#sr:o

Jimmy rolled over to his feet and tried to get a quick look around but the room was too dark and he’d never invested in any fancy vision enhancements for his eyeware. He did spot more glitter-puke on the side of Anthony’s bed as it glistened in what little light spilled in from the hallway. Anthony charged him again, arms flailing. Jimmy tried to sidestep and land a punch to Anthony’s head, but the smaller man didn’t even seem to register the impact as he wrapped his arms around Jimmy’s torso.

He kept his footing and tried to push Anthony away but the smaller man somehow seemed possessed with the strength of ten men as he squeezed tighter and tighter around Jimmy’s chest. His fingers were already digging into the soft tissue under both his arms, delivering excruciating pain. He flailed at the smaller man’s head and upper body but didn’t have the leverage to do much damage.

Time seemed to slow as he fought to breathe against Anthony’s crushing hug. Finally, he managed to hook a thumb into Anthony’s eye socked and squeezed as hard as he could.  The vice grip on his chest didn’t waver for even a second. As the world around him began to darken, his vision narrowing to pinpoints, Jimmy’s eyes caught a glimpse of Carmichael’s door opening.

The blurry form of Carmichael seemed to stumble from the darkness but suddenly straightened and made a beeline for the struggling pair on the floor of Anthony’s room.

“Carmi…” Jimmy managed to force out only part of her name with what little air he had but Selena Carmichael responded. Jimmy was hoping for an attack on Anthony that would break his grip and get him free but instead Carmichael lunged forward and grabbed Jimmy’s outstretched arm. He winced in pain as his savior latched hard onto his arm. Carmichael’s grip was no less painful than Anthony’s but it was pulling him out of the room and hopefully away from his bear-hugging psychotic coworker.

Carmichael managed to drag the pair into the hallway before her grip suddenly slackened, then slipped, and her blurry outline stumbled backwards, impacting the wall with a hard thud.  Using the brief distraction he began driving his elbow into the crown of Anthony’s head over and over. Every few impacts would send the unpleasant tingle of a “funny-bone” impact up to his hand but he kept striking, over and over, dozens of times. He gasped in breaths whenever Anthony’s grip would waiver from a hit and shimmied higher, trying to escape.

Despite his own valiant efforts it was Carmichael who saved him. She rejoined the fray in a most unexpected way as Jimmy’s senses were assaulted by the smell, feel, taste, and sight of Carmichael’s glitter-filled puke. The ejection cascaded over Jimmy’s entire face and chest but the slick, stomach-ejected matter slithered between Anthony’s vice grip and Jimmy’s expensive and hydrophobic suit. The vomit clung to Anthony’s skin and ruined his grip. Jimmy’s elbow strikes turned into a two armed push off his attacker’s shoulders the instant his other arm broke free. Legs flailed to push back Anthony as Jimmy slid across the vomit covered faux wood into the hallway.

Jimmy scampered to his feet and turned to both thank Carmichael and make sure the woman was alright. Before he could get out more than, “Sel..”, he felt the hard impact of her closed right fist slam into his temple. The right fist was followed quickly by a left that impacted his already tender gut and sent him stumbling back. He only registered the danger of his awkward stumble when one of his feet suddenly missed the ground for a moment and then caught purchase at the edge of the staircase.

Jimmy tucked in tight as he tumbled down the half flight of stairs in an ungraceful roll. He expected to be foggier than he was but the adrenaline rushing through his veins made him edgier than novacoke. In the general area of fight of flight, he was fast exhausting his successes with the former.

He saw the light go on as Carmichael cast a shadow into the dark stairway and had one of those momentary moments of humorous clarity as he wondered whether the automatic light sensors just didn’t pick up people falling down the stairs, or all people of small stature. But the corporation wouldn’t install racist light sensors, would they?

He snapped out of his moment of oxygen deprivation induced introspection as Carmichael started to move. Jimmy rolled sideways down the next flight of stairs, hearing the impact of what he guessed was Carmichael taking the entire stairway in a single leap. He didn’t look back as he keyed in the code for the door and the emergency code for the local Minuteman office.

Wearing only glitter-puke covered socks, James McGovern ran for his life.

