Waiting Room

A completely subverted Halls of Pandemonium Prompt Response.

The waiting room television hangs from the upper corner of the wall inside a thick black security cage like somebody expected customers to eventually revolt against daytime programming hard enough to weaponize a folding chair.

A woman on the screen smiles with pharmaceutical intensity while explaining the symptoms of a disease I’m reasonably certain the commercial itself just invented. Somewhere farther back in the service bay, compressed air hisses violently for a second before metallic clanging follows. The entire building smells faintly of burnt coffee, rubber, and industrial cleaner.

I sit beneath the television in one of those rigid plastic dealership chairs designed by people who fundamentally resent the human spine. My inspection paperwork rests beside me untouched while I half-scroll through my phone with the concentration of somebody trying to distract himself from the financial implications of unfamiliar noises happening to his vehicle behind a wall.

The waiting room is otherwise empty except for an elderly man asleep near the vending machine with his arms folded across his chest like a corpse prepared for transport.

A weather alert crawls silently across the bottom of the television.

Outside the massive front windows, gray rain drifts steadily across the parking lot while technicians in dark jackets move between service bays carrying tires and clipboards with the exhausted body language of people who’ve long since accepted that entropy always wins eventually.

I barely look up when the service door opens.

“Sir?”

The voice catches anyway. It’s not loud or anything. I glance up from the phone slowly.

The dealership shirt should not work. That’s the first coherent thought my brain manages.

Dark blue button-down with the company logo stitched above the pocket. Name badge clipped neatly against the front. Lanyard hanging from her neck beside a tablet she carries tucked loosely against one hip. Jeans. Hair pulled up casually in a loose blonde knot that somehow makes her look younger and more exhausted at the same time.

Completely normal. No gold-violet glow. No impossible dress. No roller skates whispering against laminate flooring. No cosmic supervisor energy radiating through the room like emotionally devastating disco lighting.

Just Kira. Olivia Newton-John after surviving middle management.

She watches me over the top edge of the tablet with the kind of professional patience service advisors reserve for customers about to receive extremely bad news regarding brake assemblies.

Then one corner of her mouth twitches slightly.

“Your vehicle requires extensive repairs,” she says calmly.

I stare at her for a long moment.

“You work here now?”

“No.” She glances briefly toward the service bays behind her. “God, no. I came here voluntarily.”

“That somehow feels worse.”

“It is worse.”

I lower the phone slowly into my lap while she walks farther into the waiting room. The fluorescent lighting catches briefly in the strands of blonde hair escaping around her temples. Up close she looks tired in a way I’m not accustomed to seeing on her. Not physically tired exactly. Administrative tired.

The lanyard alone somehow makes it more alarming.

“You look disturbingly believable,” I tell her.

“I’m blending.”

“You look like you’re about to explain financing options.”

Kira grimaces faintly. “Don’t say things like that to me while I’m emotionally vulnerable.”

That gets an actual laugh out of me before I can stop it.

She exhales quietly through her nose at the sound, some small amount of tension leaving her shoulders. Then she drops into the plastic chair beside mine with all the contained dignity of a woman willingly sitting inside a place designed around stale coffee and deferred maintenance.

The chair squeaks beneath her.

For a few seconds neither of us says anything. The television continues silently cycling through medication advertisements overhead while rain taps softly against the front windows.

Then Kira closes her eyes briefly and rubs two fingers against her forehead.

“It’s been a catastrophic morning,” she mutters.

I glance sideways at her. “Muse stuff?”

“Muse HR stuff.”

“That sounds significantly worse.”

“You have no idea.”

She lets her head tip back against the plastic chair and stares at the ceiling tiles like they personally offended her bloodline.

“We ran the retention reviews this morning.”

“Ah.”

“Yes,” she says darkly. “Ah.”

The elderly man near the vending machine snores once without waking up.

Kira lowers her voice instinctively anyway.

“You know how many humans sent their muses back?”

I wince slightly. “A lot?”

“Darling, one Cinderella-coded muse walked off the job. We still don’t quite know why.”

“That’s rough.”

“That’s not even top five.”

She shifts in the chair beside me, one hand still loosely gripping the dealership tablet she absolutely does not work there to possess.

“I had to mediate a reassignment between a horror writer and movie producer and a muse who managed to perform a Rick Roll when he said goodbye. Do you know what she’s assigned to now?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“Lifestyle blogging.”

