Thread by @ViragArpad

We have returned to the office at a 50% capacity. The men are fatter and the women are even more unpleasant.

And among the ruins of what was once a respectable occupation stood George, half-man half-copying machine.

During the lockdown George put on at least two stone. He's not farmer-fat or truck-driver-fat. His fat deposits are formed by endless hours of sitting in a computer chair and on a computer. He once said a story of driving a bicycle to work and getting 'really REALLY tired'.

George's eyes are big, blue and bulging. His skin is pale and his breathing is quick and shallow. His steps are small and wide due to thighs rubbing against each other.

He is friendly and polite, yet his neuroticism reaches levels that are clinical. At first I wondered why.

I liked George because unlike most he never seemed to lack enthusiasm for actual serious work, and would be eager to respond to all of my emails immediately. He was a colleague to wish for. Yet I couldn't stop mocking him in my head and it made me feel guilty.

Nature was not generous to him. He switched from XL to XXL, now resembling the huge Xerox machine next to my desk. He'd stand there touching it gently for hours, nervously smiling at the perfect colored copies, as if they were involved in a sick transhumanist mating ritual.

Last Tuesday we sat in the company cantina. Hungover, I was stuffing sausages and eggs in my burned tortured mouth and George looked at my plate as if it had tits.

- Oh God! I only wish I could have that!

In front of him was a giant bowl of disgusting porridge.

- Go on mate, grab one!
- I...can't. My wife wants me to... eat healthy.

He looked at his vile porridge, something a starving pig in my homeland would not even sniff and people of this cursed island believed gave them magical powers of regular shits and lowering cholesterol.

He stared at the table for a few seconds. Seemed like an eternity to me, he was obviously in a very bad state, recalling some deep traumatic event.

- You alright mate?
- Yes yes... Have you watched Liverpool last night???

He smiled with his mouth, his eyes were wet and bulging.

Two days later I needed to collect my car from the Romanian mechanic in George's part of town and asked him about the train schedule.

- It's on the internet.

My ego was hurt. I was kind and friendly, and now he's blowing me off. F**k you, George, I thought darkly.

I was too distracted by the hot young campus students on the train to read and as I surveyed the curvatures in yoga pants I spotted George at the end of the wagon, staring at the floor.

He disembarked the train at the very station where my dodgy mechanic lived and walked away.

My morbid curiosity could not be helped. I sent a text to the Romanian leech who made a fortune off my rusty Renault that I won't be able to make it today and instead of heading to his squalid shop I followed George.

This felt perverse, but also dodgy and exciting.

Ten minutes away he turned around in a blind alley and walked into a construction site. This was very strange - guys at work would constantly talk about fixing the fences, applying for a house extension and a shed, and not a word from George about anything of that sort.

He unlocked the gate and carefully locked them back upon entering, leaving me standing at the corner, feeling creepy, like a KGB spy or a pedo.

I walked around the fence trying to find a spot from which to see inside. The fence was oddly perfect, no single hole to peek through.

This was bizarre - a high impenetrable fence in the middle of an otherwise decent neighborhood fired up my curiosity and I was determined to find out what was behind it.

Carefully walking around, pretending to look for a house number, I spotted a tree onto which I could climb.

It was already getting dark, nobody was on the streets, took me just seconds to climb up and hop from a thick branch onto the fence and then inside of the yard.

It was an ongoing construction of a third-world wooden house extension on all sides. This could not be built legally.

Inexplicable. George who would not dare to click 'print' before checking there was enough paper in the tray demolished several walls and built a wooden extension that resembled something from those Liberia documentaries I use to watch on Youtube. What was this madness?

I creeped up to the house. All the windows were boarded with plywood and even the entrance door was oddly supported by a wooden beam from the outside.

There was colorful light pulsating through the window on the second floor and I was determined to see what was inside.

Gingerly I climbed onto the scaffolding and after checking no one was watching from the neighboring houses I peeked through the window.

The first thing I noticed was a giant twelve-screen array across one of the walls, radiating wicked rays of digital light in the room.

All the walls and the ceiling were removed and the whole house was an odd form of a storage. For a few seconds I could not comprehend what was going on.

As I stared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on the giant screen I realized - the floor is moving. The floor is ALIVE.

My mind went into a state of complete terror.

What at first seemed like an oddly uneven floor turned out to be a mass of flesh. It was covering the entirety of the house and then kept overflowing through the newly formed holes on the walls into the newly build extension.

This could not be real.

This unholy lake of flesh was moving under the evil rays of light emitted from vast screens, and in the middle I noticed a pair of utterly horrendous arms and in between them a head that seemed almost human. Waves of horror were passing through my body.

The unspeakably hideous head in the midst of the vile sea of obese flesh had a golden chain around it with a one-foot golden letter-pendant.

The pendant spelled SUZIE.

It dawned on me. This was beyond all imaginable horror. This was George's wife.

A part of the concrete slab at the opposite edge of the house was kept and it seemed to contain some sort of rails. I noticed George clumsily pushing a sort of a mini-wagon on the rails, filled with strange multicolored particles. The huge mouth at the ground floor opened.

He tilted the wagon nead the edge, and what must of been at least three hundred kilograms of Cheetos, potato crisps and gummy bears was devoured by Suzie in just seconds.

As she swallowed the entire load a screeching scream that nearly broke my eardrums was released.

MOOOAARRR!

In about a quarter of an hour, George came back with a full wagon again, unloading it directly into the mouth of Suzie, who surprisingly kept quiet after it.

George seemed exhausted and sat on the edge of the concrete slab. He picked up a few pieces of crisps from the floor.

As he chewed on the crisps, the voice came down from below, equally screeching, like a thousand fingernails on a thousand chalkboards:

- Do not eat that! It's not healthy!

Obediently, he stopped at once and sat in silence.

Soon the voice ordered.

- Tan! TAAAAN!

George pulled a lever on the wall, an suddenly twenty seven UV lights came out of the walls, and a sprinkler system was activated. It was a humongous spray-tan system, serving a creature that might be the greatest mammal that ever lived on the surface of this planet.

The next thing I remember is walking down some streets, crying and trying to catch my breath. This was just too much. I stumbled upon a corner shop and got myself a bottle of Coca Cola, thinking that sugar might help me compose myself, however I threw it all up in seconds.

After hours of walking I somehow came home, swallowed a few sleeping pills that Katie left when she moved out and just to make sure I was soon unconscious I jugged down a pint of whiskey.

No man should see this, ever.

And George lived with it.

I woke up in 36h morning, still shocked but surprisingly fresh. It was 8AM, still time to get to work.

Working in civil service is a blessing, one could be missing all day and it would hardly be noticed. Jack wasn't in town that day, otherwise I'd have to make up an excuse.

On the way i kept thinking if it was all a dream or not. I should really stop watching those god damn shows on Netflix. 'They'll do your head in' my mom once told me, and she was right.

I haven't eaten in two days and on my way to the office I got myself a bag of crisps.

First bites of those salty fatty carbs were just divine. I washed them down with some Fanta and felt my body rejuvenating.

As I walked through the corridor I saw a familiar face and was struck with horror again. It was George, standing over his favorite Xerox.

I could not utter a word. Speechless I stood in front of him, feeling like an evil, strange priest of some vile satanic cult had been in my presence all along and I was completely unaware. All I could do is extend my hand, the hand that held that bag of crisps.

George looked at them lustfully for a second and then waved his hand.

- Oh no, no thanks. My wife wants me to eat healthy.

THE END