the bearded lady

There’s a thick plastic screen between me and the outside, but I can see straightaway that it’s not going to keep them out. The boss says, don’t worry, they don’t come around here. Swear to god. He winks and then he pulls the shutters down over the windows and leaves me in the cubicle. As he walks to his car, the plastic distorts his figure, and it seems like he’s shimmering over the tarmac. He isn’t, of course. He isn’t the type to shimmer.

It’s alright in the daylight, but when the sun goes down, the cubicle starts to feel like a trap. I smoke cigarettes, taking packets off the shelves behind me, and I chew gum, spitting it out the second it loses freshness. I push the sliding metal sheet back and forth across the channel where goods and money are exchanged. I look at a magazine article about chicks who get surgery on their vaginas to make them more like playboy models, but I can’t concentrate on it, keep flicking my eyes up to the screen to see if anyone is there.

Just before midnight, the phone rings. It’s the boss. I tell him nothing’s up, no customers, and he sighs, like it’s my fault or something.

“Hey,” I say, “did you hear about those chicks who get their, like, vag’s fixed up?”

The boss tuts. “I don’t like you looking at those magazines. Why don’t you bring a book to work in future?”

“Yeah, right. A book. Like what, Shakespeare?”

Like, what the fuck? If I had the kind of brain for reading books, would I be working the zombie shift at his crappy 24/7?

“I gotta go,” says the boss.

“Hey boss? You sure they won’t come around here?”

“I guess,” says the boss. “See you later.”

“Hey, what? What do you mean?” I say. “What do you mean, ‘I guess’? Hey, you fucking…” but he’s already hung up.

After midnight, they start coming. I can’t see them til they get right up close to the screen and put their faces up to the plastic. Anyone can see what they are. They crowd around the cubicle, shuffling closer and peering in. I can hear their raggedy breathing through the mike. Their eyeballs are falling out of their heads.

“Alright, alright,” I say, backing into the corner of the cubicle. “One at a time, fellas.”

They shuffle closer, pushing their necrotic hands into the metal slide. I can smell them.

“What do you want?” My voice is raised hysterically high. “Smokes? Gum? Candy?”

I throw packets of cigarettes and gum into the channel, and they grab at it. One of them leaves his whole hand in there. It twitches, the fingers crawling up the curving metal. I grab the magazine, roll it up and use it to attack the hand. Okay, pathetic, I know. And the hand knows it, too. It grabs the magazine from me and throws it outside, where it flaps around in the wind. Someone catches it and the hand jumps up towards me again, and this time I have a better idea and I grab the fire extinguisher and lay right into the hand, bashing it until it’s unidentifiable meat.

When I finally look up, I realise that the murmurs and shuffling has stopped. They’re standing around, all peering at the magazine. Seems like that article has grabbed their attention. One of them sees me looking and he leans towards the mike.

“Dude,” he says, in a wet, rattling voice, “this shit is fucked up.”

He throws some cash into the slide, and slowly they all shuffle away. I almost feel insulted. What, my brains aren’t good enough for you or something? Maybe I will bring a book tomorrow, after all.