A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre: Halloween Is Going to Be Jealous

SEEING RED

by Chris Lewis Carter

Our company picnic is almost over when my boss climbs the makeshift stage built alongside a wall of cresting sand dunes. He wrenches the microphone free from its stand, causing a whine of feedback that jolts the crowd to attention.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen! How is everybody feeling today?”

I finish the last bite of my hot dog, then wipe my ketchup-stained hands down the front of my yellow SunVerge t-shirt. Standing next to me, the blonde HR rep with a huge rack wrinkles her nose in disgust, so I wink and use the leftover ketchup on my fingers to smear a heart across my chest. She rolls her eyes and marches off, as the enthusiastic voice of my boss once again sweeps the beach.

“On behalf of myself, Kenneth Morgan, and the entire SunVerge family, it’s great to—”

More feedback squeals from the mic, and our resident tech geek scrambles to a nearby amplifier and fiddles with the knobs.

“Testing, testing? Okay, I think that’s better,” Kenneth says, now at a more reasonable volume. “As I was saying, it’s great to see everyone here at our annual employee appreciation day. Before we go any further, I’d like to personally thank some people who have gone above and beyond to make this event run smoothly.”

Kenneth points at the tech geek, a scrawny kid with a wispy chin beard and horn-rimmed glasses. Office gossip is that he’s almost thirty, but he barely looks old enough to be out of high school. “First, to Philip Barnes, for helping out with our sound system. Don’t worry, he’ll mute me if I say anything too embarrassing.” He pauses for a laugh that never comes, then adds, “Come on, let’s hear it for Phil.”

A few people feign a polite clap, but most decide that it’s not worth the effort of putting down their drinks. Philip waves for a few awkward seconds, then becomes interested in checking the extension cord at his feet.

“Second, to the lovely Miss Christine Dawson for organizing our games and activities. Where are you hiding, Christine?”

Across the beach, the blonde climbs on top of a picnic table and performs a sort of wiggling curtsy that sends most of the guys into a round of hooting applause. With her SunVerge shirt knotted just below her chest to expose her tanned midriff, and hot-pink bikini bottoms riding high, it isn’t hard to imagine how “Christmas Party” Christine earned her nickname.

Someone wolf whistles as she bends over to pick up her drink, which draws a few laughs from the crowd.

“Hey now, I’d know that sound anywhere,” Kenneth says, motioning towards a row of barbeques. “Tommy Hayes, you old hound dog. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about those fantastic burgers of yours.”

“It’s all in the seasoning, boss,” he calls back, stepping out from behind the grill to show off his greasy apron, which drapes over his thick slab of a gut and stops just above the knees of his cargo shorts. He waves at Christine, then makes a big show of gesturing at the words, “Kiss The Cook,” embroidered on his apron’s front.

Kenneth scans the crowd until he notices me standing by the ice chests, then shoots me a quick thumbs up. I return the gesture, but it takes most of my self-restraint not to flip him off instead.

In his mind, we’re still every bit the colleagues we were before last month’s performance evaluation. He thinks I’m still clueless as to why I didn’t get that promotion.

What a jackass.

“On a more serious note, I’d just like to say how grateful I am to have spent another year with this organization. This job means the world to me, it really does.” He lowers the mic and teethes on his knuckle, then puffs out an exaggerated breath. “Anyway, I know there’s been a lot of tension around the office lately, and the economy has been slower to rebound than we’d all like, but I promise to keep fighting for each and every one of you. Whatever it takes, we’ll get through it together.”

He locks eyes with me again, so I smile and clap like he’s the Second Coming in flowered swim trunks.

Pulling this off was even easier than I’d thought.

“Which is why I’d like to extend an extra special thanks to our lead programmer, Simon Gaines, for approaching me with his idea for a team-building exercise that we’re all about to take part in.”

Honestly, the people of Venezuela deserve most of the credit. They’ve been doing it for over sixty years. I just introduced the concept to middle-management.

