The Hall of Doors

My job is to clean an office building, whose name is only an address. I am the only cleaner, and it is a long work day, taking care of all four floors alone. Day in, day out.

In Denver, if it matters, which it doesn’t.

I am expected to make all rooms spotless. With one exception. A hallway, that also doesn’t have a name, but everyone calls it the Hall of Doors. To give you an idea of the kind of people who work here, I later learned that this is explicitly in reference to the second Rayman game.

I am not allowed to enter the Hall of Doors. I get daily reminder texts, in fact.

By the way I know next to nothing about what all these well-dressed office workers actually do. As far as I can tell they all just sit at their computers frantically typing day in, day out, and when I ask they just kind of shrug. They never really notice me. They do have meetings, in various conference rooms that I have to clean, but I have to wait for them to leave before I can enter, so who knows what they say in there.

One time they forgot to erase everything on a whiteboard, after one of those meetings. I walked in, after everyone left, and there before me was a whole whiteboard all filled up with, I shit you not, the Fibonacci sequence. On and on and on. Surely it wasn’t some kind of strange math class, but I did marvel at this for a second, and wonder, before erasing it.

Every day when I get to work, I park in a giant empty parking lot. I’ve been told there’s a subterranean parking garage, where all the office workers park, but I have not seen it. I also know nothing of how to get to it, which has always irritated me because I clean the whole building, so I should know, right?

But when I get to work, all the workers are already here. And they always leave during the part of the day in which I’m going through and cleaning all those conference rooms. Day in, day out. I’ve genuinely wanted to change the order I clean things in, out of both misery and curiosity, but management is very strict about that.

Right, management. In a first for my cleaning career, I actually work directly for the corporation that owns this building. But, as I got this job by answering a spam text out of desperation, I have not actually seen or heard the name of the company. In my interview the smiling bald man only asked whether I’m a first born (I’m not), if I own any cats (I don’t), and whether I can work weekends (I now work seven days a week). As you can tell, this place is not great with communication. And all those office workers only ever say “management”. Never a name.

When they speak English, that is. They have a lot of different native languages, from all around the world. I don’t even know where this company is headquartered, or where the one they call “the CEO” is from, because they always go into the Hall of Doors to speak with him.

Which brings me to the time I went into the Hall of Doors.

It wasn’t for a good reason. I knew I’d probably get fired. Maybe I wanted that. But, I got it in my head that I needed to see “the CEO” with my own eyes. With how all these office workers talk about him, I needed… proof. I know it sounds strange. But I needed to prove he really exists.

For the first time I wondered why this place doesn’t feel the need for security.

But anyway there I was, just got done cleaning the last conference room of the day. I saw the entrance to the Hall of Doors. I looked both ways. No witnesses. Then, I just walked in there, pretending to mop the floor, like one does. As though I always clean the Hall of Doors, so if anyone sees, they think I’m supposed to be there. No one really notices me anyway.

So.

The Hall of Doors.

It looked no different from all the other hallways, with all the other doors, just without all those televisions with all those news channels. Just as clean, somehow.

Then I heard voices walking up.

“Man, can you believe the CEO is coming?”

“Yeah, man. The CEO coming here. Imagine.”

I panicked. I picked a door and opened it and stepped out and—

I was outside. I was on a busy walkway. Broad daylight, hot. Immaculate architecture all around me. All the signs were in Italian.

I turned around, and saw the nondescript wooden door I was still holding open. I turned around again, and a man in white robes came around a distant street corner, with seemingly a large escort. Back in the door I went.

Another door. I’ll hide there, I thought.

Outside that one it was night and everywhere were neon signs in Korean.

Back inside.

The Hall of Doors had now taken on a very different tone for me.

But I just kept mopping, and mopped my way back to the part of the building I was allowed to be in. Right past those two office workers.

“And that’s when she made that crazy face, and ran off!” one said to the other.

“I mean, I would too!” the other replied.

If either one noticed me, they made no indication.

Like I wasn’t even there.

Like always.

Apparently neither one told on me either, because I still work in this building. And I now try as hard as I possibly can to never think about that creepy hallway with all those doors. It was probably a weird dream. If it was real, the world would stop making sense.

So here I am. Cleaning.

Day in, day out.