Synergeist: The Haunted Cubicle by Daniel M. Strickland Page B

batteries; she needed to hit the start button and go. But something more needed to be added to the message, something very important. She flashed back to her cubicle and sucked all the sweet juice from her mouse and zapped back over to the copier. That took maybe a millisecond in real time. She continued the dance of fibers and dust up from the floor to the glass until she had added “Love, Millie.” to the message.
    She willed the message to tell Martin so much more than what the actual words said: to be the story of her existence, her need, and of how in one shining moment she had come to know him as she had never known anyone, and to love him. She knew the energy pattern for 9, so she created three of them and then duplicated the energy pattern for start. The machine began to run as she flashed back to her spot on top of the box. She doubted the machine had 999 sheets of paper in it, but it should create a big enough pile to get his attention. She waited.

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You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!
— From A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
     
    The next morning, Martin approached his infamous cubicle, impaled on the stake of column E6, with curiosity. Would there be a new message? He rounded the final turn of the labyrinth. A woman stood in front of the Dais of Digital Duplication, her arms crossed, her look disapproving of him. He wondered if he imagined it because—well—because he always imagined things. He got the answer to both of those musings as he wheeled around the filing cabinet into his cubicle. Piled on his chair was what must have been an entire tray of printer paper. On top of the stack was a sticky note that read, “Waste not, want not. Stop killing trees.” He pulled it off and tossed it in the trash.
    The top page read, “Help me, Martin. Can’t Sit. Can’t See. Love, Millie.” The message appeared to be carefully crafted from bits of carpet fibers woven together and laid out on the copy glass. He was afraid of what might be on the rest of the pages. He lifted the first page off of the stack. The second page contained the same image. He leafed down through the pages. They were all the same. He glanced over his shoulder at the machine and saw the disapproving woman brushing bits of stuff off the copy glass.
    Martin started to pick up the pile to move it off his chair, when a strange thought stopped him short. You can’t sit in your chair if something else is in it. Last night there had been a box in Millie’s chair. His pulse quickened. “No way…” he whispered to himself. He loved fanciful stories about ghosts and other supernatural things, but he didn’t believe they were real. “But what could ‘Can’t see,’ mean?” he thought to himself. He left the pile on his chair and headed for Millie’s cubicle.
    As he approached her office with the lights on, he noticed what he had not the previous night. A large dry erase board that stood on end blocked the window that could be seen from Millie’s desk. He knew this was likely an elaborate practical joke, but he couldn’t shake the notion that this was not a prank—that Millie had sent him the messages.
    He wouldn’t wait until later. Better sense might reassert itself if he didn’t act now. He glanced around and saw that no one was looking. He ducked into her cubicle and lifted the box from her seat then slid it up under the desk behind the trashcan. As he left, he moved the dry erase board from in front of the window. Again he sensed a warm breeze scented with an ancient spice and the end of a perpetual frustration.
    Martin half expected the perpetrator of the great hoax to pop up and have a good laugh at his expense, but nothing happened. The air conditioner hummed. He heard someone repeatedly banging on a keyboard. Each stroke increased in tempo and volume, as if hitting a key harder would