Kenneth pauses for what I can only assume is dramatic effect, then says, “Have any of you heard of La Tomatina?”

A dull murmur ripples throughout the crowd.

“It’s a holiday they have in Spain,” he says. “Every year, on the last Wednesday in August, thousands of people visit the town of Bunol to take part in an hour-long tomato fight. Well, guess what? We’re about to have one of our own.”

The murmur swells to a nervous chatter. If I wasn’t the guy who sold Kenneth a line about this being a great way for the staff to “vent their aggressions,” and “have a unique, cultural experience,” maybe I’d be confused too.

“It might sound strange at first but it’s going to be great, I promise.” Down the beach, a few of the workers pull back a large blue tarp, revealing hundreds of plastic bags leaking red pulp.

People crane their necks to get a good look, muttering things like, “ridiculous,” and, “waste of food,” which is fine by me. Making Kenneth look insane for green-lighting this idea is a nice bonus.

“Before anyone asks, these tomatoes were overripe to begin with,” he says. “And they’ve been crushed, so nobody can throw anything dangerous.”

Well, nobody is a strong word.

“Everyone will get their own bag of tomatoes and then we’re going to have a ten minute free-for-all. Come on, meet me by the pile. Let’s get this ball rolling!”

Kenneth leaves the stage to a half-hearted round of applause, then immediately becomes surrounded by a hoard of unsettled employees. For a moment, I almost feel bad for the guy. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s just endorsed.

Then I remind myself how he screwed me out of a ten percent pay increase and three more vacation days a year.

Which is why I came prepared.

NO ONE KNOWS WHAT inspired the first Tomatina back in the mid-1940’s, but the most popular theory involves a mob of disgruntled residents attacking an elected official with tomatoes. These days, tens of thousands flock to Bunol every year for the event, and they’ll pelt each other with over one hundred metric tons of overripe tomatoes in sixty minutes.

But over here, hundreds of SunVerge employees crowd around a mountain of sticky plastic bags, each person removing one from the pile with all the enthusiasm of handling roadkill.

While they distribute the ammo, I’m out of sight, crouched inside a sand dune crater, unearthing the bag I’d planted there earlier this morning. When it’s finally exhumed, I sneak a quick peek at its contents.

Three large beefsteak tomatoes.

Stuffed with rocks.

Am I being petty? Sure, but it’s the perfect crime. Kenneth Morgan is going to have one of these babies punch a hole in that cheesy grin of his. While the chaos is in full swing, nobody will be able to trace a loaded tomato back to me, and it’s not as if they’ll be able to dust the skin for prints. He gets a few cracked teeth or a bloody nose, and I get some anonymous revenge for screwing me out of a pay grade.

How’s that for thinking outside the box?

I drop the tomatoes in my pockets and head down to join the group. Someone who I vaguely recognize from accounting hands me a bag dripping with red juice, and I quickly add my secret payload. Their size and shape should make them easy to find when I need to use one.

When everyone has a supply of squashed fruit, Kenneth jogs back to the microphone with his own bag of tomatoes in hand. “All right, I think we’re good,” he says. “In a few hours, the tide will wipe this beach clean, but the memories will last us a lifetime. And remember, our Tomatina is going to last for ten minutes.”

He lifts the stopwatch dangling around his neck and taps a few buttons. “Ready? Set? Go!”

I lob a handful of mashed pulp into the crowd, setting off a chain reaction of fleshy tomatoes that sail through the air like a volley of arrows before splattering across the employees. The juice leaves its mark upon impact, dyeing scores of yellow SunVerge t-shirts with bright red wounds, trickling down shocked faces and staining patches of sand.

Within seconds, the entire group is caught up in the hysteria. They’re spreading out across the beach, screaming, tossing food like an out-of-control children’s party. Some of them are taking cover behind picnic tables and overturned beach chairs. Others are firing wildly at whoever happens to be close by.

But most of them are no different from me. They’re out to settle office grudges, one tomato at a time.

