Phillip K. Dickhead

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Picture a gigantic five-story hamster cage a quarter of a mile across, and each of the five floors separated by a maze of its own storage, industrial equipment, and systems of belts to bring freight in and out.

A demented child’s toy, blown up to the size of an amusement park.

-But I often forget its subtle and elegant genius; here at the precipice, the fifth floor, I can see down through all the cage floors, and clearly make out faces of my coworkers clocking in.

Coburn, my boss, is explaining something in excruciating detail. Probably the daily goals and hot issues, and I’m pretending to listen. But frankly the last thing I remember hearing him say was at the cafeteria pizza party two weeks ago, when he announced to some forty of us workers he “couldn’t eat with us because he is vegan.”

Well, I don’t want to work for a vegan –especially the world’s only fat vegan. At 5’2" and with a blunted-looking head, Coburn almost casts a perfectly cube shadow from any direction.

Coburn stops talking at the same moment I see Barbarossa, out of breath and sweating, clocking in on the ground floor.

Barbarossa is four minutes late.

“We will descend upon this like the angels of an angry God,” I growl.

Coburn, I’m surprised, is still here. In fact I’m reflexively engaged in his weirdly-hard, excruciating handshake.

“You’re a good man,” Coburn explains. “And the company has its eye on you.”