Getting Good Work Ethic 

The grids of the data entry software displaying on my monitor become blurry, I look out across the open plan office and my colleagues are moving through a translucent desert haze, I can feel every synthetic fibre of my cheap work trousers rubbing against my skin. It is coming, I am getting good work ethic. The veil drops. 

I long to be away from this accursed brood, away from the muck of the lower tier where they dwell, wallowing upon the banks of the swamp. I bat away the tentacles that whip up from the waters to snatch the weak, I am not of this brood, I am certain. I plough through the massing runts, toppling the soft-legged and trampling them. I’m surely the blossom of some mighty discharge from on high, from some nobler plateau, an exquisite drop from the ootheca of a managerial power. Trapped down here I vent my rage upon my false peers, a swift twist snaps their feeble spines, and they lie helpless as I gorge upon their abdomens. Their gentleness nauseates me, so rarely do they fight back, but if they do I let them live, reassuring them with a puff of musk. These fighting ones tail me all over and feed upon my devastated victims, growing larger and more violent. This haemolymph-drenched crusade against the endless swarms brings small solace for the loss of my exalted birth right. Frail dusty limbs crushed into the mud, death rattles and acidic tangs, these no longer stave away my melancholy. By forcing open the beaks of the mollusca ones and driving my stinging tongue down their gullets into the lymphatic node clusters, I can gain some pleasure, but envy taints my every joy as my top eye spies the looming cliffs and I think of what my innate good work ethic should entitle me.