People are teaming up, signing unspoken contracts to single out mutually despised co-workers. That guy who always drinks the last cup of coffee but never puts on a fresh pot, he’s getting pummelled from at least four different angles. Little Miss Always Steals Your New Pen, she’s drenched in red slop.

Deep down, most of us would take retribution for the simplest things. All we need is the right opportunity.

I weave throughout the fray in search of Kenneth, flinging the occasional tomato to keep from standing out. It probably doesn’t matter at this point, though. Nobody is concerned about what I’m doing. They’re all too busy enjoying their little slice of warfare.

That’s when I notice Philip, the tech geek, standing by himself near the tide line, with one hand cupped above his brow to block out the glare. He’s looking at something, or someone, so intently that he doesn’t notice me duck behind a trash barrel to get a better view of the object in his other hand. It’s a fresh beefsteak tomato, like the three I have stashed in my bag, but it’s bulging with tiny pinpoints of silver that gleam against the sunlight.

A rush of panic tenses my muscles. Philip is carrying loaded tomatoes too. How did he find out about La Tomatina before today? Has he been spying on me, digging through my work computer’s internet history?

From behind me, a tomato flies overhead, severing me from my thoughts. It hits Philip directly in the face with an explosion of pulp, and he staggers back a few steps towards the water.

He scowls and removes his glasses, searching for a yellow patch of shirt to wipe them clean. As he holds them up to inspect his work, another tomato soars through the air and strikes him right between the eyes.

Philip screams and clutches his face as a deep red liquid trickles out from between his fingers. He lowers his trembling hands and screams again, only now I understand why. His face is a mixture of blood, tomato juice, and thin shards of metal that look like broken razor blades. Some of the larger pieces have punctured his eyelids, and now Philip’s every blink drives them deeper inside his eyes, slicing through layer after layer of sensitive tissue until his irises turn to gobs of blue jelly.

I whirl around and search for his attacker, but it could be anybody. Hundreds of people are running back and forth, firing chunks of red, drowning out his cries with their own excited cheers.

Philip staggers toward the crowd, waving his arms and shouting for help, but that just makes him an easier target, and I watch him get pelted mercilessly before he disappears. Inside our ten minutes of company-sanctioned pandemonium, his blood is no different than their tomato juice. No one is going to notice until this is over.

A tomato thumps against the trash barrel, and I dive towards the sand like a soldier in a foxhole. The person responsible fires another one that lands nearby, and I look up to see my boss, no more than twenty feet away, covered in pulp and laughing hysterically. He throws one more that pegs me in the shoulder, then vanishes back into the swarm.

“Son of a bitch,” I mutter, scrambling to my feet and across the beach in pursuit. I try to single him out of the crowd, but it’s impossible. We’re no more than three minutes into La Tomatina and already everyone looks the same. Red-drenched shirts and shorts. Faces caked with red gore.

Life, dyed red.

After taking a few more hits, I distance myself from the mob and make my way towards the stage, taking shelter beside a stack of ice chests. Kenneth will have to pass alongside me in order to call off the game, and that’s when I’ll strike.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel terrible for Philip, but I’m not stupid. Getting involved could mean shooting to the top of some lunatic’s hit-list, which is exactly what I don’t need. Whoever Philip managed to piss off that bad is his problem now, not mine.

Besides, I’ve got my own payback to focus on.

It isn’t long before someone else is headed this way, but even though he’s stained like the rest, I can tell it isn’t Kenneth. This person is at least twice his size, with a sagging gut that’s slapping rhythmically against his cargo shorts.

It’s Tommy Hayes, our chef extraordinaire, and he’s pawing at his throat, wheezing, struggling to breathe, as a deeper shade of red oozes down his SunVerge shirt. He staggers toward the row of barbeques no more than fifty feet away, pulling whole beefsteak tomatoes from his bag and scattering them on the sand like landmines.

He manages to drop over a dozen of them before he trips over a folding chair and stumbles headlong into a massive drum-grill. His hand hooks the lid and yanks it forward, sending an avalanche of glowing charcoal onto the ground. He claws at the air for a moment, then collapses on top of the pile, howling as the briquettes hiss against his exposed skin.

