Company Policy

The bodies were piling up, but it wasn’t Trevor’s fault. No, he worked fast. The problem was that the company was running its simulations in overdrive. Apparently, the CEO’s kid had leukemia. A new stream of tiny bodies sprayed on top of the already large pile, and some bodies bounced down onto the concrete—breaking their tiny bones with tiny snips.

The corpse room was a bland concrete room. It contained a single red-dial phone from the 1970s that could only place calls within the company. It was for work and emergencies only. Nothing personal. There was a black office chair in the far corner. The orange meat grinder, browning with rust, stood tall in the way that only an altar could.

The outlet of the grinder fed into a bin that would be taken down to shipping in about fifteen minutes, where the company would then send the meat mulch to another company who made fertilizer with it.

Trevor paused for a moment and stretched his back to relieve the pain of hunching over for hours, and then drove a spade straight into the mountain of bodies. He preferred the rectangular shovel to the spade due to the amount of bodies he could fit on it, but his had broken not even a week ago. Now, he was stuck with the spade until he found the energy and time to go to another company and buy an overpriced rectangular shovel.

The job paid well, and with the most recent raise, he was making twenty-eight an hour. He’d kill people for twenty-eight an hour. Hell, anyone would. He shoveled another pile into the grinder.

The grimy-black inlet of the grinder was nearly full, but Trevor had been doing this for a while, and it looked like he could squeeze in just one more load. He drove the shovel into the pile and watched in mild disinterest as a tiny old man clambered over the rest of the bodies. He jumped and waved at Trevor, trying to catch his attention. Trevor didn’t acknowledge him in any way, just took two steps and dumped them all into the metal bin.

Sometimes they were still alive, and if they were, they usually screamed. He had learned that lesson on his first day. Now, he brought headphones in and listened to disco. He lost himself in the contours of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s voice as he slapped the grinder’s power switch on.

It would take about ten minutes for the unrelenting teeth to chomp them to goo.

So, break time.

In the break room, five technicians sat around whispering. One of the guys lifted a hand in greeting, and Trevor nodded at him. He filled a coffee from a warm pot and sat back against the counter, taking a long draught of the black coffee.

“No cure yet?” Trevor asked, turning down his disco music a little.

A black-haired woman turned to him, looking angry and like she had been crying. Trevor cocked an eyebrow at her. Must be a touchy subject. Sometimes, the technicians got attached to the people they created. It was inevitable even with the company’s policies.

When no one said anything else to him, he shrugged his shoulders. “Better get back to work.”

Trevor left the break room. The grinder would be done soon anyway.

Inside the corpse room, he sat in his only chair. It had been a technician’s who had lost his mind and tried to bring one of the little people home. The company had painted him as a sexual deviant. Maybe he was; maybe he wasn’t. Trevor didn’t worry about those things. He thumbed the volume up to drown out the roar of the grinder.

He leaned back in the chair and felt a bit of pressure release on his back. In a moment, the grinder would stop, and the pain would start again.

Two minutes passed, and the grinder began to rattle instead of roar, which was the tell-tale sign that it was finished. So, Trevor stood, stretched, and slapped the grinder’s switch off. He walked around it, grabbed the metal bin of black and red slop, and wheeled it to where the lids should have been.

There were no lids. But that wasn’t a problem, he’d just grab more from shipping. He pushed the metal bin through the doors right into the black-haired technician.

She took one look at the metal bin and, without warning, vomited directly into it.

“Goddammit!” Trevor yelled. It was more of a cry of surprise than one of reproach. The power went out of her legs, and she fell—hitting her head on the side of the metal bin.

“Oh shit,” Trevor said, taking off his headphones with one hand and moving the bin out of the way with the other. He knelt next to her.

There was blood pooling around her head, and he jostled her shoulder a bit. “You all right, lady?”

Her eyelids fluttered, and she heaved, but the vomit just rose in her slightly open mouth.

