MONSTER

        It’s Friday.
        But you’re not yet free. Your boss Dave makes it painfully clear: “If I don’t get those charts optimizing work-time productivity in my inbox by the end of the day, you’re fired.” That’s not actually what he says, but that’s how it feels. And the pressure is real, because above him someone needs those same charts in their inbox, and so on, and so on, forever and ever, Amen.
        So you get to work, crunching numbers and hot-keying highly specific Microsoft Excel operations. You’ve long since graduated from using the mouse, but you’re still no virtuoso on the keys, so when the clock says noon and you realize you’re not halfway, you have to replace lunch with two Peppermint Bark Clif Bars and an 18 oz can of Monster. For some unknown reason probably related to your childhood, you like to pour it into a glass like a draught beer, where you can see the green glow and smell the notes of cough syrup and molten sweet tarts. It might not pair well with the Clif Bars, but who says eating is about taste? The important thing is that the caffeine and sugar will accelerate your neural processing speed, slowing down and thus multiplying time, while the taurine decelerates your cardiac activity, keeping you from dying.
        It works. You become an optimization machine, playing that spreadsheet like Jerry Lee Lewis, sweating and shaking, hooting and whooping, while X-Games highlights play in your mind’s eye. Before your consciousness can catch up to your body, you’re baking bits of data into rainbow pie charts and serving them hot to Dave’s inbox. And the craziest part is, you enjoy it. Your left foot taps at 400 bpm and your smile shines with a weird green glint dentists HATE.
        But by 2 pm you’re coming down. The sugar and caffeine have exited the party, and the protein from the Clif Bars is bored of hanging around waiting for you to do something athletic. You want another Monster. You’re just one little can away from the weekend, you tell yourself.
        As your attention drifts, an image forms. An image of Dave’s Monster. In the break room fridge, Dave has kept a can of Mean Bean Java Monster Coffee + Energy for years. No one knows how long it’s been there, but no one recalls a time when it wasn’t, either. It must be there, on the left side of the bottom shelf, shoved to the back with its owner’s name printed obscenely on its lid in Sharpie.
        If you just slip into the break room like you’re grabbing an afternoon snack of pita, then snatch Dave’s Monster up and chug it in seconds flat, no one will know it was you who left its leather-colored carcass in the recycling bin.
        For the next hour, your thoughts hover over the image of Dave’s Monster: desperate and forsaken, waiting to be let off its leash. You get no work done. A pool of sweat has formed between the G and H on your keyboard. The chill of Dave’s Monster, after so many years in the fridge, must be supernaturally refreshing. By now, the mean java beans will have aged into tender generosity. And there’s added energy? It’s almost too much to bear. Numbers dance around your spreadsheet, to no rhythm at all. You yearn to lay somewhere dark.
        This is it, you decide. It’s the only way. You sneak into the break room, acting casual about the concentric circles of sweat around your neck. You check your surroundings. No one’s watching, so you open the fridge.
        Dave’s Mean Bean Java Monster + Energy is gone. In its place, a sticky note: “You really thought you’d get this after 13 years?”
        That asshole. You ask Siri whether Monster even existed 13 years ago. It did, but the Mean Bean Java version didn’t. Dave must be trolling. You search the room for cameras. None in the coffee-maker, none in the water-heater. Digging through cabinets, you notice your fingers lengthening. The flaps between them seem looser too. You run hot water over them in the sink. It feels good. You want more. Hotter. More. You want to roast. The sweat pools at your feet. Your shirt is a mess of oil and slime. You tear it off. Ahh, better. Freer. But the caffeine, you still need it. You load the Keurig, punching a hole in the pod with your claw.
        You down your quarry in a scalding cup and race back to your desk, hunched and beaming, ready to work. Your reptilian claws are awkward on the keyboard, like knives chopping coffee beans, but it doesn’t matter. You grind the data into a fine, siftable powder.
        When, grunting and panting, you hit send, the whole office is staring. You rush past them and out the door, your wet hair smelling of java and trailing behind you like red algae. You claws are too clumsy to grip keys, so you forego your car and sprint—on four magnificent limbs—to the Monster factory outside town, where at last you can climb into a cool vat of coffee + energy and soak your weary bones.
        You’re a Mean Bean Java Monster, and you can’t be stopped.

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