The Unpaid Intern

Table of Contents

The first red flag should have been the job posting. It was buried halfway down a local classifieds page, wedged between offers for used lawn equipment and dubious get-rich-quick schemes. The headline read: Seeking highly motivated self-starter for exclusive opportunity. Compensation: Experience. No salary, no benefits, not even an email contact just a number to call and a single, untraceable address.

At any other point in life, the ad would have been laughable. But weeks of fruitless applications, dwindling savings, and the kind of desperation that dulls instinct made it seem almost reasonable. The promise of “exclusive opportunity” worked its way under the skin like a splinter. Something in the phrasing suggested rarity, a door that only opened briefly, a position meant for someone exactly like me.

Blackwood & Graves LLP wasn’t listed on any maps. When the address was entered into a phone, it led to an unremarkable stretch of cobblestone street that most locals passed without noticing. Wedged between two shuttered storefronts stood a narrow brownstone, its bricks the color of dried blood. The building leaned slightly forward, as though eavesdropping on the street below.

Inside, the air carried a faint metallic tang, and the flickering fluorescents overhead hummed with a sound just shy of speech. The receptionist was a thin woman with parchment skin and eyes so still they seemed painted on. She didn’t look up as the door closed, merely slid a clipboard forward, the pen already uncapped and waiting. The name on the glass partition behind her read Blackwood & Graves LLP – Est. 1842.

Mr. Vellich arrived exactly one minute after the appointment time. He was tall in the way old trees are tall—straight-backed, with the kind of presence that suggested roots sunk deep into unseen soil. His suit was moth-eaten but perfectly pressed, the same dark brown as the building’s exterior. He carried no phone, no briefcase, only a slim portfolio under one arm.

He spoke exclusively in legal Latin. Not in a showy way, but with the ease of someone thinking in it. The phrases fell from his mouth like prayers or curses—some recognizable, others twisted into forms I couldn’t place. It wasn’t clear if he was speaking to me, the room, or some silent audience only he could see.

The work was menial at first. Sorting papers. Copying pages from ancient ledgers whose ink bled into the fibers like spreading bruises. Sometimes, the copier spat out documents in alphabets that crawled like insects across the page, twisting into shapes no modern language used. Mr. Vellich would pass by, glance at the paper, and murmur something in that same low Latin before sliding the pages into locked drawers.

By the third week, I had memorized the rhythm of the place. Mornings began in the lobby, where the receptionist’s unblinking gaze followed me until I disappeared down the hallway. Afternoons passed in the dim offices, the windows always covered by heavy drapes that smelled faintly of mildew. The other employees—if they were employees—never spoke above a whisper, and never to me.

It was on a late Thursday evening, long after the others had left, that I found the basement.

The door to it was recessed behind a row of filing cabinets in the far corner of the main office. It might have been missed entirely if not for the faint draft that stirred the edges of the old papers on my desk. The knob was cold to the touch, older than the rest of the hardware in the building. The hinges screamed softly when I opened it, revealing a narrow staircase that descended into shadow.

The steps groaned underfoot, each one sinking slightly, as though the wood was not quite solid. The smell of dust and old stone grew stronger with each step. By the time I reached the bottom, the sound from the floors above had vanished entirely, replaced by a silence that seemed to drink in all thought.

The basement was cavernous, the kind of space that could not possibly exist beneath the narrow brownstone above. The ceiling arched high overhead, lost in darkness, supported by pillars of blackened wood. Rows of filing cabinets stretched into the gloom, their metal fronts dulled with age. Each drawer was labeled with a year 1842, 1907, 1933, and on. Each one precise, the numbers engraved into tarnished brass plates.

The most recent cabinet was marked 2024. Something compelled me toward it, the way one is drawn toward a mirror in a darkened room. My hand hesitated over the handle, the metal biting cold into my skin, before sliding it open. Inside, under a thin layer of dust, lay my personnel file.

The photo was recent, too recent. Taken at the desk I had been sitting at only hours before. The papers beneath it were filled in with my personal details, some accurate, others unnervingly intimate. And at the bottom, stapled to the rest, was a single-page contract. The signature at the bottom was mine.

I had no memory of signing it, but the handwriting was unmistakable, down to the particular tilt of the last letter in my name. The contract was brief, written in neat black ink: The undersigned agrees to render services in perpetuity.

The payment section was even shorter: One mortal. The ink here was smudged, as though a hand had lingered too long over the words.

As I stared at the page, the fluorescent light overhead flickered once, twice, before holding steady. Somewhere above, faint and muffled, a typewriter began to clack. The sound was deliberate, steady, as though each key was pressed with purpose.

The air in the basement shifted. From the far shadows between the filing cabinets, something moved. Not quickly, but with the patient certainty of something that had been waiting.

I could not make out a face, only the outline of a tall figure, shoulders narrow, head tilted in a way that suggested deep familiarity. The shape remained still for a long moment before stepping just close enough for the light to catch the worn fabric of a moth-eaten suit.

There was no sound, no words only the faint movement of his lips, forming shapes I couldn’t hear but somehow understood. Time was slipping.