He walked in large strides back into the room, picked up the phone, and dialed his supervisor, Miss Smultz. He relayed the situation to her, then went back out and turned the lady over onto her side like in the company’s safety videos. The vomit bubbled out in a thin sliver that ran out of the corner of her mouth. He couldn’t tell if she could breathe, so Trevor took two fingers and scooped out the vomit so there would be no obstruction. Then, after a few more seconds, her body started to shake, and he put his hand under her head so she wouldn’t knock her head against the white tile during the seizure.

Down the hall, Miss Smultz was walking and talking on a cell phone. When she got there, the technician’s seizure had subsided, and her chest heaved a bit.

“An ambulance is on its way,” Miss Smultz said. She looked from the container to the woman. “What happened?”

“She passed out and hit her head on the cart.”

“You’ll have to write a report,” his supervisor said matter-of-factly. “Why isn’t there a lid on that bin?”

Trevor looked back at the bin as if he, too, was seeing it for the first time. “It was a heavy day, so I used all the lids. I was going to get one from the boys down in shipping.”

“All right. Get that bin down there and have them bring up more lids. We’re already behind schedule.”

Trevor knew he was going to catch hell from Miss Smultz for not following company policy. He should have called someone and had them bring up the lids before the grinder was finished. Still, he should come clean about everything. The product was spoiled. “She vomited in the bin.”

“It’s all organic.” Miss Smultz looked down the hallway and then down to the woman with a click of her tongue before finally looking up at Trevor. “What are you doing hanging around? Take that shit to shipping.”

He took the bin down to shipping, and, figuring it was better to stay out of Smultz’s sight, he lingered there, listening to the stories about last week’s drunken brawl or the gossip about someone named Tony who hadn’t shown up to work and was on a week-long bender. A tingle rose in his throat. He tried to swallow it.

After a sufficient-seeming time, Trevor pushed the cart back up to the grinder. By the time he got up there, the woman and Miss Smultz were gone. Jodi, the janitor, mopped up the dark red fluid. He sighed when Trevor pushed the cart through the doors, right through a pink puddle of blood and water.

After Trevor had finished grinding the rest of the mountainous pile and with about forty-five minutes left of his shift, Jodi walked through the doors and told him that he’d be handling Trevor’s finishing tasks today.

Miss Smultz wanted to see him.

In her office, Miss Smultz gave him a lecture about following company policy, but since he had an otherwise stellar record, it only resulted in a verbal reprimand. Then, he wrote his report of the incident and learned the black-haired woman’s name. Erica.

Miss Smultz dismissed him when he was done. He apologized again and got up and left. On his drive home, he pulled into the parking lot of a bar. He sat there a while. His brain fought with the want in his throat and body.

He unbuckled his seat belt, buckled it, unbuckled it again, and this time put his hand on the door, but then he withdrew it, and, without buckling his seatbelt, turned the car on and drove off.

He called his wife, and it went to her familiar voicemail. He didn’t leave one, but he enjoyed the sound of her voice. That was why he still paid seventy-five dollars a month to keep the line connected.

He drove past his house, ignoring the brief flash of desire to turn in the driveway. Instead, he drove on a little farther and pulled into the parking lot of a church. He wasn’t the religious type, but his wife had been.

In her more lucid moments, she was full of prayer and singing and acceptance for her hospice care. In her less lucid moments, she claimed to be receiving divine instruction about putting silverware in the oven to disrupt the energy flow of attacking demons.

Trevor walked into the church, up the stairs, and onto the second floor where his AA meeting was taking place. He was late, and everyone was already in the circle, coffee and cheap donuts in hand. Some of the people gave him a thumbs-up or a wave, others just stared down at the floor or into their coffees.

He sat next to Reggie and across from Beth. Beth was a pretty woman with eyes that shimmered at any sad story, but when she told her own, her voice became frigid and stiff. And Reggie was the leader of the group. A retired Anglican priest who was five years sober. He didn’t preach at them.

Reggie nudged Trevor with his elbow. “Looks like you’ve got something to talk about, pal.”

Reggie was also a bloodhound.

Trevor shook his head. “Yeah, all right. I went to a bar today. That’s why I’m late.”

No one said anything.

“Had a rough day at work. Almost went in.”

That’s all he wanted to say. The others nodded their heads. They’d been at that crossroads before, dancing with the devil in their bodies. They knew what it was like.

