Horror vacui

If there was one thing Sonia hated about her job, it was working on the second of January. With a permanent contract she would have had the freedom to take the day off; as a temporary employee, she had no such right.

She held a bachelor’s degree in office management but worked as an administrator’s assistant at Coma & Morph, a prestigious health insurance company in R. The role was well below her qualifications, yet she didn’t mind. Landing even a temporary position at Coma & Morph was considered a small triumph in the city. The recruitment process was brutal: a three-hour test held in another city, followed by a rigorous interview.

The test began with three administrative tasks to be completed in thirty minutes — alphabetical classification of documents, organising a cleaning rota for a fictitious company, and planning a sales representative’s visits and calls. What followed was two and a half hours of mental torture: an unrelenting barrage of complex riddles, rebuses, mathematical and geometrical problems that demanded total concentration. Sonia was one of the few who made it through. A suitable degree was the second requirement. That was how she had got in.

It was the most desirable job in R. School-leavers and graduates alike competed fiercely for a chance at a better future. The city’s unwritten rules were clear: priority went to those born and raised in R., who owned a car, were officially registered as residents, and could provide strong local references. If you met those criteria, you might secure a decent administrative or management post. If not, you faced chemical plants, factories, shops, or cleaning jobs — regardless of your qualifications — especially if you needed money and had no one to support you.

Sonia met none of those conditions. She had simply been in the right place at the right moment. Her interviewers had been three older men and one woman; had the woman held the deciding vote, Sonia would never have been hired. Fortunately, the men prevailed.

She had worked at Coma & Morph for nearly two years — the maximum term for a temporary contract. In five months, her time would be up. Every Monday she felt a fresh wave of depression at the prospect of returning to the humiliating cycle of job applications and unanswered CVs.

Before Coma & Morph she had worked in the administration of a chemical factory. She had been offered the job instantly, with no proper interview — just an email telling her to start on Monday. No one else wanted the position. A year before she arrived, the factory had exploded; thick black smoke had hung over the city for two days. R. was already notorious for its foul odours, but that incident made things worse.

At the entrance, a digital display proudly showed “… days without an accident.” Every morning Sonia glanced at it with dread. Zero meant something had gone wrong the night before or that same morning. She thanked God she hadn’t been there.

The company cleaned used chemical barrels. Ten to twenty lorries arrived daily from across the country. Sonia had heard of two young workers diagnosed with cancer. Some days the stench of toxic solvents was unbearable, permeating even the small administrative trailer. She was the only one who still gagged and suffered headaches; her colleagues had grown used to it. The constant stress and toxicity had caused a goitre the size of a ping-pong ball to form on her neck. When she laughed or spoke, it moved visibly, like a grotesque Adam’s apple. The mere thought of returning to that place — or any similar factory — filled her with panic.

On this particular second of January, Coma & Morph’s car park was deserted. Access was restricted by a barrier that required a pass. Sonia didn’t have one. Her father dropped her off just before it, as usual, and she walked around. She noticed for the first time an electric gate beside it. Because of the holiday it remained closed; apparently the caretaker had forgotten to open it for the handful of unlucky employees on duty.

The gate stayed shut. Sonia tried the main visitor entrance, but those doors also refused to open. Sighing, she returned to the electric gate and swiped her internal security pass. To her relief, it began to move, jerking open in slow, reluctant stages. She waited until the gap was just wide enough, then squeezed through.

Finally, she stood before the grim, towering building of Coma & Morph.