There are days like today when the living ain’t easy. I sit in the back of the store—breakroom slash stockroom—waiting for things I cannot name. Boxes stacked to the ceiling containing gadgets to keep us entertained. Fluorescent lights hum. The clock ticks away each second of my life for minimum wage. I won’t be dishonest, a dollar more than minimum. I am still a slave without chains. The mental and spiritual shackles are hard and cold, holding me firm to an invisible wall deep inside invisible catacombs. There is no cask here. I am bricked in by this culture. It is wild and oppressive and no longer free. I want to melt coins, burn Franklins and Washingtons to ash, mix them to create magic wands to cast out demons and cast spells to bind the future of capitalism; forever.
The bulbs continue to buzz, the microwave hums, warming food for the one invading my space. She is tall and pencil thin, hair dyed Smurf-blue, voice like Rosie Perez. She doesn’t know that I want to save her from this place, this back room, cold and lonely, not fit for life. We are here because the melting and burning has not yet begun. Instead of a war cry to usher in the next revolution, she waits for a beep, so her radiated meal can soothe her. She eats away her minimum wage, unconcerned with the reality that she may live and die in a stockroom, somewhere on this continent, making less than the patriarchy that owns her life and lives well off her lack. Her Smurf-blue hair will have turned gray and white, her back low and knees pained; but she can’t stop because cat food is expensive these days and she needs to eat.
The light dims and flickers. A toilet flushes in the distance. Footsteps trace their way back to the front to greet an uneventful life, bloodied with microwave dinners, worn shoes, unpaid light bills and a life-dance without music.
A vivid and disheartening description of wage slaves. Puts me in mind of the 1927 movie Metropolis by Fritz Lang.
I love that movie. Have watched a few times.
I look forward to retiring next year and breaking free from the rat race.
I can only imagine how ready you are.
Wow. Love the Poe reference, and he would be proud of the tightness and control (and the consistent mood) of this piece. I have been in the stockroom before, and you returned me there flawlessly.