Leeder’s Doll Limb Bouquet Co.
by Varden M. Frias
|
Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
Warren sorted through doll arms and legs riding along the flat conveyor belt in front of him, picking out the dirty, nicked, or otherwise malformed doll limbs. On occasion, he came across disfigured ones that perhaps bled out of their mold or cooled too gradually for the desired shape to form. He pocketed them rather than discard them as he was supposed to.
Once he had counted the appropriate number of limbs, he bunched the handful into a plastic bouquet bag hanging from a dispenser over a conveyor belt atop the doll limb conveyor belt. He then set the bouquet on the top conveyor belt, where a mechanical imp pressed down a switch that mechanically wrapped a thin rubber band around the bouquet’s base.
In the next second, it trundled along the assembly line, the limbs shivering to the uneven rhythm of the belt’s rusty old gears. It bumped over a crusty knob at the end of the line before falling into the pile that another team would pick up and send to the packaging department in another warehouse.
“Warren, quit holding up the line!” a gruff voice shouted in his direction. Warren didn’t need to look over to see that it was Dave, the line leader, shouting at him. He reverted to sorting the perfect from the imperfect doll limbs. He performed this monotonous task for a few more hours until the four-eyed mechanical bird up in the corner of the warehouse announced with a series of prolonged shrieks that it was lunch hour. The conveyor belts stopped. Warren wiped the sweat from his brow and trudged for the exit: a malformed sheet metal door leading out to the facility’s main campus.
Outside, the gray sky hung low over the rows of massive warehouses. Each one fixed with eye-shaped cameras following him down the muddy path towards the car lot. Beyond the lot stood the chain-link fence forming the campus perimeter that opened only three times a day.
He passed by the company’s HR building, a trailer whose foundation threatened to sink into the mud. He sighed and walked up the metal steps, causing the trailer to sway. The receptionist, Maggz, was typing on a computer thicker than her torso. She had eyes in the back that squinted at him with deep, unprovoked suspicion. Warren cleared his throat.
“Welcome to Leeder’s Doll Limb Bouquet Company, how can I help you today?” Maggz typed as she recited her formal greeting.
“You know it’s me, right?”
“That ain’t gonna make me quit sayin’ what I’ve been saying for longer than you’ve been alive, son.”
Warren sighed, “I’m here to put in my two weeks, Maggz.”
Her curled, manicured nails paused their frantic typing for a hiccup of a second before resuming the manic task.
“You want to quit, eh?”
Warren grunted, “Yeah, well, I want to have some pride in the work I do, and I never do get to see my kids what with the extra hours the boss has been giving us lately, and all.”
She nodded, “Ah yeah, I miss my kiddies every time I’m in here but the bunnies need the moneys.”
“Yes, that they do. So could you let the big man know? I’d really appreciate it.”
She popped a gum bubble, squinting at him through her pink sunglasses and leaning to the side to yank open the filing cabinet built into the desk, all while maintaining eye contact.
“Sorry to see you go so soon,” she said, taking out a sheet of paper that looked very much like paperwork and handing it to him. He took it.
“What’s this for?”
She tapped the paper with a pen she pulled out of her pink bumblebee hair. “New policy. Been lots of quittin’ lately, and Mr. Sterling wants to know why.”
“Sterling?”
“He’s the new boss man. Last one disappeared on us. No idea where he’s at. Just state your reason for leaving down here” — she tapped at the bottom of the page — “and fill the rest out, but I don’t got to tell you that. You’re a smart boy.”
“I fill out this form in here?”
She smacked her gum and gestured to the office seats lined up on the wall behind him.
“Turn it in on the desk when you’re done.”
“Thanks, Maggz.”
She nodded and he left her. He slumped down into one of the front office seats and began filling out the form. While he worked, droves filtered through the office door, but he ignored them. By the time he had finished, people in jumpsuits with the company’s logo of a doll’s head printed on the back were clogging the office.
Maggz’s voice cracked through the murmuring voices. “One at a time! You folks wait outside, I can’t think worth a darn with you all crowding my thinkin’ room.”
The workers cursed under their breath but nonetheless shuffled out. Warren got up and bumped into Al, a muscular woman with an orange-red mohawk and a kind smile who towered over the rest of the workers by a foot. Her green eyes dropped down to the paper in his hand.
“You’re quitting too, huh?”
