Splatter Plot

These fuzzy gray-twilled walls are cramping my style. I clank my coffee mug down on one of the many brown-stained rings swirling on my desk and glare at my colleague. We’re sitting in my 10×10 office cell and he’s going on about how visualization software lacks statistical algorithms.

“Just give me the data,” he exclaims around a mouthful of Cheetos. “I’ll R it up and prettify it for ya…”

Really, prettified data just doesn’t do it for me. The visualization I’m entertaining involves him lurching across the desk as pus drops from the bloody crater that was his nose. The gore lands in my mug with a plop, his fingers an inch from my throat. I dodge his grasp and lock his arm. With a nimble twist, his forearm breaks. A squall bursts from his shriveled lips. I angle the protruding bone into his chomping jaws. He sinks his teeth into the petrified flesh. I have a moment to wonder, “Does working with zombies mean I get to bring my M4 to the office?”

He spits out his arm. “Arghh,” he bellows. “Just for that, we’re gonna graph the correlation between your various blood sprays on a splatter plot.” Flies crawl over his unblinking yellowed eyes.

“You look a little under the weather today. You catch something?”

“About to, beeyatch,” he gurgles and dives over the desk. Or tries to. His feet tangle up in the vicera evacuating the gaping maw where his gut had rotted out. He falls back in his chair.

“You’ve got a little something right here.” I point in the vicinity of my right incisor.

He stabs a jagged nail in his snaggletoothed grill and dislodges a hunk of skin. I use the distraction to slip my letter opener from the drawer. Then I imagine a scatter plot trendline between us and spin the letter opener along that line. It whistles across the desk and pierces his fly-encrusted eye. Boom goes the dynamite.

His orange-fingered hands slam down on the desk in a confetti of Cheetos powder. “Dammit, Godwin. You’re zoned out on zombies again.”

 I flutter my lashes. The letter opener twirls between my fingers. “Just fantasizing about splatt…er…scatter plots.”