The Atrium - Chapter 1

Welcome to The Atrium—a serialized story about a cheeky corporate guy who gets an unprompted promotion — and he's perfect for the job. Join Andrei as he fights his way out of the graveyard shift, with nothing but his survival instincts and his will to live

New chapters drop weekly on my Substack.

If you like haunted coming-of-age stories with emotionally damaged characters, too many metaphors, and a little magic? You’re home.

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“Thank you for calling CommTech, How can I help you?”

“Have you tried turning your phone off and on?”

”Your bill was charged a late fee because it’s seven days overdue.”

“How would you like to pay?”

“Can you please confirm your date of birth?”

“My pleasure!”

…

The skeleton crew, as we’re called, didn’t get quite as many calls as our daytime counterparts. Still, the nights blurred together in the same eight-hour loop. Only a handful of calls a night, rinse and repeat.

I used to work the daytime shift. Spent a year developing thick skin, learning how to mentally block out insults from middle-aged Karens who didn’t know how their own phones worked. So when they offered me the graveyard shift for more than double the pay, I didn’t think twice.

Double pay, plus overtime, plus holidays? Fuck yeah.

The problem? No one told me that the graveyard shift would be boring as hell.

Instead of four hundred calls, we handled forty. It was mind-numbing. A few hours of dead air every night. How was I supposed to fill eight?

Let alone overtime?

Let alone holidays?

“That meeting room is open,” Carl’s voice cut through the silence.

I looked up from my screen. Our cubicles were just an arm’s length from each other, separated by flimsy half-walls. No privacy. An absolute nightmare during the day shift. But at night? The only thing keeping us from losing our minds.

“So?” I asked. Three weeks on the team, and I was still learning the quirks.

“So? It’s never open.” Maynard says, staring at the slightly open door down the hall.

“What’s the big deal?” Rosie rolls her chair closer to the group, catching the last bit of the conversation after her short call. The only new hire, just as confused as I was.

“It’s never open.” Carl repeated, shaking his head.

I raised a brow. The air wasn’t exactly thick with tension, but it was colder now. Maybe it was the AC.

I stood up from my squeaky computer chair and walked towards the end of the hallway. “I’ll close it.”

Maynard stiffened. “Dude, don’t.”

I ignored him. The office was eerily silent at night, a stark difference from the morning shift traffic. But that didn’t mean doors swinging open by themselves warranted a horror movie reaction. I’d been in the building for a year. I’d never even noticed this meeting room.

When I reached for the door handle, it was cold to the touch. Of course it was. It was metal and the central air conditioning was on 24/7. I shut it close and started walking back when I heard a little creak from behind me. I turned again to find the door I just closed, slightly swung open again.

“Wow” I chuckled audibly for my team to hear. “This door really wants to be open.”

Carl stood up from his chair. “Just sit back down, man.” He warned me. I extended a leg and nudged the door with my foot to close it again for good measure. The stubborn door just wouldn’t close.

For the first time in three weeks, I felt something other than dread and unbearable boredom. Who knew a stubborn door would be the thing to wake me up? I reached for the door handle’s lock from inside, and pushed the door closed. With a nod of good fucking riddance, I turned. As I walked back to my chair, I felt the hair at the back of my neck stand on end, like it was being pulled by the sound of…

Click. Twist. Creak.

An opening door.

—

“Morning Andrei!” Kyle, our team leader called out to me as I zigzagged my way to my desk. At least nine other agents came in for an early start. I looked at the obnoxious flat screen against the far wall, with bold red numbers that dictated how much we’re gonna love our job each day.

281 CALLS ON QUEUE

Great. All hands on deck and we’re still understaffed.

“Hey man, how’s it going,” I muttered, already dreading the shift.

“Come here, I need to talk to you for a second.”

Shit.

“Look,” I sighed while I dragged my way over. “If this is about my numbers, I know I can do better. And if this is about the customer I hung up on-”

”Woah woah, slow down for a second.” Kyle held up both his hands, cutting me off. He awkwardly draped his arm around my shoulder, and guided me down the long corridor of meeting rooms. “Relax, you’re not in trouble.”

“So… what is it then?” We were walking so slow, I almost forgot how busy the office floor was behind us.

Kyle exhaled, like he was about to tell me something heavy. “I have an offer from the assistant manager he wanted me to take for myself and…” we stopped in front of a door. “I looked at the role and qualifications and well, I thought you were qualified for it.”

I frowned. ”Qualified for what?”

“Team lead. Graveyard shift.” His tone had an echo to it. Or maybe it was his eyes. Void and unreadable. It made my stomach turn.

“Why me?”

“Just -” Kyle hesitated. He let out another heavy sigh. “I think you’ll do great. You have… tenacity.” He opened the door to a meeting room at the end of the hallway. “Step right in.”

For a while, I hesitated. “The hell Kyle, I feel like I’m signing my life away,” I chuckled. Kyle let out the most out-of-place laugh, it almost sounded cartoonish. “Hilarious!” He wags a finger at me. His other arm, still draped around my shoulder like an octopus tentacle suctioning the life out of me the longer it stayed there. He lightly pushed me inside the room.

The meeting room was small, if you could even call it that. It looked more like a vestibule, with a door at the far end that looked identical to the door we used to get in. It was then that it dawned on me. I’ve never been in this one.

In the middle of the room, there was a table, with two chairs on each side, and a stack of papers with a pen and ink pad placed right at the middle. Kyle motioned for the chair on the right. “Have a seat!” Someone’s really excited. He made his way over to the chair on the left. With each step towards my seat, the air felt a little bit more humid. A little harder to breathe each time. A little bit more suffocating. Like a warning.

