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New Flavor


by S. Asher Sund


Our boss was a cadaver. He had a heart attack probably, or was poisoned. We found him after lunch slumped over his paperwork. We put him in his chair. We taped one hand to the phone to his ear. We put his other hand in a foam finger. We painted a devil's point on his chin with a Sharpie. This was two days earlier. There were more flies than before, but basically the break room was working. People came in there for their coffee when punching out for their breaks, and talked some of the stink while stirring their coffee with cream, and punched back in. The only problem was that we became careless to the point of not caring. In the production line of late afternoon on the third day of our boss's death, Billy fell into a bottle, and we couldn't get him out. We couldn't call for the boss for obvious reasons. He was on the phone. For days Billy cried for help. We could hear him when we got on shift. But like what were we to do? We held out brief videos of him on our phones after work to family members and friends who said that's so sad, it reminds me of that video of the dog who fell into a well. Have you seen it? We nodded that we had. Everybody has. Billy later died and in his honor we made him our new flavor.
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