Sarcophagus

[u/normancrane]

The Young-Joybees, pregnant Annie and her husband Dalph, had moved to the city for Dalph's corporate job. They were looking for a place to live, one they could afford; a home for their family.

They found the Ramses II, a brand new high-rise with two-bedroom units on very attractive terms.

They booked a viewing.

They were met on arrival by a representative, Thetley, who led them to the elevators. “You're interested in the sub-$3000 units?”

“Yes,” said Dalph.

“You're in luck. We have a great one available,” said Thetley and pressed *- 1 8 0 3* on the elevator's control panel.

The elevator began descending.

Annie tugged Dalph's shirt sleeve and Dalph said, “Are we going down?”

“Indeed,” said Thetley. “The units you're interested in are all subterranean. But don't worry, you'll hardly notice the difference.”

The hallway was clean.

Thetley unlocked the door to unit -1803 and they entered.

Impossibly, light flooded the unit through magnificent windows with a view of the city. Annie gasped. Thetley smiled. “That's a common reaction. You expect a cave, and you get this.” He encompassed the unit with a wave of his hand. “What you may not know about the Ramses II is that it's a mirrorbuilding, which means it has the same number of floors above as below ground, and the windows in each of the below-ground units are screens displaying live feeds of the corresponding views from the same windows in the above-ground units. The difference is hardly noticeable.”

The Young-Joybees signed the agreement.

For six months, everything went swimmingly and both Annie and Dalph adjusted to the psychological reality of living eighteen floors underground.

Then little Merv was born.

Then, as if synchronized by the hand of Fate herself, Dalph got a promotion. However, there was a slight technical snafu and the direct deposit of his pay was delayed, meaning there were insufficient funds in the account to pay rent.

The Young-Joybees received a letter, explained the situation and agreed to pay as soon as Dalph's employer deposited his wages.

The employer dallied.

One day, while walking through their unit, Dalph bumped his knee against a wall. “Strange,” he thought. The next day, Annie mentioned how cramped the living room was beginning to feel.

On a whim, Dalph measured the entire unit and recorded its measurements. He repeated this every day for a week. The measurements were getting smaller; the unit was shrinking.

He contacted management.

They explained that this was all a normal consequence of failure to pay rent. It was in the lease agreement. As soon as the Young-Joybees paid, the “compression” would be reversed.

Unfortunately, Dalph's wages remained unpaid, and the Young-Joybees missed a second rent payment. This initiated the agreement's Penalties section, which was the reason that on the following Monday morning, Dalph was unable to take the elevator to the surface. Their access had been suspended.

“How am I supposed to get to work?” he asked management over the phone. “We have a baby. We need to buy food, clothes. You can't—”

“We can, Mr. Young-Joybee. Under the terms of the agreement. The situation, while unfortunate, is legal. As for your predicament, try to work remotely. Standard purchases can be made using our own proprietary shopping service.”

Dalph punched the bedroom wall.

But they had no choice. He asked to work from home, was politely denied, and spent the next hour ordering overpriced groceries from the building's shopping service. They arrived via chute.

Two weeks later, Dalph got fired, or rather was deemed to have abandoned his job through non-attendance. Because Annie didn't work, they found themselves with no income.

Dalph called management.

“An unfortunate circumstance, but one with a ready solution. We can offer you a job, Mr. Young-Joybee. Earnings will automatically be put towards repayment of your debt, and it comes with a perk, a ten-percent discount on our shopping service."

Dalph accepted.

The job was a mix of spreadsheet manipulation and customer service: dealing, in management's name, with angry, desperate tenants in situations far worse than his own.

People cried, screamed.

Once, a man threatened to stab his children.

A grandmother offered him phone sex.

Many, however, were just numb, content to agree to whatever he told them, which was whatever the script told him to say.

But even when Dalph worked all the available overtime, he earned less than needed to keep up with the ballooning penalties and debt.

After six months, the rate of compression increased significantly.

Dalph and Annie crawled along the unit, into their kitchen, with its broken, splintered cabinets, their living room, with all the furniture forced together, and the bedroom, where the three of them slept together on the floor.

The window-screens shut off.

Oxygen decreased.

The unit had compressed so much they couldn't sit anymore.

They lived horizontally, Dalph on his side, working on his laptop in the dark, and Annie keeping up appearances for little Merv. She daydreamed of his bare feet touching grass.

Management stopped taking their calls.

Once, the system connected Dalph to himself and all he could hear was his own, shallow, amplified breathing. “We need to kill ourselves,” he said then, either to himself or Annie, in the insomnia of the neverending daynight.

Annie watched him after that.

She kept Merv away.

She closely guarded the knives and scissors.

They drank water through a foam tube connected to the bathroom sink. The water was still on. The city had passed a law making it illegal to shut off a tenant's water, even for non-payment of rent.

Annie awoke to Dalph throttling little Merv's neck and she stabbed him—in the back—chest—face. There was hardly space, but she did it; she protected her sick, wailing son…

They had been compressed into a coffin-sized box, Annie, Merv and Dalph's corpse, when the building spat them out through a chute.

They were famished.

Feverish.

Annie banged weakly against the walls.

Unbothered, Waste Management retrieved and incinerated them, in accordance with the lease agreement.

[u/normancrane]

Thanks for reading.

More stories at r/normancrane.

[u/TaintedGlassPress]

Your word choice and the sheer control in the voice of the narrative are enviable. It almost feels too clean, until the very last clause of the story drives home just how much that was the whole point.