A five minute freewrite, written on the Most Dangerous Writing App (it deletes your text if you stop typing for more than a few seconds)
...
"I'm going outside for a cigarette," she said, pulling on her thick coat. "You stay here and protect the goblin."
I opened my mouth to ask what the hell she meant, but she had already slipped through the door, allowing a vicious gust of ice-cold wind to force its way into the room. I had been excited about getting the job with I-tex, the cutting-edge start-up that everyone was talking about. But I hadn't realised it would mean relocating to the freezing cold arse-end of the world.
I wondered if the phrase "protect the goblin" was some kind of in joke, something I would have to guess the meaning of without ever being sure what it meant. My boss seemed to know her stuff, but she was weird.
They all were out here.
I looked around the office. There wasn't much to see. A desk with a laptop on it. A large bookshelf with one book on it and in the corner, the far dark corner I hadn't looked into before now, was a cage.
And in the cage was a rather angry-looking goblin.
