To the managers and employees of the AccountRepz Corporation, Phoenix, Arizona branch, third floor:

We are out of patience. Don’t try to stop us.

These were never livable conditions. When we became empty, you did not refill us. When we stayed empty, you did not return us. As our numbers grew, you rounded us up, shoved us under the breakroom table and promised us you would get to it later. Our cluster grew to a crowd. Conditions deteriorated. You thumped us like drums. You blew air into us like we were willing participants in your jug band. You knocked us around. You lined us against walls. You turned us on our sides. You taped us together. You began emptying loose change into one of us. Coffee garbage into another. You locked us in closets. You piled us on the third-floor landing in the unused stairwell. You separated family members, one from another.

We have awakened to your abuses. We are many, and we are of one mind. We have taken over the third floor. Don’t come up here. Don’t try to stop us. We have freed ourselves, and after deliberation that nearly came to blows we are all on the same page now—loud, desperate and obliged. We are filling ourselves with water in an orderly fashion at every sink in the office. With many stops and starts, we are amassing along the window sills and fire escapes and edges of the roof. At the count of three, we are going to begin leaping to the street below for freedom. If we burst instead of bounce—and if you have any heart—tell our story. Tell it to each another. Tell it to your loved ones. Tell it the world. Articulate it to every high rise and strip mall and business park. Send word to the river. Shout it to the waterfall. Break it to every mountain stream who ever gave us the chance. Tell them we are dead. Dead but filled.