Tainted Meat

He reached back and rubbed the eerie feeling out of the back of his neck before slumping into his chair. The heating system must’ve been acting up. That same weird breeze had crawled over him today three times already. He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. It was kind of strange that a warm breeze, more like a probing stench less fart, would be reaching him at all considering his cubicle was nowhere near a heating vent, but then again he was an accountant, the only thing Peter knew about air was that he breathed it. He shrugged it off and went back to work.

It was lunch time when he got that eerie feeling again, but this time it wasn’t caused by a breeze. He had just placed a piece of cafeteria Salisbury steak onto his plate when it began to bleed, not the simple drizzle from maybe a steak or prime rib but an actual, ever-increasing flow that spilled out onto his tray. Peter was shocked at first but, then again, he had never actually had Salisbury steak before. Maybe it was supposed to bleed out onto his plate and mix with his corn and mashed potato.

He contemplated his lunch before looking toward the cafeteria lady. She was eyeing him with pure malice while stirring a bucket of pink powder into the tomato soup. He and the lunch lady had never been on good terms. Even from his first day, when he had witnessed her dark hateful gaze sitting above her numerous jiggling chins, it had been clear that she didn’t like him and in the six months since, he had only managed to incur more of her wrath with his attempts at friendship. At this point even accomplishing polite courtesy between the two seemed like a drug induced daydream. Peter poked at a corn kernel that had floated off of his plate and watched as it bobbed in the red pool forming in his tray. Throwing a full plate of food away would only raise her hackles even more. He sighed and began shoveling the soupy meal into his mouth.

An hour had passed since lunch and Peter's stomach was roiling. He felt as if a rat was trying to chew its way out of him, and that damn after taste... even after two rolls of breath mints the taste of iron still lingered.

He was about to get up for a glass of water when the screaming began. He stood up and peered over his cubicle wall. Dozens of his coworkers were standing, some from obvious curiosity and the others... he had never seen anything like it. They shook uncontrollably, their eyes rolling up into their heads as froth poured out from their lips. People yelled for the office manager who had pissed himself when the screaming began and was now crouched, cowering beside the water cooler. Peter looked up at the fluorescent lighting and a vague memory slipped into his mind. He had read about this somewhere before..."Epilepsy. They're epileptic!" Peter yelled. A magazine somewhere had said that fluorescent lights occasionally caused seizures, or was it video games that caused seizures. Sure he had never heard of epilepsy victims glowing blue and popping and pussing like these people, but... Action in the face of adversity. One of his grandpa’s senile ramblings popped into his head. Peter took a deep breath and lunged for the closest seizure victim. He reached Jim, wallet in hand ready to jam into his coworker's mouth, just as the man fell to the floor, steaming.