Sam called his grandmother.

She picked up on the second ring, and the first thing he heard was a heavy, exasperated sigh.

"Sam," she said in her rough smoker's rasp, "What have you done now?"

"Gran," he cried into his phone, "I don't know what to do!" 

"Uh huh." A pause. She was probably pulling the half-empty bottle of vodka from the cupboard and pouring herself a shot. She did that a lot when he came to her for help. "All right, Sam. What's going on?"

"I don't know."

"Right. Let's start with the obvious, then. Where are you?"

He sniffed. "At work."

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Is someone else hurt?"

Sam made a weird sound. "Maybe?"

"Sam, tell me what you did, or so help me, I'm shipping you off to the military. They can deal with your problems for a change."

Sam wrinkled his nose. She always threatened that, ever since he'd been small, but she never carried it through. It was just one of those ways that she told him she loved him. To hear that familiar threat again actually made him feel a lot better. It meant that in a world where people randomly blew up in elevators, at least one thing still remained normal.

"I didn't do anything," he said pitifully. His voice wavered dangerously on the last word. "There was a pretty lady in the elevator, and I just wanted to talk to her, but-"

"But what?" His grandmother demanded.

"She exploded."

The groan that came through his phone's speaker was so loud he had to pull it away from his ear. This was followed by a brief, but energetic rant about expired milk and something about idiots. When he brought it back, his grandmother had calmed down enough to speak very slowly and very calmly.

"Sam," she said, "where at work are you?"

"In the bathroom." As he spoke, he eyed his reflection in the mirror above the sink. It looked as bewildered as he felt.

He'd managed to run out of the elevator and into the bathroom before anyone saw him, at least. He'd also locked the door. But that was the limits his poor brain could reach before it shriveled into its shell and hid away, trembling in terror.

People, it insisted, were not supposed to explode.
But she did, Sam insisted right back.

His brain clammed up then, and Sam was left with a whole lot white noise blanking out his thoughts. It was a good thing he had his grandmother on speed dial. He listened carefully, and as usual, it didn't take her long to come up with a plan.

"All right. Here's what you're going to do. Take the elevator down-"

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"It's... dirty."

His grandmother exhaled, like she'd just tossed back an entire shot of particularly strong alcohol. "Then take the stairs, you dimwit."

Sam shook his head. "Can't do that either."

"Why, Sam?" There was another, emphatic why left unsaid.

"I had to take my clothes off." Indeed, the only thing left untouched by the rain of gore in the elevator had been his underwear. But he'd accidentally gotten blood and other questionable goop all over them, so he had to take those off, too. (There were some things that he just couldn't do, and wearing other people's insides on his privates was one of them.)

He'd stuffed his clothes in the garbage bin and cleaned up as much as he could, but now all he wore was sopping wet hair.

Silence came through the phone. He waited, but when she didn't speak, he looked at the screen.

She'd hung up.

Sam stared at it. He wished he could have said this was the first time she'd done so, but it wasn't. Sometimes, when she got really grumpy or when he called her in the middle of the night to ask her to come kill the spider hanging over his face, she often hung up on him.

He sighed. That meant he was on his own.

"Every now and then," he could almost hear his grandmother say, "you gotta figure out your own crap. You can manage a spider. So don't you dare call me again unless it's an emergency."

He looked at his own reflection forlornly. "But it really is an emergency this time."

Someone chose that moment to knock on the bathroom door. "Hey, is - is everything okay in there?"

Sam nearly jumped out of his skin. He whipped his head around and stared at the door with wide eyes. Oh. Oh no.

This, he realized, could be a problem. A very big problem.

He didn't have any clothes. If someone in the office saw him, they'd go inform HR, and HR would write him up one last time and he'd probably get fired. Three strikes and you're out, they had said.

Well, it'd only been two weeks and he'd already been given two strikes. He'd been told that if he messed up one more time, he'd have to find another job. Even worse, if he got fired yet again, he worried his grandmother would really drag him over to the military recruiter's station and leave him there.

