Free Falling Over by James Everington

couldn’t help but think that what was outside trying to get in was a cool, clear sky, a smokeless blue with a hint of breeze, and with alarm bells ringing somewhere far below or above him...
    He realised that an alarm was ringing – it took him a few seconds to remember that this was the day that the fire-bell was tested, that this was a routine which he knew. Still, in those few seconds before he realised, his heart quickened until it seemed to beat with the pulses of the shrill alarm, and the manager wondered if it was happening again; and if that meant a reprieve or merely a repetition.
    The bell stopped; his heart seemed to stop too. The swift silence didn’t seem comforting, he was sure the echoes were still vibrating but too softly for him to hear. There was a surge and a clatter of high flying debris outside, sounding so close that he flinched... He stepped outside his office for some space, for some normality, but his vision felt blurred and his eyes quivered slightly – the blurring seemed to be a physical presence above and around him. The faces of his staff seemed to lurch from one expression to another as they looked up at him. He didn’t recognise half the faces, and that was merciful; he didn’t want to recognise any ... – but then the room seemed to click back into focus and solidify. His eyes went fixed in their sockets.
    The manager was watching one of the sub-managers, who was leant over a temp’s desk, guiding him. The temp looked bored at what he was being shown, looked contemptuous at what he was expected to learn. He looked young and out of place in an office – a familiar look among the staff that the company hired (and fired). The manager felt a vertigo as a thousand things seemed to fall into focus...  the temp’s face refused to change. The manager beckoned his sub-manager over frantically.
    “Who’s that? ” he said.
    “The new boy. The replacement. Same kind of slacker as half the others but I’m sure he’ll...”
    “ Get rid of him! ” the manager said in a half-shrieked whisper, his eyes refusing to turn away from the bored, slack face that he had been looking for.
    ~
    It had never been a problem for the manager to get rid of people before.  He hadn’t even needed to speak to the offending member of staff directly. It had been a simple case of waving to them cheerily as they’d left the office, and then calling the employment agency who had originally sent them. “I don’t think he’s working out...” “We were looking for someone with different skills...” And the agency would call the temp and explain; and they would send someone new in his place the next morning. All the employment agencies had so many ex-grads, drop-outs, and wannabes on their books that they never complained, for the money continued to flow as before, and they didn’t want to lose custom. That was how it always had been.
    “We can’t just get rid of him,” the sub-manager said, “for nothing.”
    The manager shut his eyes, and felt the wind whip around the walls of his office. Here the walls seemed very thin, as thin as the rattling glass, and it was suddenly easy to remember that he was in fact standing hundreds of feet up in the air. On top of this, the manager’s office was so small that with two other people in there it felt like he was being forced against the wall.
    “Can’t you see it?” he said, his own eyes still closed. Even so, he could sense the way the two of them glanced at each other before one of them spoke.
    “I’m not saying there isn’t a similarity ,” one said, “but Jay wasn’t exactly distinctive looking anyway, so...”
    Was it a conspiracy, the manager thought, or was it that the world had changed and only he could see it? For his subordinates did not seem to be able to see that the ‘new boy’ looked exactly like Jay had! (And Jay was the reason the manager had been off for two weeks.) It wasn’t a ‘similarity’ or ‘resemblance’; it was an exact