I stormed out of the elevator. The clops of my heavy footsteps rang out as they collided with the marbled lobby floor, and as I moved toward the massive line of people waiting to access the portals, I let out an irritated sigh as I noticed the length of the queue. The queues to get to the portals were long and arduous, as they always were around midday. The drudgerous1Another word that technically isn't a word, but I'm using it anyway. Sorry. spirits lumbered forward with the motions of the line, their actions dictated by the line, as they stood like trained dogs following its motions.
With each occasional five-inch shuffle forward, I could see a sense of relief creep across their faces: a sweet release from their temporary suffering.
I stood at the back of the queue, as I stared around the lobby. Beyond the front windows and the door of the building, I could see the swirls of the multihued world beyond the confines of the office building, dancing - colours swimming just out of reach of this greyed place, teasing us with a world of promise beyond the pale. Sometimes, I wondered what it'd feel like to reach out into the abyss - to just touch it. I'd never be able to find out from here though. The windows tempted us with impossibilities.
Standing in the queue, I pulled my arcane ID pass from my pocket, and wrapped the lanyard around my neck while I waited. I rarely wore the ID pass; I didn't really appreciate the reminder that this was my job. I tapped my foot as I waited. Each inch of movement seemed to take an eternity.
With the queues getting like they did, sometimes I wondered why they didn't just install more portal receptacles. Crowds of other lifeless employees gathered behind me, faces of ashen-bagged eyes and languid frowns - all awaiting something that was only mere metres away, yet miles out of reach. The three portals were never enough to service the hundreds of employees that wandered down here, and it usually meant that some employees spent more time waiting in the queue for the portals than they did on their client's cases. If you were a real "case closer" in this industry, you probably spent most of your time working simply waiting in that queue.
It was a waste of time, but like most things in this building, it wouldn't change. The capricious kakistocracy that ran this place probably had their motives. Whatever those motives were though, we weren't privy to them. Those arduous wait-times seemed designed to torture us, in much the same way that many of us designed lives to torture others. Maybe that's all it was about? Torture for the sake of torture, perhaps?
I didn't know; nobody did.
Slowly, I began to drift forward in the line, a few inches at a time. Ahead of me in the queue, I could hear a pair of young businesswomen growing restless about the wait, complaining amongst themselves about the wait for their meetings, talking about how they probably could've gotten lunch and come back in the time they'd taken waiting here. As I sat there, watching, waiting - even that dull conversation helped me to cut through the doldrum of this endless procession.
Eventually, through the slow shuffles of the queue, the impossible occurred - I reached the front of the line. I stood before the portal clerk, bored out of my wits as he scanned my lanyard with the little runestone once more, viridescent light shimmering upon its surface.
"Do you have a Client ID?" he asked, with little to no intonation in his voice.
"549-826-303-474-1," I replied. "Andy Waters."
"Again, ma'am, I don't need the name," he replied. "The number's just fine."
The number wasn't just fine. I couldn't bear to be like that, thinking of my clients as just numbers; every human soul that came through here, they were all more than just a set of vapid digits - their lives meant something. Up here though, it felt like those meanings were made meaningless. To the gods, the soul was worth nothing; save for its weight in sorrow.
As I stood there, pondering - the portal receptacle began to whirr, the pitch-black ocean of the gate formed once more. The Stygian waters lapped at the edge of the gate.
"You're good to go," the portal clerk said. I nodded in response.
Wandering to the gate's edge, I could see my own reflection against the surface of the water - my pale white complexion and light blonde hair in stark contrast to the obscuring gloam of the obsidian depths. As I approached the entrance, following the steel walkway that stretched the length between the portal and the clerk, I tore my lanyard off my neck and put it back into my pocket.
Stepping forward, the skin of the water rippled against my face as I dipped my dimpled cheek through the surface of the water wall. After a moment, I pressed my whole body against it. With the currents of the water, I drifted slowly once again through the oceanic abyss. The light of the world beyond flitted through the ripples of the portal's surface, doing little to disperse the darkness in the water, and as I sunk, I too surrendered to that darkness.
I closed my eyes, the light of the portal yonder slowly fading to nothing, leaving me in the murky darkness of the Tartarean depths.
