My Work Is Not Yet Done

by Thomas Ligotti

  All that remains to me, to my comatose body lying in a darkened hospital room, is to put an end to the thing beneath all those bandages. I’m sure that I’ll be allowed to do so. My work is finally done. Yet having gone to all the trouble to concoct this statement, I cannot resist the ludicrous temptation to throw it out to the crowd. I told Richard I would send him something on his computer, although it won’t be the documentation for a New Product idea, which I destroyed in both its digital and hard-copy forms. And whatever satisfaction it may bring Detectives White and Black, I will also forward a copy to them, so that they can match the fingerprints on the handle of this knife I hold over my own body to those that wait for them in my apartment . . . and so that they may know something of the atrocious wonders of this world. On Monday morning all the printers in the company will be spewing out these useless pages. Perhaps this occurrence will bring on the bad publicity which those merchants of stale information, those data pushers, so anxiously desire to avoid, since the company is now struggling for its life in the corporate arena. I am now struggling for my death. That’s the only thing that matters.

  I do not regret having annihilated seven persons any more than the fact that I’ll never regain that lost hour which was taken from me six months ago. I make no excuses for my acts, and I beg no forgiveness or reprieve for the lives I’ve eliminated.

  A curse on them.

  These are the words of a swine who seeks only his own slaughter under the slicing, serrated blade of a Buck Skinner Hunting Knife.

  A curse on me.

  I was weak and afraid . . . and I ended up as a deadly weapon wielded by a dark hand that not even I – that no one – will ever see.

  A curse on it.

  I remember how wonderful it felt to die the little death of that cockroach in my apartment. I can only hope to know that feeling to its fullest when the moment comes and the river rushes in to drown me in its blackness. Perhaps a swine whose savage work is finally done may be allowed this much. I cannot wait to tear into the tender flesh of my last victim, and with a single slash kill two.

  I cannot wait to be dead. I cannot wait.

  I am not afraid any more.

  I HAVE A SPECIAL PLAN FOR THIS WORLD

  I REMEMBER WORKING in an office where the atmosphere of tension had become so severe and pervasive that one could barely see more than a few feet in any direction. This resulted in considerable difficulties for those of us who were trying to perform the tasks which our jobs required. For instance, if for some reason we needed to leave our desks and negotiate our way to another part of the building, it was not possible to see beyond a certain distance, which was at most a few feet. Outside of this limited perimeter – this ‘cocoon of clarity’, as I thought of it – everything became obscured in a kind of quivering blur, an ambience of agitation within which the solid and dreary decor of the company offices appeared quite distorted.

  People were constantly bumping into each other in the narrow aisleways and high-ceilinged hallways of the Blaine Company offices, so severe was this state of affairs in which the atmosphere of tension at that place had caused any object more than a few feet away to be lost in a jittering and filmy tableau. One might glimpse some indistinct shape nearby, perhaps something resembling a face, which at best would look like a rubber mask. Then suddenly you found yourself colliding with one of your fellow office workers. At that moment the image of the other person became grotesquely clarified in contrast to the otherwise blurry environment brought on by the severe tension, the incredible agitation that existed in the office and pervaded its every corner, even into the smallest storage room and the sub-basement of the old office building in which the Blaine Company was the only tenant.

  After one of those collisions between coworkers, which occurred with great frequency during this time of tension, each of the persons involved would quickly mouth some words of pardon to the other. Of course I can only be sure about my own words – they were always polite expressions of self-pardoning, no matter how I actually felt at that precise moment of collision. As for the words that were spoken by the other person, I cannot attest, because these were invariably garbled or sometimes entirely lost in that same atmosphere of tension and agitation that obtained throughout the Blaine workplace. (Even in the closest quarters all exchanges of conversation carried only a few inches at most before they turned into a senseless babble or were lost altogether.) But whatever these words might have been was irrelevant, for very soon you had collected yourself and were rushing off once again into the blurred spaces before you in the Blaine offices, trying to put out of your mind that intensely clarified image you had witnessed, if only for a flashing moment – that microscopically detailed eyeball, that pair of super-defined lips (or just a single one of those lips), a nostril bristling with tiny hairs, a mountainous knuckle. Whatever you might have seen you wanted only to drive from your mind as soon as possible. Otherwise this image of some part of a human face or a human body would hook itself into your brain and become associated with the viciously tense and agitated state in which we all existed, thereby initiating a series of violent thoughts and fantasies concerning that eyeball or pair of lips, especially if you recognized the person to whom those parts were attached and could give a name to the object of your murderous rage.

  To a certain extent the conditions I have described could be attributed to the management system under which the company was organized. It seemed evident that the various departmental supervisors, and even upper-level managers, operated according to a mandate that required them to create and maintain an environment of tension-filled conflict among the lower staff of the company. Whether this practice was dictated by some trend in managing technique or was endemic to the Blaine Company was a matter of speculation. But there was another, and more significant, reason for this climate of tense agitation under which we labored, a situation that, after all, is common to working environments everywhere. The reason to which I refer is this: the city in which the Blaine Company offices were located – in fact had very recently re-located – had once been known, quite justly, as ‘Murder Town’. Hence, it was not unreasonable to conclude that the atmosphere of tension, of agitation, that, at certain times, severely affected the spaces of the building in which the Blaine Company was the only tenant, had its counterpart in the streets of the city outside the building.