He shrugged, “I can’t see my kids no more. Can’t work at a job where I can’t see my own kids at dinner, you know?”
She nodded, “I feel you. Ashburn’s for lunch today? My treat.”
Warren nodded, “You know it, Al. See you later.”
They bumped shoulders as a sign of departure. Al continued walking towards the front door of the office while Warren set his paperwork on the desk in front of Maggz who clacked her hen claw nails on the keyboard.
“Turns out you’re not the only one who’s quittin’,” she said, her eyes never leaving the screen. Warren watched whatever she typed on the screen reflected on her glasses, but it all blurred into the scratches and smudge marks.
“Say, why are the other folks quitting? Just out of curiosity, of course.”
The clacking stopped. “You didn’t hear it from me, but the HR lady told me something funny is gumming up the works in management.”
Curiosity egged him to prod further despite the weariness of the heavy work day on his shoulders. “Like what?’
“You didn’t hear it from me!” She resumed her furious typing.
Warren took the obvious hint and walked out of the office trailer to the parking lot, where he found Al leaned against his truck, typing on her phone. She looked up at him and smiled. “Ready?”
“You know it, sister.”
Even though Al was not his biological or even adopted sister, they’d both grown up together building mud pies and capturing frogs in glass jars to release back into the local ponds or rivers.
They got into Warren’s truck and drove towards the gate leading out of the campus when a pair of men in overalls drawing the gate shut stopped them. Warren poked his head out the driver window and called to one of the men walking past his truck back to the campus.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
“Sterling wants us to close the gate now,” the man shrugged and kept walking. Warren and Al looked at each other.
“Hell, we still got the food truck,” she said.
Warren sighed. “Yeah, I suppose we do, but I like gettin’ out of here every once in a while when I can.” He turned the truck around and parked at the parking spot closest to the gate.
“Food truck here we come,” Warren said as he swung out of the truck cabin onto the gravel lot and crunched his way over with Al at his side. Upon arriving at the food truck, the truck’s metal door came rattling down. The worker dressed in a plain white apron with grease splatters all over it packed away the tables, chairs, and umbrellas normally placed in front of the food truck.
“Lunch ain’t over yet,” Warren said to the food truck worker who just shrugged and continued working.
“Mr. Sterling told us to pack up early today.”
Warren and Al looked at each other, then watched as the man upended a table and wheeled the folded eatery receptacle into the back of the food truck.
“Come on, I got two sandwiches in my Igloo back at the truck,” Warren said and lead Al back.
“Something’s wrong,” he said as he opened up his Igloo in the truck cabin. He handed Al a sandwich and he took the other.
Al bit into her sandwich, “I’m not too worried as long as I get paid and leave work once that damn bird shrieks at the end of our shift.”
Warren nodded, his gaze drifting over to a few workers donned in the company jumpsuits running towards the fence. He swallowed a large chunk of roast beef slammed between rye and cheddar.
“Now what do you suppose those folks are doing?”
“Whatever it is, it’s dumb. Don’t they know the top of the fence has got barbs on it?”
Warren muttered and reached into his Igloo, all the while keeping his gaze on the workers climbing the fence in a frenzy. “Looks like they’re running from something.”
His fingers brushed the cold aluminum of one of the soda cans he brought to lunch. He handed Al the can and reached for the second one, watching one of the workers hop over the top of the fence onto the dirt road leading back into town. “Bet he hates it as much as we do.”
Al muttered in agreement as she cracked open the can and slurped down a few gulps, pulling back to belch and rip a new bite off her sandwich.
“In better news, want to see what I found for my daughter today?”
Al grinned, “You didn’t find another bad apple, did you?”
Warren beamed as he searched his chest pocket and showed Al a handful of discarded doll limbs.
“I hate tossing them. What a waste. But my girls love them, especially Maddy. She makes sculptures with all the ones I bring home.”
He held the doll limbs in front of him, all in varying states of deformation, his smile fading and the twinkle leaving his eyes. “I used to work on the sculptures with Maddy. She’s only five, she doesn’t understand why the boss makes me work so late.”
Al put her hand on Warren’s shoulder. “She understands that you love her and that’s all that matters.”
Before Warren could respond, a familiar high-pitched shriek sounded from across the parking lot from the main warehouse.
“That the lunch bell already?” Warren looked to Al, then to the radio clock on the dashboard. “Only fifteen past.”
