Lunch Breaks and Sick Days

“Jacklyn!” The shout comes from across the office, in the break room. In the cubicle beside me, Jacklyn’s hooves begin to tap a steady, but frantic, rhythm on the floor. The source of the yelling storms out of the break room. Harold’s red eyes lock onto Jacklyn as he barrels across the office.

“What is it, Harold?” Jacklyn asks, playing the nonchalant role.

“You left another tree in the fridge!” His thick country accent draws out the word another more than what’s necessary. She spins around in her chair and glares at him.

“Yes, I did. It’s my lunch.” He snorts, and steam begins to rise off of his shoulders. A side benefit to being half-demon, I suppose.

“Lunch? Lunch? There are still bugs on that crusty piece of wood!”

“Have you seen what you put in the fridge?”

“I need to eat that. To keep my demon-hood.” She rolls her eyes so hard I’m afraid that they’re going to fall out.

“Demon-hood? You have got to be kidding. It’s coleslaw and barbecue ribs.There’s no way that’s real. Fine. I have to eat foliage to keep my satyr-hood. Go ahead and contradict that.” Small flames flicker on his shoulders.

“They’re in a box! They ain’t botherin’ nobody!”

I tuck my head farther into my shoulders and pretend to type on my laptop. Sooner or later, one of them is going to drag me into the conversation. And there’s nothing I’d rather do less than pick a side between the two- Harold could send me to Hell with a snap of his fingers, but I work next to Jacklyn. And the last time I picked Harold’s side, I came to work only to find my desk covered in writhing, slimy bugs.

The girl in the cubicle across from me lifts her head to meet my gaze. Maybe girl isn’t the right word to describe Lillian. After all, she isn’t quite human. Overall, she seems normal enough, but if you look closely, it’s possible to see the shadow of glimmering wings behind her. She’s a full faerie, a creature made from light and happiness. It’s almost ironic, in a way.

“They’re ridiculous,” she whispers, “And that’s the plain truth.” I glance over to see Harold and Jacklyn simply glaring at each other, pure hatred written in both of their eyes. Hatred, and love.

“I know,” I whisper back. “I’m just waiting for them to kiss and make-up.” And that’s no exaggeration either- Jacklyn and Harold live in a constant back-and-forth relationship.

The sound of lips meeting makes me cringe, and Lillian lets out a soft laugh.

“They’re done now, you know,” she says, and I sit up a little bit straighter. Jacklyn is back to working, but a small smile lingers on her face, and a quick glance at Harold striding away confirms it. I’ve never seen a man that big skip before, but that’s the only way to explain it.

Lillian wrinkles her nose and looks around.

“Do you smell that?” She asks, and I sniff too. I gag.

“Who is microwaving fish?” She demands. A small squeal comes from a few cubicles down.

“Zara,” she hisses to me, before getting up and striding over there. I watch her interact with the water nymph. Moments later, she comes back, her shirt soaked with Zara’s tears.

“I swear,” she mutters, “That girl never stops crying and it’s getting on my nerves. And that’s the truth.”

“Everybody gets on your nerves,” I say, opening up my email tab.

“That’s the truth. But she’s especially bad. Did she really think that bringing her own microwave would reduce the smell? Cmon, Charlie, just agree with me.”

“Give her a break, Lillian. She just started going through her divorce.”

“Her fault for marrying somebody who drives a truck. A truck that runs on dragon fire, no less.”

“I drive a truck,” I say, signing the email and sending it off, “And he owns a baby dragon. I hear they give off a lot of fire.”

“You have a barghest-dog and drive a normal truck.”

“Only because Mimi doesn’t breathe white fire. I wish she did. Would be better than the horrifying amount of drool she gives off..” Somewhere deep within the recesses of the office, an alarm begins to go off.

Lunchtime.

Our boss, Darryl, emerges from his office, his great, feathery wings stretching out as he cracks his back.

“Lunchtime already? Boy does time fly here.” I try my best not to cringe at his horrible pun, but he notices.

“What’s wrong, champ? Something, like, the matter?” I shake my head.

“No, sir. Just starving, that’s all.” He claps me on the back.

“Well then you’re totally in luck! It’s lunchtime!” Mercifully, he moves on from me. I hadn’t quite realized how annoying angels were until I started working for one.

The break room is quite the spectacle at lunch. All of us crowd in there to sit at the round tables and talk.

Or simply to tear into raw meat, as Harold is prone to do. It’s a disgusting, but slightly gratifying, sight to behold.

Jacklyn daintily picks leaves off of her tree and scarfs them down, while Zara enjoys her stinky fish at her desk, which saves us all from vomiting during lunch.

I, personally, always bring a cream-cheese bagel to lunch with me, and most of the time I end up giving Lillian half of it. Today is no different. I sit down, and a knife shoots out of the cabinet and into her hand. I’ll be honest. Her magic definitely scares me sometimes.

“Please, Charlie?” She begs, offering me the knife. I can’t say no to her, really. I think it’s the faerie magic.

Darryl doesn’t eat anything. Says that the Word of God is food enough for him, except for that one time I caught him eating my bagel. We don’t talk about it.