  More often than not, this city which had once been known as Murder Town was permeated by a yellowish haze. This particular haze was usually so dense that the streetlights of the downtown section as well as the vast, decaying neighborhoods surrounding this area were in operation both day and night. Furthermore, there existed a direct correlation between the murders that took place in the city and the density of the yellowish haze which veiled its streets. Even though no one openly recognized this correspondence, it was a verifiable fact: the heavier this yellowish haze weighed upon the city, the more murders would need to be reported by the local news sources. It was as simple as that.

  The actual number of murders could most accurately be traced only in a tabloid newspaper called the Metro Herald, which thrived on sensational stories and statistics. The other newspapers, those which purveyed a more dignified image of themselves, proved to be a far less reliable record of both the details of the murders that were occurring throughout the city and also the actual number of these murders. These latter newspapers also failed to indicate any link between the density of the yellowish haze and the city’s murder count. True enough, neither did the Metro Herald draw direction attention to this link – it was simply a reality that was easier to follow in their pages than in those newspapers with a more dignified image, let alone the radio and television sources, which labored under the burden of delivering their information, respectively, by means of either a human voice or by a human head accompanied by a human voice, lending both of these media a greater immediacy and reality than their printed counterparts. The consequence of the heightened reality of the radio and television news
sources was that they could not afford to report anything close to the true quantity or the full details of murders that were always happening. Because if they did offer such reports by means of a human voice, with or without the presence of a human head, they would make themselves intolerable to their listeners and viewers, and ultimately they would lose advertising revenue because their audiences would abandon them, leaving only these human voices and heads reporting one murder after another without anyone listening to them or watching them recite these crimes . . . whereas the newspapers with a dignified image were able to relegate a modicum of such murder stories to the depths of their ample pages, allowing their readers to take or leave these accounts as they wished, while the Metro Herald actually thrived upon disseminating such sensational news to a readership eager to consume dispatches on the bleakest, most bizarre, and most scandalous business of the world. Yet even the Metro Herald was forced to draw the line at some point when it came to making known to their readers the full quantity as well as the true nature of all of the murderous goings-on in the city to which the Blaine Company had relocated – the city that was once known as Murder Town.

  Of course by the time of the company’s relocation the epithet of Murder Town was no longer in wide usage, having been eradicated by a sophisticated public relations campaign specifically designed to attract commercial entities like the Blaine Company. Thus, the place formerly known as Murder Town had now acquired an informal civic designation as the Golden City. As anyone might have observed, no specific rationale was ever advanced to justify the city’s new persona – the quality of being ‘golden’ was merely put forth as a given trait, a new identity which was bolstered in the most shameless manner in radio, television, and newspaper ads, not to mention billboards and brochures. It was something assumed to be so, as though ‘goldenness’– with all the associations attending this term – had always been a vital element of the city. Certainly there was never any reference made, as one might have assumed, to the meteorological phenomenon of the yellowish haze that was truly the preeminent distinction of the physical landscape of the city, including the vast and decaying neighborhoods that surrounded it. In radio, television, and newspaper ads, across billboards, and in the glossy pages of brochures that were mailed out on a worldwide scale, the city was always depicted as a place with clear skies above and tidy metropolitan avenues below. This image, of course, could not have been more at odds with the city’s crumbling and all-but-abandoned towers, beneath which were streets so choked with a yellowish haze that one was fortunate to be able to see more than a few yards in any direction.

  I knew for a fact that a deal had been struck between the local bureaus of commerce and businesses like the Blaine Company, which could not, for the sake of appearances, relocate their offices to a place whose second name was Murder Town but could easily settle themselves in the Golden City. Nevertheless, it was this place – this haze-choked Murder Town – to which the Blaine Company had been attracted and which well suited, as I well knew, its purposes as a commercial entity.

  Not long after the Blaine Company had relocated itself, a memorandum went out to all employees from the office of the founder and president of the company, U G Blaine, a person whom none of us, with the exception of some members of senior management, had ever seen and from whom we had never received a direct communication of any kind, at least not since I had been hired to work in its offices. The memo was brief and simply announced that a ‘company-wide restructuring’ was imminent, although no dates or details, and no reasoning of any kind, were offered for this dramatic action. Within a few months of the announcement of this obscure ‘restructuring’, the supervisors of the various departments within the Blaine Company, as well as a few members of upper-level management, were all murdered.

