Revenge Is a Deep Dish

There was a burning sensation lingering in the back of his nose and throat. As Jesse opened his eyes he saw mostly darkness. The eyes adjusted, but still didn't see much. Everything was a dull gray, most things were concrete. Shifting his weight, Jesse understood he was seated on a bare floor with his hands tied behind him. His back rested against something. It took his groggy mind a whole minute to work it out; the back of a wooden chair had been separated from the rest of the chair and cemented directly into the floor. The floor was now a chair, he supposed.

Eventually a fluorescent light fizzled to life overhead. A surveillance camera and a speaker sat recessed near the ceiling across from him. That ceiling was strange. While the walls and floor were featureless concrete, the ceiling had those white-with-black-speckles flimsy tiles present in every commercial building he'd ever entered. Turning his head to take in the room, Jesse couldn't find a door.

"Hey!" Jesse called. There was no answer. He maneuvered his legs underneath him and attempted to stand. It worked; although his arms has been looped over the back of the chair, he apparently wasn't tethered to it. Jesse walked closer to the camera and called out again. An electronic whine rang out as the camera focused on him.

"Hello, Jesse," crackled out of the speaker.

"Where am I?"

"'Where' is not as important as 'why'. Take a good listen to my voice, Jesse."

There was a beat of silence as Jesse wracked his brain. "Sorry, what?"

"It's Nick from the IT department, dumbass," came the grumbling reply.

Jesse blinked. "Oh, sure! Nick. Hey, buddy. How are you?" He legitimately had no idea who he was speaking to. Jesse was a junior marketing associate and he rarely encountered anyone from IT. He didn't even know how many people were in the department, much less their names and voices.

"Don't call me 'buddy'. You know what you did."

Jesse did not know what he did. "Okay, why don't we talk about it, huh?"

"It's too late for talk. I want you to make it right."

"Come on, man. Whatever I did, it couldn't have been that bad. Let me out of here and we can figure this out over a beer. My treat."

"Oh, I think you'll come around. Probably in the next 120 seconds or so." There was a shrill beep before the speaker clicked off.

All at once the familiar, crappy ceiling tiles began to audibly and visibly crack. Jesse shielded his eyes as plaster and dust rained down like flour. When he was able to see again, that mundane office ceiling had been replaced by hundreds of sharp steel spikes. Very slowly the spikes began to descend accompanied by a horrible grinding of stone on stone.

It was so cartoonish and cliché Jesse laughed out loud. And then he remembered how to panic.

---

On the other side of the wires, Nick was standing up from his computer desk. The shrill beep Jesse heard a moment ago was a kitchen timer. Nick's homemade deep dish pizza was ready to come out of the oven. It smelled heavenly and looked cooked to perfection. Nick allowed himself a few moments to take it in, whetting his appetite as he listened to Jesse's far-away voice begin to beg.

"Okay, this isn't funny anymore, Nick. I'm sorry, ok? I'm really really sorry, and um... You want money? I can get money."

"Nope," Nick said to himself as he dished up his dinner.

"Come on, I don't even know what this is about. I don't know your name, your voice, your face, give me a hint!"

"Think a little harder." Nick poured himself a glass of pop.

Jesse swore a few times and sat down on the floor to get more space between himself and the falling ceiling. Then it clicked.

"Wait, is this about the parking space? What the hell, man? You can have the goddamn space. I'll park somewhere else. I won't even complain about it, please just TURN IT OFF!" For the last month, Jesse had been arriving to work a few minutes earlier to park closer to the building. Some asshole had left him a nasty note about it and had tried to shout him down across the office a few times. Apparently, that asshole was named Nick.

"There we go." That was what Nick wanted to hear. He was a little sorry it had to come to this, but the polite note he had left on Jesse's windshield has been completely ignored. Nick had even tried to speak to him a few times, but Jesse must have thought himself above talking to a nerd. Jesse was a jerk. That was the only logical explanation.

Nick set his meal on a table and returned to the desk to spare Jesse's life. The computer screen had gone to sleep. He wiggled the mouse, and Windows prompted him for his password. Nick's password was incredibly secure, complex, and about 40 characters long.

"The password is incorrect. Try again." That was annoying, but not uncommon. He tried again.

"The password is incorrect. Try again." Jesse was screaming.

Nick manually unmuted his microphone. "Hang on a bit longer, Windows thinks I don't know my own password." Nick tried again, more slowly. No dice.

Jesse was laying face down on the floor. The spikes were only two feet above him now. He could hear Nick's frustrated typing over the speaker.

"Nick, I am going to die. Reset your password. Do it FAST."

He wasn't fast enough. By the time Nick had logged in, the other end of the wires had fallen silent.

If Jesse were still alive, the irony of an IT guy fumbling his login credentials would not have been lost on him. But Jesse was not alive.

At least there was no hurry now, Nick thought. He had a lot of problem-solving to do in the very near future, but it could wait until he finished his pizza.