Donna had stopped wondering how a corporate real estate manager had fallen so low, to be the nurse maid for a 3,000 square foot cubicle farm of geeks, nerds and emo girls.

Really though, all of that personal career blight seemed so insignificant now. As the head of Human resources for Blue Unicorn Collectables, essentially the ‘CHO’ for 93 dysfunctional repressed souls, whose tasks ranged from incomprehensionably effete to unarguably banal, Donna had thought she had seen everything. Well, today was a new low, and terribly so.

Donna stood in horrific awe as big, flabby, pasty-white, freckle-faced Roger Westinghouse, the guy in charge of marketing collectable Japanese children’s fantasy cards, dove over the table of the plexiglassed ‘special projects room’ and attacked the nearly retired Milford—of the forever unmemorable last name—who everyone knew as the resident baseball card nerd and protective card sleeve ‘nazi’. Roger kept chanting, as if by involuntary rote, “I want to rip your face off!”

And then he did, perhaps half of it!

“Oh gross,” said Sheeabantai, the lead on her janitorial staff, “that shit be off the hook!”

The rest were milling around and calling the police, and some of the reprehensible staff were videoing the rampage rather than helping.

Milford was seizing up in shock and Roger was jumping up and down on top of him like the Pillsbury Dough Boy as King Kong.

Donna—or ‘Hipster Bitch’ as the ever grousing nerds called her behind her back—went into classic law suit limitation and damage control mode and rushed past the screaming and chanting Roger to the security cubical by the elevator and…found Henry asleep at the video display, where he claimed he belonged at all times since his Homeland Security Live Shooter Training seminar which she had booked and paid for—“Henry! Wakeup!”

Henry looked up at her with a startled expression and then jumped to his feet.

“What? Hugh? Where—are they towel heads?”

She placed the calming hand of female power on his over excited chest, and the 50-year-old career security guard did seem to calm a great deal.

“Henry, please stop Roger. He is hurting Milford.”

He looked zombie like at her, nodded ‘yes’ and stalked robotically toward the screaming Roger as she hovered behind him reminding him to use minimal force.

Within seconds they were before the ‘special projects’ cubical as it came down in a folding heap of hinged plexiglass, and Roger leaped onto Mary Ellen Basque’s desk, where the shaking overweight redheaded benefits specialist sat biting her designer nails and crying, looking up at the rampaging Roger who held half of Milford’s face in his right hand and pointed savagely at Mary Ellen with his left as he screamed, “I want to rip your face off!”

Mary Ellen was in tears and frozen so Donna bolted over to her and wheeled her away in her chair to the desk Donna herself shared with her slacker administrative assistant Mason Burges, who was out getting coffee—and as usual taking so much time that he brought it back barely warm.

Mary Ellen was now hugging her as Roger came on with torn face in hand chanting his maniacal, “I want to rip your face off!”

Now cornered, she looked to Henry and said “Please, do something!”

Roger was stalking forward with his grisly prize in a shambling squat like some ape man—blood staining his paisley polo shirt—chanting, “I want to rip your face off,” as he bore down on Mary Ellen, who dissolved into quivering tears in her arms.

Donna pulled out all of the persuasive stops by turning her face square to Henry and batting her eye lashes as she mouthed, “Please!”

Henry stopped stalking toward Roger and came on towards her saying in a robotic chant, “I’ll give you a baton shampoo Hipster Bitch!”

As if in answer to her silent plea Mister Jansen spoke up from behind her, “And the military wants women in a combat role, really—you see where this leads don’t you Alvin?”

This realization lent wings to her insensible heels and she dragged big fat Mary Ellen with her like she was hauling bags of cut grass that the lazy landscaper punk always left laying around for her. Somehow Mary Ellen’s feet worked in sympathetic union as they backed towards the elevator with the two men stalking after them robotically chanting their insane mantras, “I want to rip your face off!” and “I’ll give you a baton shampoo Hipster Bitch!”

They backed past Mister Jansen’s desk ahead of their looming pursuers.

“We are going to make it Mary Ellen.”

They backed past Alvin’s desk as the two insane men followed zombie-like with their sick chants droning on:

“I want to rip your face off!”

“I’ll give you a baton shampoo Hipster Bitch.”

They backed past Henry’s cubical as the two crazies continued their slow pursuit and the rest of the staff seemed to mill around aimlessly either talking into their smart phones, videoing the madness, or mumbling various unheard mantras to themselves.

Just as Roger and Henry followed them into the hallway her back hit the elevator and she instinctively slammed the button:

One beep, one step of the chanting psychos…

Another beep, another step of the chanting psychos…

Another beep and another step of the chanting psychos!

“Oh My God!”

And the door opened behind them, the two of them falling into the elevator. Donna reacted like she had a spring in her butt and bounced up and hit lobby, again and again, and again, even as a gory hand reached into the elevator and she hit it again and again—Roger’s bloody hand reaching for Mary Ellen as she cringed tearfully on the floor. At last, somehow against all of OSHA’s safety rules, the door closed on Roger’s hand as he chanted without, “I want to rip your face off!”

With a crunch and a squishy tearing sound and a triple squirt of blood into the elevator accompanied by a vacant animal scream somewhere beyond and above, the elevator descended.

“I think I’m going to puke.”

“No, don’t puke,” came Mary Ellen’s voice, “I’m down here.”

They looked at each other and laughed, and laughed. Mary Ellen was soon scrambling to her feet in her ill-fitting dress suit with Donna’s help, and there they were hugging tearfully, so relieved to have escaped such insanity.

“Thank you Miss Donna, thank you for saving my life!”

“That’s alright honey. When the men go crazy we girls have to stick together.”

They hit the ground floor and the door opened with a ‘ding’, Roger’s gory torn hand flopping over in the doorway. Donna grabbed Mary Ellen and led her in an awkward skipping motion over the nasty relic of one man’s recent rage.

They found themselves holding hands and heaving ragged breathes in the lobby as Mason Burges walked up to her—not with a twin cup of coffee in a carry out holder from the Thai coffee shop across the lobby, but with an entire steaming commercial coffee pot held between his blistering hands! The smell of skin cooking mingled most unappealingly with the rich scent of the brew. He was walking toward her with a faraway rage in his eyes, chanting, “So you want it hot Boss Lady, when the only woman on earth who takes the time to smile at me is pouring it? I ought to pour this down your throat Hipster Bitch!”

Still holding hands the two girls looked at each other, tall and small and short and big, and mouthed as one, “Run!”

And so they ran toward the lawn entrance, one waddling in rubber clogs and the other stumbling in pumps; two insensibly shoed women fleeing a world of men gone mad, as one singularly enraged man followed them robotically, a 4 gallon steel coffee brewer dangling an electric cord cooking off the skin from his hands, all the while chanting, “I ought to pour this down your throat Hipster Bitch!”