Chapter 5: The Office That Screams
The numbers on the spreadsheet were not numbers. They were black specks swimming on a field of eye-straining white, pixels of meaning he could no longer decode. Arthur pressed his thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes, but the pressure did nothing to quiet the cacophony.
It wasn’t sound, not exactly. It was more than that.
Two cubicles over, Mark from receivables was typing. Arthur didn’t just hear the clatter of keys. He felt the jagged, frantic rhythm of it, a staccato pulse that matched the man’s elevated heart rate. Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum against the ribs, a nervous butterfly trapped behind starched cotton. Arthur could taste the coppery tang of Mark’s anxiety in the back of his own throat, a flavor like licking a battery.
He swallowed, trying to clear it. It didn’t work.
“These Q2 reports are a beast, huh, Art?”
Janice from adjacent accounting leaned over the partition, her voice a tinny chirp. But layered under her words was the thick, cloying scent of cherry blossom body spray, applied too liberally to mask the faint, sebaceous odor of unwashed hair. And under that, something else. A sour, vinegary emission of disappointment that seemed to waft from her pores. It was the smell of postponed dreams, of television dinners for one, a lifetime of playing it safe curdling in the gut.
Arthur forced a weak smile, his lips feeling stiff. “Yeah. A real beast.”
His own voice sounded alien. Thin. He heard the slight rasp of dehydration, the micro-tremor in his vocal cords. He was a walking sonogram of his own pathetic state.
Janice’s smile didn't reach her eyes. He could see the minuscule tension in her zygomatic muscles, the calculation there. Poor Arthur. So quiet. Probably goes home to a cat. The thought seemed to hang in the air between them, not telepathy, but an impression painted in the subtlest plumage of her expression—a pitying head-tilt, a fleeting lack of focus. He smelled the condescension, a dry, papery scent.
“Well, hang in there. Lunch soon!” She vanished behind the grey fabric wall.
Lunch. The thought of the breakroom made his empty stomach clench. The hollow ache was a constant now, a silent bass note underlying every other sensation. But it wasn’t a hunger for food.
He turned back to his monitor. The numbers blurred again. He caught a reflection in the dark glass of his turned-off second screen: his own face, pale under the fluorescent glare, the new lines of strain around his eyes. For a dizzying second, he saw Artemis superimposed, her dark gaze fierce and hungry. The ghost of her pleasure, that sun-drenched explosion of feeling, flashed through his nerves—a cruel, gorgeous remembrance. Then it was gone, leaving the gray, muffled reality of Arthur in its wake. The contrast was a physical pain.
His manager, Carol, walked past on her way to the coffee station. The click of her heels on the linoleum was a series of tiny gunshots. Arthur inhaled.
Cheap department store perfume, a brutal floral. Coffee, stale on her breath. And underneath… a richer, discordant note. Sandalwood and salt. A man’s cologne, expensive, not her husband’s. And the tang of sex, hours old but still clinging to the synthetic fibers of her blouse, nestled in the warmth where her collar touched her neck. It was unmistakable, a whole secret history screamed from her clothing. He saw it in the way she held her shoulders, a fraction too defiant, in the extra sway of her hips. The sheer, vibrating aliveness of her deceit was a siren song in the dead air of the office.
He looked down, his face burning. The hollow place inside him yawned wider, a silent scream of want. Not for her. For the vitality. For the raw, messy, human carelessness of it.
By eleven a.m., the office was an aura of psychic static. A symphony of discontent played out in biological shorthand. The acidic burn of Barry’s ulcer competing with the saccharine, diabetes-warning sweetness wafting from Janet in payroll. The muted, rhythmic tap of Sarah’s foot, a metronome for her simmering rage at a passed-over promotion. The low-grade fever warmth radiating from the intern, Ben, a cocktail of adolescent hormones and ambition that smelled like hot pavement and new plastic.
Arthur was drowning in it. His skull felt paper-thin, a strained membrane holding back a ocean of other people’s lived experience. He was a locked room and every other person was a radio broadcasting at full volume, tuned to stations of quiet despair, petty jealousy, and grinding boredom.
He couldn’t focus. He typed a column of figures, his fingers clumsy. 71642. 89451. They were meaningless glyphs. The only numbers that mattered were the ones counting down in his cells. A week, Lilith had said. A week before the grayness set in.
