The Struggling Sandwich Artist, Her Poor Clearner and the Day the Horses Raced

A Story by Owen J Kato

A disgruntled Subway sandwich artist living in Melbourne takes out her rage on a poor cleaner on the day of the famed traditional Australian horse race, the Melbourne Cup.

The Struggling Sandwich Artist,
Her Poor Cleaner
and
The Day the Horses Raced

Based on a true story
By Owen Kato

Within a certain type of hospital, a young Australian woman with arctic blue eyes looks down upon her poor cleaner.

“He won’t work anymore,” she said.

“I think he will, give it a minute,” said Mister Jokafruit.

“No, he’s broken, I broke him,” she said tipping her head down in despair.

And she had broken him, she broke him good, and it all goes back to the Day the horses raced... The Day the people drank too much, thought too little and wore fancy hats.

•••

In the city of Melbourne, on a hot summer November day, life changed for Turris the cleaner from China. Things, they were fine for Turris during the famed annual Australian horse race everyone called the Melbourne Cup, yes it was all fine then. He was doing his job, the job he was made to do, was--happy doing; and that was vacuuming interior floors. He did this with great precision and care. The renter he worked for was named Ashlyn. She was his only client and she wasn’t home, no. She was out killing gin and tonics with her mates watching horses run fast and clapping at them afterwards. Ashlyn had a funny hat on that made fun of all the fancy hats. She also had on ripped acid washed jeans that she angrily converted into shorts one day, a white tank top and not a care in the world, especially the task of vacuuming any floors. Underneath her fake fancy hat, Ashlyn had dark brown wavy hair she would often will straight.

It wasn’t easy, though in the summer heat, it was always quite the hair ordeal for Ashlyn keeping it dead straight.

Now Ashlyn didn’t have enough money to furnish her two bedroom apartment she rented in downtown Melbourne. Perhaps, though, if she only rented a one bedroom she could have used the extra money for furniture but she had chosen to rent a two bedroom and leave the second room empty for her future office. See, Ashlyn went to school to be a graphic artist but quite obviously couldn’t be a graphic artist right away. So, in the meantime she became a sandwich artist at Subway because it didn’t demand much training and didn’t require a degree and that would do Ashlyn for now. Problem is, it didn’t pay much, and just barely did much for Ashlyn now, but it did, pay in a free lunch for Ashlyn on top of the minimum wage, which helped.

Since Ashlyn was a struggling sandwich artist and a renter in the downtown core of Melbourne, she had no money for fancy new furniture. And it was all handed down from her family and one particular piece was handed all the way down, inadvertently of course, from her Great, Great Grandfather.

It was a chair so astonishingly uncomfortable no one ever wanted to sit on it, but there it sat in Ashlyn’s living room all old, brown and oaky. The antique chair had no cushion for anyone’s bottom and no arm rests for anyone’s arms. It was part of a table set but all the other pieces of its family had died over time in one way or another.

Some of the chairs were too damaged, others dropped from careless movers, one, was set aflame in a house fire back in her mother’s old house in Canberra. No one knew what happened to the table besides that it was tossed away a while back. But this chair, this lucky chair, had survived and Ashlyn often sat in it to think about life or study but to do nothing else. She had a beat up couch for doing all the nothing else. And the nothing else consisted of: her videogame sessions, which lasted for hours or days until her dark brown wavy hair was greasy and her eyes had red forked lightning in them, her movie marathons, and her nights where her eyes would gobble up a whole book. But still, despite its unrivaled uncomfortableness, Ashlyn loved the prehistoric oaken chair for whatever reason and somehow over the test of time the chair had been left basically unmarked of any nicks or damage to the solid oak frame it was built upon until one day, the day the horses raced.

Turris awoke the same time as he always did. He started to do his job perfectly on time and was never late, not once and even though Ashlyn was a poor struggling sandwich artist she still got paid more than Turris. He got paid nothing, cleaners rarely did. His name though, of course, wasn’t Turris. Ashlyn had taken to calling him that as some sort of joke and since he couldn’t speak English, he didn’t protest. Though he didn’t smile at it either.

After Turris finished vacuuming Ashlyn’s bedroom, her empty spare room, her messy kitchen, he started in her living room. He carefully dodged all the handed down furniture except one piece, the oaken chair. Turris accidentally rubbed plastic up against the front left leg of it causing a minor but noticeable ding. Turris stopped in his work and felt no guilt about it, then he finished his job vacuuming and went back to his tiny home that wasn’t far off.

