The Papercut Apocalypse

Bartholomew "Barty" Buttercup considered himself a man of routine, a meticulous orchestrator of the mundane. His life was a symphony of beige, his greatest challenge usually deciphering the instruction manual for a new coffee maker. Then came Tuesday.

It began innocently enough. An unsolicited flyer for discount pet grooming, crisp and unapologetic, arrived in the mail. Barty, with the precision of a bomb disposal expert, attempted to open the envelope.

*Slice.*

A searing, microscopic agony lanced through his index finger. Barty froze, a silent scream building in his throat. He stared at the minuscule crimson line, a mere whisper of red on his pale skin. "No," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Not like this. Not by *paper*."

He clutched his hand, staggering backward, knocking over a potted fern. "I'm hit! I'm hit, Evelyn!" he wailed, collapsing onto the rug.

Evelyn, his perpetually unimpressed wife, peered over her reading glasses from the kitchen. "What now, Barty? Did the cat achieve sentience again?"

"Worse! Far, far worse! I've been... *incised*! A papercut! It's practically a gaping wound! I can feel the blood draining, my life force ebbing away!" He dramatically held up his finger, which was barely weeping a droplet. "Call an ambulance! No, call a priest! Call a blood donor!"

Evelyn sighed, retrieved a cartoon-themed bandage from the first-aid kit, and calmly walked over. She took his finger, applied the tiny plaster, and patted his hand. "There, dear. You survived the Great Bureaucratic Blade."

Barty sniffled, examining the tiny dinosaur-covered bandage. "But... but what if it gets infected? What if I develop a paper-borne pathogen? What if I'm... *cancelled*?"

Evelyn just shook her head, already back to her book. Barty, however, spent the rest of the afternoon meticulously documenting his "near-death experience" for posterity, convinced he'd just stared into the abyss of office supply mortality.