“Don’t touch my coffee!”

I blink at Coleen. I wasn’t going to, I just wanted to squeeze past her so I can go use the bathroom.

“It’s not break time yet.” She hisses at me, one hand placed threateningly near the coffee machine, the other holding a scalding cup of bitter black bile.

“Can I piss on the carpet then?”

Of course, I do not say this out loud. Because Colleen is my boss and I like being alive. I briefly ponder when the steps between “study marketing” and “buy the bare necessities for living” became so convoluted that I have to somersault through hula hoops just for a tub of Chunky Monkey.

So instead I say, “I’ll be right back.”

Before she can begin her speech about not paying me to play flappy birds I begin a dignified sprint towards the bathroom. In a rich man’s house there is no place to piss but her face.

When I come back I find Colleen looming over the new intern’s desk. Charlie’s caught with her hand in a box of doughnuts and chocolate icing on her mouth. Poor girl has yet to learn that Colleen is a fucking bloodhound who can sniff out grad school desperation from miles away.

Of course, into the trash bin the doughnuts go, along with the last of light in Charlie’s eyes.

“When is lunch break?” She meekly asks me after Colleen saunters back into her office.

It’s never. “It depends on how fast you can fish the doughnuts out of the bin.”

Janusz begins chewing his leather watch strap in the cubicle next to me. I know it’s Janusz because last week Eric declared himself vegan, and has switched to eating sticky notes and pencils.

Sometimes I think I see Teresa licking her tube of lip balm just because it smells like birthday cake.

Just as Charlie finishes shoving the last bits into her face-hole, Colleen storms out of the office – there’s a papercut on her thumb. Bright blood seeps. Tantalizing.

“Does anyone have a bandaid?” She announces across the room.

Teresa slowly, so slowly twists back the tube of lip balm.

“Anyone smell blueberry cupcakes?” Janusz asks.

Then in a split second, they all pounce on her. Teeth, nails, hands digging into the soft bits and ripping out whatever they can chew up. Bones snap deliciously like twix bars, someone gives a yelp of triumph – it’s Eric, his vegan days long behind him, holding up Colleen’s partially opened stomach. There’s still half an undigested blueberry cupcake in there.

Janusz is looking at Charlie, offering the best bits of the corpse. I give Charlie a nudge towards him and flash the man a wink. The feasting continues.

Well, at least nobody touched her coffee.