09.05.18: The Lot of Em

The office was in meltdown. God dammit, we need that confirmation. Bartworth, did you send the email?

His words stabbed in whetstone-sharpened staccato.Yeah boss, I sent it, but he hasnt checked the last five. What makes you think hell see this?

Bartworth snivelled in his monitor-blue light, wrapped in a cocoon of dark impervious to the flickering incandescent sickness, his body doubled over the keyboard, neck contorted upside down and 180 degrees, slipping farther down with every sentence, corkscrewing to face the man. You put the hazard emoji on it?Yeah, but And did you ask please?

Yuh-huh And you put the ellipses on it so he knows theres more to read? He dragged the ellipses like he was seducing a linguist, like that was something he knew.yeah, yeah I did.

The boss paused, his expression grave.And tell me Bartworth, you better you sent it at 4am.Of course, so hed see it first thing when he woke up.

Just like you said. His eyes were peering through the lens of his melting underarm.Dammit.

This is just what I was trying to avoid. If we dont get that confirmation now God, its bankruptcy or bust. Two sides of the same shit situation.

The boss had been pacing around the 10x10 doorless office but now sat in his plastic folding chair at his plastic folding desk, defeated. His elbows on the hard, goosebumped, slug-gray surface brought the entire world forward until his head was trapped in the webbing of his long, membranous fingers. His corneas seeped through to look over at Bartworth.

Bartworths neck had fully realized three revolutions and he was now slithering on the floor in the process of coiling around his three-days-on-the-corner-in-the-rain swivel chair attempting to get back up. Anything?Not yet, boss.

I dont feel so good about this one. He had wrapped all the way around and was beginning to assimilate the chair.Neither do I.

On any other day, the boss wouldve asked Bartworth to stop, good chairs are hard to find but he was desperate. If we send that email, its wasted potential, and were on our last gasp. And thats all if he really meant to unsubscribe, and thats one big If.

Huge, boss.Huge.Enormous, boss.

Exactly. No one just unsubscribes like that. Without comments in the box?

How do they think we improve? The boss fingers had now stretched to his nape. Bartworth had begun assuming the form of the swivel chair; hed fit in with the rest of the trash when the time came (it was how he got the job in the first place).

Whispered: No one has that sort of nerve. Monsters. Monsters do that.

Crazed, malformed lumps of barely sentient flesh, thats what unsubscribes without comments. Betusked, eyeless, cave-dwelling centipoids with their shit-covered stalks. The lot of em.

The swivel chair spun idley. With renewed intensity: The lot of em. Thats it!

Send the email. Ive got the faith! Ive got the feeling again.

This is it, Bartworth. This is it! Were on the ups.

I believe in this Patdalton? Thats an honest name. Hell, not a tusk on it.

An honest, clean, bipedal sack of ex-septionally sentient flesh Bartworth! The swivel chair obediently extended an arm and hit enter. The boss fingers slackened, releasing his butt from their tendril grip, receding until they were just large enough to rest his head against.

He leaned back, elbows out, reclining to look up at the slime-covered ceiling; its stalactite drippings had a nicer color these days. Yup, thats right Bartworth. Ive got a good feeling about this.

Pat Dalton is a copywriter disguising himself as a fiction writer. Or a fiction writer disguising himself as a copywriter. Hes still not sure yet and its getting to be a problem