Let’s Play Hangman

A short story by CrystalDragonness

I heave a heavy sigh. The ceiling tile directly above my head had seventy two holes in it. Just wonderful. Am I so bored with life that I need to resort to… To whatever this is I’m doing? I let out a yawn, give a stretch, and give myself a mental kick to get back to work. The sooner I get this done the sooner I can get home.

Clack clack clack. The sound of my typing echoed across the entire office. It was almost deafening to be alone at night, where any noise reverberates unusually loud. I think I can even hear the groans of the wood contracting in the walls.

Beeep!

I nearly had a heart attack, jumped straight out of my chair! But that was just the fax machine waking up. I can’t help but chuckle a little at how silly I was being. Getting startled by the fax machine! Who even does that? Wait? Who would be sending a fax at this hour anyway? Taking any excuse to put down the work I didn’t want to do, I leave the safety of my cubicle to investigate.

The ink cartridges move back and forth, the soft sound of printing reaches my ears. It doesn’t take the machine very long to print whatever was being sent, the job completed by the time I arrive. I take hold of the paper, still warm to the touch. A simple message in plain text stared back at me on the paper. ‘Let’s play hangman’.

What a strange message! I can’t help but ponder who would send such a thing when I notice a phone number… No, a fax number in the corner. I recognized the number immediately; this fax came from the office just one floor up. Looks like I’m not the only one who had to work late. Humoring my co worker, I fax a response back. ‘Sure thing’.

Whoever it was must have been expecting that I would say yes. A new fax printed just a second or two after I responded. There on the sheet was the game, two words it looked like! Oh this was going to be a bit hard; I was never good at the game. I write down my first guess and fax the paper.

The game is almost over now. I used up all my letters and all that is left is to guess the word, but there are still so many spaces missing. I honestly have no idea what the word is. I give a glance over to the little man in the corner who is about to get hanged. Interesting enough the person did it back words, and started with the legs. I thought it was odd but nobody says that you couldn’t do it that way. I send my best guess and wait for the response that I knew was coming.

Here it comes. The words ‘I Win’ print first, oh and here comes the little man…? I’m not sure how I should feel about this. Instead of just a circle as I was expecting, the person put their face instead. I recognized the person, he usually shows up around my lunch time. I never spoke to them very much but they seemed like a nic-

Crash! Thud!

I let out a scream at the unexpected noise. Something hit a window on my floor, and from here I could see something was sawing just outside of it, but was that crashing sound? It was almost like glass shattering. Steeling my nerves, I push forward to see what it was that hit the window. That was a mistake. Just outside the figure I saw was the man I was playing with, dangling by a rope around his neck.

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