It was already here. The office, once just dull, was now leached of true color. The grey cubicle fabric was the grey of damp ashes. The potted fern in the corner was a lifeless green-black, like old spinach. Only the people bled their chaotic, painful colors—the fever-red of Ben’s ambition, the bruised-yellow of Janet’s loneliness, the stealthy, bruised-purple of Carol’s affair.
His phone, his old one, buzzed. A text from his sister. Mom’s dr appt moved to Thursday. Can you?
The mundane concern felt like an artifact from another life. He stared at the words. He could smell the sterile, antiseptic anxiety the message carried, imagined the fluorescence of the doctor’s office, the muted-beige worry of his sister’s living room. It was a world of beige. A safe, suffocating, beige world he was no longer part of.
He didn’t reply.
At twelve-thirty, he broke. He had to get out. The breakroom was a torture chamber of overlapping aromas—microwaved tuna, burnt popcorn, the flat, brown scent of communal coffee. He grabbed his jacket, mumbling about a dentist appointment to no one in particular, and stumbled into the alley behind the office building.
The cold air hit him like a slap. It was clean, for a moment. Just cold brick and distant traffic. He leaned against the wall, breathing heavily, his forehead against the rough concrete.
“Hey. You alright, man?”
Arthur jolted. A young guy was there, maybe early twenties, taking a smoking break. He had a delivery service logo on his jacket. His name tag said ‘Leo.’
“Fine,” Arthur rasped. “Just… needed air.”
Leo took a drag, studying him. He wasn’t handsome in a conventional way, but there was an openness to his face, a lack of the calculating veil Arthur had learned to see in everyone else today. And then Arthur felt it. Or rather, he didn’t feel the usual storm.
From Leo, there was no blast of complicated emotion. There was the sharp, green bite of nicotine, the warm, yeasty smell of the bread he’d been delivering, the healthy salt-sweat of physical labor. And underneath… a simple, steady hum. A contented fatigue. The placid rhythm of a body at ease with its day’s work.
No desperation. No secret misery. Just a guy having a smoke.
The hollow place inside Arthur didn’t twinge with predatory hunger. It… quieted. The static in his head dialed down a notch, soothed by the uncomplicated vibe. It was peaceful.
“Office life, huh?” Leo said, grinning. He offered the pack. “Vice of choice?”
Arthur shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“Smart.” Leo took another drag, exhaled slowly. “Looks like it sucks the soul right out of you. All those screens. Me, I like being outside. Even in the cold. You see things.”
“What kind of things?” Arthur heard himself ask. His voice was less strained.
Leo shrugged. “Little stuff. The way the light hits the bricks on King Street in the afternoon. The old lady in the flower shop who always gives me a discount on day-old blooms. The regulars.” He flicked ash. “It’s not much, but it’s real, you know?”
Real. The word echoed.
Arthur looked at Leo—really looked, not with Artemis’s hungry assessment, but with Arthur’s old, weary gaze, momentarily cleared of agony. He saw the spark. Not a blinding, needy conflagration like Chloe’s, but a steady, pilot-light glow. A life being lived, not just endured. It was the most beautiful, gentle thing Arthur had perceived all day.
The awareness crashed over him, cold and decisive. This was what he was supposed to hunt. This quiet light. To snuff it out, to use it as a battery for his own borrowed, cursed existence.
A revulsion so profound it was physical rolled through him. He felt his saliva go thick, bitter.
“You okay?” Leo asked again, his brow furrowed with genuine concern. “You look like you’re gonna be sick, man.”
Arthur pushed himself off the wall. The moment of peace was shattered, replaced by a nausea that was moral as much as sensory. “I’m… I’m late,” he stammered. “Thanks.”
He fled down the alley, back toward the roaring artery of the main street. The office, with its prison of muted despair, was suddenly preferable. He couldn’t be out here. He couldn’t see them, smell them, feel them like this. It was an impossible geography. Every person a landscape of vulnerability.
He pulled out his new phone, the one from the penthouse. His thumb hovered over a number saved simply as L. The hollow ache pulsed, a demand. He thought of Leo’s steady, uncomplicated hum. He thought of the solstice tide going out inside him.
