The Sphinx at the End of the Hall

The office dog, a golden retriever named Barnaby, lay sprawled across the conference room table during what was supposed to be our quarterly review. He belonged to Sarah, the HR director, who'd started bringing him in after her divorce. The rest of us pretended this was normal, just another eccentricity in a workplace where the coffee machine dispensed something that tasted like burnt rubber and the water cooler had been empty for three weeks.

I sat across from Marcus, my boss of seven years, watching him peel an orange with surgical precision. The citrus scent cut through the stale air of the room—that particular blend of toner, desperation, and air conditioning that had seeped into my pores since I started here at twenty-four, ambitious and naïve enough to believe I'd be running the place by thirty. Now I was thirty-seven, and Marcus was still peeling oranges while explaining why my promotion was being delayed again.

"The market's uncertain," he said, placing a perfect segment of fruit into his mouth. "We need someone who can navigate ambiguity. Someone who can answer the riddle."

The sphinx in the lobby—our company's mascot, a ten-foot marble monstrosity installed during the CEO's brief obsession with Egyptian mysticism—had been graffitied last night. Someone had spray-painted "WHO ARE WE?" across its base. Security footage was inconclusive.

I thought about the water glass in front of me, how I'd stopped drinking from the office supply after the anonymous email last summer warned about contaminants. Bottled water only now, like everyone else who'd been here long enough to learn that paranoia wasn't a symptom but a survival skill.

"Sarah thinks Barnaby's good for morale," Marcus continued, scratching the dog behind the ears. "She says animals sense things. Loyalty. Instinct."

Barnaby lifted his head, looked at me with what I imagined was pity, then went back to sleep.

"What's the riddle?" I asked, and Marcus smiled—a terrible, knowing thing that made me understand everything at once. The sphinx wasn't asking. The sphinx was waiting to see who would stop asking.

That night, I bought my first bottle of spray paint. The orange I'd taken from the conference room sat in my passenger seat, slowly oxidizing in the moonlight. Some riddles, I realized, weren't meant to be solved. They were meant to be destroyed.