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Larry’s Dead

Chapter I – Kevin Blogged
Chapter II – Tall Brad

Note, any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.

Brad knew he was coming for him, he could feel it in his bones and at 6’8” he had more bone than most humans, so it was a pretty strong feeling. Larry’s body lay on the carpeted, corporate floor, crumpled like a napkin after a particularly plump burrito. A bill for $2.33 with the words “third place this” was pinioned to his body and the tracks of bloody wires curved out the open mouth of the cube, leading back to the bare network jacks that had been the lifeline of Larry’s world. The whole sordid scene offended Brad’s sensibilities. Rapid Application Development was fast, clean and efficient. This had obviously been slow and messy and without a shred of reiterative unit testing. To anyone who could read a tell, it was apparent Brad was wishing he’d never left his shared bachelors’ cube and the repetitive comfort of his Nerf minihoop. He could barely think over the blood rushing to his head with a thrumming like the sound of distant taiko drums.
“This’ll never do,” Brad nearly jumped out of his size thirteens at the sound of Moanica’s voice in his ear, unsettling not just for its closeness, but because she had to stand on tiptoe to achieve the effect. “I’ll never be able to move anyone into this cube now. Do you think facilities will clean it?”
“Not sure it matters without a computer,” Brad opined.
“We’ll give it to a manager,” Moanica agreed. “But you’ll owe me another burrito.”
“What the hell for?”
“Cleaning up your mess.”
“It’s not my mess…” Brad quickly trailed off, craning his neck around to make sure the actual perpetrator wasn’t hiding somewhere nearby. He suspected Kevin and Kevin was tall, but he was also wiry. He could be hiding behind any of the nearby columns.
“We’ll see,” Moanica stomped off, stopping only twice to glare over her shoulder at him and once more for a full turn with a penetrating scowl.
Brad stood rooted in the gore, poking Larry’s remains with his shoe, wondering what to do next, while Moanica cube gophered, anger furrowing her brow as she exchanged unheard words over the phone with an unknown accomplice elsewhere in the building, the words “burrito…burrito…buritto…” skipping along below the ceiling panels. As unsettling as her wrath was, it wasn’t what made the hairs on Brad’s back prickle – he realized Moanica wasn’t the only one watching him, wasn’t the only one wondering what part he’d played in Larry’s death. Slowly, he turned to find himself staring into a pair of ambitious eyes, evil eyes, eyes that you just knew were capable of murder, particularly to cover up a season of painfully shameful CDFFL performance – they were predatory eyes, knowing eyes, dangerous, devious, inscrutable eyes.

Next: A Mysterious Malaysian