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✦
Outside the apartment, the grating drone of the machine filled the parking lot. It was sporadically perforated by the inane voices of Kush City workers.
Dale sat on the balcony debating whether to smoke his last cigarette now or save it for work, fiddling with the pack. The package was black with a simple skeleton engulfed in smoke on it and the red symbol for “toxic”, with the brand name of Reginald Classics in tiny white letters at the bottom, smaller than the federal government decreed “shame on you” at the top.
Getting through an entire shift in Doson South without one damn cigarette was going to be rough. A living hell would be even worse than it had to be. Dale’s newfound knowledge that he was broke this morning didn’t help either. Turns out a friend that owed him a decent chunk of money simply stole it instead. There was nothing he could do. He didn’t even have thirty dollars for a pack of smokes. When you couldn’t even buy your coping mechanisms was an abject nagging horror that couldn’t be ignored.
Denial meant lying to oneself.
I may be broke, fucked up, divorced and miserable, but I’m no liar.
That was the truth.
Besides the paycheck there was at least one other perk to the job. After several months of working at the chemical plant Dale’s tolerance for sheer pointlessness was forced to go up a few points. He needed to stay employed, even though he desperately didn’t want to. Unfortunately, Dale’s ex-wife Emily got a lot of that paycheck and all the other ones recently for child support. The conniving witch had managed to brainwash Dale’s own son against him. Six year old Shawn Crawford had transformed into a little bastard right in front of Dale’s eyes, through no fault of his own. That was right before the government stooges came to take Shawn away for good.
That’s when Dale really started hitting the bottle. He drank before, but that’s when he really started hitting it.
Years passed.
It was only pure nepotism from his brother Fred that got Dale the job at Doson. Funny what counts as qualification when you’re easy, recommended and convenient. Dale managed to slither right past the gatekeepers without the stupid certificates usually needed for a job like that.
Certificates the peasants would need. Not Dale.
He was clever, he thought, and he wasn’t going to waste time and money paying for a certificate from some bullshit course he didn’t want to do to get a job he didn’t really want to have, but that he had to.
Hell, he didn’t even want to be alive anymore but here he was now. Might as well stick it out for the shitshow after someone else already bought the ticket even though life was shattered like a bad-luck mirror.
However, life was all about perseverance and Dale Crawford was no pussy.
The noisy nuisance machine had stopped now. The voices of the NPC’s settled. Dale decided to save that smoke.
Have a little discipline, like a real man, see what comes of it later.
Dale stood up out of the chair surrounded by half-dead plants and moseyed inside the apartment. A glance in the mirror reflected a man with long drawn bags under his eyes and a pale complexion bordering on ghostly. His beard was more than nothing but less than a respectable real man’s beard and his hair was tousled and salted with grey strands.
How the hell did this happen?The world was cruel enough as it is without those who are supposed to be closest to you throwing you under the bus. Oh well. Fuck it. He glanced at his Timeoid. Almost time. He went to the bathroom and found his gross towel. The one with Hawaiian beaches, pineapples and pretty girls on it, now stained with the filth of his body over a long period of time from having never been washed.
He turned on the shower knob. He still had enough self-respect to turn on the shower knob and take a shower. He wasn’t a total loser. Not yet. No matter what Claudia kept brainwashing Shawn with. Maybe one day he’d get a chance to prove her wrong, like the lying deceitful bitch that she was. He felt bad for Shawn to have a bitch mother like that. Maybe one day he’d get the chance to prove that it was her who was the loser… Not him. But Dale was a realist – and realistically, probably not.
This shift was going to super suck, as usual, but that’s how it goes.
That’s why it’s called work. That’s why you get paid.
He’d lost perspective somewhere a long time ago. It was no longer clear how much of this shitty situation was due to his own choices and how much was just the pure inescapable fate in a terrible world.
✦
The journey to Doson South was almost as annoying as working there. It was a long ways away and took a long time to get there and back again, just to repeat the same process the next day. Dale didn’t drive so he had to take public transit. In this case it was a sky train through the desert outside the south end of town.
The train stopped at a weird suburbs out there beyond which was even more suburban than regular suburban. It was a mini-town, like a strip mall, comprised of living quarters for long-time Doson workers. The company knew how to reward its lifers at least.
The train was always filled with the most disparate people one could imagine. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to come across anyone at all with a bonafide look of dignity or respect amongst them. The plain downtrodden street folk were actually on the upside of the spectrum of degeneracy witnessed here on this southside train.
Dale knew he wasn’t a picture perfect display of health and respectability either. He was a loser, not a moron. Two Clamatizers deep was decently paced drinking for a weekday workday. He was subtly torn between pride and shame somewhere in the undercurrent of his consciousness that wasn’t focused on dread, panic and resentment at the moment, and most moments. The pride was coming from where he did not drink as much as he could have. The shame was from he still drank. It was hard to win. Either you had some fun and you felt bad about it or you didn’t have any fun and you felt bad about that. Either way you still had to go to work that day, clock in, do your shift and say “good” when someone asked you “how are you?”
✦
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