2.a.xiii
“What are you
looking for anyway?” Tanya asked. Mr.
Jones was rifling through the desk where the defunct CEO was still seated.
“I don’t know,
actually,” Mr. Jones said. “I don’t even
know why I shorted the CEO out like that.
Kind of going on instinct here.”
“Why not
search him?” Tanya said, pointing to
the CEO. “He’s bound to have something
important on him somewhere.”
“Yeah, but is
that a search we really want to conduct?
You saw what he was up to when we walked in here.”
“Gross.”
“Exactly. Still…” Mr. Jones sighed and then checked the
CEO’s pockets. “Hey, do I have a tie
somewhere? You know, a special kind of–”
The CEO
lurched forward, biting at Mr. Jones’s hand.
Mr. Jones jumped back, yanking his hand away, and let out a startled
yelp.
The CEO made
no further movements, and everyone remained frozen as seconds slid by like
glaciers. Tanya and Mr. Jones shared an
exasperated look and then inched toward the CEO, advancing slow and cautious.
“Sorry. I couldn’t help myself,” the CEO said. His voice sounded different, strained and
bubbly like sweaty flaps of skin clapping together. “A detainment team will be here shortly, but
I wanted to be the one to confront you, Corporate
Man.
“Who are you?”
Mr. Jones said.
“What? You don’t recognize me? How depressing. We’ve shared so many good times together,”
the CEO’s mouth said, though it seemed to open and close independently of its
jaw muscles and tongue. The CEO’s eyes
were rolled back in his head, the blood-shot whites twitching, the eyelids
fluttering.
Mr. Jones held
his hand out, palm toward the CEO as if sensing something. He grimaced and shuddered. After another moment his eyes snapped open
and he said in a low, breathy growl, “Greed.”
“Wonderful,”
the Greed said with the CEO’s mouth.
“Anyway, that was fun. Pleased to
see you, but you know, money to make, taxes to dodge. Must go.
Oh… and you can die now.”
The CEO rose
up out of his chair, held aloft by a sticky looking, pinky-white tentacle. The tentacle drew back and then swung the CEO
forward like a club. Mr. Jones and Tanya
dove out of the way and the CEO’s body bashed into a filing cabinet. The tentacle drew back again and swung,
missing the intended targets again and upended a potted plant that sat in the
corner. There was a flurry of violent
swings, like a cat struggling at the end of a leash, but Mr. Jones and Tanya
managed to avoid the attacks. The CEO’s
face slapped against the surface of the desk, his head rebounding with a
disgusting fleshy knock.
On the next swing
Mr. Jones pinned the CEO’s body against the desk and when the tentacle pulled
back it found little give and yanked harder.
On the third of such yanks the tentacle pulled itself free from the
CEO’s backside. There was a sucking,
schlooping noise and a horrible reek.
“Don’t let it
get away!” Mr. Jones called out, but it was too late. The thing had slipped out of the room.
“Hey, don’t
look at me,” Tanya said.
“I wasn’t.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, how’d
you expect me to stop it? No way was I
grabbing that slimy, stinkin’ thing.
What the hell was that anyway?”
“He’s called
The Greed.”
“I know who
The Greed is. I’ve never seen him like
that before.”
“He’s a living
embodiment of that desire,” Mr. Jones said.
“Just his proximity is a taint that most cannot resist. This must be a new, mutated form.”
There was a
commotion in the hallway, just outside the office door.
“Looks like he
wasn’t lying about the detainment team,” Tanya said.
“We need to
go. Now.
You see another way out of this office?”
Tanya pointed
to the floor. “Not that I want to, but
we could follow that trail of slime The Greed left. He didn’t use the door.”
