John lurched to the office's coffee machine. His sagging eyelids snapped open when he caught sight of the freshly brewed pot. With Charlie gone, nobody should have been here early enough to start it yet.

"Mondays," John groaned as he grabbed a mug. It was too early in the morning for him to be concerned. Once he downed his daily caffeine fix, he shambled to his cubicle.

A deluge of emails greeted him. Some offered condolences, but most simply assigned him one menial task or another. With plenty of excuses to turn his brain off for the next few hours, John hunched in front of his computer and got to work.

He was pulled out of his spreadsheet-induced stupor by an email from none other than Charlie. "Good morning John," the email read. "Don't forget to send me your quarterly expenditures report. It was due last Friday. Regards, Charlie."

The hair on John's neck stood on end. Charlie's replacement must be using Charlie's email until he got his own and had forgotten to change the signature. And he must've shown up early to get the coffee pot going too since he wanted to make a good first impression on his subordinates. Yeah, that was it.

John sent off the report and returned to his spreadsheets. His eyes glazed over once more as he stared at the sea of cells.

"Hey," Maria hissed from the next cubicle over, "Did you get an email from Charlie too?"

"Yup," John muttered. "It's probably just the new guy. You know how long IT takes to do anything other than put us on hold."

"Yeah, but it's still creepy. Plus, I haven't seen John's replacement yet. You'd think he would have at least said hi to us by now."

John shrugged. "I'm just glad to have some peace and quiet."

Maria took the hint.

Before John could re-immerse himself in his work, his phone rang. "Good morning," he said, "This is John Clarkson from Lazarus Corp. How can I help you?"

"Hey John," said a hoarse, familiar voice. "Just checking to make sure my phone still works. Nobody's been answering my calls, so I thought I was losing it. See you later."

"See you," John croaked. The phone nearly fell from his sweaty hands as he hung up.

Getting an email from a dead person was one thing, but hearing Charlie's voice was something else.

"Maria," he whispered, "I think someone's trying to mess with us."

"Something's definitely up," she said. John heard her type something. "Emma and Dan got emails from him too."

"I'm going to get to the bottom of this."

John dragged himself out of his chair and over to Charlie's office. He knocked.

There was no response.

"Don't bother," Emma grumbled from her near permanent residence: the water cooler. "I tried an hour ago. Whoever's in there isn't coming out, and they've locked the door."

Dan snorted from across the hall. "I bet they'll come out for Meatloaf Monday. Charlie always did, and you know how much he hated leaving his office."

By lunchtime, a small mob had formed outside of Charlie's door. After a morning full of mysterious emails and post mortem phone calls, everyone looked paler than moonlight.

John knocked on the door again. "We're heading down for lunch," he said as his voice trembled. "You coming?"

Charlie stepped out of his office with a groan. "I'm actually not feeling hungry today, so I think I'll just stay here." As he stretched his stiff muscles, clods of dirt rained off his clothes. "Sorry for the mess. I had a rough commute."

Work Count: 591

This story is absolutely hilarious to me in hindsight. Yet another story from back when I was in college, I wrote this well before I had any kind of work experience, yet somehow I managed to capture what a workaholic I'd end up becoming!

Before anyone asks, this was not inspired by Steven Universe. I wrote this a while before the song with the same title came out, but the coincidence is definitely pretty amusing.