The Break Room

8 PM Tuesday. The last member joins the small circle.

“Who’d like to share?”

“I’ll go. My name is Hammy, and I’m an abandoned work lunch.”

A chorus of, “Hi, Hammy!”

“She brought me in three days B.C.” The group members nod. Before Covid.

“There were three of us.”

Hammy chokes up.

“We were all in a bag together. She’d always bring three lunches and get takeout the other two days.”

Tears are running freely now. His jacket, fancy King’s Hawaiian once but now months past its prime, gets soggy around the collar. Another group member gently pats his shoulder.

“I was looking forward to getting eaten that day. It was my DESTINY!”

He dissolves. Literally. Nothing left but a small mound of moldy ham, near-liquified brown lettuce, and a sodden mess of breadcrumbs.

The meeting is over.

The group members bury him in the southwest corner of the deli drawer surrounded by the others who’ve succumbed. A couple of petrified french fries out of an old doggy bag mark his grave.

A year after lockdown sealed everybody’s fate, the deli drawer morgue is nearly full. A bento box, its neat cubes now tombs for dried-out rice, lifeless teriyaki, and desiccated veggies, stands sentinel at the entry.

The three survivors, who retreat to their lonely homes in the butter keeper and crispers, are the lucky ones. Zipped into a padded lunchbag, clicked shut in a cheerful lunch box, or cozy in a soup thermos, they’ve outlived their cursed peers. Anyone tossed haphazardly in a grocery sack or saved in a paper take-out box started dropping dead mere weeks after the lockdown.

There’s a whole other community in the freezer who’ve survived the apocalypse, but they won’t make it anyway. Fridge or freezer, they’re all dead lunch walking.

The first human to open the fridge and smell the decay will clutch their nose, slam the door, and call Facilities. They’ll seal the doors with duct tape, wrap the fridge in crime scene tape, and cart it off to the dumpster. A pristine new fridge will get delivered, but staff, who now come in just once or twice a week if at all, won’t use it except to refill water bottles.

Forlorn in their bunkers, the survivors dream of better days.