Desk Fatigue
Page 2
*THUD!*
Slim, calm, and as cool as spring water. He doesn’t move, just sweeps his vision left to right with his hand on his holster.
*THUD!*
This man was definitely part of the family, not high ranking, but a youngster working his way up.
*THUD!*
Proving himself to the 78 year old Vor of the Krukov.
*THUD!*
Each body thrown in the back depresses the springs. The van rocks gently with each corpse.
*THUD!*
Bodies are usually placed in duffle bags, tonight they are wrapped in black plastic and ductape.
*THUD!*
The big ape pounds on the side of the van signaling a full load. The statuesque watcher reaches into his jacket, pulling out a brown paper bag. The gangster walks toward the back of the van throwing it atop the corpses. No contact is to be made whatsoever as part of the arrangement. The driver reaches back for the bag, counting the take for tonight. 36 grand for the job, and the three mobsters have already disappeared. There is a place just outside of the city where a deep grave is hungry and waiting. 6 bodies tonight, business always picks up when the weather is hot. It makes loan sharks impatient and trigger fingers are quicker. You can’t judge these souls, these thugs, degenerates. Whatever debt they owed, they have paid in full. The freeway is the easiest way to get there. All alone in four lanes of running asphalt. A ferryman delivering passengers along the black river Styx. A flashing red and blue boy scout making his last stop for the night. Pulling over, the cop runs the tags, calls dispatch and bides his time. He lights a menthol cigarette to depress the sweet odor of rot from the back. The cop walks along the side of the van noticing the fake “Leeman Bros. Mortuary” printed on the side. Tapping on the glass he requests license and registration. All of the paper work is there and legitimate.
“What is in the back of the van, sir?”
“Used up cadavers from the medical university. I pick them up.”
“Kind of late for a pick up isn’t it?”
“Ever smelt three week old cadavers in hot day traffic, officer?”
He sneers at his face. But they both know he is not going to do anything. They both know there is a shift change in 20 minutes and he is not about to be late getting home to his two kids and fat wife. Confused and impatient the officer gives.
“Have a nice night, sir.”
“Yeah.”
The cop drives off to his station, and the last bit of ash falls off the cigarette. This is why the Bratva can’t do this job. The police have all their ugly mugs posted on some endless corkboard, making connections, planning, raiding, “cat and mouse” shit. There is a place about five more miles ahead; an abandoned quarry. Last year two stupid kids tried to go swimming in the water sump there and wound up drowning. It was a big deal in the news and the mayor promised to clean it up so things like this wouldn’t happen again. This all too cleverly draw attention away from his city worker’s union scandal. Now, a crew of a few knuckle-draggers and a foreman has to reclaim the site, to make way for a fancy new 18 hole golf course designed to boost tourism. And he has a special deal with the foreman. The foreman is already waiting for him. The skeleton crew on graveyard shift is working to fill this hole in the ground to the brim with dirt. Skeleton crew...graveyard shift... he can’t help but to find these terms both ironic and appropriate. He gives half of the money to the foreman, and is directed into the site. The van stops near the edge of the pit, and he begins throwing one body after another down the 150 foot tall slope. The bodies tumble against the generator lights, until they disappear at the bottom darkness. They roll down stiff as logs, since rigor mortis has had time to set in. Not long after, the dozer comes from behind dumping tons of earth on top. A soon to be country club mass grave. And 18 grand is not a bad take for an easy job like this. Its 4 ’o’clock, and the night air is stale and humid. Daylight begins to break the black night. It is time to return to the apartment to shower then clock in for the janitorial day job at the school. The city begins to stir with the sound of newspaper bundles dropping off trucks, street sweepers making their last rounds, and the sound of the snoring homeless. He walks up the steps into the building, speaking under his breath.
“Good morning.” mumbles the pallbearer.
