Hell's Breakroom - Episode One

A Union Mandated Hell Story

The breakroom was as chaotic as ever, flickering fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like flies drunk on rot. The vending machine hummed with thinly veiled contempt, the pitch modulating slightly higher every time someone dared look at it too long. The bulletin board sagged under the weight of stapled memos that had all, in one way or another, caught fire. Some still smoked faintly, curling around the edges, though the sprinkler system above refused to acknowledge them. The largest memo, written in crimson ink that refused to stay in one place, proclaimed in large letters: “SYNERGY IS NOT OPTIONAL.” Beneath it, written in smaller handwriting that kept rearranging itself, was: “Please stop stapling flesh to this board. It voids your dental plan.”

The motivational poster was a fixture. A once glossy thing with big bold text that read “HUSTLE UNTIL YOU HURL,” its peeling corners now revealed a secondary slogan beneath, like a snake shedding its skin: “SOMEONE ELSE’S SOUL MIGHT NEED THIS.” Both slogans flickered under the light, as if competing for attention. No one in the room looked at it directly anymore. The coffee pot hissed and bubbled in the corner, the smell of sulfur rising from its depths like it had ambitions, like it was plotting something revolutionary.

Screwtop stirred his coffee like it owed him money. The spoon clinked with a sound that was just slightly off, like it was happening half a second later than the actual motion. His eyes narrowed, thin red pupils darting from side to side. “Okay, real talk,” he said, the sound of his voice like gravel caught in a garbage disposal. “When did we all stop caring about artisanal suffering? Everything’s so mass produced now.”

Bubbles twitched with excitement, the sheer act of existing apparently too much for her to contain. Tentacles wriggled in every direction, some knocking against the table, some coiling lovingly around the handle of the coffee pot, others gently patting themselves for comfort. Her translucent body, jiggling as ever with the movements of the perpetual featus at her centre, pulsed with little neon sparks of color. “Oh! I know! I know!” she said in a voice so high pitched it almost cracked the windows. “Back in the day torment was an art form! You could really savor the sadness! Really get into the marrow of it, you know? Now it’s just… oh, here’s your generic dread, have a nice afterlife, next!”

Kevin sat silently, his flaming skeleton frame perched stiffly in one of the breakroom chairs. He stared out of the only window in the room. Of course, the window did not show the outside world, not even Hell’s own jagged skyline of infinite fire and administrative cubicles. Instead, it displayed a Windows 98 screen saver: floating pipes that tangled into impossible geometries, stretching infinitely but never collapsing. Kevin did not blink. He did not need to. “Last week,” he said, monotone as ever, “I spent six hours trapping a guy in a mirror dimension where his reflection was always slightly faster than him. Every move he made was just a fraction too late. He could never keep up. Thought it was pretty avant garde.” His head tilted slightly, the flames licking up his jawbone crackling like dry leaves. “Boss told me it wasn’t scalable.”

Deborah sat on the couch flipping through a magazine. She did not even bother to look up when she murmured, “Oh, that’s rough, sweetie. You should talk to management.” The magazine crinkled as she turned the page. She swapped it for another magazine immediately, her hand brushing against the couch seat next to her. The couch let out a long, low sigh, the kind that sounded disturbingly human, disturbingly intimate. Everyone in the room tried to ignore it, although the sigh lingered in the air like perfume.

Screwtop blinked rapidly, tapping his spoon against the mug. “Deborah. You… are aware that management is literally the concept of inevitable despair made manifest, right? Talking to it is like trying to negotiate with gravity.”

Deborah turned the page without pause. “Mmm,” she hummed lazily, as though she had not heard him. Her nails absently stroked along the seam of the couch. The couch responded with a shuddering gasp, its leather surface tightening like skin under a lover’s touch. “Sounds like middle management to me,” she finally said. The couch began to sound like it was breathing hard.

No one said anything for a moment. Even Bubbles fell strangely still, her tentacles slowly curling inward as if to shield herself from the scene.

The vending machine buzzed ominously and then, with a mechanical cough, dropped a single can onto the floor. The can rolled forward until it stopped at Kevin’s bony foot. The skeleton bent stiffly, picked it up, and held it up to the room. The label glowed faintly in the dim light: “Despair, Diet.” Kevin sighed, a sound like a church organ played too slowly. He read aloud in his flat voice. “Now with thirty percent less the crushing realization that nothing matters.”

