Selben glanced past the assorted boxes filling the narrow hallway for the fifth time in as many minutes. He could see the table in the office kitchen remained empty and sighed. Turning back to his work, he pushed the handcart full of computer parts. It was nearly 9am and the expected treats had still not appeared. As his mind began to race with possible reasons, his thoughts were interrupted by his boss and mentor asking he take another laptop with him and tossed it on top of the pile.
“Gee thanks, I almost forgot that one,” he said with a smirk.
Soda laughed and patted his shoulder, but then his face grew serious, and came in a bit closer.
“Have you seen them?”
Selben shook his head. They both looked equally distressed by the situation. Selben was about to voice his own concerns when the lights suddenly turned off. After fumbling around in the dark for a moment, Soda found a small flashlight attached to his keychain. Selben dug in his own pockets but didn’t find a light of his own.
“I’ll go check the circuit breaker, just wait here.”
Soda climbed over some of the nearby boxes down the hallway, going out of view as he rounded the corner. Selben sat with his thoughts, the darkness was both comforting and a bit unnerving. Time seemed to stand still as he waited for what seemed like approximately forever. He called out to Soda but got no response. Steeling his nerve, he decided to follow, and carefully started climbing over the first set of boxes. He didn’t get far before he stumbled and felt an arm reach in front of him and catch his fall.
“W… Who’s there?!”
Selben was panicking when the familiar voice of Jake spoke up.
“Don’t worry, what happened? Did the power go out?”
“Yeah. Soda went to check it out, but it’s been awhile, so I was trying to get over to him”
They could only faintly make each other out and together struggled over the different boxes, some crashing to the ground as they made slow progress. Making it to the end of the hall a faint light could be seen. Getting closer, they saw a small flashlight attached to a keychain laying in front of the maintenance closet. Jake picked it up and used it to look around. They saw several knocked over boxes nearby as well as red fingerprints on the door handle. Selben felt his heart rate increase at the sight.
Jake reached for the handle.
“Are you injured?” he shouted while pushing the door open.
The door opened, revealing Soda sitting on the floor looking terrified and holding a pink box.
“What happened?” Selben spoke first.
Soda slowly opened the box. “They… They’re all gone. Did either of you take them?”
He explained he had tripped over the boxes outside the closet while entering and it locked behind him. The pink box was on the floor inside.
The donut box was empty. Not even a crumb was left. They all said none of them had eaten any of the donuts. After checking their hands and mouth inspections for evidence it was clear none of them had been the culprits.
They were looking at the donut box dejectedly, when the janitor walked by, wheeling his cart, holding his gloves in one hand, and licking his fingers on the other hand.