SEVEN MONTHS AGO
A stream of light illuminated a white board placed slightly off center on the front wall of a barren conference room. This light took form as a legally mandated Standards and Safety presentation. Nine haggard plant workers slouched in their chairs, paying little to no attention to the facts and figures being presented to them. They preferred instead to stare at the blank walls or tables which all managed to be various shades of puke. One openly snored with his head down on the table in front of him. Charlene would eviscerate him afterwards. They were 23 minutes in with no end in sight.
At least they weren’t out on the floor, Ella Maloney thought from inside the concentrated haze of her boredom. “Be aware of your surroundings and potential exits,” the soulless, emotionless drone of the video went on. “Have a plan. If you see something, say something.”
It was in the running for most generic corporate presentation in existence. Information floated into the glaze of her eyes, sanitized messaging so thoroughly numbing it managed to bore into her skull like a drill. It threatened to let loose the pressure that was building up inside of her brain. If the presentation kept up, her head would actually burst and coat everything in a nice wet sheen of red.
At least they were getting paid to watch it. Beats a monotonous eight hours of picking through recycling in a dirty, greasy room that smelled so strongly of decaying food and trash that it made her want to empty her guts all over the conveyor belt. Couldn’t ever actually do that though; cleaning it up would make her coworkers upset.
Yeah, instead of doing that for eight hours, she only had to do it for six today. She had that going for her, she guessed.
The barrage of information continued, and miraculously her torpor deepened. She considered fighting against it, sitting up straight to avoid any scrutiny from the micromanaging blob called “supervisor.” Settling for scooching forward in her stiff-backed chair, her head rested slightly off kilter from the top of her neck.
That oughta keep the talking-to after at a minimum.
Over the course of the next 20 minutes she made it a goal to avoid moving as much as possible. Aside from the constant up and down twitching of her diaphragm, there was nothing to suggest there was life left in the husk of her sweaty, stinking body. A numbness started in her fingers and toes, crawling up from her limbs and into her organs. It was almost like being asleep, and despite the droning she siphoned some rest out of the self-induced stasis.
As she finally started to tune the smooth, glossy voice out, two words stroked her eardrums. Just two words, a preamble to an otherwise innocuous sentence.
“Magical Girls are not a very well understood phenomenon yet.”
It shook her like a tsunami striking a small coastal Asian town. The slide flickered too quickly for her to read the intro, but the next was crammed full of text. She was suddenly, painfully aware that whoever had put this travesty together hadn’t the faintest fucking clue about condensing their points down.
The mellifluous voiceover disappeared from her consciousness as she opted to read the verbatim text instead, as quickly as she could:
“There have been reported incidents of so-called rogue Magical Girls conducting attacks on various properties both public and private throughout the United States. Magical Girls working for the United States government, especially those engaged in active duty with the United States Magical Force (or USMF) are responsible for responding to such threats and containing them in a timely manner. However, rogue Magical Girls may still have time to inflict damage or endanger staff. Over the next few slides we will cover basic strategies for protecting yourself in the event of a magical attack.”
A couple slides passed by with remarkably useless information. Ella didn’t believe for even one second they would be of any real help–how the fuck do you prepare for a magical attack you aren’t already aware of? It’s magic, the shit is fundamentally unknowable to begin with.
She dimly registered a bullet point which said “If unable to escape, lock yourself into a safe, enclosed space.” Her minor telekinesis didn’t exactly make her a powerhouse, but any two-bit cantrip rendered this advice absolutely worthless. See how much good a lock does when you can disassemble it from the inside out. Most of them could just rip a fucking door off its hinges anyway.
There was one piece of information she did think was helpful, that Magical Girls could sometimes be identified by strange or ostentatious jewelry on their person. It even used the term “Soul Gems,” which made her feel strangely exposed, and almost without realizing it she stroked the small topaz she kept nestled on its chain under her stained work shirt.
The juicy tidbit, however, presented itself on the final slide concerning this personal topic. There were a few bullet points recapping the “advice,” and a fairly succinct appeal at the bottom of the projection:
“If you are aware of any Magical Girls who are not subject to the authority of the USMF, you are legally obligated to inform local law enforcement so as to protect the public interest.”
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
Her body felt like breakers in a switchboard that had just been shunted to the “on” position. The federal government was mandating training materials which concerned magical girls, and the USMF was getting involved with incidents. The Kansas City community had grown suspicious of this for a little while already, but hearing it in such plain speech gave it a startling, incontrovertible quality.
Now the government was assembling motherfuckin’ lists.
Kaycee needed to be told about this. They all had to start lying low immediately. No doubt the other cities would start doing the same, if they had any brains to work with.
As the voiceover returned to ramble on more mundane topics, Ella allowed these thoughts to percolate in her brain, which now felt like it might pop for entirely different reasons. Somewhere at the back of it all was the realization that she needed to quit this job, something that both relieved her a bit and scared her immensely. She hated change, and they were all about to get their world rocked in ways they could scarcely imagine.
