Corporate
Man’s fever broke in the middle of the afternoon resulting in a tremendous puddle
of sweat. He didn’t have time to relax
in the salty pool, however, and quickly found himself racing to the toilet,
wracked with violent heaves, donating the partially digested contents of his
stomach to a porcelain charity.
A long moan
rumbled from his throat as one hand searched weakly for the toilet’s
handle. Something was wrong. And not just common cold or shared flu
sweeping through the cubicle Petri dish that is the office environment kind of
wrong. This was something more. He never got sick. He was the ultimate employee. He was the perfect executive. He was… throwing up again.
His fingers
were shaking.
His whole body was shaking.
Corporate Man rinsed his mouth out
and crawled back to bed. His skin was
gooseflesh and his teeth chattered like rattling change. He buried himself in blankets and endured the
chills for quarter hour; for a fiscal year.
And then he was on fire again.
Apparently his fever hadn’t broken.
A sickly sweat ran from his pores, thin and acrid, like gasoline or some
backwoods distilled spirit.
After that it was all fever
dreams. Repetitions of hourly employee
profiles and job descriptions. Operating
hours and percentages and increased efficiency programs.
Over and over and over again.
