I found the file by accident.
It was tucked between Q3BudgetProjections.pptx and TeamSalesSeminar_2021(final_FINAL2).pptx on the shared drive.
Jesus.pptx
Just like that.
I clicked it out of curiosity. Or maybe boredom. It’s hard to tell the difference between the two when you spend the day in an office staring at spreadsheets that mean nothing to you.
The file was empty. One blank white slide. No title. No bullet points. No formatting. Just a white void.
A warmth emanated from the screen. I stared at it for a while. I bathed in its glow. My body slackened. My thoughts dulled to a low hum. Like I was recharging. Like I had taken something I wasn’t prescribed. Somewhere below the static, I thought I could hear a choir humming. Maybe it was the computer’s fan speeding up. The electric sermon lulled me into a trance.
I don’t know how long I sat there.
A wave of anxiety snapped me out of it. Any of my coworkers could have walked by, caught me slacking off. I told myself to close the file, to get back to work. But I couldn’t. My hands moved without me. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I started typing.
I wrote:
I was the one that stole Rachel’s underwear at the 6th grade sleepover.
I had never admitted that to anyone, though the memory haunted me awake with guilt many times in the 20 years since.
It felt good.
I typed another confession. Then another. And another. I kept going until—
“Mary,” the voice said.
I looked up, heart racing. My coworker stood across from me, arms crossed. “You’re in this meeting right?” he said. “You coming?”
I clicked save and exited out of the file.
It wasn’t until later that night, stoned and half asleep in bed, that it occured to me. Other people had access to the shared drive. My stomach twisted. I sprung upright, grabbed my laptop, and logged in. Jesus.pptx was in my recent folder.
I opened it up. Checked the file history:
File owner: Mary S
Last edit: Mary S
I didn’t remember creating it, but then again, I hardly remember anything I did at work. Assured that no one else had read through my confessional, I shut my laptop and drifted off.
Weeks passed before I opened it again. Work got busy. Days blurred. But one slow morning, restless, I clicked the file. Just to vent. Just to kill time.
I typed secret after secret. My muscles unclenched with every confession. I wrote down my hopes. My childhood fears. I described my first kiss. It was at that moment I decided I would speak to Jesus.pptx every morning when I got to work.
The next morning, however, I discovered something strange.
I opened the file, expecting relief before the first slide even loaded. But a new slide had been added:
I miss the way my mother stroked my hair.
I was hit with nausea. My vision tunneled. I hadn’t typed that.
I deleted the text and replaced it with a secret of my own choosing:
I google myself everyday.
I saved the file. I closed it.
I began checking the powerpoint every morning.
Like clockwork, new slides appeared. And they knew things that I barely admitted to myself. Things I had buried. I wasn’t sure if the feeling it incited stemmed from feeling seen or feeling surveilled.
Slide 16:
It felt cold and sterile and free of guilt. No one noticed.
Slide 21:
I haven’t been touched in 46 days.
Coworkers glanced at me differently. “You look great,” one said in a tone that meant nothing. “You seem tired,” another offered, like a question. I started bringing lunch from home, eating alone. I stopped taking breaks. I withdrew, unsure if I was becoming more real or if I was being erased.
Eventually, the file ran out of confessions. It had mapped every failing, every fleeting shame. It started predicting my future.
Slide 56:
I won’t be needed after Q1.
I stopped checking the file after that. Not because I didn’t believe it. Because I did.
On March 31st HR called me into their office. I knew what was coming.
Before packing up my few belongings and returning my laptop to IT, I deleted the file. Cleared the trash.
On the way out, I passed the printer. A stack of fresh printouts sat waiting for someone.
In big bold letters the title page read:
JESUS (FINAL).
I didn’t stop to read it.