"Breakfast" The thing at the desk mutters.
"pardon?"
I don't know where it came from, I do know however that 3 seconds ago, it wasn't sitting at the desk next to me like it was now.

"Breakfast" it repeats again, this time, more emphatically and swiveling its shaggy head in my direction to regard me with two bloodshot and crusted eyes.

I can't remember seeing it (or even anything like it) before.
Buried in a mass of jumpers and clothing, its hair dread locked and matted, face covered by a beard that hasn't been trimmed in far, far too long. It doesn't smell, it just looks...shaggy and unkempt.
Then, from somewhere beneath the layers, a hand emerges, clutching a shining soup spoon. "Breakfast!" this time waving the spoon about.


I look down at my cereal, Some sort of berry concoction that's supposed to lower my cholesterol, make me more regular and possibly do something amazing like wash my car as well.
Whatever else it does, amazing or not, it completely fails to resemble any berry that I've encountered in my life.
"You want some of this?" I ask, gesturing to the bowl.
I thought it best not to antagonise the thing, who knows what could be hiding under all that hair (and clothing)?
"Breakfast" The spoon is waved in what I can only assume is an affirmative gesture.
"Well... I'm sort of done now, you can have the rest" I say pushing the bowl across the desk towards it.

Watching the thing eat is like listening to a threshing machine. A threshing machine in a swamp filled with frogs.
All noise, chaos, terrible slurping and then, towards the end, the sort of sounds you'd expect from a drain in an abattoir. Gruesome and yet somehow too intriguing to look away from, and yet, astoundingly, not a drop was spilled.
It ends with a satisfying burp, shortly after the thing raises the bowl to its mouth and drinks (or slurps) the last of the milk in the bottom.

"Breakfast" it says again, this time in a satisfied tone of voice and then, "Thank you."

"...You're welcome" I reply, wondering if its going to put on a headset and start answering calls. For a moment I have an image of a confused radiologist on the other end of the line shaking his head, as all he gets in answer to his self important queries is "Breakfast!" repeated down the line a few dozen times.
Instead, I watch in silence as the thing licks the spoon clean with a tongue that looks like its been pierced with an old paperclip and with great care, wipe it dry on a sleeve, then place it back from where ever it came from, somewhere deep within the layers.

"Later" it mutters quietly and then pushes the chair backward and climbs back under the desk slowly, making the sort of noises that my father makes when he's getting in or out of his chair on a cold day.
From beneath the desk I hear a rustling as if it's making itself comfortable in some sort of nest, and then, a quiet snore which goes on for a little too long, tapering off into a sort of ...wheeze, and then nothing.
I resist the urge to look under the desk in case I see something Im not going to forget in a hurry.
No one else in the office seems to have noticed it. They're all busy taking calls, being efficient.

Idly, as I stand and go to the kitchen, bowl in hand, I wonder if the Office Beast likes toast...