Baxter wrapped his stubby fingers around the handle. His mind was already elsewhere, thinking of deadlines, unread emails, and the quiet despair he brought to the office every day. The door stood as nothing but a gateway to another part of the building which may, or may not,  have been as irritating depending on whether, or not, one worked within it. He pulled the door open, revealing the other half of the corridor. This half was no different to his half; yellowing  walls, noticeboards with pinned advertisements and work safety posters, and a dowdy grey  mat-like carpet. Graves, his oil-slick hair perfect even under the harsh yellow light from the  ceiling’s fluorescent tubes, his posture upright, his movements deliberate, arrived at the door at the same time. He placed his palm on the door. His eyes met Baxters like the headlights of  two oncoming cars on a narrow one-way street. Baxter’s grip tightened reflexively on the  handle. Something was decided without words, though neither of them would have admitted  it.
  
“After you,” Baxter tilted his head just slightly, an overture of civility masking.  

“No, after you,” Graves replied, his voice smooth, authoritative, and tinged with the echo of a  man who had spent too many years perfecting the art of professional manipulation. His eyes,  dark and unwavering like two black olives, held Baxter’s with something close to amusement.  “I insist.” 
 
A coworker, Mallory from accounting, slipped between them, murmuring a distracted,  awkward, “Thanks” as she passed, finding them both holding the door open for her as overkill. 
 
Minutes turned to  
hours turned to  

days. Distended like a swollen wound on the brink of sepsis. More employees entered. More  employees exited. Some cast bemused glances. Some avoided eye contact entirely. One of them  kept saying “We must stop meeting like this” and chuckling at his own tired bit every time he  passed through. It was annoying enough, even after the first time, for Graves to consider letting  Baxter through. 
 
Baxter’s arm began to ache. Graves shifted his weight, subtly, imperceptibly to anyone who  wasn’t watching closely. Baxter was watching closely. He saw the betrayal of muscle and  knew—knew— Graves was human, Graves was faltering. 

“You must have somewhere to be,” Baxter offered, voice tight as it passed under his broom head-esque moustache.  

“So must you,” Graves countered. He was sweating.The slightest  glisten at his temple, but Baxter saw. He smelled victory. Or maybe it was the burnt coffee  fumes wafting in from the two-decade-old machine in the break room. He wished for a coffee.  He longed for one. 

The door, by now, had lost all meaning. It was no longer a threshold but a symbol, a test, , once thick and syrupy, and still they stood, hands  poised, the world flowing around them like a river circumventing two stubborn stones.  

Word had spread through the office building, mutating as it passed from cubicle to cubicle like a curse. The spectacle had drawn a small but growing crowd, a peanut gallery of  onlookers with their own interpretations, their own allegiances. Was it stubbornness or  selflessness? Pride or principle? Did Baxter deserve to go first because he arrived first? Or did  Graves, with his effortless authority, command the right of passage? Were they in a secret  relationship and was this the only way they could spend time together away from their partners?  Was this an art project?  

“Just flip a damn coin!” snapped Jill from Middle Management, standing atop a chair she’d wheeled into the corridor from her office. “You’re holding up productivity!”  

“Nah,” countered Leon from IT, shaking his head with solemn reverence. “This isn’t about  efficiency. This is about something much deeper.” He folded his arms over his marginally  loosened tie, watching the duel with the zeal of a scholar witnessing history unfold.  

A murmur of agreement spread through the crowd of largely unknown colleagues. Someone  from marketing proposed a vote. Others argued a vote would only cheapen the sanctity of the  standoff. Heated discussions began, first between cubicles, then in the break rooms, then on  the office floor itself. The copywriter’s team declared allegiance to Graves. The accountants,  citing precedent and ‘order of the handle’, backed Baxter.  

Makeshift banners started to appear, sticky notes and printer paper scrawled with slogans— ‘BAXTER STANDS FIRM’ on one side, ‘GRAVES HOLDS THE LINE’ on the other.  Meetings were postponed. Deadlines slipped. People stopped going home. IT shut down the internal chat system after too many channels devolved into all-caps arguments over who should  yield first.  

