Bad Day at the Office?

This started out with the writing prompt listed below. Twenty minuets later, the timer ran out, but I had to know what happened. The setting was inspired by my old place of employment. What I can't do in real life, I can write about.

Write about a situation with the following goal and obstacle:

Character: Claudette Kersey

Goal: To find a safe place

Obstacle: Incompetence of a co-worker

The store was on fire. The shrill sounding of the alarm had not yet registered to many of the employees and customers as the real thing, but Claudette knew. She was the manager of the store, and had been sitting in her office playing solitaire, procrastinating from creating the weekly cashier schedule, when the alarm sounded. A quick glance at the camera screen showed that the fire was located in the break room, right outside her office. The fire seemed to be coming from the microwave where some incompetent employee must have tried to cook aluminum foil. No one was in there at the moment, but many of the employees would sneak to the break room ten minuets or so before their break to heat their food. She had made examples of enough people that the habit had almost stopped, but there were always a few idiots who took longer to catch on, and apparently one of them didn't know how to use a microwave.

After seeing what was happening, Claudette's training took over. She knew that the fire department was already on it's way. The alarm automatically notified them and the only way to stop them was to make a phone call within one minute after the start of the alarm with a code that only she and the other store managers knew. Her priority at this point was evacuating the costumers and employees. She stood up and turned, not even having to take a step to reach the door to her office that was really more of a closet. She grabbed the knob, and pushed.

Nothing happened. The door was stuck. This happened occasionally; the thick metal door had been painted many times, and the old paint had never been removed, causing the door to jam on particularly hot days. Claudette used her shoulder to push against the door as she turned the knob, but the door would not budge.

The fire alarm continued it shrill, piercing song, and Claudette could feel the heat of the fire faintly through the door. She turned around to view the security display again, and noticed, to her dismay, that her office door was blocked by a pallet of goods. How she had not noticed this before was beyond her, but when she got out of this and had a chance to review the footage, someone was going to get fired, and probably sued if she could find a good lawyer.

She picked up her phone and dialed the extension for the assistant manager, wondering if he had been smart enough to have started the costumer evacuation in her absence, and hoping he could find someone to get her out of this mess. There were only two people here who knew how to operate the pallet machine, besides herself, but all of them knew how to lift boxes. That was about all they were good for.

"This is Charlie," came crackling through the handset, and she started talking rapidly.

"Charlie, I'm stuck in the office, I need you to start the costumer evacuations and send back either Bobby or Chris to move the pallet blocking my door. If you can't find them, send a group of people back here to move the boxes. The fire isn't bad yet, and the stuff is so heavy that I can't get the door to budge at all."

"Already started on the customers, and I've got all the employees up here, I'll send..." his voiced trailed off as she heard the sirens of the fire engines faintly over the phone line. "Hey, the fire department is here...I gotta go", he mumbled into the phone.

"Hey, hey don't forget about me," she yelled into the phone, but the line was already dead.

Claudette was starting to sweat. The fire was probably eating at the merchandise on the pallet by now. She was praying that it wasn't liquor; they had been expecting that truck today, but she was unsure if it had arrived or not. Smoke was slowly starting to crawl under the door. There was no window, and she knew if the fire department didn't get her out soon, she would likely pass out.

As those foreboding thoughts were running through her mind, she heard the unmistakable sound of shattering glass.

"Damn it!" she screamed, "I'm not just going to fire the dumb ass who put that pallet there, I'm going to rip his throat out, right in front of all the other idiots here!" In an act of desperation, she started throwing her weight at the door, slamming into it with her shoulders over and over again, screaming profanities the whole time. These were wasted exertions however, if she didn't turn the knob, the door would never open.

It was another minute or so of this frantic, useless attempt for escape before she realized that the fire had heated the door enough that it was actually beginning to burn her shoulder as she slammed into it. She stood staring at the door, sweat dripping down her face, chest heaving as she struggled to breath through the now chokingly thick smoke.

All of a sudden , she realized that the firefighters should be here by now, and wondered why they hadn't helped her yet. She turned to the security cameras, only to realize that the one that surveyed the break room was no longer operational. As the smoke grew thicker, she imagined she could actually see phantoms forming within it, snarling at her, reaching out to get her to drag her away. Then she began to scream.

She screamed, over and over again, not even seeming to draw breaths to feed her desperate, terrified cries. She was beyond the point of being able to hear the voices that called out to her from the inferno that had been the break room; voices telling her to remain calm, help was here. She screamed until her voice broke, and as she tried to draw breath, the coughing began. She fell to her knees as her body heaved with coughs.

The phantoms began to take solid shape to her eyes. She found herself surround by the employees of the store, and they were all screaming at her, reaching at her with hands that had become sharp claws. They screamed her sins against them at her, screamed that she had never tried to help them, to fix their problems, that she had fired them and cost them their whole life, that it was their turn to punish her. Their teeth were sharpened fangs; drool slithered out of their mouths as they began descend on her. She could no longer draw breath to scream and tears ran in thick rivulets down her cheeks as she struggled for air through the suffocating blanket of smoke. As the first monstrous hand reached down to shred her body, the world went black.