A few hours later Ashlyn eventually stumbled in with her hat that made fun of all the other fancy hats. It was made of foam and it was pink and it said on it in big green letters: “Melbourne Cup Day Fancy F*****g Hat”. After Ashlyn and her friends stumbled in, all took to seating themselves in the living room, and all avoided the uncomfortable oaken chair naturally. Ashlyn rarely made friends so she rarely had them over, but today she was three-

sheets to the wind, flying on a high of gin and Australian sunshine. And being intoxicated to the point of being social.

After seeing her two bedroom apartment filled, Ashlyn thought about things; like being a bad host. She got up and went to her messy kitchen, opened her fridge and grabbed everyone more alcohol. Not that they needed it, but they did want it. Most of them on Melbourne Cup Day wanted it until they couldn’t want it anymore. Some, even wanted it when medical professionals, who were busy pumping their stomachs would strongly and forcefully advise against the wanting of it.

Now everyone was drinking like sharks and Ashlyn had just finished pouring her own drink and walked into her living room. That was when she saw it; the nick on her Great, Great Grandfather’s oaken chair her careless cleaner had made. She then looked at the floor all clean, all vacuumed perfectly for her and her friends to mess up.

“What is it Ashlyn?” asked her moderately drunken friend with a gold top hat.

“Nothing,” said Ashlyn in preoccupation glaring at the ding on her chair.

Then Ashlyn left for a short while and came back with her cleaner, Turris. She gazed down at him. Most cleaners always get looked down upon and this case was no different.

“What have you done?” Ashlyn asked.

Turris, however, did not reply because he didn’t know how to speak English. Ashlyn sipped hard from her alcohol filled glass until only ice cubes were left in it.

“This is f*****g rubbish!” she yelled out as she kicked Turris.

Her friends noticed and came to see what was going on in the hallway.

“Ash you okay?” said her drunkest friend who had a non-fancy black beanie on.

“F*****g overpriced cleaner here nicked the f**k outta my Great, Great Grandads chair!” yelled Ashlyn.

“Okay?” said a buzzed friend with glasses and a beard, who completely didn’t notice the cleaner, no one usually ever did. He was just a really short and lonely cleaner that had made the trip from China with his family after all. Him and his family had all come from the same place in Eastern China and had made it to Australia safely just to clean everyone’s houses because without speaking the language they weren’t really qualified for anything else. Although some were used to keep peoples pets occupied, and that was even more degrading.

Ashlyn kicked Turris again.

“Go easy Australian child, you’ll hurt yourself, it’s not worth it,” said her day-drunk friend who was on exchange from Kenya. She had pink dyed hair.

After hearing that however, Ashlyn did not go easy, no. She went quite hard. She grabbed Turris the cleaner from China and tossed him down the hallway in a fit of reckless intoxicated rage and the poor cleaner fell hard on the floor he had vacuumed earlier.

Turris didn’t move, he just sat on the floor and then Ashlyn kicked him all the way out onto her balcony. Ashlyn’s friends, all of them: the drunk, the buzzed, the day-drunk all cheered her on because they didn’t know what else to do, and after all, they were just guests and he was just a poor cleaner. He wasn’t anybody, especially anybody they’d consider partying with, no. They never partied with anyone that didn’t speak English.

Turris started to make sounds as he was kicked in protest. All this action from a cute girl like Ashlyn had turned him on as he took blow after blow from her barefoot. The rage had filled Ashlyn full of adrenaline and what was no longer in her empty glass had filled her full of

stupidity that, she didn’t even feel the damage of kicking the cleaners hard sculpted body until around the tenth blow. The poor cleaner never ate anything and his body was like kicking a box of hardened plastic. After the tenth blow Ashlyn jumped and grabbed at her foot. She started into a hop and she hopped around and fell to the clean carpet.

“Whoa, crazy,” said her semi-sober friend with glasses and a beard.

Ashlyn didn’t say anything she just looked to her oven. She was even more heated after Turris had left red marks all over her feet.

“F**k it,” she said picking up the beaten up poor cleaner.

Ashlyn went over to the oven and flipped the “on” button then stuffed the poor cleaner in it in an off-putting way, then readjusted her fake fancy hat as she felt her straight hair becoming a little wavier in all this heat.

“What the f**k Ashlyn!” said her three-sheets-to-the-wind friend with wayfarer sunglasses still on despite being inside. Even now, he had a mind enough about him to realize this was wrong. That this, was- out of the control.

Ashlyn didn’t say anything and flicked on the oven light with a sinister grin. She sat down cross-legged in-front of the oven and watched it combing her now semi-straight dark brown hair with her fingers. Turris seemed fine for a while but then the melting came. It got quite hot in that oven and the poor cleaner was dying from all the heat.

