Chapter six:
I lock the door behind me after switching off the lights inside the slaughterhouse.
I refuse to call this place by the company name because it’s lame and no one calls it that. Charlie said his kids named it, in a roundabout way. They were playing with their toys one day, when he heard them talking. Seemed like a good idea at the time, he laughed. But it wasn’t a good idea. It’s a truly awful name.
Charlie didn’t come back into work today, and I feel bad about that because I know it was my fault he stormed off. I pissed him off by bringing up things that needed fixing, with money he doesn’t have.
Sorry, Charlie, my bad.’
I think about getting him a croissant on my way in to work tomorrow—a nice hot one, freshly baked like I had today. But then I think of the rude woman behind the counter who didn’t smile and who looked at me like I was shit and I decide against it.
Maybe I’ll buy him a pack of smokes instead.
I sit at my bus stop, two blocks from work, with my hood up tonight, thankfully. And though my jeans and sneakers are getting soaked through, my head isn’t.
So that’s a good thing.
I wish they’d fix the bus shelter. But Charlie said it’s been broken for years. Just a metal frame where a structure used to be, and he’s surprised a bus even stops there at all. I say it’s just my luck that it does and I smile.
I try to always look at the good things in life. And not to dwell on the bad.
‘Life’s too short,’ my mom used to say. And though I think that’s bullshit because life is actually fucking long and arduous, still, I get the sentiment she was going for.
You have to respect life and everything it stands for, because you never know when it’s going to be taken away from you. When the carpet, so to speak, will be ripped out from under you.
‘We’re all going to die. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow,’my counselor used to say.‘You have to be positive, Ethan.’
‘But it’s like I can see the bus already coming toward me,’I would reply in my blind panic. ‘I want to step out of the way of it, if I can.’
And then he would laugh. Because he said there was no avoiding death. Hadn’t I ever seen the movieFinal Destination? It always caught up to you in the end, he said, so the best thing was to just enjoy life while you had it.
I hadn’t seen the movie. Nor any of the ones that came after it. So I rented it out from the video store near work, and I was horrified when I watched it. More so because my counselor, the ever-loving prick that he was, was right. There was no avoiding death. It caught up to you no matter what.
And so it got me thinking about all the other things in life that perhaps couldn’t be avoided.
Like Carrie.
Perhaps if I hadn’t seen her that day, it would have easily been another.
Perhaps if I had stayed inside that day, instead of listening to my mom’s nagging about going out and getting some fresh air, perhaps none of this would ever have happened.
Perhaps if I hadn’t fallen in love with the beautiful Carrie, perhaps everything would be okay.
Perhaps my mom would still love me.
Perhaps Dad would still take my calls.
Perhaps I’d have a wife and 2.5 fucking kids. Kids who would no doubt hate me because I’d make them do their homework and I wouldn’t let them stay out late at night. I’d make sure we had family night once a week, no matter how tired I was from work. Or how much I just wanted to take my wife to bed and fuck her until she quivered in pleasure underneath me.
I’d always make time for my kids.
Just like my parents did for me.
Because I’d seen what happened when parents didn’t care. I’d seen the sting of pain and bite of horror, and the desperate things that people would do to make the pain stop. But that would never be me or my life.
Perhaps things would be different, if things had worked out differently.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…
