At 10:02 Monday morning, Morgan got up from their desk to bring a small plate, a knife, a fork, and two napkins—- all compostable—- to the office break room. They pretended to check their phone while waiting for Greg from IT to finish washing his dishes. 

“Hey! Morgan! How was your weekend?” He used his wet hand to brush back some of the wilder strands of his thin hair.

“Pretty good! How about you?”

“Not bad, not bad. Oh, you need to get by?” He sped through the last of his utensils.

“You’re good. Take your time.” Morgan opened a message they’d already read and lingered on it for a few extra seconds after he stepped away, demonstrating that there had been no hurry.

As he refreshed his cup of coffee, Greg noted, “Must be that time of day.”

“You know it.” Morgan opened the good snack cabinet, reached up, and stopped mid motion. 

There was the glass canister of jelly beans on the top left. There, the potato chips beside it. On the bottom left, where the mini packs of danishes once lived, stood three garish yellow jars of sunflower seed butter.

Morgan closed the door and moved to the sad snack cabinet above the microwave. Among the variety of flavorless off-brand cracker packs, there was not a danish to be found.

A quick sweep of the break room revealed tangerines on the table, a fridge full of other people’s lunches, and Greg with a dawning look of realization on his groomed-to-look-grizzled face.

“They took away your danishes,” he said.

Marketing Lead June stuck her head in. “The higher-ups wanted healthier snacks. It sucks.” Her dangling earrings clacked the metal doorframe.

Morgan laughed. Had Greg ever attended a funeral with Morgan, he might have recognized the laugh; he might have caught the undertones of confusion and shock. June had already left.

Greg asked, “How dare they?”

Morgan carried on the light-hearted tone. “It’s cruel, is what it is.”

“Heartless,” he agreed.

Morgan pocketed a tangerine and headed back to their desk, forgetting their compostable dishware. 

No more danishes, then. It had been a generous use of the term, really—- the two inch spiral pastries packaged with a plastic sleeve of thin icing were likely cinnamon rolls filled with jam, rebranded, and sold at a healthy markup. Morgan picked at the tangerine, their thumbnail too short to break its skin. 

Strawberry jam. Not so much as to ooze when you cut into it, but enough to catch your attention with each bite. A difficult balance.

Every Monday and Friday around 10 AM, with breakfast eaten and lunch still at a comfortable distance, Morgan would take one strawberry danish to their desk as a treat. They’d gently knead the icing packet to warm and loosen it up, then cut a precise hole in the corner and drizzle a fun pattern over the pastry. An elegant wave or a delicate crisscross. If it came out particularly charming, Morgan would snap a photo of their creation. They always reused the same fork and knife, kept in a clean compartment in their desk drawer.

Morgan snapped out of their chair to retrieve the forgotten utensils. When they reached the break room, they saw that someone had already cleared the counter. They couldn’t even be certain the dishware had been composted. They tapped their collarbone and tried to make sense of what they were supposed to do now.

Well, they thought, go back to work, obviously. Obviously. They returned to their desk the same as any reasonable person would do. As their eyes failed to focus on the spreadsheet that needed updating, Morgan reasoned in the manner of a reasonable person that one could get tripped up on something even so small after a rough week. A hard month. A stressful year. Years, yes, if one were honest.

Morgan was exceptionally honest. They tried their best every day, even when it seemed entirely possible the world might end in the next 24 to 72 hours, and they never let the ever present knowledge of that fact impact their attitude or performance. 

Was a danish so much to ask?

They could put in a request to bring the danishes back. Except they were already blinking away tears. Who in their right mind would cry over snacks? How could it hurt so much to think of asking for so little? Morgan heard footsteps behind them and, thinking fast, they grabbed a glass of water from their desk and pretended to choke on it.

“Yo Morg— Oh jeez, you ok?” A coworker they recognized but couldn’t name came up beside their desk.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Wrong pipe,” Morgan wheezed.

“Don’t die on me.”

“Trying,” they laughed.

“Is Hank in today?” Morgan shook their head. “Tomorrow?” Morgan nodded. “Cool. Thanks. You good?”

“So good.”

Chuckling, the mystery colleague went on their way. Morgan felt equal parts clever and pathetic. They dried their eyes and decided to clear their head with an inventory check. They would start with the basement supply closet.

Morgan pressed the button to call an elevator and wondered once more what could be done. Never love anything again, so as not to lose that love? Well, that might have been an overreaction, they had to admit. 

Elevator F dinged and slid open. Everything had been fine until this. Then again, clearly nothing was fine. Their mental health had apparently been held together by sugar and ritual alone.

Stepping inside, Morgan noticed a familiar smell. The doors closed. They removed their face mask and breathed in deep, an unmistakably sweet scent taking them by surprise. The elevator descended. The lights went out.

Morgan startled. “Weird. At least it’s still moving.”

“That’s what I love about you,” a tinny voice from the emergency call box further alarmed them. “Endlessly optimistic.” 

