Commended in the Writing Rammy 2019
This is your station. You put a container into a carton, pack six cartons into a box, and stack twelve boxes on a pallet here. Your target is two pallets per hour. You get boxes from Lilith, that’s her at the press waving. Yes, wave back, but never speak to her, she’s an evil old witch.
Jack loads the pallets. You’ll get along well with Jack. He’s a Bairns fan too. You will go to games together every weekend, and head out in Falkirk afterwards. You will be drinking buddies for the next three years, until the night Jack confides in you about his irrational phobia concerning the cross-species relationship of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. He will relate his recurring nightmare about the noisy Muppet couple moving into the flat below him with their hideous, hybrid frogspawn frig and porcine prog progeny. You will swear never to tell anyone, but Jack will suspect – quite correctly – that you blabbed to Mary, and he will never socialise with you again, until his awkward leaving do in Wetherspoons, five years from now.
That’s Mary taping boxes. She can seal a box in under a second, and in three months-time your fingers will touch when she’s taping your third box of the day. You will start dating after that. You plan to propose to her the week before your first anniversary, but Mary will break up with you a fortnight before this event. Mary will claim she doesn’t love you anymore. She will never tell you how she got freaked out after searching for an anniversary present while you slept, and finding the box under your bed full of men’s, women’s and children’s single shoes. If Mary asked you about the box, you could have told her that you’ve collected discarded odd shoes since you were six, after your father abandoned you with nothing to remember him, except for his old smacking slipper.
This is the kitchen. Your lunch hour is at one. This will be your favourite chair and you will sit in it every lunch time here, until you fall from it sixteen years and four days from today. The post-mortem will reveal that you inherited a genetic heart condition – as well as a smacking slipper – from your father, and so you will perish on the floor there, clutching a pot noodle. Beef and tomato flavour! You will remember your grandmother’s rhubarb crumble at the end. Mary will rush to your side, and you will murmur your last words to her. She will say you whispered: “I love you Mary,” but, really, your final words will be: “I wan custard nana!”
There’s Lilith again. Never speak to that evil old witch. I asked about her weekend plans once, and she put a purblind foresight curse on me. Now, I see everyone’sfuture, but no one ever heeds my predictions.
So, any questions?
Yes, this is your station, [sigh] I am sure you will be very happy here.
(c) Gary Oberg