Stan

Ralph pulled into the coffee shop parking lot and parked in his usual space. He grabbed his book bag and laptop and set off toward the front door. Once inside, he nodded to the plastic skeletons at some of the coffee tables (a running gag at this particular coffee shop) and he ordered his usual vanilla latte with whipped cream and sat at his usual spot in the rear, beside his friend Betty (a rather cute female plastic skeleton).

He checked his watch and saw he had about an hour left before work. If he was going to let off some steam, now was the time to do it. He cracked open his laptop, loaded a blank document on his word processor, and started punching the keys.

He wrote about his boss, Stan, who came into the factory last night and spotted him just as soon as he had walked in, as usual. He beelined over to him and started in with the criticisms. First, Ralph wasn't stacking the boxes correctly.

"You need to stack them straight, Ralph. I don't think you understand the core principle of your own job, do you? It's critical that each box gets stacked straight. Stack them all again. I'll watch."

"Can't I just straighten the one box that's out of place?"

"Are you being insubordinate right now, Ralph?" 

Insubordinate was Stan's favorite word. Insubordinate and insubordination were used in nearly every encounter Ralph had with him since he started working at Treadware LLC two years ago.

"Do you know what we do with people who are insubordinate, Ralph? Do you know what happens to them?" Stan bawled. "I'll tell you what happens to them, Ralph. Let me tell you what happens to employees found guilty of insubordination. No, you can stack those boxes later, let me explain to you what happens to an insubordinate employee."

When Stan was finished, he found something else to gripe about -the labels. They weren't straight enough. He took out a pocket level and held it to one of the yellow labels on box 212. The bubble on the level was still in the center, as Ralph was happy to point out, meaning it was level, but it was ever so slightly to the left of the two lines. "It's close," Stan conceited. "But no cigar. Take off all the labels and put on new ones."

Of course, they couldn't just fix the one label. That wasn't Stan's way. So Ralph tore off all the labels on all three hundred boxes, printed off new ones, and placed them accordingly.

But Stan wasn't done yet. Several hours later, of course, there was another problem. Ralph's safety glasses weren't up to snuff. "I see a line on those glasses, Ralph."

"I just got them out of the tool vending machine today, sir."

"Oh?" Stan said, a sneaky grin stealing across his face. "So you've been getting new glasses every day, have you? Costing the company money?"

"What? No!"

Stan took out his notebook and began writing something down. "Now don't you lie to me, Ralph! Lying, as you well know, could be considered a form of insubordination."

After several paragraphs of Ralph listing yesterday's verbal abuses, he finally got to the good part of his writing routine. He took a long sip of his latte, sat up in his chair, and, though he certainly didn't realize it, he smiled as he typed out the next part. He tried to get even more vivid and descriptive as he visualized the most colorful and gruesome details of what he wished he had done yesterday instead of what he had actually done (which is nothing at all).

"Let me tell you, Ralph, if you don't straighten up your attitude around here," Stan was saying in Ralph's little 'story', "then -

Ralph pushed Stan backward. He gasped and shrieked as he fell into the bailer behind him. As Stan turned over and climbed to his feet inside the baler, Ralph closed the wire mesh door and pressed the button. On top of the green metal baler, a red light flashed and the machine whirred and groaned like a metal monster. The reek of rotten eggs from the garbage shoot nearby made Ralph almost lose it.

Stan was hunched down, stumbling over empty boxes as he smacked his plump hands against the wire mesh repeatedly. His face was red and misshapen like a rotten tomato.

"Let me out of here right now, Ralph!" Stan fell to his knees as the ceiling of the bailer slowly drove down. "Get me out of here right now, or I'll fire you for insubordination!"

The boxes below Stan were slowly rising as the green metal above him was descending. The monster was swallowing him whole.

And Ralph was loving it.

"Ralph! Let me out!" Back and forth Stan was crawling on his hands and knees looking for an exit. But there was none. He beat on the wire mesh until his fists looked like ground beef. "Ralph!"

Ralph stood on his tiptoes to peer into the bailer. Unfortunately, he couldn't watch as the bailer squashed his boss to death. The green wire mesh door prevented him from entering the machine - a safety feature. All he could make out was the man disappearing into the bowels of the beast as the top pressed him down into the cardboard. 

At first, he didn't think his boss would die after all. The baler pressed and pressed, and he could still hear his boss screaming and whining as he disappeared further and further down into it. Then, at last, he heard the satisfying crunch and pop of bone and a sudden spray of some liquid (blood and brain matter) hosing down the interior of the machine.

A moment later the bailer ceiling was rising again, the machine humming along. The metal mesh raised, and he was just about to peek inside and see his boss's mutilated remains when he ran out of coffee.

Ralph checked his watch: it was time for work, as usual.

The following day, Ralph showed up again at the coffee shop with his laptop. He ordered his vanilla latte. He sat next to Betty. He imagined running his boss over with a forklift. It was a pretty horrific mess that he visualized this time. Blood everywhere. And the surprising part was the man somehow survived so he had to back the forklift over him again and -

"That is pretty horrible," said Joe, the barista, looking over Ralph's shoulder at the story he was typing. 

Ralph quickly covered his computer screen. "Hey! What are you doing? You can't read that!"

"Easy, mate. We've all done it, haven't we? Maybe not in a coffee shop, but I think we've all imagined 'offing' people we hate. It's just -

"What?" Ralph asked. 

"Well, I mean most don't write about it. It's just bad form, you know?"

"'Bad form'?"

