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Damn Jobby Adam Armstrong
SCREECH! – SCREECH! – SCREECH! – SCREE-Smash!
His fist slammed down on the snooze button, killing the alarm clock’s cries.
His hand stayed on the snooze button for a moment, tense and waiting. The
muscles relaxed in defeat and he snapped the clock from snooze to off,
without raising his head.“This sucks,” he said.
Using his arms, Burt Strass peeled his nude body off the sweat soaked bed.
His feet must have missed the email about getting up. As he tried to walk to
the bathroom his pins and needles ridden feet attempted to throw him to the
floor. Burt caught his rhythm (before the carpet caught him) and stumbled
into the bathroom.Flipping up the switch, he was attacked. The light bit into his eyes like a
mother snake protecting her eggs. Burt covered his eyes with his arm while
recoiling backward. His head met with the wall like Sammy Sosa’s bat meeting
with a ball. Weak in the knees, he propped himself up on his filthy podium
sink.Over the sink there hung a small cracked oval mirror. Through the clinging
dust, dried pimple puss, and flecks of shaving crème, he could see his ugly
mug. Opening his lips, Burt took a gander at his yellow teeth. On the back
of the commode lay a toothbrush that had brown bristles and a pack of
cigarettes that looked like someone had used them for a seat cushion. Burt
chose a flat cigarette and lit it up. Hygiene sucks.The water pressure stuttered, and then the shower vomited up a mixture of
brown and black goo. Burt shut the hot water off completely, the water
hovered at about two degrees from boiling his flesh off. Echoes of the night
before boomed in his head as the filthy water slid off of his body. His
friends dragged him all over, keeping him out all hours of the night. It had
to stop. He should get his friends a job where he worked. A few days of
slaving under idiot supervisors would show them. His friends suck.With a cup of coffee down his gullet, Burt was out the door and down the
street. An early morning walk always primed him for work. Of course,
everyone had to walk down here. The heat was intense. The humidity was so
dense you could almost swim through the air. The waves of heat coming off of
the ground rippled Burt’s vision and made the city look like it was under a
pool of water that children were throwing rocks into trying to kill the
goldfish swimming there. The heat sucks.The sky maintained its dreary glow morning, noon, and night. The fires were
burning brighter each week on the edge of the city. Burt wondered what they
would do in a few years when there were more people than places to put them.
Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something large and
multi-headed slithering down an ally. Nah, he must not be getting enough
sleep. It could be the heat playing tricks on his mind. On second thought,
walking sucks.Burt punched in with time to spare, as always. Being punctual had an air of
depression about it. The square peg going into the square hole right like it
should. Glancing around, he could see they had the new meat hook conveyor up
and running. He could have some fun with that, though they probably wouldn’t
let him use it. Middle management sucks.His shoulders sagged when he saw his supervisor coming toward him. His
supervisor was fat, balding, and wonderfully dull. The type that loves to
sit in some sort of meeting day after day, because that was all he ever told
anyone that he did. He must have a friend or family member higher up the
food chain.“You know that the flow rate has changed, right?” asked the supervisor.
“Yes,” Burt replied.
“You’ll be running the new arrival line today.”
“Yeah, it was on the schedule.”
“And you also know that we are dealing in larger volumes than ever?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Very good then,” the supervisor said before dashing off to some meeting.
Supervisors suck.Walking over to his station, Burt was thrilled to finally get to work. The
toolbox by the station was filled with wonderful toys: pinchers, pliers,
hooks, scalpels, acids, flammable liquids, a torch, some hammers for
breaking skin, some hammers for breaking bones, sewing needles, chains,
fishing hooks, and, of course, knives. At the station a middle-aged man was
nude and bound at the wrists and ankles to a giant X. The man had a little
flab on him and a pair of bewildered green eyes under his slightly graying
and thinning hair. As Burt pulled out a foot long knife the man’s penis
shriveled up.Burt stuck the knife about two inches deep into the man’s chest, and then
tore it down through his torso. The man screamed as Burt used his pliers to
pull the man’s skin off of the muscle. Thick stingy lumps of fat splattered
around Burt’s steel toed boots. Burt reached into the hole he made and
pulled out ropes of entrails. He slung some intestines around the man’s
neck, like a morbid necklace, so he could listen to his body trying to empty
its bowels while it was being eviscerated.Burt looked up at the man’s face, the man cried. Burt took the end of the
blade and put out one of the man’s eyes. It burst like a balloon full of old
yogurt. A smile broke on Burt’s face as a mingled scream of pain and disgust
escaped the man’s throat while a glob of fluid ran down his cheek.“Please just kill me,” the man begged.
“I can’t do that,” Burt said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re already dead,” Burt said with a smile he can never fight
back when he let newbies in on what was happening to them. He added, “This
is hell.”Burt resumed cutting and burning and peeling and scraping. His smile
widened. At least his job didn’t suck.
© Armstrong, 2007
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Adam Armstrong is a lifelong native of Northern Kentucky. He has been
actively writing for the past five years and has been a published author for
the last three. He lives with his girlfriend Lyssa and his psychotic,
bi-polar parakeet Budgie.