He sits on top of the fridge, wings curling and releasing every few seconds.

He claps his hands to get everybody’s attention, and we all look expectantly up at him.

“So, guys,” he begins, his tone already warning us that this is not going to be a pleasant talk, “I just wanted to let everybody know that we’re going to start hiring soon. Everybody cool with that?” Lillian and I exchange a glance. As far as I know, we’re the only business around who hires those with even tinges of magic. And we’ve hired basically everybody around. Sure, we might’ve missed a shapeshifter or two, but they’re only found if they want to be found. If they don’t cause any trouble, they’re no longer our problem.

“Hiring more magics?” A man in the back asks, his stag antlers nearly scraping the low ceiling.

“Not exactly dude,” Darryl says, and immediately the break room erupts into chaos.

“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?” A woman with only a bottle of thick red liquid poses this question, and I can’t get rid of the shudder as I comprehend what- or who- her lunch might be.

“The big guys in charge- you know the ones- decided we should try branching out. Allowing non magics into our companies could definitely be a great way to expand our resources.”

“You’re joking,” Lillian says beside me, her mouth full of bagel.

“This is not a joke, you guys. There’s a huge population of non-magics around here-”

“Here and the rest of the world!” Someone shouts, and Darryl frowns as he tries to pinpoint the culprit. When nobody is found, he starts talking again.

“We could really make something out of this company. For right now, we aren’t making much. And that’s not cool at all, y’all.” He snorts. “That rhymed.”

The vampire speaks up again. “We’re not making much, but we’re safe here. It’s a pain to go out in public. It’s a pain to even walk from my car into the office because of the goddamn sun. Letting nons in would mean we’d have to be glamoured all the time. And let’s be honest, Darryl, we don’t have enough faeries to keep up that many glamours at once.”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, for one. Not cool, dudette. For b, we wouldn’t have to be glamoured. Because they’d know. Dang, I messed up my letters and number again.”

“Nobody knows what we are,” I say.

“Shut up, Charlie,” Harold says. “Everybody knows that you’re barely one of us.”

“I become one of you every full moon! Just because it isn’t constant doesn’t make it any less real.” Harold growls.

“You don’t have to come into work everyday looking like you just crawled outta a crawdaddy bucket!”

“Not my fault your daddy couldn’t keep it in his pants and you got his crusty skin. Take your half-demon issues to somebody who actually cares. Oh! That’s right. Nobody cares. Because we’ve all go our own problems to deal with.” Harold snarls and lunges for me across the table, but Darryl lifts his hands and he is thrown backwards. Heavenly magic works wonders against demons, apparently.

“Everybody needs to calm down, like, for real,” he says. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch a banshee speak in sign language to a siren, who laughs with no sound. They’ve both taken great steps to ensure that none of us die because of their voices.

“H-how are we supposed to just “c-c-calm down” when you’re suggesting we let n-n-n-nons into our sanctuary? T-there’s nowhere else for us to just b-be. Don’t you understand that, Darryl, s-sir?” Our intern, a small Japanese kitsune speaks up, surprising all of us.

“Look, champ. I, like, don’t want to do this either. But we’re all going to lose our jobs if we don’t start to embrace this policy. And the plan we drew up is like, totally cool.”

“I’m sure it is, Darryl, but this seems like a really bad idea,” the vampire mutters.

“Look, you guys will like, totally not even notice them. Just give it a try.”

***

We noticed. We definitely noticed. The new employees regarded us with a mixture of extreme fear and unfortunate curiosity. Darryl had explained that all of the new employees had seen something before, whether it was a nymph in a community pool, or a demon walking their dog but it was always something.

That didn’t stop them from outright staring.

Lillian had glamoured her wings away, but every so often I could catch a few sparkles trailing from her shoulders. Harold, on the other hand, had cast his flames into an inferno. He was definitely not trying to hide his magic side. Jacklyn had actually put on pants-the first time she’d ever done that- but her feet were still bare, and the sound of her hooves tapping against the ground makes us all feel more nervous.

When the alarm goes off for lunch, nobody moves. The nons do, sure, but the rest just stare at our laptops, praying silently that they’ll get us away from this hell. When one of the nons pauses to look at Jacklyn, I flinch. This will only provoke Harold, and, surprise, I’m right.

“What are you supposed to be?” The non asks, prodding at her horns.

Across the room, a fire flares up. A fire that is moving quickly towards us.

“Leave ‘er alone,” Harold says. The non raises his hands.

“Sorry, man. Just thought she was cute.”

“Do you always flirt by asking “what’ re you supposed to be”?”

“Piss off.”

“You would cry if you saw the color my piss is.”

I put my head down. Today is the full moon. I can already feel my body preparing for it. I don’t have the time to deal with their nonsense.

***

The next morning dawns in anguish and pain. My body, reversing the transformation.

“Hey, Darryl, sorry for the late notice, but I can’t come into work today. I’m sick.”

“Bruh, that is like, totally not cool. Just be here tomorrow, okay dude?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Even werewolves have sick days, I guess.