With a trembling finger, he opened a new text. He didn’t call Lilith. He typed a message to the only other contact in the phone, the one labeled Isaac/Isobel.
The list. Please send the list of places. Today.
He hit send before he could think. The momentum of the chapter carried him forward, a man stepping off a cliff, choosing the storm over the beige, settling for the lesser evil of hunting the lonely in curated, appropriate venues rather than facing the truthful horror of seeing the spark in someone truly, quietly alive. The decision brought no peace, only a stark, clarifying shame. But it was a decision. The hunt, however reluctant, was now deliberate.
The decision sat in his gut like a swallowed stone, cold and heavy, but it had a peculiar effect: it muted the office’s psychic scream to a manageable murmur. The hollow ache remained, a constant undertow, but the sharp panic subsided into a grim focus. He finished the day in a numb, mechanical daze, the spreadsheets finally resolving into mere numbers again. At five o’clock, he joined the river of bodies flowing onto the sidewalk, but he didn’t turn toward his own apartment.
The hollow place was pulling him, a compass needle swinging north. It wasn’t a whisper yet; it was a directional tug, a thermal current in his blood. As he walked, the setting sun bled orange and purple across the glass towers, and with each step, a low heat began to kindle deep in his core. It was different from the office’s overload—a cellular warmth, building and spreading.
By the time he stood before the sleek, anonymous facade of Lilith’s building, the heat was a steady pulse. The sun was a bloody sliver on the horizon. He rode the silent elevator up, his reflection in the brass doors looking wild-eyed, his skin flushed.
Lilith opened the penthouse door before he could knock. She was in a simple black robe, her hair down. She took one look at him and nodded, as if reading a familiar gauge. “Right on time,” she said, her voice devoid of its usual playful smoke. “The moon’s impatient tonight.”
She led him into the living room, where the wall of windows framed the city sinking into twilight. The room was cool, the air still. Without a word, she went to a sideboard and poured two fingers of amber liquid into a heavy crystal glass. She handed it to him. “This will help.”
Arthur’s hands were trembling. The heat inside him was coalescing, a knot of potential energy that made his bones feel too tight for his skin. He didn’t sip. He brought the glass to his lips and chugged the whiskey, the fire of it scoring a path down his throat to meet the rising internal flame. The combined surge was instantaneous and overwhelming.
A wave of heat, dry and electric, blasted through him. His muscles locked. The glass slipped from his nerveless fingers, shattering on the polished concrete floor with a sharp, expensive sound. He gasped, doubling over, as the sensation crested—not pain, but a total systemic overload, like every circuit blowing at once.
“Good,” Lilith murmured, stepping back to observe. “Don’t fight it. Just let it happen.”
The command broke his paralysis. His clothes were suddenly intolerable, a scratchy, constricting shell. He ripped at his tie, his shirt buttons pinging away, fumbled with his belt and pants, kicking them off in ragged, desperate motions until he stood naked in the middle of the room, chest heaving. The cool air on his skin was a fleeting relief.
Outside, the last light vanished. The first sliver of the full moon broke over the distant skyline, a perfect, luminous curve. Its light seemed to physically enter the room, a pale silver tide washing over the floor and up his legs.
As it touched him, the deep internal heat found its catalyst. A shudder wracked his frame, violent and profound. He heard the crunch and grind of his own skeleton, a sound felt more than heard, like stones settling deep in earth. His perspective shifted, the room seeming to grow as his own height diminished, muscles re-strung, fat redistributing in a swift, uncanny flow.
Lilith watched, unblinking, as the body of the middle-aged accountant dissolved. The softening jaw sharpened into a delicate point. Thinning hair thickened, streaming dark and long down a back that carved new, elegant curves. Shoulders narrowed, hips flared, and the chest swelled with a sudden, heavy weight. Arthur’s nervous flutter vanished, replaced by Artemis’s poised, feline stillness.
The transformation settled with a final, subtle sigh. Artemis stood, breathing deep, her new lungs filling with the charged air. Her skin was alight with sensation, every nerve ending singing a welcome hymn. The arousal was immediate and intense, a deep, throbbing pulse between her legs that needed no touch to ignite. She looked down at herself, at the sleek lines of her torso, the curve of her breasts, and felt a slick, gathering heat at her entrance, moisture beginning to appear, a natural, eager response to the moon’s call and her own reborn vitality.