Morgan often spoke to themself when nervous, but they’d never received a reply before. The voice didn’t sound like any of the security guards. Not that Morgan knew each one so well; specifically, it didn’t sound human.

When this voice added, “You’re special, Morgan,” the elevator warmed. Human voices had many powers all their own, but beyond a purely poetic sense, they couldn’t change the temperature of a space.

“Who…?” Morgan whispered.

“I was loved once. My people tended to me, and I to them. I welcomed all.”

Though they still felt the slight pull of the car descending, Morgan hadn’t reached their destination. They put this out of their mind and tried to focus on the conversation. “Have you always lived in an elevator?”

“I am much older than elevators,” the voice answered with a flat, lukewarm air.

“How old?”

“We were born together. The infancy of your species was mine as well.”

“Not from here, then,” Morgan thought aloud. “Humans didn’t start anywhere near Cambridge.”

“I followed my followers, as was the demand of our mutual adoration. But they’re long gone now.”

Morgan sat in the corner of the elevator, their eyes sufficiently adjusted to the dark to distinguish the faint outlines of the emergency call box. It was nice not to be fighting back tears in front of their laptop. They rested their chin in their palm and asked, “Who were your people? Tell me about them.”

“I can’t remember much. When they forgot me, our ties were severed. But when I think about them, I project the joy of our time together outward and hope it can still reach them.”

“I have friends like that,” Morgan said.

“Maybe we could be friends.”

Here, Morgan felt afraid for the first time. “Why me?” They couldn’t work up the courage to ask, what happens if I say no?

“I saw the way you cherished your fake danishes. I want to be cherished like that. I want to cherish like that.” The elevator warmed again. “And you have the most remarkable fawn response I’ve ever seen. Most humans would be screaming or fainting in a situation such as this.”

“So I was right,” Morgan brushed past the last part. “Those weren’t real danishes?”

“No, no, my child. That dough has never known lamination.”

Morgan didn’t understand this, but they sensed it proved them right.

“I heard your heart,” the voice went on. “I will provide the sugar if you will provide the ritual.”

The lights flicked on. In the middle of the elevator floor, Morgan’s plate and utensils awaited them along with a perfectly iced faux danish.

“You want… to be worshipped? Do I have that right?”

“No, we were not as god and believer. We were partners.”

“And what ended our partnership?” In response to the reluctant silence that followed, Morgan ventured, “You haven’t said yet what you get out of this.”

“Yes,” the voice drew out with a refreshingly cool air, “it’s good and right for you to ask. But this has been the subject of much misunderstanding. My kind, we can feed on and draw power from a particular kind of energy that humans are especially good at producing. Unfortunately, the vast majority of humans experience the energy as negative.”

“You’re not,” Morgan said, that same laugh from before bubbling out of them.

“Ah. You are familiar with this trait.”

“You are.” In a stunned whisper, they said, “You’re a demon.”

“That word has some inaccurate and unhelpful connotations to it. While it is true that I feed on suffering, I would never seek to cause it. We only reap. We don’t sow. Why should we? With nothing but respect, the idea of causing pain for humans is akin to bringing water to the ocean. I don’t mean to be offensive.”

“No, no, that is a pretty fair point. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around all this. What about possessions? You don’t possess people, do you?”

“Another misunderstanding, I’m afraid. Sometimes we take a little too much— (an honest mistake—), and as it turns out, certain humans base their entire moral framework on how they feel, such that losing the capacity to experience negative emotions results in, well, disaster. I can assure you I myself have never had that happen. I’m very careful.”

Morgan curled their toes in their shoes, distracted themself with the sensation. “So you just want some livestock,” they joked, unable to keep the disappointment entirely out of their voice.

“Not at all. I want connection. I want to strive to be worthy of whatever you will share with me, and to find worthiness in sharing with you.” The fake danish lit up with a soft, comforting glow.

“You know, I could buy these at the grocery store.”

“But that was never the point, was it?”

They sighed. Their throat knotted as they answered, “No.”

“What’s wrong, kindhearted Morgan? Tell me about it.”

“I want…” They tried to breathe their way out of crying, but it was no use. “I want just one good thing to stay.”

“You are a good thing,” the voice assured them, “and you will always be with you. Now I’m here, too.”

Morgan drew their knees in with one arm and dried their face with the other, fresh tears ruining the effort.

“Take your time.” The lights went out again. “When you’re ready, we can talk.”

* * *

At 10:05 o’clock Friday morning, Morgan got up from their desk to bring a small plate, a knife, a fork, and two napkins- all compostable- to the last door on the right in the elevator lobby. As they waited for elevator F to arrive, Greg stepped out of elevator D.

“Good morning, Morgan!”

“Morning,” they sang.

Greg nodded at their plate. “I see what time it is. You know something I don’t about the danish situation?”

“I might have a secret stash,” Morgan admitted.

“I knew it. Hey, your secret’s safe with me.”

With a sweet smile Morgan didn’t notice themself forming, they said, “Maybe I’ll even think about sharing.”