Joe wiped down the table beside Ralph. "It's like breaking a mirror. It's just - I don't know. Bad luck, I guess. You just shouldn't write about that stuff."

But Ralph wasn't about to let anyone - least of all Joe - tell him what he could and couldn't write about. And besides, he needed this. He needed to be able to vent. He needed to be able to write out his feelings while sipping his latte. It was better than actually doing it, wasn't it?. Surprisingly, he imagined Joe with his head in a brewer. But immediately after the thought struck him, he felt guilty for having it. Joe wasn't like Stan. He was nothing like Stan.

"Maybe you're right," he said, closing his laptop. "I won't do it anymore."

"Glad to hear it," Joe said.

But what Ralph really meant was that he wouldn't do it at the coffee shop anymore. Not that he wouldn't write his murderous imaginings. So, emboldened to pursue his passion elsewhere - and finding no better place than at work - Ralph decided to arrive in the break room an hour early the following day with his trusty laptop and a vanilla latte from Joe's coffee shop on Third Street, and to write about how he would murder his boss that day.

He had a perfect scene in mind where he would surprise his boss by using a welding tank to rocket him out the factory window when, lo and behold, who should enter but the evil monster himself? And immediately upon spotting Ralph, he made his way over and sat down beside him.

"I'm going to need your computer, Ralph," Stan said. "Anything done on company time (including the stories you write) are property of the company."

"But, I'm not on company time yet, sir, my shift doesn't start for another hour."

"Do you hear that Ralph?" Stan cocked his head to the side as he smirked. "Is that the sound of insubordination I hear? Are you boarding the insubordination train right now, Ralph?" Stan pumped his fist into the air. "Toot-toot! Next stop - the unemployment line! Is that where you wanna go? Huh, Ralph?"

"I'll put it away, sir."

"Damn right, you will."

After he finished his shift, Ralph went to the break room, intent on blowing off the steam that had built up all day from his interactions with Stan. He bought a vanilla latte from a vending machine (not nearly as good as Joe's) sat down at his computer and took a deep, steadying breath. He needed a surprising way of murdering his boss tonight (metaphorically speaking of course) but nothing seemed gruesome enough given how mad he was. Maybe Joe had been right, he thought. Maybe he really shouldn't be writing all of this stuff down.

"Hey, Ralphy!" Stan poked his head into the breakroom, surprising him. "No, you're fine. You can be on your computer for the next half hour, Ralph. Do you want to know why? Please say you want to know why. Please please please."

"Why?" Ralph asked.

"Because you're doing a sixteen-hour shift tonight, my man! Billy went home so you just got a first-class ticket on the overtime train. Toot! Toot! Yeah!" Stan laughed loudly and made cha-ching noises as he walked off.

That encounter decided it for him. Well, that and the fact that at that very moment, for reasons he can't even begin to comprehend, he had a surprising craving for a Butterfinger. His boss would come in, and buy him one of the sweet treats. Throw it to him, get one for himself. But the one he gets for himself ends up stuck and since Stan thinks he's the man, he'll reach up into the machine, but of course at that very instant there is a malfunction and the machine impales his hand and begins to corkscrew his arm around snapping bones and wringing it out like it's nothing more than a string of spaghetti.

"Ralph!" Stan screamed. "Help me, man! Awe, man, this sucks! It's breaking my beat-off arm, Ralph! Do something!"

Ralph laughed aloud as he imagined the scene.

Until Stan came in and made his way to the snack machine... 

And put in a five-dollar bill...

And pressed a button...

And out came a Butterfinger.

"Ralph," Stan threw him the Butterfinger. "Thanks for helping out tonight."

To say Ralph was surprised at that moment was a large understatement. He felt like he was in a bizarre Stephen King novel. He stared dumbly at Stan who made another selection on the machine.

"Damn thing's stuck," Stan said, reaching into the machine. Time stood still as his arm ascended toward the yellow wrapping of another Butterfinger. A small part of Ralph wondered if he shouldn't say something. But it still felt so unusual, so surprising, that all he could do was watch. Then the lights flickered and Stan screamed in pain. The metal had impaled his hand and was twisting his arm like it was made of Laughy Taffy.

"This isn't real!" Ralph said. "This can't be real."

"Ralph! Help me! It's crushing my beat-off hand!!"

Ralph ran out of the breakroom only to be surprised by an even more frightening scene out on the factory floor - hundreds, no thousands of Stans, all meticulously mutilated, making their way over to him. There was a Stan who was flat as a pancake, a spaghetti-like substance oozing down either side of his misshapen head. There was a Stan who had been rolled up into a ball (arms and legs sticking out here and there, bits of pale bone exposed beneath the phosphorescent overhead lights), who pulled himself along on the floor in a gruesome gliding fashion. There was even a Stan hanging from a hook on the ceiling, swinging to and fro, shouting "Cha-ching, Ralphy! Cha-ching!"

He ran back into the breakroom.

And the Stan with his hand twisted up in the machine laughed severely. "You are so getting fired for insubordination."

Ralph felt like he was going to pass out. They were everywhere. His creations - he couldn't escape them.

"Ralph!"

Ralph looked up from his computer screen. He had forgotten he had been typing this entire time. He had overdone it with the details. Joe was right. He needed to stop getting so sucked into these thoughts of murdering his boss. "Yeah?"

"I was just saying surprise, Billy called in tonight, as usual. So you're on overtime. Sixteen-hour shift. Love it or leave it."

"Leave it," Ralph said. He got up, bought himself a Butterfinger, and left.