I stare at her. Kira stares back with the exhausted expression of someone who just spent three hours explaining emotional boundaries to theater majors.

“She writes sponsored posts about weighted blankets now.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I know.”

Kira rubs both hands slowly down her face before continuing.

“And then there was the comic-book villain.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.” She points vaguely toward the ceiling like the man currently exists several floors above us inside some metaphysical disciplinary office. “Cape. Monologues. Referred to himself exclusively in third person. Dramatic pauses before every sentence like he was waiting for invisible thunder.”

“That honestly sounds exhausting.”

“He tried to unionize the muses.”

I stare at her. Kira stares back with the flat thousand-yard expression.

“He brought visual aids.”

“Of course he did.”

“He called the reassignment process ‘an assault upon narrative sovereignty.’”

“That’s kind of strong phrasing.”

“He made a PowerPoint.”

The elderly man near the vending machine shifts slightly in his sleep. Somewhere deeper in the service bay an impact wrench screams briefly against metal. Kira continues anyway, fully committed now.

“He refused three reassignment offers on artistic grounds. Said his talents were being wasted. Said modern storytelling lacked grandeur. Said civilization no longer respected operatic evil.”

“What’d they finally give him?”

Kira closes her eyes briefly.

“He writes descriptions for pornographic videos now.”

I choke slightly on the terrible waiting room coffee halfway to my mouth.

“He what?”

“He tags and categorizes videos for search optimization.”

“Oh my God.”

“He spent forty minutes arguing that his doctorate in theatrical menace was being squandered.”

“That might be the funniest sentence you’ve ever said to me.”

“He’s writing things like ‘masked billionaire domination scenario’ now.” She stares hollowly at the rain outside the dealership windows. “Yesterday he threatened to destroy a kingdom. Today he’s debating metadata around stepbrother content.”

“That’s bleak.”

“He cried, darling.”

That finally breaks me hard enough I have to lower my head into one hand while laughing quietly into my sleeve. Kira watches me with mounting irritation while I try unsuccessfully to recover.

“I’m sorry,” I manage eventually. “That’s horrible. Truly catastrophic for him specifically.”

“You’re enjoying this far too much.”

“I absolutely am.”

Kira exhales sharply through her nose and shifts farther down into the rigid plastic chair beside me.

“And then there are the interviews. The paperwork. The dissolutions. One muse attached herself to a crypto day trader because she thought she could ‘fix him creatively.’ Another voluntarily reassigned to a tax attorney because apparently stability started sounding attractive after six years with a literary novelist.” She gestures helplessly with one hand. “I had an elf threaten litigation this morning because his writer became a Substack Guru.”

I smile faintly into the coffee cup while she keeps spiraling.

“And every single one of them wants closure meetings. Do you know how exhausting closure meetings are? Humans cry. Muses cry. Someone always says they’ll still write on weekends like that somehow makes abandonment spiritually healthier. Then management wants forms filled out afterward evaluating the emotional transition quality on a scale from one to ten—”

“Kira.”

She keeps going.

“—and apparently now we need post-separation wellness packets because one bard locked himself inside a Cheesecake Factory bathroom for six hours after being reassigned to ad copy—”

“Kira.”

“—which somehow became my problem despite the fact I explicitly told upper management the renaissance initiative was emotionally underfunded from the beginning—”

I reach over quietly and touch two fingers against the sleeve of the dealership shirt. Not enough to stop her physically. Just enough to interrupt the momentum. She falls silent immediately. I look at her for a second while rain drifts softly across the parking lot outside.

“I kept mine,” I say quietly.

The words settle between us so softly they almost disappear beneath the muted television overhead.

Kira stills beside me. She stops moving entirely for a second while the fluorescent lights buzz above us and compressed air hisses somewhere deep in the service bay. Her eyes drift down briefly toward my hand still resting against the sleeve of the dealership shirt. Then back up toward me again.

And for the first time since she walked into the waiting room, the exhaustion leaves her face.

---

This is a response to day 27’s prompt for Bradley Ramsey’s “Halls of Pandemonium” writing event. Although I’m not participating in the scoring portion of the event (you know, since I, uh… wrote the backend for it), likes, comments and restacks will (maybe) help us achieve community goals and spread the word about the challenge.