Finished

[dungrollin]

The cataloguing office was quiet. The muted chatter of mouse-clicks 
played a delicate (though rather avant-garde) duet with the crickets 
outside. Occasionally someone would snort, and mutter "Reject..."

One of the new members of staff had barricaded herself into a dark 
corner. Arranged along the edges of her desk and piled several feet 
high, was a collection of cages, populated by an assortment of small 
creeping things. A lone imp sat mournfully in a tank on the corner, 
munching half-heartedly on a moth.

The new woman stood up and yawned and stretched. She had something 
indescribably unpleasant under her fingernails, which no amount of 
scrubbing would dislodge, and she gave off an aroma faintly 
reminiscent of silage, almost (but not quite) masked by the scent of 
ashtray. "Crikey, is that the time?" 

She turned back to her desk, swept up the remnants of the cockroach 
clusters she'd been dissecting, and threw them into the Imp's
tank. Then scribbled "Mostly Blaberus discoidalis" on a scrap of 
paper for future reference. Clutching a water and bubblebath damaged 
paperback that she had been attempting to iron back into shape, she 
stumbled over to Miss Havisham's desk, where she scrawled the
words "Finished; corrections/more please, Dung." on the back of 
something she hoped wasn't important. Miss would find it in the 
morning.

She gazed around blearily at the assorted weaponry in the office,
hoping that she'd soon have mastered enough of the basics to
upgrade her toothpick to something a little more dramatic. It was 
far too slow and inefficient. 

With a tuberculitic-sounding cough, she began to roll yet another 
cigarette, and walk slowly to the door. Pausing briefly, to admire 
the FEATHERBOAS on the hat stand and wish you didn't have to
prove yourself in combat to get one, she ambled out and headed for 
home.

Seconds later, the door swung open again, and she re-entered, to 
say "By the way, thanks for the reassurance on the subject of bias,  
I'm glad it's not just me," to the office at large.  Before staring 
into space for a moment, remembering that she was meant to be going 
home, patting her pockets in search of a lighter, and finally making 
it out of the door.