Suddenly parched, Trevor stood while Beth recounted a drama that unfolded this week with her teenage daughter. Her daughter had been sneaking liquor into the house. Beth felt betrayed by this and was so angry that she hadn’t been able to speak to her for days.

Trevor nodded along, but in his mind, he was thinking about Erica. Had she been on her way to talk to him? He could count on one hand how many times a technician had been down the hallway that led to the corpse room.

While Beth continued her long-winded story, Trevor stared at a painting that hung on the wall. It was one that he had painted a long time ago and gifted to the group. It was a dandelion. Marge’s favorite flower. She always used to say that it put the other flowers to shame. It was hardy and full of the will to live. She had been that way, too, almost until the end.

After the meeting was finished, Trevor followed the procession out of the church. No one ever wanted to hang out and shoot the shit. He drove home, listening to more disco.

At home, he spent the weekend painting a landscape from a local park and watching TV game shows. Reggie called him on Saturday and invited him to church on Sunday. Trevor appreciated the call, but he politely declined.

Soon enough, it was Monday and he lost himself in his work. More disco. More shoveling. Some bodies still alive, some dead, all ignored. Grinder slapped on. Coffee. The gooey mess taken to shipping with a lid secured tightly.

He did this until Wednesday. Wednesday was when Erica showed up again. He didn’t notice her at first. The grinder was on, and the Jacksons were blasting full volume. He was doing a little shuffle, waiting for the grinder to finish its business, and caught her out of the corner of his eye.

He yelped and then quickly covered his mouth with a cough. He pulled his headphones off, his face flushing red, and asked her what she was doing down here.

She motioned to her ear and shook her head. So, she probably hadn’t heard him yelp. Good. He motioned with his thumb that they should talk outside of the room. He held the door for her and let it close behind him. The grinder’s roar was barely muffled.

Up close, she was pretty. Dark, sunken eyes and a pale complexion. His headphones played the opening notes to “You Sexy Thing.” He looked down at it in surprise and then killed the song.

“What’s going on? You all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said coolly, looking up and down the hallway. “Listen, don’t you think what’s happening is cruel?”

He raised an eyebrow. “They don’t pay me to think about that.”

“You only think about what the company pays you to?” There was an edge to her voice now. “Are you a monster?”

“Listen, lady, I don’t know you. What the hell do you want?” Trevor took a step back and opened the door. The grinder was rattling. He stepped inside, not caring if she followed.

She did.

Another stream of bodies fell, but without a mountain of bodies to catch them, they hit the concrete, a cascade of the tiny snip-snip-snip of bones breaking. Her eyes widened, and her hand trailed to her pocket. Trevor looked at the growing mound of bodies, grabbed his shovel, and leaned on it. The bin was about half full with its red mulch; he could probably make it through this new batch.

“So, you don’t have a problem with all this?” she asked.

“I’m not the one who kills them,” he said, but a sharp dagger of dissonance stabbed his brain. “You work for the company too, so you’re just as much a monster as me. Now, can I get back to work?”

Trevor turned and, using his foot to give himself that extra oomph, he drove his spade into the bodies. He flicked the disco music on, and, as he heard a funky guitar riff, a searing pain lit up in his shoulder. All those years of hard drinking had caught up with him. Almost three years sober, and he was having a heart attack. The pain flared white hot again. Trevor fell with a groan into the bodies.

He rolled, disoriented, and saw Erica with a knife in her hand. It was nothing more than a pocket knife, but that was his blood dripping off it. His brain shorted, and he told her that having a knife was against company policy.

She never answered; instead, she fell on top of him with a scream, swiping wildly. He felt his flesh open and open and open and, his body acting on instinct, reached for her shoulder. The blade bit into his hand, but it didn’t stop him from grabbing Erica and pulling her to one side. She went easily, almost weightlessly. She couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds.

He stood, stumbled, fell to a knee. His vision doubled, but in it, she lay there panting. The grinder rattled on, hungry for more meat.

He tried to stand but fell onto his back and crawled away from her. He bellowed for help, hoping, praying that Jodi was out there or Miss Smultz was making her rounds.

