MESSED UP - completed!

1- Humping Monkey

1 Humping Monkey

The lights in the conference room are off, so we all can see the big screen in front of us. My animator coworkers are sitting at the table and watching the video we created in the past few weeks.

I'm standing by Smith, our boss, as he silently and carefully watches. A cold sweat sits on my back, and I breathe too slowly not to disturb anyone. The screen goes black, and the video which was playing ends. Someone turns the lights on. Tilting my head, I see Smith's hand playing with a pen on the table.

"Take a seat, Mia," he instructs, and I pull an unsafely quivery chair and sit on it. As I try to balance myself not to fall from the chair, Smith speaks. "Not that bad," he says, and everyone sighs in relief. "I don't want any mistakes like this in our company again." His British accent somehow makes him more serious. "You understand that if you hadn't finished this video by today... I don't know what I would do to animators."

I nod in agreement. "It won't happen again."

"There will be no next time." He puts his hand on the table. "You will be fired. Is that understood?"

"I—"

Before I can form a sentence, the quivering chair breaks, and I almost fall to the floor. "I'm okay!" I say as I try to get back on my feet. My coworker grabs my arm and lifts me. I dust off my clothes and look at Smith again. "Sorry. Go on."

"Are you okay?" Smith asks, and I nod.

"I'm fine."

"Alright. I hope you take this warning seriously."

"I wish you would warn Sebastian, too," I mumble.

"Excuse me?!"

The atmosphere of the room tenses up again. Everyone holds their breaths.

Putting the strand of my hair behind my ears, "I was talking to myself," I say, and he narrows his eyes. "I don't care when anyone shows up. I mean, who cares, right?" I can't believe no one is stopping me. Everyone's awkwardly watching me ramble. "Look at your bloody faces," I say, this time with a British accent, and my teeth tighten. Why did I have to do this? "Cheer up, mates," I add with the same accent that sounds more Australian than British.

Smith grabs the flash drive from the laptop on the table and leaves with his assistant. The tension is still here, although he probably has arrived in his room already.

One of my colleagues breaks the silence, chewing gum in her mouth. "Did you just say 'cheer up, mates'? With an Australian accent?"

I let out the breath I was holding. "Bite me."

She shrugs. "I'm not the one you're mad at."

"You know what?" I move the broken chair in my way to face all my colleagues. "I worked a couple of weeks on an animation of a monkey humping everything, which was disgusting, and I got five hours of sleep in total. So excuse me if I'm mad at Sebastian for not showing up at work!"

"A lil' bitter today, huh?" a soft voice says.

I turn and smile when I see my friend, Isla, who works here but not in our department. She works in the filming section.

She offers me the box of cupcakes she is holding.

"Ugh, I am so sleep-deprived," I whine. "I'm gonna punch someone, like, really bad on a private part."

"No punching, Mia," Isla warns me. "I thought you were over that rage."

"People test me."

"Smith again?" she asks, and I nod as I grab a cupcake from the box. "What was he talking about all this time with you guys?"