James McGovern, Jimmy Mac to his closest friends, was at home when the news stations first started talking about a dragon crashing the Red Sox game. He wasn’t a huge fan. Having grown up in a Novatech, later NeoNET, arcology in Atlanta, he preferred the Braves, but it seemed like everyone else in the company was a BoSox fan since Boston became the main hub of the megacorporation. He wasn’t watching the game and completely missed the rush of MeFeed links that blacked out every host in Boston. He was one of the many in Boston who didn’t see the event “live”, but one of the rare few who never bothered to try and hunt down some footage later on. The main reason for his lack of cultural awareness was that, since 05:49 on the morning of the 16th, he had been too busy running for his life.

Jimmy woke up at 05:31, four minutes before his alarm would go off, and as usual decided to try and catch just a few more Z’s before he started his daily routine. The result was the same as it was every morning: he was startled awake by the alarm and felt far more exhausted than he had just four minutes earlier. He stumbled out of his room and down the hall to the bathroom he shared with the other members of his corporate cohort. He was still a few earning grades shy of having a place of his own but it was better than the paired housing he was part of back in Atlanta. The hall was empty, as was the bathroom, but that was the norm. Jimmy was the senior staff member and had to be up first, making sure everyone else followed their routine. They were one of the top producing cohorts in Boston Regional Office 121 because of their precision and all of that started with their near hive-like morning routine. All of that was thanks to Escher Parks, a former senior staff member who started the routine back in ’71. He wasn’t with the corporation anymore – his skills got him extracted, but Jimmy didn’t know what other megacorp had snagged him and he lacked the authorization to check out Parks’ personnel record.

Not every morning ran perfectly, especially when they had new members, and this was definitely going to be one of those mornings. When the auto-lights came on in the bathroom Jimmy came across the first challenge – the second if you count getting out of bed – of the day. Their communal bathroom was set up with stations, part of the routine everyone followed on a five minute delay; every day but Thursday, because that was the cohort’s day off. Fridays did always seem the toughest and with the rest of the cohort out partying last night they were certainly starting things off as expected. Stations three and four, simple washbasins for brushing teeth and shaving were both a mess of what looked like a combination of vomit and glitter. It wasn’t unusual that there was some fallout from the partying, but the glitter was definitely a new touch. With a sigh he grabbed cleaning utensils from the locker and started mopping up.

Jimmy was dropping his glitter and puke covered cleaning gloves into the disposal when the 05:40 chime dinged and he realized how far behind he was. He skipped his morning bowel movement, even though he knew he’d need to take part of his lunch to take care of it, and went straight to the shower which he cleared in less than 3 minutes. He shaved in under a minute and heard the 05:45 chime go off while in the middle of brushing his teeth. He couldn’t hear Anthony’s alarm over the drone of the electric toothbrush but when it shut off at the two minute mark, the alarm was loud and clear, though it should have been off and Anthony should have been sitting for his morning movement.

Jimmy stepped out of the bathroom and gave Anthony’s door four solid raps. A groan from inside signaled that Anthony was awake, if not happy.  With the alarm still blaring, Jimmy readied himself for a hurried morning of wake-up knocks and a disciplinary speech about unicorn vomit and punctuality.

Jimmy was still a minute or two behind on his own morning schedule so he left the alarm go and quickly dressed for work. He was done with everything but his hair and shoes before the clock on his retinal display read 05:49, meaning Anthony would only be four or five minutes behind, not an insurmountable obstacle and probably a good lesson for the natural overachiever.

Jimmy gave Anthony’s door  another four hard raps and added in a wake-up call, “Anthony, up now! You’re four minutes off routine! One more tick of the clock and it’s a discipline note!”

Jimmy’s wake-up call was answered by a solid thud against the door. Jimmy grabbed and turned the handle but Anthony was pushing hard against the other side and Jimmy knew something else had to be up.

“Anthony, if this is another ‘she just needed a place to crash’ joygirl debacle, you have thirty seconds to get her out the door. When my clock rolls on oh-five-forty-nine she better be strolling with me for the door while you hit the shower!”

As Jimmy yelled through the door Anthony kept shoving him back. Jimmy kept the knob turned to keep his coworker from locking the door, even though he had lock overrides at his disposal that no one knew about until they made senior staff. It was still strange how Anthony kept pushing on the door.

As the clock turned over onto 05:49, Jimmy gave the door another generous push but was again met with Anthony’s zealous resistance. It was starting to make him a little nervous that Anthony was so resistant to coming out but his fear was far less powerful than his excitement. What was going on in his room that was so bad he didn’t want his senior staff cohort member to see?