You sat there, head resting in your hands, all day. You didn’t even move when you heard the door swing open, instead you slid your hand over the counter and tossed some menus toward the nearest waiter. You thought about where your life was going, or rather where it wasn’t going while you sat at this station without any hope.
You probably didn’t know it, but other employees debated whether or not you were going to kill yourself that night. If you had just given up and didn’t want to face another day behind the register, filling out receipts for people who hadn’t even cared to read the name stitched in the front of your shirt. If it had said “fat” or “bitch” or maybe, “fuck you”. Then maybe it would have caught their eye, but instead you were nothing more than an extension of the adding machine: taking money, returning change, watching people wander in and out.
What no one knew was that you actually had tried to kill yourself a couple of times. The first was with that poison spider your brother, Davey, had found. He left it, at the end of the day, in a bucket, lid secured. Said he was going to put it in an aquarium or something, feed it crickets and lizards, watching them die with its venom dripping from puncture holes. That night, you had brought it out, put it on your arm and begged it to kill you. Just end this bullshit you were so tired of. It bit you all right, and then you crushed it. Reaction learned from years of Valley misquotes. It died and you were left with a severely infected arm. Your parents worked frantically to fill you full of antibiotics and other remedies, the whole time you just wished you were dead.
Then there was the incident with the pills. They must not have been as strong as you had thought, and instead of slipping away into a drug induced over-dose, you just laid there all night. Feeling snakes and spiders (maybe the ghost of one) climb up and down your body, your skin on fire, it was hell. Sadly, it wasn’t really hell, though, that was waiting for you the next morning, when you woke up and had to play it off like you were just trying to get high. But that day, while you sat at your post, next to the front door, oh, how you wished you were dead.
So another week passed by, and then another. You sit there at that register, staring at the wall, waiting for the clock to hit 2 so you can get up and turn the sign over to closed. You try to ignore the catty comments from the waiters and diners and, for the most part, you do. They become the soundtrack to your workday: a low murmur to blend in with everything else. You sit there. You wait. And you wish that you were dead.
A short story that will appear in my upcoming chap book, Weight of Days.
