The Midnight Cleaning Company

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I drove back to the office with the prisoners and new recruit while my colleagues stayed behind to collect all remaining evidence for disposal. As I parked the van it occurred to me that we don't have the facilities to detain prisoners. My solution was to keep the two Rogues locked in the back of van. The unconscious gang member was slumped in the front seat. I scooped him up over my shoulder and carried him up the metal spiral staircase to the second floor, where I deposited him in Richard's now vacant desk chair.

By the time the gang member regained consciousness, my colleagues had returned. Together we had destroyed the bodies of the deceased Humans and Rogues, and were preparing to erase any evidence of Richard's existence. It was my rummaging through the late Richard's desk drawers that woke him. He peered around the room with unfocussed groggy eyes for a moment before recalling the recent events and sitting bolt upright.

I snorted in amusement. Hearing the noise he turned to me, his eyes wide with fear, searching for pity and answers.

"Where the f-fuck am I?" he stammered, terrified.
"Your new desk", I replied. "You are now an indentured Cleaner. We had two problems; a vacancy that needed to be filled, and a witness that needed to be silenced. I decided to spare your life to kill two birds with one stone."

His face still wore an expression of shock and I had no time for mollycoddling, so I walked away while he processed the information. I picked up my coffee mug as I passed my desk and opened the large fridge in the corner to get a drink. His glazed eyes followed me there but sparked back into life when he saw the contents of the fridge. It contained nothing but plastic bottles of blood. "You are one of them!" he screamed, leaping out of the desk chair.

"I am nothing like them!" I snapped from across the room, wheeling around to glare at the clueless youth. "They are animals, they are diluted and weak, they endanger The Secret".

Startled by my outburst, he sank back down in the chair. I turned back to the fridge, filled my coffee mug with pigs blood and placed it in the microwave for fifteen seconds.

"It is your predecessor's leaving party, stay here while we say goodbye." I ordered, sipping from my mug as I descended the spiral stairs.

I joined the five remaining team members in a circle around one of the disposal vats. Richard's body lay face up in the centre, surrounded by his few possessions: his spare uniform, his gun, his coffee mug, and a small collection of old books. In lieu of the usual efficient reduction through alkaline hydrolysis, we opted for a more dignified funeral by fire. John poured petrol over Richard's corpse. The remains no longer resembled the man at all. Where once there had been dirty blonde hair, there were only small patches of grey. His young skin had rapidly decomposed to a dry grey leather. He looked more like a mummy from a museum than a man who had only been dead for a few hours. Perhaps this is his true century old form, I thought as John dropped a lit match into the vat. We stood in silence until the fire died down. Michael then shovelled a single scoop of sodium hydroxide onto the charred remains. John turned the large tap at one end of the vat, swamping the contents with water. The small pile immediately began to fizz and hiss as it was broken down at a molecular level.

I drained the dregs of pigs blood from my mug. There was no sadness; Richard had died a long time ago and his continued existence had been justified only by our work. We turned away solemnly to resume our task.

The new recruit had been watching from halfway down the stairs.

"Is that what will happen to me?" he said, looking over at the now melting and burnt remains.
"Only if you're not careful", I replied with a slight half smile, a rare attempt to comfort. "It's time to turn you", I said with no emotion and we ascended the stairs.

The new recruit swallowed nervously and loitered by my desk while I retrieved a dusty metal case from a cupboard in the far corner of the room. Inside was a small steel pump and a series of empty glass boiling tubes, along with needles of varying sizes.

"Give me your arm", I ordered.

The new recruit looked down the stairs towards the disposal vats where his friends had been erased from existence, and the adjacent vat containing the bubbling solution that had until moments ago been his predecessor, and complied.
I pushed the needle into his vein and pulled back on the steel pump. The first boiling tube began to fill with his blood.

"Aren't you meant to drink it?" he asked with a puzzled expression.
"Human blood is prohibited for us", I replied while extracting the first full tube from the pump and inserting an empty one.

We continued in silence. He grimaced occasionally and his eyes began to droop. After the sixth container was full, I removed the needle and metal pump and placed them carefully back into the tin case. The new recruit slumped in my desk chair. I reached behind my back to pulled out my knife from its sheath on my belt and dragged the side with the straight edge across my wrist. The new recruit was shivering. He averted his gaze to avoid the sight of my blood. Impatiently I grabbed his head and forced my wrist against his mouth. He remained still at first while my blood overflowed over his lips and dribbled down his chin. After a few seconds his arms shot up and wrapped around mine, pulling it closer. He slurped noisily and greedily. When I pulled away the colour had returned to his face. He clung to my arm like a drowning man to driftwood. I snatched my arm away. He looked up at me expectant and needily, like a kitten demanding food. He was breathing heavily.

"Was that...it," he panted, evidently relieved.

"Almost," I replied, calmly reaching forward to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder before quickly twisting his neck to the left, snapping it.

I carried the corpse of the new recruit over to his inherited desk and sat him down with his head resting on a pile of the late Richard's unfinished paperwork.

The sun had risen, so I descended the metal spiral staircase to the basement to join my sleeping colleagues.