“Get outta here!” I heard one of my coworkers outside as he laughed loudly with another colleague. Like… a warning.

Kyle wasted no time to orient me with the new job offer. I watched him intently, fumbling over his own words. He insisted that I wasn’t the first choice for the role. That there have been others.

“Others have come and gone. they all failed.” He said.

“So what makes you think I can?”

“Oh, I believe in you, Andrei-”

“Yeah, you said that. But why?”

For an interviewer, Kyle seemed more nervous than expected. As he should, I thought to myself. He’s selling the job to me. I didn’t ask for it. “See, this is why I like you! The others, they just said yes! No questions asked. But you? You read the fine print. You don’t let any detail escape you. You were made for this role!”

“The others? How many?”

“… A handful.”

“Where are they now?”

“Eh, we’ve been struggling to find someone who’s up for the task.”

“Shut the front door, man!” Again, another coworker from outside, chatted away the last few minutes before every agent went live. Like a warning…

I checked the wall clock. 8:55 am.

—-

Carl had convinced me somehow, to let the door be. “Must be faulty, the lock,” he said. It was nothing to get riled up for, so there I was, back on my computer chair, lovingly, and intricately designed like… every other chair.

The whole night, Rosie seemed to be the only one getting calls. And all night, she would only get a deadline. Until -

“Thank you for calling-” Rosie let it ring twice before she answered.

“I wish there was something here to keep us busy while we waited out the shifts, you know?” I said, starting a conversation with the other two guys.

“Good thing you're the team lead,” Maynard said. “You can call the shots! It’s not like the managers would know.”

“Wouldn’t it be funny if we just up and left?” I laughed. “I feel like we don’t actually get to answer calls anyway. Except for Rosie.”

“Andrei,” Rosie called, still on the phone. “I think it’s for you?”

“Wow, an escalation. Finally some work.” I joked. I smiled at Rosie as she passed me the phone. “Thank you for ca— hello?” I covered the receiver and directed my next question back to my confused coworker. “Was she crying like this when she called?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. She was sobbing and asked specifically for you.”

“She gave you my name?”

“Y-yeah. Sorry, I couldn’t get anything more out of her.” Rosie apologized.

“Ma’am?” I called again. Quiet sobs. Usually I’d get angry calls. Nothing could have prepared me for a crying customer. I was about to hang up when I finally heard her on the other line.

“I don’t know what to do. Please, it’s been three weeks. Just…”

“I’m sorry?”

“Just come back, please.”

“Miss, I think you have the wrong number.”

“Andrei,” hearing my name didn’t offer me any clarity, but it did make me curious. “Please…” and then, the call dropped.

“…Okay? That was weird.” Look. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. But three weeks of idle nights can make one’s mind wander.

Three weeks. The caller mentioned it’s been three weeks for her.

“Andrei?” Rosie snapped me out of my thoughts.

“Huh? I’m fine.” I reassured her and the team.

“Did she say anything important?” She asked again.

She mentioned three weeks. “Coincidence,” I thought out loud.

“What’s a coincidence?” Maynard jumps in, like a dog who heard the word ‘treat’. I swear this man could’ve been one in another life.

“…Nothing. Don’t mind me.” I smiled at the team. “Now back to work! Busy night ahead of us. Chop chop!”

—-

“Any questions?” Kyle grinned after blurting out corporate mumbo-jumbo that sounded similar to my onboarding meeting last year. Something about this whole thing sticks out to me. I swear I could count the number of times Kyle has blinked in the past half hour. I mean, if I didn’t know any better, I think this was how I would act if I was being watched. There’s another thing…

“Why do I need a thumbprint to sign the contract? Can’t I just… sign it like anything else?” Immediately, I thought I was giving the poor guy too much of a hard time. It’s just a piece of document. But still.

“Oh don’t even worry about it!” He replied a pitch too high compared to normal. “It’s just standard procedure. There have been cases of others claiming their signature was forged, and then wanting to back out - stuff like that.”

“Sounds competitive.” Yeah. The competition for who quits faster seemed intense. This offer is sounding more and more attractive.

“So will you do it?” Finally, I could hear the impatience in Kyle’s tone. I looked at him, intently and unwavering. He’s scared.

“Can I think about it?”

“No,” he snapped. “It’s a yes, or I move on to find someone else. But I’d really be glad if you accepted.” In the end, he toned it down. Maybe he realized the chances of me saying yes were getting slimmer the more aggressive he got. But I can’t help but think. Why me?

I roll up my right sleeve and reach out to the ink pad on the table.

Don’t. A whisper cut through the air like a pause button, muting every sound. Even my heart beat skipped in cooperation.

“What did you say?” I stopped mid reach.

“What, why? What’s wrong?” Kyle asked back. The skin on my arm prickled with gooseflesh. “I thought you said something,” was all I could whisper.

I pressed my thumb down on the ink pad and jerked it back in surprise. Something in the ink pad pricked like a tattoo needle. Before I could inspect my thumb, Kyle grabbed my arm and pressed it down on the contract. “There you go!” He said, shaking my inked hand. “You’re gonna do great. I’m counting on you!”

I felt my internal organs settle at the bottom of my stomach. “Yeah, sure thing, boss.” I lift my hand to look at my thumb closely.

Is that… blood?

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If you want to keep reading The Atrium, I publish new chapters every Saturday on Substack.

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