Parts

A night in the life of three employees at a clinical waste storage facility.

It was coming up to three in the morning, and despite the floodlights stretching around the perimeter of the storage facility, it was still dark. She hated how dark it was, not that light would have made her job any less unpleasant.

With a well-practised heave, Simone slammed the doors of a container shut. That’s one more done, she thought. In the dim light, various dried fluids shone both glossy and matt against her vulcanised rubber gloves. She slid the bolt through the lock of the container, hooked in the padlock and snapped it shut with a push. She had to take a break before sorting the next one, she desperately needed one. But there was no time, there was still so much to do. Dragging her cart of cleaning equipment behind her, she retched at the foetid air churning sourly in her lungs.

“You alright, Sim? asked Nye as he locked up a container the next row along. He’d been doing this for longer than Simone and, to her great distaste, actually enjoyed it somehow.

“That’s one more down,” he announced cheerily. “

Simone nodded and didn’t say anything. She never spoke much when she had to work long shifts. It was something to endure and hope to never go through again. Of course, that would never happen. Of that she was certain.

She retched again as she approached the next container. Her supervisor had said that this one was particularly bad. Having fallen from a stack three containers high, the whole thing had been badly damaged meaning that everything inside needed to be sorted and resealed. The corners had been rounded by multiple impacts and a couple of cracks and splits on the side oozed with thick shiny sludge. The container doors opened with a low scraping sound. She gagged at the smell.

“It’s okay Sim. They can’t hurt you now,” Nye said smiling behind his mask.

“I bloody hope not,” she said half joking half not. “Why couldn’t they have just burned it? I mean, look at this s**t!”

“I heard there’s more coming too. The company’s taken on another contract, some ritzy private clinic.”

“Great,” said Simone, “now we’ll have rich people’s s**t coming here too.”

“Yep, we’re moving up.”

“I feel classier already,” Sim laughed but her jollity was short lived. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take Nye. How do you do it?”

Nye shrugged. “Can’t afford to care anymore,” then he gave Simone a serious look, “and neither can you.”

Simone turned up her headlight, revealing the container’s innards. Racks lining the walls had come loose, so too had the containers attached to them. She grabbed a stiff bristle brush from her cart and stepped inside, the floor was soft, spongey, and very wet. She felt a fist close around her gut as the smell of rot dissolved into the membranes of her nose and throat. She swept aside large cloying piles of a wet glutinous substance, clearing herself a path before carefully inspecting the state of the racks. She shook her head and clicked her tongue.

A blackened length of something hung from a rack above her, dangling inches from her face. It was about two feet long, ending in a rounded mass attached to rounded stumps. Fingers, must be an arm, she thought. The whole thing was a splotchy grey black save for the gelatinous white fluid forcing itself through the already over stretched skin. Manoeuvring awkwardly between the fallen racks, she stepped on something hard, not metal hard but hard enough, but before she could look at it, whatever it was burst beneath her feet.

How was it, she wondered, that people like Nye could just get on with this? What does he know that she doesn’t? Was he taking something, did he know some special meditation technique that made him somehow immune to all this ugliness. That was unlikely. The only person Nye ever spoke to, apart from Simone, was Doug, their supervisor. And Doug, though not naïve, was far too straight for drugs and far too old fashioned for meditation.

The three of them were close, the kind of close that grew from their lifelong three way rally of saving each other’s skin. None of them remember who saved who first, only that it was something they did now; part of the job.

It had been an activist group that turned the place into such a mess. They called themselves Reco-warriors, self proclaimed divine agents who rescued the desecrated according to Doug’s knowledge.

“They didn’t do a very good job this time,” Simone called to Nye.

“Do they ever?” Nye poked his head out from a hole in the side of his container. “I mean look at all this,” he threw out a leaking bag of orange brown slop, it smelled of rotten eggs and old fish.

“Watch it idiot! Don’t throw that s**t around!”

“Sim calm down. With all the mandatory vaccines we get, I can drink a pint of this and not get sick.”

Sim knew this was true, but she wasn’t being unreasonable, she just didn’t want Nye throwing bags of rotten blood all over the place. “Vaccinations don’t fight toxins genius. Now cut it out.”

They continued working in silence for several hours until a loud pop behind them broke their gory monotony. Cautious but not alarmed, they stepped out of their containers. There was the sound of someone struggling a few containers down. Another noise, louder than before, something heavy hitting metal. It came again, and again and again.

Simone and Nye walked towards each other into the path between their containers. They looked in the direction of all the noise. Shadows twisted and flickered before them. Then, a figure appeared amidst the shifting darkness.

It didn’t take them long to realise what was happening. They knew this was coming. It always did, they just never knew when.

The figure drew nearer, features clarifying beneath the floodlights. It was a young man, shotgun cradled in his arm. Simone knew him and so did Nye. Justin, or at least that’s the name they knew him by. He was a dangerous man, a fact he proved every time he visited. It had been from this man whom Simone, Nye and Doug had saved and continued to save each others skin.

“Morning Simone, Nye,” he said.

They nodded.

“Sorry to call so early. You’re up anyway I suppose,” Justin said laughing. “Just another job for you guys really isn’t it?”

They nodded again.

“It’s funny isn’t it. I mean, here we are, living and working in perfect harmony,” Justin closed his eyes and twirled his fingers above his head. “Jobs for us equals jobs for you, my job feeds your job and your job, done correctly, keeps me in my job,” he clapped his hands and laughed hysterically. Simone and Nye did not.

Justin straightened himself and brought his hands to his mouth, dabbing his fingertips on his lips. “Could you guys come help us with this one?”

They followed Justin to the container from which they’d heard the noise, a spidery profusion of red strained its side. Beneath this lay the remains of a man. Thin wisps of steam drifted from the exposed bottom half of his head while the top half lay all around him in wet shiny clumps.

“Just pop him in with the others if you can please, thanks,” said Justin.

Simone and Nye bent down to pick up the body and hauled the body towards the container Simone had been inspecting. Justin followed them, until the stench forced him to stay back. Simone and Nye put the body down, their hands were shaking.

“You two are so kind,” Justin smiled coldly at them. “You want to speak to him?”

Simone nodded, Nye didn’t move.

“Here you go,” Justin handed her his phone. It was already calling.

“Hello?” a voice rasped.

She knew the voice, “Doug,” she said trembling, “you alright?”

“Fine, just sick of this s**t.” A sharp crack sounded and Doug said no more.

Justin snatched the phone back, “alright, you know the drill,” he said adjusting his grip on the shotgun, “you’ve got a week to clear it out, someone will come and do a sweep to make sure we’re clean. Once that’s done, we’ll let Doug go and we’ll be dandy, yes?”

Simone and Nye nodded.

“Great,” Justin smiled. “I can’t remember who’s meant to be collateral next time,” Justin tapped his lips with his fingers again, “ah, it doesn’t matter. We’ll sort it out when it comes,” he waved them goodbye, turned and walked away.

It didn’t matter to them who was taken next, as long as they did what Justin said, they’d live.

They waited until Justin left. Once they were sure he was gone, Simone and Nye trudged back to the container where they’d put the body and, with a well-practised heave, closed it.

Author's Note

Same as usual, what do you like, what don't you like and why.