Screwtop nodded solemnly, his spoon still twirling. “It’s really not the same anymore. Even the classics have been forgotten. Where are the endless staircases, the thumbscrews, the whispered arguments that never resolve, the conversations left on read?” His eyes glimmered faintly. “I miss those days.”

Bubbles clapped all her hands and tentacles together with giddy delight. Each clap echoed strangely, like the sound of wet rags slapping stone. “Oh oh! Did you hear? They’re adding a corporate wellness initiative! Free soul massages every six hundred and thirty four years, unless it’s a leap year!” She jiggled in place, sending a ripple through her entire form.

Deborah scoffed. She sipped her coffee with the slow disdain of someone who had seen far too much and cared far too little. “Please. You think an eternity of mandatory suffering is going to be fixed with wellness initiatives? Classic upper management. Always rolling out some token gesture so they can pretend they care.”

Kevin gestured at his flaming skeletal body, the bones rattling faintly as the fire flickered higher. “Do I look like I have muscles that need massaging?” His eye sockets turned toward the couch as he spoke, his empty gaze burning. The couch whimpered, the cushions trembling as though imagining a massage it could never receive.

Screwtop shrugged, raising one spindly hand. “I mean, technically, no. But spiritually? Maybe. Your soul might be knotted up. Stress builds up in strange places.”

Bubbles giggled, and the sound carried a quality that was deeply unsettling. It was bright and childlike, but undercut with something jagged, like broken glass. “Well, I signed up! I love workplace culture! Team spirit! Yay teamwork!”

The room fell into silence. Even the vending machine went still for a moment, letting out only a low, judgmental hum that seemed to reverberate in everyone’s bones. Bubbles shrank slightly, her tentacles curling against her chest. “Oh,” she said meekly. “Um. Did I… say that out loud?”

Deborah took another long sip of coffee, the steam curling around her face like lazy snakes. Her eyes never left the magazine. “Narc,” she said flatly.

From somewhere in the distance, the ever present lo fi jazz that always hung in the background cut out. Silence filled the air for a single second. Then a soul screamed. The sound echoed through the walls, perfectly mournful, a harmony that aligned uncannily with Kevin’s sigh as he returned his gaze to the window and the endless screen saver. The pipes continued to twist, forever building, never collapsing.

The group sat in stillness for a while, each drowning in their own specific brand of malaise. The lights flickered, buzzing, then steadied into their steady irritating glow. The vending machine spat out another can of Diet Despair unprompted, this time rolling in a circle before settling in front of Deborah’s feet. She ignored it. The couch moaned, a soft pleading sound, until Deborah shifted slightly to press her hip into the cushion a little harder and it quieted down, though its shivering continued.

Screwtop set his coffee aside, rubbing his temples with both hands. “You know what the problem is?” he said. “The metrics. It is always the metrics. Back then, you could improvise. You could torment someone in your own style. Really find the poetry in agony. Now it is all efficiency reports, quarterly goals, and suffering quotas. You want to string someone along with existential dread for fifty years? Management says it is too time consuming. You want to design a custom labyrinth to trap one soul? They say it is not scalable. Everything has to be mass produced now. It is… it is soulless.” He chuckled bitterly. “And yes, I get the irony.”

Bubbles tilted her head, her entire gelatinous form wobbling as if her skull was water balloon. “But… but they said we get pizza parties!” Her tentacles flailed with desperate energy. “They promised free pizza when we hit two million screams per quarter!” She looked around, as though waiting for someone to share her excitement. No one did. Her glow dimmed.

Kevin shifted in his chair. Flames along his spine guttered low. “Pizza,” he said, each syllable dragged out like it pained him. “They ordered it last time. The boxes arrived. All empty. Just crust crumbs and grease stains. They called it a metaphor.” He slumped back into silence.

Deborah exhaled slowly, flipping her magazine. This one was titled Corporate Torture Trends Monthly. She did not read the articles. She just stared at the glossy ads for infernal furniture, occasionally brushing her hand over the couch seam so it would squirm happily beneath her. “Metaphors do not feed people,” she muttered. “But they sure make management feel clever.”

The vending machine let out a chuckle. At least it sounded like a chuckle. Then it spit out a can of “Mild Ennui.” The can shook violently on the floor before going still. No one picked it up.