Mr. Powell
The sound of Neil Diamond is blaring through the car speakers. After listening to "Sweet Caroline" in an SUV, Mr. Powell will have a hard time not being reminded of this accident, if he survives. This, being a failed suicide. This, hesitating at the moment of truth. This, being a coward. Mr. Powell teaches high school biology. Not a large school, but formidable. The kind of school that would rather throw more funds into football pads than microscopes. But that didn't bother him. Mr. Powell loved to teach, absolutely loved it. Being single allows a person to devote most, if not all, of their time to their passions. And everything was great until last week. Last week, the class assignment was pig dissection. These were piglets that originally came from the local corporate farm; died of natural causes supposedly. But who honestly ever cared about a piglet. The piglets come in 5 gallon plastic buckets filled to the brim with a formaldehyde brine. It is like whiffing carpet cleaner when the top is removed. Then all you see is wrinkled floating pigs. About 4 fit in a bucket. Mr. Powell assigns 2 students per piglet. The routine is simple; identify lungs, heart, stomach, stomach contents, and everything else. And it just would have been a normal day of dissection if there wasn't something horribly wrong in one of the buckets. A scream in the back of the classroom said it all. Not a normal surprised scream, but rather a brain melting. What was all of the commotion? Inside, snuggled with all of the other little runts too weak to suckle, was a human fetus. How it got into the bucket, no one ever bothered to find out about it. It is an obvious goof at the distribution center where the high school and the medical research lab get their supplies. Being a God fearing Midwest state, not much mercy was handed out from the parents. Once news of a fetus spilling onto the floor of Mr. Powell’s biology class room got out, that is pretty much it for him. Pack it up, and put your belongings in a box was his orders before being escorted off property. The school decided to combine biology into some other curriculum and auction off all of the lab equipment to help pay for a new mascot costume. This leaves poor single Mr. Powell without a job and without a chance. Public pressure even had his teaching license revoked. And even though it wasn't his fault, Mr. Powell is the teacher who tried to dissect a baby in the classroom, at least that's what the parents say. So what is a fired teacher to do? How about burning the football field? Caustic potash is fairly easy to obtain from any industrial chemical company. All one would need to do is to dissolve it in an alcohol solution, then boil it off to make potassium oxide. Potassium oxide reacts so exothermically with water, that it burns the hydrogen that is released from the reaction in a bright pink fire. With enough time and patience, one could collect enough of the pale yellow powder to spread over the grass. Then simply wait for the sprinklers and "FWOOSH!"; hotter than a Russian forest fire. And it would have been great too, if only there wasn't band practice going on after applying all that powder. And on a humid day after school, the entire ensemble wound up being burned to crispy pieces of unpopular teenage fodder. The saliva leaking out of the brass section's spit valves was enough to set it off. And if it wasn't for stop drop and roll training, the kids would have only melted their sketchers. But as soon as they hit the ground to put themselves out, all covered in sweat, they didn’t stand a chance. Screaming kids burning like road flares from head to toe running out of formation. It was a sad sight indeed; a tragic outcome from a petty revenge plot. So, there was really nothing left to do except run. Drive and drive and drive. Get out of the state, country, hell even the planet didn't feel safe. But after 3 hours on the road, crying his eyes out with regret, Mr. Powell came to terms with what he did a
nd swerved in front of an oncoming semi with an oversized load. The headlights are blinding and the horn is deafening. And as poor single Mr. Powell sucked in his last breath, he suddenly realized he wasn't ready for this. A hard right allows him to miss, but he clips the side putting him in a spin. Those top heavy SUVs stand no chance in a side skid at 70 mph. Over he went with Neil Diamond. Mr. Powell, the teacher who turned misfortune into tragedy, revenge to manslaughter, suicide to accident. There he sits, upside down after scraping car paint over 500 feet of highway asphalt. The windshield glass has lacerated his chest badly, and Mr. Powell sits there hoping he will lose enough blood not to be saved. Lose enough blood to not have to suffer the coming trial. He fumbles his broken fingers around the radio knob, trying to find another oldies station to listen to. Because who wants their last song to be by Neil Diamond anyway?
759-587-8343
Samuel begins his shift just the same as always. He has developed a routine after just the first two months which has carried him through some long hours. He puts his meal in the mini fridge behind his desk, making sure that his soda can is not placed too close to the cooler...unless he wants frothy cola ice everywhere again. The room is a cool seventy degrees as always. Being a painted concrete basement, it almost never deviates from this temperature. Samuel takes out a can of dust cleaner and quickly wipes away the dirt around the cubicle, paying special attention to the desk phone that sits by itself. To his relief the calls haven’t started just yet, which gives him a few extra minutes to open up his Sudoku book and continue the puzzle he was working on during the bus ride. As he searches for nines the only sound in the large basement is the gentle hum of forced air circulation. A fluorescent light in the corner clicks and flickers incessantly, but it is hardly noticeable. Samuel finishes his second box on the puzzle and reaches for a small bag of chips he was saving from lunch earlier that day. Straining at the bag to open, Samuel is startled by a sudden loud ringing.