"Hello? Are you in there?" The pounding on the door grew in intensity.

Sam's eyes darted around the bathroom. He had to get out of here. And he couldn't stay naked, either. His eyes fell on the toilet paper hanging in the stall. No, that was too flimsy. Then he saw the spare roll of paper towels sitting on a corner of the sink.

It would have to do.

He snatched that up and immediately began to wind the paper towel roll around his waist. From there, he passed it between his legs and around again. It made for a very uncomfortable and scratchy covering, but he had no other choice. He absolutely could not get fired from this job.

Once he got the makeshift underwear organized, he proceeded to awkwardly wrap the papery material over each shoulder and around his torso. He used the entire roll. To make sure it would stay put, he carefully tucked in the end.

Once Sam finished, he stood back and admired his job in the mirror. It was a bit rustic, to say the least, maybe even primitive as far as fashion went, but it was better than the alternative.

Now there were voices murmuring outside the door. The door handle shook, as if someone was trying to turn it.

Sam gulped. Another look around the bathroom revealed no other escape route. There were no windows. No back doors. No helpful holes in the wall that he could crawl into. There was only the door through which he'd entered.

With a little click, the door handle abruptly turned all the way. Whoever was on the other side had managed to unlock it. Sam's heart leapt into his throat, and he panicked.

He snatched up his phone, rushed into the stall, and slammed the flimsy aluminum door shut. At the same time, the bathroom door opened and a few people came in.

"Hello?"

The voice was disturbingly familiar. It belonged to the chatty guy who worked in the cubicle next to Sam's. Jeffrey had a nasally tone that was hard to forget, and even worse, Jeffrey had a terrible habit of taking tiny molehills and exploding them into giant mountain ranges. If anyone could get him fired just by babbling gibberish, it would be Jeffrey.

I can't let him see that it's me, Sam realized. He looked around his little stall, ignoring the random message scratched into the walls - Ebra stinks like cow - and finally settled on the toilet paper. He grabbed on to it and started yanking it off its roll.

"Hey!" Jeffrey heard the noise. "You in the stall! Come out!"

"Mmhmm." Sam made a high pitched sound. He couldn't let Jeffrey recognize his voice either. Once he had a huge wad of toilet paper, he tore it free and began wrapping it around his face.

"Look," someone else murmured. He sounded rather calm as he added, "There's more blood on the floor."

"I saw," said a third person. She sounded disgusted, as she should be. She shouldn't be traipsing all over the men's restroom to start with.

He finished wrapping the toilet paper around his head, covering everything except for a small strip for his eyes. There, now no one could see his face.

Shoes appeared before his stall door. He could see them in the small gap above the floor. They were polished to a nice shine, even though he still noticed the deep creases worn into the leather. Knuckles rapped firmly on his stall door.

"Can you come out, please? We need to ask you something." It wasn't Jeffrey, at least. This guy sounded calm, even reassuring.

It almost made Sam want to listen. And he might have too, if his entire future hadn't been at stake. That was enough to make even Sam think twice.

Even so, it became obvious that these people weren't going anywhere. They seemed quite content to hang out in the bathroom. That meant there was only one thing left for Sam to do: he lifted his chin, squared his shoulders, and pulled open the stall door.

The man outside his stall wasn't anyone he recognized, thankfully. He was tall and well groomed in a full suit-and-tie deal, and even his graying hair had been parted perfectly to one side. He was very professional.

But when the man saw Sam, his expression contorted into a weird shape and got stuck there.

"Excuse me," Sam said, because his grandmother had always told him he needed to be polite, no matter the situation. And Sam always listened to his grandmother.

The man gave no response. Nor did he move.

Sam had no choice but to squeeze past. He had to turn his entire body sideways and carefully shimmy past. Part of his paper towel underwear caught on the little latch and tore. Alarmed, he hurriedly slapped a hand over his hip, hoping it would hold long enough for him to get out of here.

"What the-?!" Oh. That was Jeffrey again.

