Skip to main content

The Exploits of Eleanor: The Interview

Eleanor had just got done watching the 1947 movie Nightmare Alley on the day they brought in the new recruit. Natasha's office—for it was Natasha who did the interviews—was right next to the break room and so she overheard how their interview went. She ate her sushi silently the whole time.
She could see the kid inside. Young, blond, close-cropped—not a bad-looking fellow. Still a little innocent spark in that eye of his. He was smiling. But something about his face made it hard to remember; she knew it would flicker and fade out of her mind soon enough, until she had time to grind into the soft pulp of her brain. (The sushi was pulpy in her teeth, having turned bad from the store's atmosphere—the guy who made it made it well, and with heart, but once it was out of his hands the air leeched in and that was the end.) The words came to her with a strange clarity.

“So what sort of experience do you have, kid?”

She was sure they actually called him “kid.” Boomers these days—no respect.

“I used to work loading at Planter's before they went under. Then I cashiered at Target for three month. I was hoping to continue cashiering here.”

“Yes, well—” Odd, swallowing pause. “We'll get you what we can.”

“Oh, I'm not interested in bagging, or any of the departments. Just cashiering. Just so you know.”

“Well, we'll stick you where you fit, how 'bout that? Now, what makes you think you got what it takes to work here at Sun Valley?”

“I have a strong sense of customer service. I have always been good at figuring out customer's problems, and—”

“Hm. Interesting. Name a situation where you had to help a customer, and what you did.”

“Well, I, uh...”

“Yesss...? I'm waiting.”

“One time a customer couldn't find a type of mulch, but I knew where we kept it—I found it and I brought it out to them.”

“Aaand...?”

“I made sure to restock that kind of mulch as soon as I could, so other customers could find it.”

“Aaaaand...?”

Silence. Poor guy. Eleanor already knew he didn't deserve this. Few did, on this Earth.

“Uhh-huhh,” Natasha said. “Well, look, we'll fit you in where we can get you.” That phrase again. Eleanor shuddered.

“We're looking for something specific,” Natasha said then.

“Listen, ma'am—I'll take what I can get, as long as it isn't courtesy.”

A long pause. “Okay. But remember, it's only temporary...”

“Okay!”
“...until we get a real geek.”

No, she hadn't heard that. It was the movie from this morning repeating in her head. The movies she watched, the books she read, they came back to haunt her. She remembered the trauma of her pre-shift viewings and readings. And that was all there was to it.

But then—they could have one here, couldn't they?

A shirtless man, chained and bound in a pile of his own filth, forced to perform under burning, sweaty spotlights for a shrieking audience. Green-liver drunk, maybe even crazy with a little dope, brought with lurching sick-motion to the climax—the biting of the chicken's head.

No, she must have heard it wrong, she mused on the way home. She'd see him on the belts soon, and that'd prove she'd heard it wrong.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Richards

It was him or Tavvy. And Tavvy deserved to live. He deserved to live too but she had had enough. If his last act on this Earth was to spare her a little suffering he would die honorably. Kevin Claude was a good man and he wanted to end his life good. And giving up his life for another was pretty damn good. It was Mrs. Richards. She was infamous at this point. The rookies heard about her early on, speaking in hushed whispers, like she was a ghost or something. In fact, there was a theory, one which Kevin had believed for a time, that she was a ghost—a ghost who could write checks. She came in regularly—once a week, usually on a Saturday—and her appearance never changed. Same clothes, same hair. She followed the same routine every time when it came to collecting her groceries. (Checkout was always a little different each time.) That was what ghosts did, wasn't it? Played out the same events over and over? It made Kevin wondered if he was a ghost. He could take the repeti...
Post a Comment
Read more

Krissy's Second Visit

Youthful footsteps echoed throughout the store's frozen section. It is not often a challenge to determine one's age from footsteps. The slow, stumbling walk of an old man, and the tap of his walker or cane, gives him away immediately. A hop and a skip might reveal that one is a child. But in the ages between 12 and 60, there is a singular type of step, one which is not easily linked to age due to the variance in height and weight of the teenage and adult population. In the cold of the frozen section, this uniformity was slimmed even further, because nothing leeches strength from the heart and legs like cold. But in the footsteps of the confident young girl who wore a Sun Valley uniform, one could sense her youthfulness. The cold didn't touch her and she wasn't afraid of it or hateful of it. And so perhaps it was the youthfulness of her step that revealed to the mysterious figure known as the Blue Phantom who it was who came to visit him, in his hidden lair behin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sometimes We Go Bad

Sun Valley Grocery wasn't far from the local mall. The name of this mall is unimportant. It was home to more than three dozen retail businesses, not counting the built-in carousel, the massage stands, and the various food and antique vendors who hosted their shows there. The businesses dropped and swapped out on a regular basis, though there were some mainstays that had been there for generations. Among these was a clothing store by the name of Harpin's. It was a family place, run by the Harpins since before the First World War. The family was even still involved with the business, unlike a lot of families who once founded such enterprises. They had about the same distance from the store's operation as a producer has from the movies they work on, but they did cameo now and again to see how things were going. People treated it with the dignity a small business deserved, though the growth of the great apathy disease had its impact there, too. What matters is that they...
Post a Comment
Read more