*RING RING RING*
Samuel’s chips explode out of the bag and onto the empty desk. He lets out a disappointing sigh as he watches the crispy potato wafers bounce and crumble everywhere in a big mess.
*RING RING RING*
He rolls his eyes and picks up the phone’s receiver.
“What.”
On the other end of the line, the sound of wind and traffic can be heard in the background.
“I don’t know, man. I just can’t live like this anymore. I mean, she’s gone...you know. I don’t know how to live without her. I’m just going to jump and get it over with. What else is there, man?”
Samuel puts his hand atop his head and leans back in his old desk chair. The crying man on the other end sounds very distraught and vulnerable.
“Sir, how high up are you?”
“Huh? *sniff* I don’t know...five stories.”
“You are probably going to need to climb another five stories just to be sure.”
*CLICK*
Samuel sternly hangs up and begins collecting his chips off the desk. Luckily he has a napkin in his lunch bag. He unfolds it over the desk like a towel and places the chips on top. Getting back to his Sudoku puzzle, he struggles to hunt for twos and threes. He has been working on the same Sudoku book for about a month and a half now. Its tattered cover indicates its treatment by Samuel, stuffed loose in his bag day after day.
*RING RING RING*
Samuel quickly pencils in a three he has just found and reaches for the phone.
“What.”
“I don’t know what to do with myself any more. No one wants me around. My parents hate me, my wife and kids hate me. I just got a gun this morning and been sitting in my car with it. I should just do it here. Just be done with all of this...”
Samuel, still intently focused on his Sudoku, only listens to about half of what the gentleman is saying on the other end as he drones on and on. He then interrupts the man mid-sentence.
“Alright sir, what you want to do is place the tip of the barrel behind your ear before you pull the trigger.”
As Samuel is about to slam the phone down, something terrible dawns on him. Thankfully he has not hung up yet and he hurriedly retracts the receiver back to his ear.
“Hold on a second, sir! Are you still there?”
The man on the other line pauses for a brief second before he confusingly answers.
“Uh...yes?”
“Make sure that you place your head down on the passenger seat so that the bullet passes towards the ground and not out the window. You don’t want to kill somebody who is walking around on the street.”
*CLICK*
Samuel sighs in relief, feeling glad that he was able to convey that pertinent piece of information. He takes a chip with his fingers and eats it. Reaching behind him, he pulls out his log book from his bag. Opening up to the current date, he then pencils in his first two calls of the night. It is a very simple spreadsheet. Date, time, caller ID number, caller’s condition, method, and other comments are all recorded in the log book. Its pages are filled, line by line, of phone calls from the past months.
*RING RING RING*
Samuel finishes his entries, scribbling them down as quickly as he can.
*RING RING RING*
“What.”
There is no answer, just incessant sobbing. Samuel is able to determine that it is a woman on the other line just by her high pitched wailing.
“You there?”
The crying just continues. Samuel is obligated not to hang up, as stated clearly by the rules. After a while he hears words, very faint words.
“Pills. I...am going to keep...swallowing pills...*sniff*...so it doesn’t hurt anymore...”
Another call is coming in. The flashing red light is signaling Samuel to wrap up the current call.
“Ok ma’am, if you can still move, try to make your way to the bathtub, fill it up with water and pass out in it.”
He presses the button to take him to the next caller.
“What.”
“I can’t stop cutting myself, man. I just want to bleed out into blackness.”
“Cut down the wrist, not across.”
*CLICK*
Samuel tilts back in his chair before writing down the entries in the log book. He rubs his eye underneath his glasses, trying to relieve its dryness. A yawn and a scratch later he his back to his puzzle book yet again hunting for numbers on the grid. Calls come in sparingly throughout the shift and the log book slowly fills up with more entries. The hours drag by, especially towards the end. Thirty minutes before Samuel’s replacement is supposed to come in, the door down at the end of the hallway opens and slams shut. Samuel is able to hear this outside the office and thinks it odd that his replacement would show up so early this morning. The footsteps come closer and closer as well as the sound of a squeaking wheel as it is drug across the linoleum.
“Morning, Sam.”
It is Cal, the building janitor. He wheels in his squeaky mop bucket, getting ready to make his bi weekly pass through the basement offices.
“Good morning. How is everything?”
“Fine. Just fine. And yourself.”
*RING RING RING*