Someone threw a stapler at a rival tearing down one of the GRAVES HOLDS THE LINE  posters. In retaliation, two Graves supporters launched handfuls of staples beyond the door,  causing Debbie from Duty Admin to yell out, blinded. Rubber bands snapped across the air  like gunfire. Paperclips rained down like shrapnel. A coffee mug shattered against the cranium  of Martin from Telesales. Maureen from Litigation balled up a piece of paper from one of the printers and doused it in nail varnish before pulling a lighter from her pocket. Security rushed  in from both sides and started yelling incoherently at each other, causing Baxter to almost lose grip of the handle as their burly forms displaced the atmosphere. Somebody nobody had ever  seen before dragged a whiteboard from a room nobody seemed to have noticed before. They  started drawing up battle plans on it. Big Shirley, the Operations Manager, stomped in and started  yelling for everybody to calm down until she was swiftly punched in the mouth, causing one of  her teeth to cross paths in the air with one of Maureen’s paper fireballs. Aneela from  Procurements dragged Stacey, the Digital Space Manager, across the threshold and started  slamming the printer’s scanner lid on her head. Somewhere in the fray, an intern barricaded  himself in the supply closet, vowing neutrality, as smoke set off the fire alarm, almost inaudible  in the chaos. Sporting a fluorescent yellow waistcoat adorned only by appointed fire marshals,  Lyn from Reception approached ground zero, ducking staples and frisbeed paper files and  computer keyboards. Her tiny voice barely crawled beyond her tongue, attempting to direct  everybody outside to the safety meeting points. 
 
The sprinklers finally roared to life, dousing the battlefield in a pathetic drizzle, turning ash to  sludge and paper cuts into deep, stinging wounds. Lyn’s charred remains smouldered amongst  the bone and sick from bodies who once had hopes and dreams, burnt plastic, and office chairs  with their seats decapitated from their octo-wheels. Someone groaned, concussed, beneath the  collapsed whiteboard, its marker-scrawled battle plans smudged beyond recognition. Martin  from Telesales, concussed but determined, attempted to crawl toward the exit, only to be  yanked back by one of the wounded cleaners, gripping his tie like a leash. The intern,  emboldened by the chaos, peeked out from the supply closet, saw what remained of Lyn, and  promptly barricaded himself once more. The fire alarm continued its impotent cry.  

Graves emerged from the darkened haze, shirt torn, mug of coffee in hand, and a stapler  holstered in his waistband like a gunslinger’s revolver. He staggered up to the door and placed  his free palm against it once more. Baxter continued to grip the handle, part of his ear missing  and his clothes singed, hesitated beneath the flickering fluorescent lights. Big Shirley, missing a tooth and covered in toner, struggled to her feet, pointing an accusatory finger at everyone and no one. 

Security dragged bodies by proxy toward the stairwell with grim efficiency. Maureen from  Litigation slumped up against the corridor wall and flicked open her lighter once more, only  to find it snatched from her grasp by a firefighter. The intern, finally surrendering his neutrality,  slipped out of the supply closet and tiptoed through the wreckage before collapsing into the  waiting arms of a bewildered paramedic who had just arrived on the scene.  

Baxter exhaled sharply, wiping soot and sweat from his brow. Graves shook out his weary legs.  The two locked eyes, neither willing to break first. A long pause stretched between them,  punctuated by the crackle of dying flames and the radios of emergency service personnel.  “C’mon, you need to leave. This place isn’t safe,” a firefighter said to Big Shirl, but also with  a nod of acknowledgement to Baxter and Graves. Graves took a sip of his coffee, before  motioning the mug out wide and slightly behind him. 

“After you…”

Dr Simon Read is a writer and Associate Lecturer based in Cardiff, Wales. His work has appeared in Filling Station, ArtHole, Ink Sweat & Tears, and places of more questionable taste. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Cardiff Metropolitan University, where his research on the commodification of experiences in digital hyper-capitalist society is examined through the lens of Dada and The Absurd. Creatively, and as a reader, he enjoys exaggerated responses/actions, cyclical dialogue, and illogical spaces.