"I want to go home!" Raf groaned. He's been spinning on his chair for the past ten minutes, sometimes hitting the corner of the desk.

"Stop that, Raf. It's distracting. You can do that after we finish."

"That's if we finish and not be dead by the end of it," he slumped further, completely giving up on working. "Why don't we all just go home and call it a day? I'm sure the parent company wouldn't mind a few hours of delay. Just tell them the wifi was weak and it wouldn't let us send the file or something."

"I do like the sound of that," chimed Alex. "But I doubt it. Even the manager looked stressed."

"Just keep working," I said while trying to speed up my pace. "I don't want to be fired on my first week here."

We were all tired, especially since our productivity took a huge cut when Gabrielle left. With all my might, I tried to make up for it, but it's draining my energy by a lot. No wonder Gabrielle left, he must have turned his mind into mush from all the work he did. I do want him back but at the same time, I don't want him to suffer any further.

My eyes were already watering from staring at pixels all day. I feel that forcing them open with a clothespin wouldn't be enough. Every second that passed, I could feel my eyelids grow heavier and the urge to lay on a warm bed became stronger. As of now, probably seventy percent of the work has been done. The manager did keep his word, sending a chunk of the proposal just in time before our morale dropped to its lowest. I would have made more progress, but I was stuck correcting all my spelling mistakes from my sloppy typing, further deterred by a lack of sleep.

"Ahhh! I've had it!" Raf screamed. "Goodnight everyone!" He went under his desk and brought out a pillow I didn't know he was hiding. He rested his head on it and curled up like an armadillo. Then a second later, snores were already flooding the room, competing with the sounds of our keyboards.

I would have sighed at this point but I was too tired to even complain.

The room had been silent ever since, but not the normal kind of quiet. The clatter of keyboards and the occasional sighs of exhaustion had been so monotonous that it became the new silence. I don't know if it's just me going insane, but I find joy whenever our typing becomes synchronized for even a second, becoming a rhythmic tune.

All of a sudden, the silence that had been maintained for the past couple of minutes had been shattered. A primal scream pierced the monotony. I was jolted awake even though my eyes were open the whole time. I didn't know what was going on since my mind was too focused on the screen in front of me. My initial instinct was to ignore it because I realized it was just Raf. After all, his dramatic tendencies were nothing new, even with the short time of knowing him.

I continued to type but an unsettling feeling loomed within me. Why did Raf suddenly scream? I know it's scary to think that we're still working this late but I don't think it is worth screaming about. Well, I could just look to my right and ask him myself, but I couldn't generate the energy to do it.

Laura had a different approach. It seems that she's had enough of Raf's antics. I could hear the crash of her chair hitting the stall behind her, followed by the sounds of her footsteps blazing through the office. I know it's her from the distinct steps of her heels.

Her voice resounded in a scolding tone, much like an angry mother. "Raf! Can't you just shut your mouth for a few minutes, please?! I've already been messing up a bunch and I don't need your yelling breaking my concentration any further. If you've got nothing better to do, just stay asleep or lea-"

She screamed.

Immediately, I burst out from my chair and looked towards them. From the split second of rotating my head, I saw the blur of Alex's figure rushing this way.

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A thud echoed in the room. The next thing I knew, Laura was on the floor. This was the first time I saw that kind of expression on her face, actually, I've never seen this emotion in general. Only in movies could someone make that face. Her eyes were wide open despite the lack of sleep, and her mouth twitched as if words wanted to come out but couldn't. The feeling was similar to encountering the great unknown, a frightening darkness. All she could do was raise her shaking hand and point.

On the other side of Laura's finger lies Raf. A gasp caught in my throat as I saw his distress. The expression on Raf's face was twice as bad as Laura's, much like he'd been woken up from a nightmare, one where he'd seen death in the flesh. He sat there, still as a statue, but his position screamed that he wanted to run. He was looking down the entire time, and from my confusion, I did the same. I closed my eyes, opened them, and repeated. I wasn't dreaming. This is reality. The horror. The absolute horror I am witnessing... it was too unreal. Raf's hand, once flesh and bone, now crumbled bit by bit into tiny particles. His hand dissolved like a crumbling statue. It was sand. The realization sent shivers down my spine. In my peripheral, Alex was also frozen, and so was Nila, peeking from the side with her tiny hands covering her agape mouth. I wanted to do something, to help in this bizarre situation, but the very scene clawed at the edges of my rationality. His hand completely crumbled, spreading sand on his keyboard, desk, chair—everything. But it didn't stop there. I could see the individual nerves from where his wrist should have been, even a bone that should never be seen from someone alive is in full display in the gaps of the flowing sand. Blood began to ooze in combination with the sand, but even as red as it was when it came out, only the brown color of the sand remained once it fell on the floor. The crumbling raced up his arm, turning him into a human sandglass, and he was slowly running out of time.

Amid my shock, fragments of understanding began to coalesce in my mind. It is definitely sand, I'm dead sure about it. And as much as I pray for this to be a dream, it is unfortunately reality. The sand, people missing, Raf crumbling... threads were getting untied in my mind. It was all coming together but in a horrifying light.

Before I could articulate my thoughts I felt my body sway vigorously. Alex was shaking me, unfreezing me from my terror.

"We need to find help, now!" he yelled.

His words cut through the paralysis, making me stand up and we both ran out the room. I took a look back just before the door had closed, and from the gap, I saw Raf. He still sat frozen like a statue, slowly losing his body, but a different image stuck in mind. He was crying. Tears dropped from his eyes while looking down on himself slowly disappearing. I felt my heart drop. I couldn't imagine Raf, the easy-going lazybones idiot, to ever make that expression.

Some sanity returned to my mind as we ran, but we were still not thinking straight. No matter what we did, there was no helping him. No doctor could possibly stop that. The unknown can't be dealt with, for reality's barriers have already crumbled at this point. I knew unconsciously that we weren't rushing to find help, but instead help ourselves escape from thinking about Raf's situation, making our adrenaline do all the thinking.

As we ran, the office didn't feel like home anymore. It was now a maze that was slowly suffocating us. The shadows laughed at our futile efforts. I couldn't hear our footsteps. Instead, the ticking of the clock in the background echoed in my mind, synchronizing with my heartbeat. Both were growing faster.

We hurried back with a first aid kit. While I was searching for it, Alex was contacting the manager, but the call wouldn't go through. He even tried to contact hospitals but it's as if we were disconnected from the world. There wasn't any signal.

Alex pushed open the door. A sudden chill went up my spine as I saw Nila sitting on the floor motionless, her back was turned away from the door.

"Raf?" I muttered walking over to Nila. I saw Laura curled up in a random station, her face completely blank. But Raf was nowhere to be seen.

Alex automatically rushed towards her. "What happened?!" he asked.

He didn't get a reply.

"Nila?!" I tapped her shoulder. She slowly turned her head towards me. She was smashed from her sobbing.

"Where's Raf?!"

She tried to speak, but her anguished tears prevented her from muttering anything comprehensible. I shook her again and again, trying to snap her back to normal, but my attempts to fathom the situation were met with fragmented responses, her words drowned in a sea of inconsolable grief.

"Please, Nila! Where is Raf?!" I yelled.

Suddenly, Laura's shaking voice intervened. She slowly pointed in our direction. "Raf is right there. He's... just below you."

I gulped. I suddenly felt like I was drowning. How... how didn't I notice it immediately? Slowly, I turned my gaze downwards, and there I saw Raf, or more accurately, what had become of Raf.

In the middle of the room, Nila and I were sitting over a mound of formless sand.

Raf is gone.