"Excuse me," Sam repeated. He couldn't help but sigh when he saw the poor lady's face. She looked like someone had smeared fish guts on her blouse. It made him give his head a mental shake – women often got that look when they ventured into the men's room. He'd seen it happen more than once.

Sam broke into a trot and hurried past them. No one tried to stop him, as they were too busy staring at him. Sam wasn't sure if that was a good thing. He checked over a shoulder, making sure the back of his makeshift underpants hadn't ripped open.

Nope. All good.

When Sam was several paces down the hallway, Jeffrey burst out of the bathroom. "Hey!" He hollered. "Come back here!"

The sudden shouting gave Sam a fright. He broke into a run, one hand holding together the ripped side of his underpants. He blew past a pair of women in the hall, leaving nothing but a single sheet of toilet paper drifting down in his wake. He heard a startled giggle, followed by more shouting from Jeffrey.

"Stop him!"

The noise drew attention like moths catching a glimpse of a light. Everyone came out of various offices and gathered in the hallways to see the toilet paper man come barreling towards them. They all had various reactions, some of which were very interesting, but Sam wasn't paying attention.

He made it to the second elevator without being caught, though he had the unfortunate timing of arriving when a group of people were disembarking. One of them was Sam's own boss, a grim-faced, narrow-shouldered stick of a man with a balding head and a sour temper to match - Mr Eric Cole himself.

The crowd of people all froze upon seeing the apparition that greeted their arrival. Sam was in just as much shock as they, and could only sweat nervously behind his shield of toilet paper. It already was sticking to his skin in a very uncomfortable manner.

"What the hell is this?" Mr Cole demanded. As expected, he was the first to regain his composure.

Sam shivered. The only thing between him getting fired was now a thin layer of toilet paper.

"Ex-excuse me," he whispered. And then he turned and waddled for the stairs. He had to waddle, because his legs had gone stiff in fear. The paper towel underpants made an audible wispy sound with every step.

From down the hall came the sound of running footsteps, followed by a nasally "Hey, stop him!"

"You!" Mr Cole commanded. "Stop right there!"

Sam's waddle gained a burst of speed, and he all but slammed into door to the stairs in his haste to go through it. Fumbling, he managed to grasp the handle with clammy hands and flung it open.

He proceeded to charge down one flight after the next like a berserk buffalo on the way to the watering hole. With both Jeffrey and his boss out there, he had no other choice.

And so he descended, gasping and wheezing, while little bits of sodden toilet paper peeled away from his reddened face. His bare feet slapped down one cold laminated stair after another.

Two flights later, his surge of energy faded into nothing. He clung to the railing, hunched over, his heart thudding so fast he feared it might hammer its way right out of his chest. Who was he kidding? There was no way he could survive an entire 92-floor descent by the stairs.

"Forget this," he panted. "Gran... always said... work smart...and not... like an... inbred turdpole."

There were faster ways down. Even Sam knew this.

With that in mind, he carefully trudged his way to the 90th floor exit, pulled open the door, and poked his head in.

A silent, empty hallway greeted him.

"Good enough," Sam decided. He went inside and hurried for the elevator.

He only had to mash the button once. It quickly descended to his floor, and the shiny silver doors opened with a ding.

Sam made to enter, a wide smile behind his soggy toilet paper mask. Then he stopped, smile freezing in place.

A pretty lady stood in the corner. She wore a business suit of deep maroon, a brown tote hanging from her shoulder. She glanced from her phone, her dark eyes widening behind slender frames when she saw him.

Her hair wasn't a luxurious fountain of auburn. It was brown and pulled into a severe bun. But that didn't matter, because-

There was a girl in the elevator again.

Eyes growing wide, his mouth dropped open into a round shape. A horrified sound issued forth, like an ancient walrus about to lay an egg. (Well, yes, of course walruses don't lay eggs. So now you can properly imagine the kind of sounds a shell-shocked walrus would make if it found itself in such a situation.)

Sam slowly backed away, unable to tear his gaze away from the girl. It wasn't until the elevator doors slid shut that he was able to whirl around and run back to the safety of the stairs.