Tommy rolls onto his back and thrashes wildly, accidentally kicking the stand of the next grill in line. It lurches forward and the lid flies back, pouring another landslide of charcoal onto his massive gut. A cloud of smoke and white ash envelops his body, turning his cries for help into a breathless gasp. He’s being cooked alive on both sides, only this time he doesn’t have the energy to get away. When the ash finally settles, the air is sizzling with the sound of burning fat.

I leap out from behind the ice chests and race for Tommy, but he isn’t moving, and I can already smell the sickening tang of charred flesh. The heat has peeled away most of his clothes, exposing patches of swollen, purple-red skin, that glisten in the afternoon sun.

I take a moment to suppress my gag reflex, and that’s when I notice the huge gash across Tommy’s throat and the shards of glass that are still lodged inside. Blood bubbles down his neck and pools along his shoulder until it glides away in silent streams of red, occasionally fizzing against a stray briquette.

This whole thing has gone from dangerous to completely fucked, and I regret ever mentioning that it existed. Spain has managed to pull off this event for over sixty years without incident, and SunVerge has chalked up at least one casualty in about five minutes.

When our investors told us to innovate on established concepts, this probably isn’t what they had in mind.

I’m about to make a break for my car when I see someone else approaching, her huge rack bouncing in time with each step. Tomato juice or not, I’d know that body regardless of what it was covered in.

It’s “Christmas Party” Christine, and she’s headed straight for Tommy’s body, running faster than I can process the potential danger of the tomatoes he’d scattered only seconds earlier.

“Wait, stop!” I shout, but it’s too late. Christine, barefoot and unaware, stomps down on one of the beefsteak tomatoes. A patch of sewing needles sprout through the top of her foot, squirting blood in all directions.

“Fuck!” she shrieks, raising her foot off the ground to inspect the wound. “My fucking foot! What did you do!”

“It was Tommy,” I say, motioning in his general direction. “He dropped them all just before—” Once again, I stifle the urge to vomit. The smell of scorched meat is stronger than ever. “Just try not to move, okay? You’ll drive them in further.”

Christine hops to maintain her balance, careful not to land on another whole tomato. “Well, did he say anything to you?” she asks through gritted teeth. “Like who did this to him?”

“No, nothing,” I say, taking a step back. “He just ran up here and collapsed.”

“Well, I’m sorry you had to see him like this,” she says, slowly reaching into her bag. “Poor Tommy. If only he could have kept his mouth shut.”

I catch a glimmer of reflected glass from the tomato in her hand, and my instinct takes over. In one swift motion, I reach inside my bag, grab one of the rock-filled tomatoes, and hurl it toward Christine’s head. It catches her in the jaw and sends her crashing to the ground, where she sprawls across no less than a half-dozen loaded tomatoes. She screams and flops onto her stomach, clawing desperately at the patches of needles that have sank deep inside her leg, her ass, her shoulder. After a few moments of useless flailing, Christine props herself up on both knees and clutches at her throat, retching and heaving until she coughs up a gob of blood onto the sand. She studies it for a moment, then reaches down and lifts a pile of red-soaked needles out of the splatter. It’s only now that I realize there’s a tomato skin pinned to the side of her neck, held in place by hundreds of tiny pinpoints.

Christine turns toward me and attempts to speak, but her voice is little more than a wet gargle. She holds up the pile of needles between her fingers, waving them at me as blood pours out of her mouth and down her chest, dyeing a path through the chunks of tomato still clinging to her skin. She coughs once more before her body slumps to the side and goes limp. Her eyes flutter for the briefest of moments, then close permanently.

I drop my bag and stare at the two dead bodies sprawled across the sand, covered in blood and tomato juice. Down the beach, people are still laughing and screaming, red shapes dancing in a sea of carnage.

Are there any more co-worker-stalking psychos out there? How many others are injured—or worse—and being overlooked by people like me? I look towards the stage, at the microphone stand positioned near the center. I can put a stop to this, call off the fight a few minutes early, before it gets any worse.