She looked down at herself, at the sleek lines of her torso, the curve of her breasts, and felt a slick, gathering heat at her entrance, moisture beginning to appear, a natural, eager response to the moon’s call and her own reborn vitality. The hollow ache from the day was gone, replaced by this radiant, demanding fullness. It was a cleaner need, but no less urgent.
Lilith circled her, an appraising shadow. “The hunt is different when you choose it,” she said, her voice cutting through the pulse of Artemis’s blood. “The office showed you the map. All those little pockets of misery.” She stopped in front of Artemis, tilting her head. “Now you get to pick which one to erase.”
The memory of Leo’s quiet glow surfaced, bright and unwelcome. Artemis pushed it down. That was Arthur’s sentiment, a relic. “It’s just energy,” she said, trying the words out. They felt both true and terrible.
“It’s survival,” Lilith corrected, gently. “And tonight, it’s also practice. You need to be fluent in the grammar of desire before you can write your own sentences.” A slow, knowing smile spread across her face as she looked Artemis up and down. “Looks like you are ready to hunt. We need to get you some hunting clothes.”
She turned and strode toward her bedroom, the black robe swinging. Artemis stood in the cool air, the moonlight painting her skin silver, the low thrum between her legs a persistent question. Lilith returned moments later with an armful of fabric that shimmered under the lights—garish, aggressive textiles that seemed to swallow the room’s muted tones.
She dumped the clothes on a divan. Tight, shiny purple spandex disco pants, a gold lycra spandex halter top, and spiked high heel shoes. Lilith herself had changed; she now wore a tight lycra shiny spandex bandage dress, which barely contained her large breasts and curvy body, the material straining with every breath. The effect was less seductive and more like a weaponized aesthetic.
“Let’s get you dressed,” Lilith said, picking up the pants.
Artemis eyed the tiny, glittering heap. “No underwear?” The question felt absurd, given everything, but the accountant’s ghost was stubborn.
“Easier access,” Lilith said, her tone implying this was as obvious as breathing.
The cool spandex pants slid up her thighs with a whisper, clinging instantly. They were skintight and showed off her ample rear, the fabric compressing and shaping her in a way that felt less like clothing and more like a second, gleaming skin. The gold halter top was a more complicated negotiation of hooks and sheer tension. It squeezed her breasts, lifting and framing them, showing off cleavage as her nipples became erect, rubbing and being stimulated by the satin lycra with every slight movement.
Lilith stepped back, nodded once in approval. “Perfect. You look like a promise no one can afford.” She handed Artemis the shoes. The spikes were intimidating. “Walk in them. Own the height. It changes your center, makes you present differently.”
Artemis strapped them on, wobbling for a moment before finding a precarious balance. She stood, feeling elongated, exposed, a neon sign broadcasting a very specific message. The constant friction of the fabric was a maddening, low-grade tease. It felt less like being dressed and more like being prepped for a ritual.
“The club is a short ride away,” Lilith said, checking her reflection in the dark window, a silhouette of liquid night. “I ordered us a limo. Isobel will meet us there.” She glanced at Artemis. “Remember the list. The venue is just geography. You’re looking for the spark. It’ll feel like a pull, a magnetic wrongness in the room. That’s your target.”
Artemis followed her toward the elevator, the click of their heels on the floor a synchronized, deliberate percussion. The clothes were a uniform, she realized. They stripped away any pretense of ambiguity. There was no hiding in this, no pretending to be something else. She was a hunter, and the city at night was a stocked pond.
The limo waited, black and silent at the curb. The driver held the door without meeting their eyes. Artemis slid in across the cool leather, the spandex sighing as she settled. Lilith followed, a perfume of jasmine and ozone filling the enclosed space.
As the car pulled into the late-night traffic, the city lights streaking past the tinted windows, Artemis felt the last of Arthur’s doubts dissolve into the vibrations of the engine. The hollow ache was gone, yes, but it had been replaced by this: a focused, humming intent, a direct line from the moonlight to the moist heat between her thighs, to the predatory calm settling behind her eyes. The hunt was no longer a concept. It was a destination, speeding toward her through the dark.