Erica stood and walked over to him, the knife angled toward him. He tried to scrabble quickly, but his elbow collapsed on him. She swung the knife again, and it struck his temple, bouncing a deep gash across his forehead.

Blood ran down Trevor’s face. She raised the knife high in Hitchcock fashion, and then the door opened.

Jodi.

Trevor passed out.

Over the next few days, Trevor’s consciousness was hazy. He crashed into a foggy reality that was separated sharply by an enveloping, blanket-like blackness. One moment, he was looking at a nurse who reminded him of his dead wife, and the next, he was being presented with a golden pocket watch and gold chain by Miss Smultz. She even gave him a kiss on the cheek while people with cameras, who had likely been hired by the company, stood around snapping photos with bright white bursts of lights.

But it was not until a few days later when Reggie came to visit that the painkillers began to wane and his grip on reality and time grew strong again.

Trevor was not surprised to find himself alive, nor was he particularly happy he still was.

Reggie sat down in a chair, adjusted himself with a grimace. “My back is killing me today.”

“You come to read me Bible verses?” Trevor’s tongue worked its way across his sour teeth. His mouth was dry.

“Now, there’s no need to be prickly,” Reggie said, a half-moon smile on his face. “I just came to see how you’re holding up.”

“How do I look?”

“Like shit.”

Trevor laughed a little. His ribs, exacting their vengeance, flared with pain, bringing an image of Erica with her pocket knife. His throat grew tight like a pair of hands had suddenly started throttling him.

A nurse wearing scrubs filled with yellow dandelions walked into the room.

“How you feeling, Trevor?” Then, without stopping, “You ready for another round of pain meds?”

“Just hold on . . .” Trevor raised a hand, sucking in a long breath through his nose, trying to control his panic. The nurse waited patiently for him to speak. He managed to squeeze out: “I don’t want any painkillers.”

The nurse raised an eyebrow. “But—”

“I said I don’t want any!” Trevor roared at her.

“Okay, that’s all right. We won’t give you any right now,” she said in a calm, practiced voice.

“Take it easy, man.” Reggie patted his arm.

“I just—I don’t want them.” Trevor hung his head and started to sob. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, sweetie,” she said, then made her exit.

Trevor didn’t say much after he pulled himself together. Reggie talked a little about the group, and Trevor, not really listening, sat there, letting the words bounce off him. Eventually, Reggie left too.

No one came to visit him again. When the painkillers were flushed out of his system, he could feel the split skin and each individual stitch that held his rent flesh together. Erica had also cut off his left index finger in the struggle. He hadn’t noticed it then.

After a few more days, he signed the form to release himself. He grumbled to the nurse about not being able to do anything without a million forms involved, and the nurse just blinked at him before taking the papers back.

At home, he called Miss Smultz’s office, and when her secretary answered, he asked him when he could come back to work. He told Trevor that he didn’t know the answer but that he would ask her.

Miss Smultz showed up at his house in the evening. He signed more papers that he didn’t truly understand and was given something he did: a year’s worth of rent and a two-month vacation. She complimented him on not drawing out his hospital stay too.

“People can be such pussies. If it were one of the technicians, they’d have been up my ass trying to file false claims. Those people think they’re irreplaceable, that they matter. They don’t get it. But we do, don’t we, Trevor?” She reached across the empty space and patted his knee.

Trevor didn’t know what to say. So, he only asked if she wanted to see his paintings.

“Oh my God, I didn’t know you painted. You’re just chock-full of surprises,” she said, smiling sunshine at him.

He took her through the years of his paintings. He started with his earlier work and went all the way up to the last portrait of his wife.

In the unfinished portrait, his wife was like a pale white flame, tinged with blue, burning faintly in the dark. She sat on a sill, looking out at a starless sky. The window’s meeting rail centered a target right where her shoulder curved to a point. She hadn’t lived to see it, but she would have loved how beauty and hopelessness came together in it even without the stars he had meant to paint for her.

Trevor felt his lip tremble, but, putting on a smile, he ushered Miss Smultz back into his living room and then out the door.