The presentation ended unceremoniously. Lights switched back on at the behest of their placid leader, rendering all of them purblind for a second. Half-formed plans and what-ifs rolled around in her muddy gray matter, and she was vaguely thankful for the fact that they still had some time left in the shift. She needed to think.
Before she knew it though, 2:45 PM rolled around. Gettin’ close to quittin’ time, can’t wait to do it again tomorrow, her fellows lining the conveyor belt all laughed as they said the same quips they said every fucking day. She offered a weak chuckle of her own as she washed the belt with a mid-pressure hose, scrubbing off bits of decomposing cardboard and moldy food. It was all stale commiseration, trading the raunchy locker room jokes and bitterness at management that were staples of their blue collar lives.
She never felt much like joining in, but today especially she kept her eyes on the belt. More and more it glistened as the fetid residue of reclaimed waste came away. Slicks of water and suds came away from her scrubber pad which had once been stiff and green, but had long since turned limp and dirty and a sickening minty gray. The sponge reminded her of the first day she worked here when she had thrown up from the smell.
The conveyor was an endless rubber tongue that fed the gaping maw of the processor. Many times she had considered flopping her senseless mass on and sacrificing herself to it, throwing herself into the churning, crushing innards of a dragon whose name was Langley Recycling Incorporated. She stared at the hanging strips of dirty plastic that were all which separated her from a painful but swift death.
Fifteen minutes later found Ella in her boss Charlene’s office, squirming on the second hardback chair that day while she waited for the waddling mass to finish up a phone call that was completely superfluous. A long and progressively infuriating string of “yes”s and “I understand”s and “of course”s issued forth from the supervisor’s mouth, flopping up and down in short chomps.
She wondered if it were possible to die from this. An overdose of performative professionalism seemed about as bad a way as she could go, honestly. She’d take her chances with the processor first.
Against all odds, the endless conversation did finally end when the receiver clattered into its rest. Her supervisor displayed the slightest touch of reproach with a sigh that also seemed like it might never end. It took all of Ella’s strength not to visibly squirm in her chair.
“You’re quitting.”
“Yes.” She offered nothing else, thinking that if she had another wish it would be for this discussion to end instantaneously.
“You sure there’s nothing I can do to change your mind? We’ll be disappointed to see you go.”
Yeah, right. You’ll be disappointed you need to get someone to cover the labor gap, you fucking cow. Maybe you’ll even have to help out for once instead of just looming over everyone, like Saturn preparing to eat his own children. “Personal circumstances don’t allow for it,” she said instead, chewing the inside of her cheeks as discreetly as possible.
“Well,” the doughy lump of fat said, and paused to tap her short but squeaky clean nails on the lacquered surface of her desk. They clacked in a wave, remarkably dexterous for how chubby the fingers were. Two waves. Three waves. Silence. A fourth.
Ella’s stomach was clenched so tight she thought she might vomit on the table just to expedite matters.
Another lazy sigh escaped the manager. “I understand,” she begrudged, and suddenly spoke quickly. “You will of course not be able to return, as you’ve offered no two weeks’ notice. Regardless, it was a pleasure working with you.” A well-rehearsed speech; Ella wondered how many times she’d given it before. Charlene held out a pudgy stump for a goodbye shake and suddenly a river poured through Ella’s brain. On that river floated memories of her time at this casual nightmare of a shit fuck job.
It wasn’t a pleasure when you had to have everything your way. Your way or the highway, you said once. Rush into a task headlong, get it done in the most haphazard and inefficient way possible, call it good enough afterwards. You’re the boss, and that’s all there is to it. Talk down to the crew about “organization” and “planning ahead” when the plant manager yelled at your fat ass after shit went south.
It wasn’t a pleasure when you tried and failed to ask what was wrong, when I was crying in my car after work.
It wasn’t a pleasure when you felt the need to hover over everyone’s shoulder all day. A small annoyance, one that builds up over time, a microscopic but tangible violation of dignity that causes fractures of trust which turn into chasms.
It wasn’t a pleasure to have a boss who is kind of a decent person sometimes, but a decidedly mediocre supervisor. Would have been easier to just hate you completely instead of having to be vaguely conflicted about it.
It really wasn’t a pleasure working with you.
She realized her teeth were gritting of their own accord and forced herself to stop working her jaw.
Ella took the stump in her own hand, expressionless in the set of her lips and brow. “Goodbye, Charlene.” She disengaged contact, picked up her lunch pail and opened the door. Slinging the bag over her right shoulder, she walked out of this dead end and hoped she wasn’t just walking into another.
Chapter End Notes
"I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found, nor much identification from shapes which symbolize continents and states."
I worked in a factory making batteries for a few months, and I hated it so much I frequently fantasized about dismembering myself with the machinery.
I conceived of this chapter in the midst of a presentation on the exact same topic, sans magical girls, and it was actually a pretty pivotal moment for the first draft. I changed a lot of stuff around I had been planning after getting this done.