One of the guards came up to the driver window and tapped on it. They spoke to Warren, their voice muffled.
“Sterling says get back to your line.”
Al directed her shout to the worker on the other side of the glass.
“We ain’t finished with lunch yet. Did Sterling even think about that?”
“Ah hell, Al, you know new bosses gotta prove themselves. Give him a week and he’ll cut loose,” Warren said, then sighed and downed the last of his soda and chucked the can into a plastic bag in the middle seat. They exited the truck and crossed the parking lot, parting ways to go to their respective warehouse buildings on the campus.
* * *
Al went straight to packaging, and Warren trudged to the assembly-line warehouse and assumed his place on the assembly line. The four-eyed bird shrieked again, and again the line leader screamed for everyone to hurry up, and again the assembly line picked up speed.
He worked his way through bouquet after bouquet until the clock struck 3:00 pm, the end of the workday, but the bird did not shriek, the line leader did not yell “quittin’ time!” and the assembly line did not stop.
Warren looked down the line to find a man in a dapper black three-piece suit speaking to Dave. Due to the dull roar of the machines, Warren had no way of hearing the exchange. The mystery man tipped his hat and made his way towards the exit, ignoring the pile of defective doll limbs cast to the floor during the sorting process.
“Quit holding up the line!” Dave screamed at Warren, then to the rest of the line team members who glanced questioningly to the clock then to the line leader. “We got an extra quota to fill today. Come on, let’s go!”
Warren grunted and haunched back over his work, sorting the doll limbs, collecting the pristine, smooth pieces, and tossing the broken, splotched, or otherwise defaced doll limbs. He had no time to save the runts, and his heart sank deeper with each deformed doll limb he cast over his shoulder.
Soon, the pieces dwindled to sparse scatterings over the assembly line that took less frantic efforts to sort and put together. His spirits lifted as if the change in pace promised in the not too distant future, the familiar shriek of the four-eyed bird announcing that the day was done and he could go home to his family.
The doll limbs slowed to one limb at a time. He glanced up at the clock. An hour past the usual clock-out time had passed. He glanced over at Dave who slouched over the doll limb chute, sipping on an energy drink as he waited for more to spew out of the opening, but none came.
Warren kept silent until his patience smoldered down to hot embers. He walked over to Dave who started at seeing him as if roused from sleep. Dave’s bloodshot eyes narrowed.
“Get back to your spot, Warren.”
“Where the doll limbs at? I ain’t seen any for at least ten minutes.”
“We’re waitin’ for the new load, now go on back and just wait for grime’s sake.”
Warren huffed and trudged back to the line, his stomach growling, his heels pulsing, and his back aching. The whole line proceeded a full fifteen minutes without a single limb going through the chute and then it abruptly halted.
One after the other, the lines in the warehouse all hissed to a stop until dead silence eclipsed the building. Warren opened his mouth to ask what was happening, but a soft set of footfalls kept him from speaking.
He found the source of the footfalls and peered over the tops of the conveyor belts at the metallic four-eyed bird that had come off of its perch in the upper corner of the warehouse and walked in the path between the lines. No one said a word. It stopped in the center of the warehouse where a man in a steam-cleaned, pressed suit stood with a microphone attached to his mouth like a mask.
“Hello, workers of the Leed’s Doll Limb Boutique. You will call me Mr. Sterling. I regret to inform you that costs have gone up within the past month but the effort with which all of you are putting out the products, we sell are simply not meeting rising demands.”
Warren shifted. Sweat dribbled down the length of his spine. He dared not move to wipe it. Sterling looked over the crowd, then indicated the bird standing next to him.
“Grok will keep watch over you all to ensure your daily quotas are met,” he said. Warren noted that the man reached out to pat the bird on the neck but thought better of it. Now that the creature was on the ground, he could see how massive it was. The beast rose an arm’s length over Sterling’s head, a man who was already taller than the average male worker in the warehouse. It had arms, not wings, and its powerful legs were as thick and clawed as an ostrich’s.
The bird’s two sets of eyes, one on top of the other so that there were two on each side, glowed red and glimmered back at everyone in turn until landing on Warren for a moment, beaming him with a hint of light like he was a slab of meat being scanned at the grocery checkout. He gulped.
“I wish all of you success this work day. Let’s make quota!”
* * *
Copyright © 2022 by Varden M Frias