Heart pounding in my ears, I bolt for the stage and reach the bottom stair when I hear a voice call, “Simon, is that you?” I swivel around to see Kenneth’s stained head peering over the lip of a sand dune wall. “The microphone doesn’t work, I’ve tried,” he says, motioning me towards the embankment. “They’ll run out of tomatoes eventually. Get up here, we can wait this out together.”

I run towards the dune, using whatever momentum I can manage to propel myself up the side. Kenneth grabs my hand, hauling me over the top and into the crater, where I collapse onto my back and gulp for air.

We both sit in silence, listening to the distant sounds of La Tomatina. “Is everything okay?” Kenneth says, after I’ve managed to catch my breath. “You seem pretty upset. Not enjoying the game anymore?”

I freeze, then realize he probably didn’t see what just happened from his position up here. This is my chance to get out clean.

“No, sir. Some of the other employees are throwing more than just tomatoes. I think some people are getting hurt.”

Kenneth raises an eyebrow. “That’s a major accusation, Simon.” “It’s the truth, honest,” I say. “Philip Barnes, Tommy Hayes, Christine Dawson. All three of them are out for blood, and who knows how many other people are in on it.”

“Those three? I should have guessed,” Kenneth says. “They’ve been a powder keg ever since Philip caught Christine and Tommy fooling around at last year’s Christmas party.”

His frankness catches me off guard. “Really? I didn’t know that.”

“Not many people do,” he says, sliding over beside me. “I met with them a few months back. We all agreed that as long as the matter was kept secret, they were allowed to keep working for SunVerge. Not to mention, I would have three permanent members of the event planning committee.”

I force a smile, then lean back and rest my head against the sandy bank. Up here, it feels like the insanity on the beach is a million miles away.

“So how do you think they found out about La Tomatina?” I say, staring off into the bright blue sky. “Wasn’t it supposed to be a surprise?”

“Oh, that’s easy. They knew because I told them,” he says, reaching into his bag. “After all, I’m going to need a good alibi.”

As I’m about to speak, Kenneth grabs a golf ball-sized tomato and forces it inside my mouth, then clamps his arms around my head, covering my nose and holding my jaw shut.

“Did you honestly think I didn’t know you were up to something?” he whispers, tightening his grip. “I saw what you just did to Christine. Was that tomato meant for me, by chance?”

I swing my fists wildly but I’m beginning to feel lightheaded. Flecks of light dance in front of my eyes.

“Although I have to admit, you’re a pretty smart guy. It’s no wonder why they’re looking at you to be my replacement. Talking with corporate behind my back, warning them I’d give you a poor review if I felt that my position was being threatened. Well, guess what? You nailed it, and now they want me out of here.”

My lungs scream for air, so I bite down on the tomato and start to chew. At once, hundreds of tiny glass fragments fill my mouth, and it feels like a rusty box grater is being dragged across my gums. Some of the fragments burrow through the insides of my cheeks, while others slice through the lingual vein underneath my tongue. Citric acid floods the cuts, stinging so bad that I scream through my closed mouth, but that only sends more of the glass fragments and acid tumbling down my throat, ripping and burning as they go.

“This job means everything to me, Simon. I wasn’t just pandering in my speech. And if I can’t have it, they sure as hell won’t be giving it to you.”

I’m about to pass out when the stopwatch around Kenneth’s neck begins to beep. He tosses me to the ground where I try to spit up some of the blood and glass clogging my windpipe, but it’s no use. My insides are tearing to shreds, and each breath feels like I’m swallowing hot coals.

“Ten minutes already. I guess La Tomatina is officially over,” he says. “Again, thanks so much for the great idea, Simon. We’ll have to do this again next year. Well, the rest of us, anyway.”

He disappears down the side of the dune, leaving me to gasp for air that never comes. That’s when I slump over, landing face first into a patch of red sand.

And all I can taste is tomato.