I heard laughter. Laughter, in response to that dry, monotonous anecdote? I was aghast!

My eyes focused in on our interrupted speaker, the department VP, and I did a double-take. Turning, I scanned the individuals around me, staunch old faculty and dyed-in-the-wool buy-ins mostly, and those few young, abitious individuals who, like myself, were trying to get ahead by seeking out more face time with the boss, even when bored to tears; they weren’t bored right now. They were all looking, staring, at me, gaping like they had collectively swallowed a live codfish.

‘…that laugh wasn’t me…was it?!’

I hadn’t felt like laughing, hadn’t planned to react in any way but with an appropriate somber nod. I knew the gravity of this occasion, knew that VP Steve Erwin was trying to inspire and inform, not entertain. Nothing within me should have lead to this outcome—yet the echoed shrieks of joyful, unrestrained laughter still hung in the air!

I hurried to put on a contrite face, to apologize for my lack of restraint, my failure of decorum—only to feel my mouth twist upward into a huge, shit-eating grin!

‘What the hell is going on?!!’

All I was feeling was embarrassment and fear. The emotions I wanted to convey were chagrin and regret. Instead, my face chose happy, even proud and defiant?! I reached up to feel my mouth, nonplused at the unexplainable expression I felt there—my feelings and intentions be damned.

…then the peals of laughter started once again. And I couldn’t stop them.

‘?!?!?!??!??!!!’

I felt confusion, horror, fear—yet my face would show nothing but abject glee!

As I wreeled about, taking racking breaths between shrieks of seemingly hysterical joy, my gaze caught on a young man in the corner, a new hire whose name escaped me. Unlike the others around me, whose shocked looks were rapidly morphing into those of discomfort or, in the case of my manager, Harold, concern, he was staring with an oddly intense, evaluating gaze.

He was fiddling with something in his hands, invisible behind the person sitting before him, but never once looked down. His gaze, fixed on me, felt predatory, threatening in a way that even with almost ten year in this cutthroat business seemed novel—like a cat observing the mouse held between it’s unsheathed claws.

The laughter ramped up; my face was hurting from how much the smile muscles were straining; I just couldn’t get enough breath. Even as the blackness began to close in around my vision, the young man continued to hold my gaze with his own. Slowly, his mouth twisted into a smirk and he mouthed something at me, something I was too foggy minded to even attempt to get.

That predatory smile, teeth bared and shining, was the last thing I saw before the darkness overtook me.