Clearing the Mind

    “Alright, clear the bay doors!” The Foreman yelled out over the shoddy PA system, strewn with hanging cables and so much patchwork duct tape around the endless warehouse. Orange spinning dome lights and a boisterous blaring siren sent workers scattering away from the giant metal doors.
    The doors were slowly pulled open by some unseen pneumatic monsters, and the gap that appeared was black and vacuous.
    “Load!” The Foreman, now standing outside a forklift, with his arm snaked around the open frame, blared again into the microphone.
    Giant canisters of rusted iron were pushed towards the opening doors by a multitude of workers and their mechanic counterparts. Inside, there were millions of sheets of clean white paper, each with just a sentence or two typed timidly onto them.
    The doors spread wider, and with the advantageous view now emerging, the workers let their eyebrows bounce to the napes of their necks at the sight of the maelstrom ahead.
    It was blackness, churning hateful blackness that spun infinitely out in a tightening spiral suction. Their was admirable pull against the workers as they clung to their safety straps, held fast by steel carabineers that gripped weathered loops on the dock.
    The canisters had been lined up like cattle to the slaughterhouse, stray papers already flailing off and whipping into the abyss. There were chaotic lightening bursts, cobalt blue against the inky nothingness, with every sheet devoured. The men squinted and braced, and all heads turned towards the Foreman as the last inches of open doorway were revealed.
    He went over cerebral checklists, his face stern and his mind filled with a thousand arms delicately setting a thousand switches to maximize efficiency and safety.
    “Now!” He yelled, and this time there was static feedback as he clicked off the PA.
    In an instant the tethered canisters were let go, and the mass of megaton metal tumbled like toys off a table into the chasm. The papers were pulled into the whirlpool and quickly spun apart into pulp as they breached into the black. Soon all that was visible was the steady empty void again, and the whipping pull of the wind smattering the workers’ hair as they stood in silence.
    “Close!” The Foreman yelled over the droning suction, and as they powered the doors to shut, a dangling speaker held to a far wall by only its wires was torn free and swallowed into the out. The doors touched, the air became stable, and another shipment had successfully been purged.
    “Alright everybody, that’s lunch!” The Foreman bellowed with his own voice, and the men began to unhitch themselves.