Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
And then she screams.
Not a small scream. Not a polite, indoor-voice scream.
A full, primal, glass-shattering scream that echoes through the entire floor and sends every human within earshot diving for cover.
I drop the rat in surprise.
It lands on her desk, right on top of a stack of papers marked "URGENT."
She screams again, scrambling backward, her chair rolling into the cubicle wall with a crash.
"What the hell, Thraka?"
"It is a gift!"
"It's a dead rat!"
"Yes! A very good dead rat! The biggest one!"
"Why would you think I want a dead rat?"
"You mentioned pest control in yesterday's meeting! I am controlling pests! Efficiently!"
Her face crumples, but not with tears. With something else. Something wild and uncontrolled.
She starts laughing.
Not polite laughter. Not professional chuckling.
Hysterical, helpless, bent-over-gasping laughter that sounds like it is being ripped out of her against her will.
She clutches her stomach, tears streaming down her face, her whole body shaking.
"You," she gasps between laughs. "You hunted rats. In the basement. And brought me. The biggest one. As a gift."
"Yes," I say, uncertain now. "Is this not good?"
She laughs harder, sliding down the cubicle wall until she is sitting on the floor, still laughing, makeup running, hair falling out of its perfect arrangement.
She looks completely undone.
She looks beautiful.
Around us, other humans peek over cubicle walls, staring at their composed, terrifying manager having a complete breakdown on the office floor.
I feel a swell of pride so intense, so powerful, that it nearly lifts me off my feet and sends me soaring through the cursed fluorescent ceiling tiles above.
I did this.
Imade her make this noise, this wild, unrestrained, completely unprofessional sound of pure human emotion that no spreadsheet could ever quantify or predict.
I broke through all her careful control, shattered all those precisely constructed walls of corporate composure, and found the real person underneath, the one who exists beneath the power suits and the color-coded calendars and the five-year plans.
The one who can still be surprised. Who can still be delighted in the most absurd way possible.
Even if I accomplished this great victory with nothing more than a dead rat, clutched proudly in my fist like a trophy from the grandest of hunts.