Watching this and realizing Turris’ melting to death could damage the interior of her oven, Ashlyn flicked the oven off. She then tried to remove Turris but in her reckless rage, forgot how hot the dying cleaner was and burnt her hands and they went strawberry red. Now, instead of running her hands under the sink with cold water like her overtly intoxicated friend with a

beer hat mentioned to do, Ashlyn got some lighter fluid she used for her Zippo. She turned the lighter fluid bottle upside down and drenched Turris with it. She didn’t laugh or smile or frown. She was stone cold serious in all this and really drunk too. Once he was drenched and a little cooled down, she walked with the poor cleaner to her balcony but not before picking up her stainless steel Zippo lighter. All her drunk and buzzed friends told her “no”, but she didn’t hear anything but rage, and rage doesn’t even have a sound, but she heard it quite loudly then and not a thing else.

She simply lit Turris on fire and hucked him elegantly from her two bedroom apartment balcony and he soared, flames and all to his potential ultimate end below. And he almost landed on someone, who, was wearing a greeny-teal fancy hat for no other reason besides it being Melbourne Cup Day.

All the people below gasped in mortal fear at the flaming cleaner, but Ashlyn was gone from her balcony before anyone could say “Horse Race.”

“That- was excessive,” said Ashlyn’s friend who had been excessively drinking and partying all Melbourne Cup day. Her friend, a few moments after then decided to excessively projectile vomit all over Ashlyn’s carpet Turris had recently just finished vacuuming. And that stopped all the drinking, for Ashlyn at least.

Later that evening, a policeman knocked on Ashlyn’s apartment door after she had sent her friend’s home: the drunk ones, the buzzed ones, the one that made a mess, and all the ones in-between. Even the exchange student from Kenya as nice as she was, she was sent home. The policeman asked Ashlyn if she knew anything regarding a flaming thing being thrown from one of the residents balcony’s. Ashlyn shook her head back and forth and mentioned something

about a crazy neighbor that lived above her, that liked fire and hated cleaners. The policeman thanked her for her time and Ashlyn went back to what she was doing before he arrived, which was sitting in her Great, Great Grandfather’s chair enjoying a tear or two in a semi-sober or semi-drunk(depending how you want to look at it) daze.

Slightly later, after a bit of semi-sober thinking, Ashlyn felt guilty and strolled down to the police station and told them it was her. They thanked her for her honesty but told her they had found a cache of unregistered firearms in her above neighbor’s apartment, who loved fire and hated cleaners. The police also told her, he not only hated cleaners, but he hated pretty much everybody else too. So in the end, no charges were laid on Ashlyn the struggling sandwich artist from Melbourne. None besides feeling a bit guilty and those were charges she laid on herself. The police said she could take back her severely beaten and burnt cleaner and she did, although she was a little puzzled at no charges being laid for all the terrible she had done. And she had done a whole lot of terrible. Once she grabbed her broken cleaner, the officers saw her eyes well up with tears as clear as gin and ice cubes. They told her they knew of a certain type of hospital where her cleaner might be mended and she told them she would take him there for sure. And that was Melbourne Cup Day for Ashlyn the struggling sandwich artist and Turris the cleaner. It was the day the horses raced. The day the people drank too much, thought to little and wore fancy hats. And while it had brought out the best in horses, or their race times anyway, it sometimes brought out quite the opposite in people.

•••

Meanwhile, no sorry, later on, back at the certain hospital…

“Okay I think you’re right kid, it, I mean he, doesn’t work,” Mister Jokafruit said rather deflated. “Look at what you’ve done.”

And Ashlyn did look, she looked hard upon what she had done: she had beaten, roasted and burned her poor cleaner. And if that wasn’t enough, she had tossed him from her balcony aflame. And if that wasn’t enough… she still expected him to work for her after all that outrageous mistreatment.

Mister Jokafruit carefully took off Turris’ top plate, sighed and confirmed it. Ashlyn had killed her cleaner, her poor little cleaner from China. Mr. Jokafruit looked down upon Ashlyn once he saw all the horrendous damage she had dealt while she was horrendously intoxicated. She mildly frowned at this, thanked Mister Jokafruit for his time and walked out of the iRobotics Hospital and Return Centre for damaged products less a dead cleaner.

Ashlyn walked back to her two bedroom rented apartment, took off her fake fancy hat, looked in the mirror and saw that her hair was now quite wavy indeed. And a little greasy too. She then ambled over and sat in her Great, Great Grandfather’s, now and forever damaged oaken chair. As she sat there in a state of stern sober uncomfortableness combing at her wavy hair with her fingers, she decided that she would not purchase another cleaner from China. No. She would vacuum her own floors from now on.

The Fancy F*****g End