Maybe! Maybe not! Read anyway!

I did not like Rich. Admittedly, I didn’t care for most people who were born with no problems, but he was even easier to dislike. I couldn’t recall his last name, but it was something along the lines of “MyFamilyWasWealthyBeforeAmericaExisted”. Something to that effect, anyway. Despite my distaste, there were worse people to work for. I say that only because he doesn’t actively attempt to kill me at any point.

One dick move from the building I work at is you can’t use the elevators without a proper employee pass. Not so bad, right? Well, interns do not get any such passes, and employees did not let interns on out of the kindness of their own hearts. Why? Fuck you, that’s why. They could give a fuck about interns. I think they thought it was funny.

Unfortunately for me, this meant I take the stairs. What’s worse is Rich’s division was on the -27th floor. Ridiculous, I know. At least it’s down….

Down, down, down; on the -14th floor I stumbled and dropped a coffee. Luckily (or unluckily? I’m not sure) I dropped my coffee instead of Rich’s. Minutes later, I arrived at the 27th floor as quickly as possible, panting slightly. I am wickedly out of shape, and the amount of times I’ve conquered those stairs have not given me the thunder thighs I was hoping for.

“Michael, you slimy, no-good, cock-sucking piece of shit! What the fuck are we paying you for? What in the mother fucking FUCK could have prevented me from having my fucking coffee TWO MINUTES AGO?!?”

I was two minutes late. Two! Not very much, right? Considering my journey and a lack of free coffee, I felt my eye twitch again. The same boiling rage I’d felt when the mansion lady had kicked me out of her driveway bubbled back to the surface, and I had to take a deep breath in order to calm down and keep my job (taking the deep breath was kinda hard because I was still panting).

“Sorry Rich. The, uh, barista messed up your order and I had her remake it.” I lied. I wasn’t taking the hit for this.

“Which barista? I order the same fucking thing every damn day, those bitches should fucking know the fucking order better than they know how to finger-fuck their own fucking pussies.” He raged on, adding expletives where they really weren’t needed.

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know them well or anything.” I lied again. Dammit! I didn’t want to throw Sara under the bus after she was giving me a place to stay (especially since she did nothing wrong).

Rich huffed and pulled out his phone, which appeared to be an iPhone model that wouldn’t come out for another three years. “That’s okay, I can call the manager of the cafe and have whatever whore ruined my day fired.”

Panic. “Wait, shit!” I immediately envisioned the trolley situation. On one path lay Sara tied to the train tracks, and on the other lay what’s-her-face. I’m not sure what the ethical choice is, but I’m a greedy bastard. I pushed the lever to run over the woman who I didn’t know. Also, Sara being tied up was a very enticing fantasy.

“Sorry, I remember now. It’s the blonde one, I can’t remember her name. She is always messing up orders!”

Rich raised an eyebrow. “Blonde hair? That’s Julian.” He sighed. “Mother fucker! I can’t get her fired, she sucks dick too good.” He put his phone away before giving me a look. “I know you heard what I said, but don’t you start fucking talking to Julian. I don’t want to be tunnel buddies with you.”

I put my hands up in a surrendering pose. “No problem, Rich. She’s all yours.” And whoever other else’s wealthy pricks she’s gobbling on, I thought. Sorry Julien, but I can’t imagine you fellatio Rich for his winning personality.

Rich seemingly drank his entire coffee in one gulp an threw the cup into the bin across the room. “Kobe!”

He swished. People with money truly get it all, huh?

“Fuck yeah!” Rich celebrated with wolf-like howls. He also pounded his chest in victory. Jesus, what dick.

“Michael! Take all of those files and take it to the 42nd floor! We need more fucking rats to test on!” He pointed to a tall stack of files that looked to weigh the same as small car.

I once again had to take a deep breath to steel myself from flying off the handle. “No problem, Rich.”

I’ll spare you the details, but I carried a ludicrous amount of files up the almost 70 flights of stairs. At one point, I took a break and opened a file to see what it read. You wouldn’t believe the amount of legal jargon they had just to transport rats to test on.

It was around lunchtime when I got back to Rich. Oh, also, I had to carry the dozens of rats back down with me that we’d ordered. I’d slipped on the -14th floor from my previous coffee spillage, and landed on one of the rat cages. Somehow, a rat had actually been shoving himself through at the perfect angle that I landed on his head, crushing it. So, I arrived back to Rich with coffee and rat blood/ brains on my shirt.

“Michael? What took you so fucking long? Why didn’t you take the fucking elevator?” He always did this. He knew I couldn’t take the elevator, but he loved rubbing it in. He turned with his shit eating grin, but it was quickly wiped away when he saw me. “Okay, ew, what the actual fuck, Michael?! Go on your lunch and get a new fucking shirt. Jesus Christ, you look like a serial killer who shit himself.”

