Weekly Writing – December 24 2022

Every week, I pick up three packs of bacon at Sandy’s Market. Sandy herself, still working the till, at least on Saturdays, makes some comment about how much I must like the stuff, to go through it so quickly.
I smile. Nod through it. Every week.
Two thirds of a pack of bacon, give or take, when I go into work on Monday night. Every night. Tucked into a sandwich bag, in my coat, so no one working late gives me a weird eye for toting raw meat around the office.
The flashlight is easier to explain. For work, I say, in case a bulb burns out or I have to go poking around under a sink. And they nod, and probably go off wondering why I need the sort of flashlight that could burn God to cinders for that. Couldn’t I get away with a little penlight in my pocket?
That was all I carried when I started this job. And no meat. No boombox either, screeching the sort of razor-on-glass rock I don’t really like much, but it likes even less.
Those rare late workers probably wonder why I don’t use headphones. And curse me as they close their office doors, and none of them have disappeared, so maybe sitting at a desk under the fluorescents is the way to survive. Too bad not all of us have that option.
My first night here, I barely managed to claw my way out the front door. I felt its breath on the back of my neck, not hot, like I would have expected, but the sort of dank, wet chill you’d expect from a mausoleum opened for the first time in a hundred years on a rainy day. When I turned to slam the door behind me, it wasn’t there.
It’s so damn fast. I went home and pulled up the job listings on my shuddering old laptop, smells like burnt wire lately whenever I turn it on, and a snow of dead pixels is starting to gather in the bottom right corner of the screen.
Most of those job listings were the same ones I had waded through to get my hands on this night cleaning gig. I looked at them, and I thought of the weeks, months I’d spent knocking on metaphorical locked doors, sitting backache straight at interviews, using cologne to try to cover the stench of desperation…
And I decided I could work with it. It was just an animal, right? So damn fast, the same slippery colour as the dark, but chances were, it wanted the same things as any animal – a full belly and a comfy place to sleep.
I tried chicken, beef, sausages, just snap off a link and toss it into the dark corner, but it likes bacon best. I don’t know if it hates the light, or can’t be in it at all – even with that flashlight that could burn God, I’ve never gotten a real, bright look at it.
And it hates the music, of course. That was just a hunch, but a good one. Its ears must be as keen as its teeth.
Meat, light, music. And a knife strapped on my ankle, though I’m kidding myself, really, if I think I’d have time to pull it out if things went south.
If there was a power outage, maybe. Could I shine the flashlight around fast enough to keep it from slinking behind me? Or if it ever just decides that suffering the music and light would be worth it to kill me. If it ever decides I’d be better than bacon.
I talk to it sometimes. At it, really. At the dark. Hardly anyone ever works late.
Just me. I peel off a strip of bacon and toss it ahead of me around every corner. Through every doorway. Maybe, if it knows me as the one who brings the treats, it’ll leave me alone.
Or maybe the job market will get better. Stranger things have happened. Until then, I’ll just keep going. Working with it. At least I have job security, right?
I mean, if they tried to replace me, what would be the chances of some other poor sap actually managing to survive their first night?