She didn’t say goodbye as she left. She only waved, and by the time Trevor had raised his hand, her back was already turned.

For the two months, he alternated between painting and watching TV game shows. Eventually, the stitches dissolved, and the wounds healed into ugly red scars. His wife would have told him he looked like Frankenstein if she had been alive, and he cried when he thought that.

At the exact passing of two months, Trevor called Miss Smultz’ secretary and asked when he could start again. The secretary told him Monday at the earliest. So, he waited, went to his AA meeting, and was surprised when they presented him with a three-year coin.

Reggie clapped him on the back and handed him a doughnut, which was stale, and a coffee that was cold.

“Glad to have you with us, Trevor. You’re an inspiration to the group.” Reggie smiled.

The AA meeting went by without any additional ceremony. Beth talked about her relapse and how she was trying to come to grips with the fact that it was part of her recovery. Her sponsor hadn’t been particularly available for her. Though it sounded like she was ducking her own guilt a little bit, no one said anything about that. Others talked about their shit week, and when someone asked Trevor how he was, he just smiled and held up his hand, wiggled his missing finger, and everyone laughed.

After the meeting, the weekend blurred. A little more painting, a lot more TV game shows where normal people won slightly un-normal prizes of money. And then he went back to work.

People he had never met wanted to shake his hand. They called him “Trev” and “Big Dog,” all for almost being killed by someone and coming back to work where it had happened. After he passed, they whispered behind his back about hysterical Erica and her “injury that led to the deed.”

Trevor punched in and found Jodi in the hallway outside the corpse room with a rectangular shovel in hand. Jodi handed it over with no additional ceremony, and Trevor took it without acknowledging it.

“I never got to thank you for saving me,” Trevor said.

Jodi shook his head. “I didn’t save you. She saw me, then climbed into the machine and grinded herself. I ran into overtime scrubbing up all the blood. Christ, this place was a mess.”

Trevor looked at the orange meat grinder and thought it must have been repainted; there was no rust anymore. “Well, guess I’d better get to work.”

“Back to the grind, huh, Trev?” Jodi laughed and pushed open the metal doors, leaving Trevor alone.

The first body fell onto the concrete with a dull thud. It was all broken bones, and it was screaming. Trevor put his headphones on, found the right disco playlist, and hit shuffle. A squirting stream of bodies fell, serendipitously striking the cement floor with each beat in the opening of “Boogie Fever.” There were a lot more than usual. A technician had probably forgotten to set a population constraint, but Trevor was glad for the work.

He had driven his shovel through the pile three times before he realized that the pile of bodies was a squirming mass of limbs. Every single one of them was alive. Trevor killed the song, took his headphones off. The pile was a muffled scream of mouths on flesh.

Immediately, Trevor headed to the phone hanging on the concrete wall. He dialed Miss Smultz, and she picked up in two rings.

“Yes?”

“This is Trevor, ma’am,” he said, then looked at the writhing pile of bodies. Some were climbing down, others were falling and bashing themselves against the concrete floor. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Trevor? Oh, yes.” She paused. “What’s that noise?”

“The bodies that came down the chute this morning—that’s them screaming.”

“Goddammit. It’s the new technician. Sorry for the trouble, Trevor,” she said. He could hear her scratching something out with a pencil or fine-tipped pen.

“No problem,” Trevor said, watching a few of them who were watching him. “What are we going to do about all these people?”

“The bodies? What do you mean?”

“I don’t thi—” Trevor began to say, but it was fucking twenty-eight an hour.

“What did you say, Trevor?”

“I just figured I’d let you know what’s going on. I’ll get it done.”

“Thank you, Trevor.” She hung up.

Trevor placed the phone back on its receiver and turned to his job. Some of the bodies had made it to the concrete floor and were standing around, still watching him, or were gaping at the mountain of their screaming kin. Some of the bodies were also running toward the door, hoping for an escape.

Trevor put his headphones on and thumbed the play button twice, skipping “Boogie Fever.” A strong blast of revolving, funky notes by the Bee Gees played.

His first shovel swing crushed what looked like the nuclear family of four.