It was a destination, speeding toward her through the dark. The city unfolded itself as a grid of potential energy, each lit window a story she could now, perhaps, read. Artemis felt the rigid containment of the spandex, the way it held her new shape like a gift waiting to be unwrapped. Every bump in the road transmitted a vibration straight to her core, a constant, maddening reminder of the pulse between her legs.
“Nervous?” Lilith asked, not looking at her, staring out at the passing lights.
“No,” Artemis said. The word felt true. Arthur’s nerves were a distant memory. This was a different somatic state—a high-tuned alertness, a readiness that buzzed in her teeth.
“Good. Nerves make you smell desperate. Tonight, you are the solution, not another problem looking for a solve.”
The limo glided to a smooth halt. The venue wasn’t the chrome-and-neon monstrosity Artemis had pictured. It was a converted warehouse, the entrance marked only by a single red bulb above a steel door, a line of people coiled behind a velvet rope. The air outside the car changed immediately.
The limo door opened.
The noise hit first—a bassline throb punching up from the pavement through her spandex-clad feet, a physical presence in the air. Then the scentscape: a swamp of cheap colognes fighting synthetic fog machines, the acrid tang of spilled beer, and the yeasty, damp sweat of bodies in close quarters. Underneath it all ran the human current: a jagged river of want, anxiety, and performative joy.
Artemis stepped out, the spike heels finding an immediate, confident purchase on the concrete. She was instantly the focus of the line. Conversations stuttered. Eyes, both male and female, tracked her and Lilith as they walked past the velvet rope. She saw the calculations flicker across their faces: envy, raw lust, instant, dismissive judgment. A man in a too-tight shirt actually took a half-step back, as if her proximity burned. A woman whispered something to her friend, her gaze lingering on the impossible shine of Artemis’s halter top, a mix of disdain and blatant curiosity.
They didn’t see a person. They saw an event.
They walked directly to the bouncer, a mountain of a man named Sam whose bald head gleamed under the red light. His expression, professionally blank, cracked into a genuine, warm smile at the sight of Lilith.
“Your table is waiting, Lilith,” he said, his voice a gravelly rumble that cut through the thrum.
“Thanks, Sam,” Lilith said, brushing his massive forearm with her fingertips as she passed.
Sam unclipped the rope and they flowed inside, past the hopeful stares of the waiting crowd. The transition was absolute. The warehouse interior was a cave of swirling light and humid, scent-saturated air. The bass was now a living thing, compressing Artemis’s lungs.
“He knows what you are?” Artemis shouted over the music, leaning close to Lilith’s ear.
Lilith laughed, a sharp, bright sound. “No,” she said, guiding them through a press of bodies toward a raised section with plush booths. “But sometimes when the pickings are thin and we have an itch to scratch, Isobel or I will bring Sam back for a good fucking. He’s surprisingly... attentive for a man of his proportions. Remembers what he’s told.”
They entered the club proper. The hot, humid air was a wall. It carried the complexity of the crowd directly into Artemis’s heightened senses. She didn’t just see people. She picked up their auras as shifting pressure zones, invisible weather systems of emotion. A knot of young women radiated a brittle, shrieking happiness that tasted like artificial sweetener. A group of men by a pillar emitted a competitive, aggressive heat that smelled of burnt plastic and sour mash.
Lilith led them to a semi-circular booth draped in black velvet, a small island of relative calm. She lifted a hand and a server materialized. “Bottle of the Veuve, keep it coming,” she said, without consulting a menu or Artemis.
Artemis scanned the room. The dance floor was a sea of undulating shadows. And there, near the center, was a familiar pale smudge of blonde.Isobel. She was pressed against a young man, their bodies moving in a slow, grinding syncopation that had nothing to do with the frantic tempo of the music. The man’s eyes were closed, his face a mask of bewildered, grateful bliss. Isobel’s hands were on his hips, guiding him, her expression one of detached, clinical focus even as her body mimicked invitation.
“Looks like she found her prey for the evening,” Lilith said, following Artemis’s gaze. She accepted the champagne flute from the server and took a small sip.
