmy sat in his car for a few moments after parking it in the garage. He'd told Virgil he would be busy with his wife tonight, and that was technically true, but in reality they were just going to sit around and watch TV before going to bed. Awkwardly going to bed.
They'd been married four weeks now and had yet to consummate the union. Yeah, I'd call that fucking awkward, wouldn't you?
It had been a quasi-arraigned marriage. Their names hadn't been written in ink - not even Indian ink - in a book when they'd been born, and his family hadn't received a cow for dowry from hers; but pressure had been applied, his advancing age had been relentlessly commented on, and pictures emailed back and forth so here he was - married to a stranger.
She seemed nice. Quite. Shy. And there was the problem - Jimmy himself was pretty shy, at least around women. He could crack up and make merry all day long with his homies, but with attractive members of the opposite sex? His mouth filled with grass and his hands became balloons. He was not, strictly speaking, a virgin, but his limited, generally humiliating sexual experiences hadn't exactly emboldened him with confidence.
So he would go inside the house, make small talk, agree on whatever program she was interested in, eat while watching TV, then, eventually, settle into the king-sized bed; her on one side, him on the other.
Maybe tonight, Jimmy caught his eyes in the rear-view mirror. Soft and brown. He narrowed them, trying to infuse steel into the irises. Tonight I'll ask her if she wants a back rub....
Jimmy quit the car and entered his house through the mudroom. It opened to the kitchen where he called out, "Hello? Sikta? I'm home."
From the opposite side of island counter-top, Jimmy noticed a puddle of reddish brown, viscous liquid seeping across the floor. He moved into the room and, advancing, saw a pair of small feet soaking in the pool.
"Sikta?" he said?
Behind him, the door slammed.
Jimmy jumped, turned, briefly saw the shape of a man lunging at him, and then everything went dark.
***
Sitka was dead. Throat cut ear to ear. Bled out like a slaughtered pig on the kitchen floor. The smell was nauseating.
Jimmy was strapped to the dining room table with bungee cords, unable to move. A dish rag crammed in his mouth to prevent any yelling. Still, he squirmed and whined and thrashed as best he could until fatigue overtook him. Then he lay there and cried.
After a few hours, a man entered the room and pulled the rag from Jimmy's mouth. Jimmy sputtered and the man said, "Quite. You scream you die."
The man sat at one of the dining room chairs. He was average looking, dirty brown hair, Caucasian, dressed in a polo shirt and denim jeans. The only striking thing about him was his eyes. They were icy, arctic blue. So blue they were almost inhuman. They locked on Jimmy and he suddenly felt as cold as if he'd been dropped into the bottom of the ocean.
"One question: why Shia LaBeouf?" the man asked.
Jimmy's mind went blank. He shook his head and sputtered.
"On your desk? At the office? Shia LaBeouf in the heart frame? What? Are you gay for Shia LaBeouf?"
"Nuh... no," Jimmy answered. "No, that's a joke."
The man sniffed and looked at Sitka's body. He shrugged.
"I don't get it," he said. "What's so funny about Shia LaBeouf in a heart frame? He's a terrible actor, you know."
"Who are you?" Jimmy asked. "What are you... doing?"
"I'm going to kill you. Soon. As soon as get this LaBeouf thing straight in my head. Why is it a joke?"
"Kill me? Did you kill...?"
"Her? Yes. 'though if you're gay for Shia, she's better off dead anyway. He's not an attractive man by anybody's standards."
"No... Why...?"
"You messed up today. The hammer? With the awl? That was a stupid mistake. So you have to die, if for no other reason than as an object lesson for anybody thinking of destroying our property."
The man tapped his chin and looked at the ceiling.
"Well," he continued, "we wouldn't be entirely incorrect to label it murder instead of destruction of property, would we? Anyway, you have to die. But first: what's with Shia LaBeouf?"
Jimmy thrashed and opened his mouth for a good scream but the man viciously slammed an elbow into his gut, knocking all Jimmy's air out in a great, weeping whoosh.
"This can go easy; it can go hard. Tell me why it's a joke? The LaBeouf photo?"
It took Jimmy a few moments to catch his breath. When he did, he said, "I was in Temple of Doom. As a kid. I was in that movie."
"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?" The man asked.
"Yes. At the end. When he brought all those Indian kids back to the village? I was one of those kids."
"Really?"
"Yes. I don't even really remember it now, but you can see me if you pause the right frame. My parents knew somebody who worked on the movie and they got me in that scene. I don't know why. I don't remember how. But...."
"Ah," the man stood up and paced the room. "I think I see now.... Growing up people must have teased you for being in that movie - because it was so bad."
"Yes," Jimmy agreed. Tears freely flowing from his eyes.
"Well," the man considered, "in all fairness, it isn't too bad a movie, but for the longest time it was the worse Indian Jones movie. Until that Crystal Skull abomination. Truly a bad movie by anybody's standards."
"Yes, yes...."
"So the picture of Shia LaBeouf in a heart frame is your appreciation for him... 'taking the heat' off you, as they say."
Jimmy nodded and sobbed.
"Hmm," the man considered. Then his lips curled up in a smile. "Yes. I see the humor."
The man took a razor from his pocket and used it to slice open Jimmy's neck.
