One day Monster came into work and his boss asked to see him right away. Monster had never been in trouble before. He was a bit worried. He tried to not listen to his heart pounding loudly in his scaly chest when he asked:
"What is it, sir?"
"Well, Monster, I'm sorry but we've been getting some complaints from the Quality Control department about your latest batch of bad dreams."
"Oh, no, I'm sorry, sir. What is the problem?" asked Monster, very concerned. He took great pride in his work. As a matter of fact, he lived for his job. It was the only thing that he did besides go to the library on Saturdays and the occasional volunteer shift at the Recycling Center smashing aluminum cans. Monster had always performed his job with great dedication and passion. Now, he felt like a screw-up. What had gone wrong? He could feel the sweat on his brow forming. Luckily, he had a pocket handkerchief.
"Please sit." said the Boss Monster. He looked wearily at a stack of print-outs on his desk while Monster sat down in an armchair and mopped his horns. "Well, there's a couple problems here on last night's release. It looks like QC felt it just wasn't bad enough. Let me see, the error report says that there was one with pink shoes and... hm... a gerbil? Do you remember that one, Monster? Was that a mistake or am I just missing something really creative here?"
"Hmmm," said Monster, truthfully, "I don't remember that one." This made him sweat more profusely.
"What about the one with the singing toothbrush? Can you tell me how that is supposed to be a bad dream?"
"Oh dear, " said Monster, furrowing his scaled brow and shaking his head, "I don't remember that one either." He wrung out the handkerchief over the trash can in the corner. The salty liquid from it hit some mice who were hiding there, making them squeak in fright as the trash can started to fill up. They climbed on each other shoulders to escape to another drier trash can.
"That's strange." said the Boss monster. "You've always been one of our best designers. I don't understand what's going on. How are these dreams escaping out into the night without you knowing about them?"
Monster thought and thought. And then he believed he knew the answer to the strange situation.
"Maybe it's a software problem." said the Monster. They had just converted to an automated system after years of making up the dreams by hand. And there had been a major system upgrade that past week. "Should we check the file system?"
"Good idea." said the Boss "Let me call the networking guys and see if they can figure it out. Why don't you just take a break until we can get your system fixed?"
"Sure," said Monster. He was so relieved! That had to be the problem. It just had to be. But still. A singing toothbrush? How embarrassing! What if his co-workers found out about it? He would never be able to hold his tail up at their next department meeting. And these kinds of mistakes could really hurt his chance of promotion to Dream Team Leader.
Monster went back to his desk and crawled underneath it. He didn't realize he was so tired. What a bad day! And there would be no new bad dreams to look forward to until he got his system fixed. He curled up under his desk and soon he was snoozing fitfully.
He was not sure how much time had passed, but Monster could tell it was Later when his eyes opened by the way the light came in low through the boards nailed over the tiny window and lit up his rock collection that he kept on a shelf over his desk. His legs and arms were stiff and cramped under the desk. But he did not move right away because he heard an Unusual Voice and the sounds of his workstation being moved around, the monitor scraping the fake wood surface of his desk. Tiny particle pixies of dust glittered in the thinning light and sprinkled down the front of his desk as he heard the voice talking to itself.
"Hmmm, looks like the diagnostic indicators have malfunctioned..." said the voice.
What should he do? The network technician must be working on his system. It would be rather embarrassing if he crawled out from under his desk at this moment. Maybe it was best to keep hidden. The voice was just talking to itself. Or rather herself. And it was humming a little song which sounded a lot like a tune he remembered from the Shrek soundtrack album that his mother had given him for his birthday two years ago. He tried to stay very still. Monster was sure that the voice would be gone soon, his system would be fixed and then he could get back to work which is what he really wanted to do.
"Darn!" said the voice suddenly. A yellow-handled screwdriver hit the floor near the desk and rolled under it into the shadows of Monster's nose. What should he do now? He did what he did in most situations when he didn't know what to do. He held his breath and pretended that he wasn't really there.
A small pink hand reached down from the desktop, patting the floor and then, then, the little pink hand patted Monster. Of course the hand didn't know it was patting him. It was looking for the screwdriver in the darkness under the desk without bothering to use it's eyes. But the warm soft hand paused on his scaly hide gently patting him and Monster was filled with a funny feeling. It was something like drinking hot chocolate on a very cold day; he could feel a tingling delicious warm feeling filling him up. It was a feeling that he had never felt before. He felt paralyzed on the floor under his desk. He didn't want the hand to find the screwdriver, it felt so nice on his rough hide. Monster thought it felt like a flower petal that accidentally fell on his nose once in the springtime when he had been much younger. But just as he was thinking this, the hand stopped in it's tracks. It's fingers rested briefly on his shoulder and then felt one of his horns and then, quickly it was gone.
He tried to sit up a bit. A small furry upside-down face with big brown eyes met his. And then there was a loud long scream. It was an impressive ear-piercing scream that went like this:
"AYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
The scream made him put his fingers in his ears and made his eyes water, but even with his ears blocked he could still hear the sound of the scream fading and feel running footsteps shake the floor. And then there was silence.
Monster struggled to get out from under the desk, but he was kind of jammed. He panicked and got up too quickly which lifted the entire desk and the workstation and flipped them upside down into a splintery pile of plastic, glass and fake wood laminate plastic material on the floor of his office. It was a huge mess! He stumbled out of the wreckage to make his way to the corridor, but the person with the little pink hands, the big brown eyes and the screwdriver was gone. And his workstation was in very bad shape. Or rather it was in maybe a hundred little mixed up shapes.
He sighed a heavy sigh. It was a very big sad sigh. He took out his pocket handkerchief and dusted off his face. And then he went to the Boss Monster's office and said: "I think I need a new system."
And that is how Monster met Monkey.
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