Artemis took her own glass, the bubbles tingling in her nose. She let the sensations wash over her, filtering them. The desperate hunger of a woman on her third solo drink by the DJ booth. The cold, transactional appraisal of a man in a suit circling the floor’s edge. The frantic, gleeful abandonment of a group that felt temporary and thin.
Then she saw her.
At the far end of the long, gleaming bar, a woman sat alone on a stool. Her back was straight, but it was the posture of someone holding themselves together by sheer will. A half-finished cocktail sat before her, the ice melted into a watery tomb. Her face, in profile, was streaked with mascara, tears cutting clean tracks through her makeup. She wasn’t sobbing. She was just sitting, silently eroding.
Artemis stared. The noisy chaos of the club seemed to bend around the woman, creating a pocket of profound, aching silence that only Artemis could hear. The hollow place inside her, so recently sated by the transformation, gave a distinct, sympathetic tug. It wasn’t a violent pull, not like with Chloe. It was a melancholic resonance, a tuning fork humming at the same sad frequency.
Lilith noticed her fixation. She leaned in, her lips nearly touching Artemis’s ear. Her whisper was a direct line into her mind. “Like I told you. You will feel the pull like a magnet. Go to her.”
Artemis placed her untouched champagne on the table. She stood. Navigating the dance floor was an exercise in deflection. A man with glazed eyes reached for her waist, slurring, “Damn, shiny.” She pivoted, her spiked heel coming down near his foot, not on it, but the message was clear. Another tried to press against her back, smelling of cannabis and arrogance; she simply stopped walking, forcing him to stumble around her, her expression flat and unmoving.
She arrived at the bar. The weeping woman didn’t look up. Artemis slid onto the empty stool beside her, the spandex of her pants whispering against the leather. The woman flinched at the proximity of another body.
Up close, the aura was devastating. It was the scent of cold rain on empty sidewalks. The taste of a ring left on a nightstand. The sound of a last, unanswered text message. It was raw, fresh grief, not the chronic loneliness of the office, but a specific, catastrophic wound.
Artemis placed a hand on the cold bar top, not touching the woman. She leaned in slightly. The gold lycra of her top strained.
“You ok, honey?” Artemis said, her voice softer than she’d expected it to be, cutting through the club’s roar and landing in that private pocket of quiet.
The woman turned. Her eyes were a watery, shattered blue. They took in Artemis—the outrageous outfit, the impossible beauty, the quiet, non-judgmental concern on her face. A fresh tear spilled over.
“My fiancé,” the woman choked out, her voice ragged. “He… he’s in the bathroom. With… with my supposed best friend. I saw them go in. Together.” She gave a hiccuping, miserable laugh. “I guess the shiny dress was for her, not me.”
She looked at Artemis’s own shimmering garb, a bitter comparison dawning on her face.“Sorry. You probably just wanted a drink. I’m just… I’m just sitting here waiting for my life to stop feeling like it’s made of broken glass.”
Artemis felt it then, not just the pull, but the opportunity. This was a life already in freefall. She wasn’t stealing stability; she was offering a different kind of dissolution. A sweeter, numbing one.
“Broken glass cuts,” Artemis said, her gaze holding the woman’s. “You don’t have to sit in it. Come with me.”
“Where?” the woman whispered, a desperate hope flickering behind the tears. It wasn’t sexual yet. It was the hope of an escape hatch, any escape hatch.
“Somewhere quiet,” Artemis said, placing a hand gently on the woman’s arm. Her skin was cold. “Where you can forget his name for a little while. I’m good at helping people forget.”
The woman—Megan, her name was Megan, Artemis knew it without asking—looked toward the bathroom door, a fresh wave of pain contorting her features. She looked back at Artemis, at the calm, promising depth in her eyes. The magnet pull was mutual now, a desperate need meeting a predatory offer.
“Okay,” Megan breathed, the word barely audible.“Okay. Just… get me out of here.”
Artemis stood, helping Megan from the stool. She didn’t look back toward Lilith’s table. She guided the trembling woman through the crowd, toward a side exit marked by a glowing red ‘EXIT’ sign, her hand firm on the small of Megan’s back. The hunt was over. The consoling had begun. The first step into the quiet room where the spark would be carefully, mercifully, blown out.