  Perhaps I might be allowed a moment to elaborate on the murders I have just mentioned, which were indeed unusual even for a city that had once been known as Murder Town. The most crucial datum which I should impart is that every one of the murders of persons holding management positions at the Blaine Company had taken place within the Golden City on days when the yellowish haze had been especially dense. This fact could have been corroborated by anyone who had taken the least interest in the matter, even if none of the local newspapers (never mind the radio and television reports) ever indicated this connection. Nonetheless, it was quite conspicuous, if one only took the time to glance out the window on certain days when the streets outside were particularly hazy or particularly yellowish, what was in the works. Sometimes I would peek over the enclosure that surrounded my desk and look out into the streets thick with haze. On those occasions I would think to myself, ‘Another one of them will be murdered today.’ And without exception this would be the case: before the day was out, or sometime during the night, the body of another supervisor, and sometimes a member of upper-level management, would be found lying dead somewhere in the Golden City.

  Most often the murders took place as the victims were walking from their cars on their way into work or walking back to their cars after the workday was over, while some of the crimes transpired when the victims were actually inside their cars. Less frequently was the body of a supervisor, or someone of even higher rank within the company, found dead in the evening hours or on weekends. The reason that far fewer of these murders occurred during the evening and on weekends was blatant, even if no one ever made an issue of it. As I have already pointed out, these murders always took place in the Golden City, and even needed to take place there. However, very few of the supervisors, and certainly none of the members of upper-level management, resided within the city limits for the simple reason that they could afford to live in one of the outlying suburbs, where the yellowish haze was seldom as dense and quite often not even visible, or at least not visible to the unaided or unobservant eye. Consequently the victims had scant motivation to make an appearance in the Golden City after working hours or on weekends, for there was nothing, or very little, to attract anyone to this place – and many things that gave cause to avoid it – other than that this happened to be the location where one was forced to come to work. Yet these persons, who spent as little time as possible in the Golden City, were exclusively the ones, out of the large roster of those employed by the Blaine Company, to be viciously murdered there. Or so it was in the beginning.

  On some days more than one supervisor’s body would be discovered exhibiting the signs of the most violent physical attack, which often suggested the work of more than one assailant, although the crime scene otherwise suggested no evidence of a premeditated conspiracy or thoughtful planning. They all seemed, in fact, to be makeshift affairs. Sometimes they were crude assaults with whatever objects might have been close at hand (such as a fragment of crumbling sidewalk or a piece of broken window in a back alley). Often the cause of death was simply strangulation or even suffocation in which lice-ridden rags had been jammed deep into the victim’s throat. Quite often it was just a beating unto death that left indications of more than one pair of pummeling fists and more than one kind of savagely kicking shoe. Frequently the corpses of these unfortunate supervisors, and the occasional member of upper-level management, were stripped of their clothing, as well as robbed of their money and other valuable effects. This was typical of so many of the murders in the Golden City, a fact that could be verified by the many detectives who interviewed almost everyone at the Blaine Company in the course of their investigations of these crimes, which, in the absence of any other peculiar facts of evidence, were attributed to the numerous derelicts who made their home in the city’s streets.

  There was, of course, the salient fact – which did not escape the investigating detectives but which, for some reason, they never saw as a relevant issue – that for quite some time all of the victims who worked at the Blaine Company offices had attained the level of supervisor, if not an even higher position in the company. I doubt that the detectives were even aware that it was in the nature of a supervisor’s function at
the company to foment exactly the kind of violent and even murderous sentiments that would lead low-level staff to form images in their minds of doing away with these people, however we tried to cast such imagined scenes from our minds as soon as they began to form. And now that all of these supervisors had been murdered, we only had each other upon whom to exercise our violent thoughts and fantasies. This situation was aggravated by the tension that derived from our concern over the likely installation of an entirely new group of supervisors throughout the company.

  As most of the lower staff employees realized, it was possible to become accustomed to the violent thoughts and fantasies inspired by a supervisor of long standing, and for precisely this reason these supervisors would often be replaced in their position because they were no longer capable of inspiring fresh images of violence in the minds of those they were charged with supervising. With the arrival of a newly appointed supervisor there was inevitably a revival of just the sort of tension that developed into an office atmosphere in which you could barely see a few feet in any direction whenever you were required to move about the aisleways and hallways of the building to which the company had relocated not long before these events which I have chosen to document transpired. It was therefore welcome news to employees when it was made known, by means of a brief memo from one of the highest members of senior management, that none of the murdered supervisors would be replaced and that this position was to be permanently eliminated as part of the scheme for restructuring the company.

  The relief experienced among the lower staff of the various departments and divisions of the Blaine Company that they would not have to face the prospect of newly appointed supervisors – or supervisors of any kind, since they had all been murdered – allowed the tension which had been so severe and pervasive to abate, thereby clearing the air around the offices from its previous condition of a blurry atmosphere of agitation and also clearing our minds of the violent thoughts and fantasies that we had come to direct so viciously at one another. However, this state of relative well-being was only temporary and was soon replaced by symptoms of acute apprehension and anxiety. This reversal occurred following a company-wide meeting held in the sub-basement of the building where the Blaine offices had been relocated.