Page 2 of Love at First Fright

Or a kidney harvesting operation.

A car roared past, hitting a pothole at exactly the wrong angle. Muddy water erupted from the kerb, splattering across my glasses with the precision of a tactical strike. The world dissolved into brown smears and distorted shapes.

I yanked off my glasses, squinting at the warped lenses. Fucking brilliant. Just bloody brilliant.

Hot mortification crawled up my spine. My younger sister was out there changing the world, and I couldn’t even afford a train ticket.

That was it.

Any job was better than being an unemployed bum for the third month running. Even if it meant walking into what was obviously a disaster waiting to happen, looking like some swamp creature dragged from the Thames.

I shoved my glasses back on and marched toward the narrow doorway. I was going in. A doorbell hung beside the entrance, its white plastic yellowed with age. The name had been written in smudged ink: ExorSquad, accompanied by a wonky arrow pointing upward.

The doorbell clicked weakly, then the door buzzed open with a grinding electronic whine.

Inside, the stairwell reeked of damp. The carpet squelched under my feet—a brown pattern that might once have been beige, now decorated with mysterious stains and what looked suspiciously like rat droppings scattered along the skirting boards. Takeaway containers and cigarette butts formed small shrines in the corners.

My stomach clenched unpleasantly. What was waiting for me upstairs? A scam targeting desperate jobseekers. Identity theft. Something worse. The sort of story that ended up as a cautionary tale on true crime podcasts, complete with dramatic re-enactments and concerned voiceovers about the dangers of following mysterious job adverts.

But I climbed anyway.

At the top of the stairs, a door bore the company logo—the word ExorSquad written in childish lettering inside the outline of what appeared to be a deeply depressed ghost. Its eyes drooped with existential despair.

I knocked.

The door swung open immediately, revealing a thin young man with hollow cheeks and eyes that darted nervously past my shoulder.

“Um… hi,” I mumbled. “I have an interview with Gerald?”

“Are you Charlie? You’re late.” He clicked his tongue with the disapproval of someone far too young to carry that level of workplace stress.

“Yeah… sorry about that. I had trouble finding it.”

The reception area beyond him was microscopic, barely large enough for his desk and two mismatched chairs that looked salvaged from a charity shop. Despite the emptiness, the young man—Ted, according to a handwritten nameplate—studied me with the frazzled energy of someone drowning in administrative chaos.

“Punctuality is very important to us, here at ExorSquad.”

My tongue started sharpening, ready to deliver some choice observations about what perhaps should be more important to them, like a professional-looking logo, or operating from premises that didn’t resemble a crack den.

But… money. I needed money. For food. For rent. For those gorgeous doughnuts in Borough Market that I walked past every day like some Victorian street urchin pressing his face against bakery windows. For train tickets to see my niece’s face light up when I walked through the door.

So I attempted to shoot him my most winning smile, which I suspected looked more like a grimace of constipated desperation.

“Right. I’ll just make sure he’s ready for you.”

I blinked. “Ready? But I’m late.”

Ted didn’t answer. He vanished through a door behind his desk, leaving me dripping onto the threadbare carpet.

The silence pressed in, aside from a radiator clanking with alarming irregularity, like it might explode at any moment. I shifted my weight, my trainers squelching.

My gaze drifted around the cramped space, searching for something—anything—that might suggest this company was legitimate. Professional certificates. Health and safety posters. Even one of those motivational prints about teamwork featuring penguins or whatever.

Instead, my eyes snagged on a photograph mounted on the wall beside Ted’s desk. A man in his thirties grinned at the camera, holding what looked like a modified vacuum cleaner.

A golden plaque gleamed beneath the frame.

Andrew Wright