MY BOSS GAVE ME THE FINAL REPORT – BUT MARK’S NAME WAS MISSING
He slid the folder across the polished desk, avoiding my eyes as the fluorescent lights hummed overhead.
The heavy weight of the report settled in my hands, the crisp paper almost cold against my skin. It felt significant, the culmination of everything. I opened it, my eyes going straight to the cover page, a small smile starting as I saw my name listed.
But it was *only* my name. I scanned the next page, then the acknowledgments, the sound of the pages turning unnaturally loud in the quiet office. His name had to be somewhere. Mark. The man who’d practically lived here for months, the one who found the key insight everything was built on.
“Where is he?” I finally choked out, the sterile smell of office disinfectant suddenly making me feel sick. My boss just kept looking out the window, his profile rigid. “Sir, this isn’t right. Mark was the lead on this, he worked nights, weekends, everything!”
He finally turned, his face pale, eyes red-rimmed. “There were… discussions. At the highest level. It was decided the project leadership needed to be simplified.” Simplified? His voice cracked slightly. “It’s… better this way. For the company.” My hands started shaking, the paper rustling. Better? He vanished him! “You can’t just erase him!” I slammed the report down, the noise echoing. This wasn’t about simplifying; this was something dark. A sudden chill ran down my spine, despite the stuffy office air. I looked from the report to my boss’s guilty face, then back to the blank space where Mark’s name should be. Something felt profoundly, terrifyingly wrong.
Then I saw the small, dark stain spreading on the corner of the report cover.
👇 Full story continued in the comments…The stain wasn’t coffee. My finger brushed it, feeling a slight stickiness, and then I caught the faint coppery tang in the air. Blood. A cold dread, different from the initial shock, wrapped around me. My gaze shot back to my boss, who was now looking at the report with a horror that mirrored my own.
“What… what is this?” I whispered, the question barely audible. The stuffy office air felt heavy, suffocating. He didn’t answer, just shook his head slowly, a single tear tracing a path down his pale cheek. The official report, the symbol of triumph, was tainted, a macabre testament to something I couldn’t yet grasp.
I flipped through the pages again, not looking for Mark’s name this time, but for any anomaly, any misplaced paragraph, any hint of what Mark’s “key insight” had been. Was it related to finances? Technology? Something unethical the company was doing? As I scanned the technical jargon, the boss finally spoke, his voice hoarse. “He… he found something. Something big. He wanted to go public.”
Public. The word hung in the air, heavy with consequence. My mind raced. What could be so significant, so damaging, that merely wanting to expose it led to… this? I looked at the stain again, then at my boss, his face a mask of anguish and fear. “Did you…?” I couldn’t finish the question.
He recoiled slightly, shaking his head violently. “No! God, no. I just… I was told to handle the report. To make sure it reflected the *final* structure.” He gestured vaguely upwards. “They handled… the rest.” His eyes flickered down to the stain, then away quickly. “It happened… yesterday. Just before the report was finalized.”
The world outside the window, the distant city hum, faded away. Mark was gone. Not just from the report, but entirely. The stain, the boss’s terror, the cryptic explanations – it all pointed to something far more sinister than corporate politics. My hands trembled, not just from anger now, but from the chilling realization that I was holding evidence, potentially the only evidence, of a terrible crime hidden beneath layers of corporate bureaucracy. The triumphant report was a tombstone, and I was standing over the fresh grave. I looked at my boss, a broken man complicit through fear, then back at the dark, spreading mark on the cover. I knew, with a certainty that turned my stomach, that nothing in this office, or my life, would ever be the same. I had to decide what to do with the truth stained onto the paper in my hands.