#binfire

He hated everyone in his office.

And not in a jokey, “haha Mondays” way.

In a deep, cellular way. Like his body rejected small talk on a molecular level.

There was Susan, who said “me likey” without irony.

Brian, who microwaved fish.

And Gladys.

Fucking Gladys.

Who wore cat jumpers and once cried because someone said Garfield wasn’t real.

Patrick had, more than once, fantasised about pushing her down the stairs.

Not in a passionate, murder-y way.

Just… a casual nudge. A gentle act of pest control.

When she brought in her homemade “cat-themed cupcakes” for her 63rd birthday and said “They’ve got little whiskers made of fondant!”, Patrick considered lacing his own with bleach and seeing who noticed.

He was Done.

Done with shared birthday cards.

Done with passive-aggressive fridge notes.

Done with the post-it on his monitor that said “Smile, it might never happen!”

He kept it there out of spite.

Just so he could stare at it while mouthing “Too late.”

He didn’t have friends.

Not really.

Just colleagues who tolerated him the way you tolerate a bad knee or an upstairs neighbour who plays Bon Jovi at 2am , too annoying to engage, too boring to fight.

People stopped inviting him to things years ago.

Partly because he always said no.

Mostly because when he did show up, he made everything worse.

At the last office party, he got drunk and described Elf on the Shelf as “surveillance capitalism for children.”

He wasn’t asked back.

⸻

The butt plug arrived like most bad decisions:

in a pub, handed over by a woman called Jess who once referred to him as “a human sigh” and meant it as a compliment.

She’d just come back from some overpriced spiritual retreat in South America — the kind where you pay two grand to cry in a yurt — and handed him a small, heavy box like she was giving him cursed treasure.

“I thought of you,” she said brightly.

“It’s wood,” she added. “Hand-carved. Haunted, probably.”

Patrick looked inside.

It was, in fact, a butt plug.

A rich, dark, polished thing. Solid. Heavy.

It looked less like a sex toy and more like something Indiana Jones would swap for a sandbag.

“Lovely,” he said flatly.

Because what else do you say when someone gifts you an ancient suppository and says it reminds them of you?

He paused.

Held it up.

Turned it slowly in the light.

“Right. So, just to clarify… this is a wooden arse plug… from the jungle… that you’ve handed to me in a Wetherspoons.”

Jess beamed.

“Cool. Just checking I hadn’t died and this was hell.”

⸻

He didn’t use it.

Of course he didn’t.

He wasn’t that sad.

Until he was.

It was a Thursday night.

He’d just been rejected by the barista he’d mentally proposed to at least twice. Cat.

Dungarees. Fringe. Nose ring. She gave him artisanal eye contact every morning and once drew a heart in his flat white foam. That meant something.

Apparently not.

When he finally asked her out, she’d blinked slowly and said,

“Oh. God. No.”

Like he’d offered a mediocre shag and to do her taxes in the same sentence.

So Patrick did what any emotionally repressed man with a tragic Tesco wine habit would do:

He drank three glasses of “Evening Red” from a box that said “Pairs well with crying”

…and found himself holding the butt plug. “Just you and me mate.”

He stared at it.

It stared back.

“Not in the avenue Gerry, ” he muttered to no one. “I’m not one of those people. I have a Nectar card.”

But he was horny.

And lonely.

And statistically unlikely to get laid without divine intervention or identity theft.

So he lubed it with coconut oil, shuffled to the bed like a sacrificial goat at a sex cult, and eased it in.

⸻

It vibrated.

It had no battery.

No seams.

No mechanism of any kind.

And yet, it vibrated.

“The fuck?” he whispered, freezing like someone had just started breathing on his neck.

Not in a gentle way.

Not in a “your parcel is out for delivery” way.

It vibrated like it was trying to communicate.

He stood in his robe, facing the bathroom mirror, arms outstretched like some pound-shop prophet.

“Take me to your leader,” he announced, deadpan.

It heard him.

Patrick didn’t so much climax as detonate.

His brain shut down.

His eyes twitched.

His body went full scorched earth.

There was light.

There was darkness.

There was cum.

“I–In the end… th-there can be only one arsehole,” he muttered, gurning, gripping the bathroom counter as his knees buckled like a dying fawn.

Then he farted his bank sort code in Aramaic and blacked out as his head hit the IKEA cupboard door handles with a bonk that somehow echoed with shame.

⸻

He woke up at 9:42am.

The flat looked like a Jackson Pollock.

Cum.

Everywhere.

The walls. The curtains. The sofa.

Inside the fridge.

The ceiling.

He sat on the toilet, head in his hands, muttering:

“Right. So that’s how I die. Drowned in my own spaff, with IKEA burns on my face and no one to blame but me and the haunted arse chess piece.”

⸻

He tried to be rational.

Stress? Wine? Prostate tumour?

Google was… unhelpful.

He searched:

• “Does cum stain sofas”

• “Haunted anal toy”

• “Cum everywhere help”

He texted Jess:

YOU GAVE ME THE DEVIL’S DILDO.

She replied:

lol