I placed the rat cages down (one slightly stickier than the others) and gladly took an early lunch. Sadly, I’d need a shower, which meant the usual soggy sandwich to save time.

I grabbed my lunch and a new shirt as soon as I arrived, huffing and puffing, to my van, having ran up the stairs and to the car. I received many strange looks. I ate and showered, and went ahead and threw away the old shirt. I have no clue how to get brain out of a shirt.

After my lunch, I took my time going back down to Rich. During his lunch he usually took a weed brownie as a dessert, which meant he took longer to notice if I was late or not. Could I use this time to not eat my lunch in the shower? Yes. Why don’t I? Honestly, this is the first time I’d thought of that. Shit. I am dumb.

I received a text moments before I got back to the office. It was from Sara. It had a link to the apartment complex. I hoped she didn’t send that link as liberally as she sent it to me.

heyyy mikey! see ya 2nite after wrk!!~

I quickly responded with an affirmation, though my text wasn’t written like a 12 year old girl. I considered asking about the roommates, but my own awkwardness and anxiety refused to let me think that was a normal question to ask. Why? I don’t know! Just feels weird.

As I re-entered the office, I didn’t see Rich anywhere. In fact, I didn’t see anyone. I hadn’t mentioned them before, but usually there were plenty of dweebs working relentlessly at cubicles, hammering away at whatever task they were assigned that wasn’t bringing assholes coffee for shit pay. Even the rats were gone.

Weird.

I wandered around the floor for a while, looking for any sign of life. There didn’t appear to be a panic of any sort; all the papers were stacked neatly, and some even had half-written sentences before the writer seemingly disappeared. Did the rapture happen? Surely not, because if I’m here, then Rich most certainly would be. Or does Hell take the assholes during the rapture as well?

I wasn’t meant to do this, but I wasn’t sure what else to do: I pulled my phone out and called Rich. He had given it to me about a week after I started working because he’d been arrested for drunk driving and needed someone to take him home. Why me? I’m not sure.

“Who the fuck is this?” Rich answered with an annoyed tone. Asshole didn’t save my number? Also, I was pretty sure I’d watched enough porn to recognize the sound of someone getting their cock sucked. Weirdly, I wondered if it was the blonde girl. Gross.

“Hey, it’s Michael. Like, the intern Michael. I don’t know if you know any other Michaels, so I thought I’d specify. Anyway, where is everyone? It’s like a ghost town here.”

“Wait, what? You’re at the fucking office? Did you not see your employee keycard flash, or hear it beep?” He sounded nervous for the first time since I’d met him. Even after being arrested he had kept the asshole character up. What’s with the tone shift? I was getting a weird feeling.

“No, Rich. I don’t have a keycard, remember? What’s going on? What does flashing or whatever mean?”

“It means - oh fuck, that’s good, keep going - it means fuck off and go home, there’s an issue. I don’t know what the fuck it is, though.” I could hear that the person blowing him kept going. Was that considered rude? I’d never received a blowjob, but I feel like I’d put it on hold if I was having a phone call.

“So… I should leave?”

“Fucking duh.”

I hung up. I had no desire to listen to sucking noises. I sighed, knowing I was going to have to go back up those fucking stairs.

I heard a smash behind me and swung around, startled.

What made the noise, it turns out, was the reason I’d have to assume the floor was shut down. Would have been nice if Rich knew what the problem was, because he likely would have had more concern than he did.

A figure stated at me from the back of the office. It was about hundred rats tall, if I had to guess. I use that measurement because it was a an amalgamation of what seemed to be thousands of rats, all conjoined in horrific ways. It was as though a sea of fur, feet, teeth, and pink tails were standing. It’s hard to explain, but I could tell that it had just registered my existence.

It started hauling towards me.

“What the FUCK!” I screamed as I started dead sprinting towards the door.

It was at this moment the alarms on the floor started going off, and the lights turned red. Why weren’t they before?!

I reached the doorway right as someone else reached it on the other side. The door flung open, bashing me right in the face and landing me flat on my ass in front of the dozen soldiers that had kicked the door in. It was good luck, though, considering they instantly started to open fire on the first thing they saw, which was the rat-wall. The deafening roar of the guns silenced the screams of the rats, as I looked at the wall turn into a fine pink mist.

I was thankful the rat thing was gone.

I was less thankful that the guns immediately trained onto me on the floor.

My first thought wasn’t “holy shit I’m going to die”; it was “fuck, they broke my nose. Now I got blood on this shirt.”