Uncle Drew's Lysergic Backbrain Apocalypse (Slight Return)
I didn’t get jack for sleep that day. Sunday was a comparatively dull night at work and that was a good thing because I don’t think I could have handled it. I spent a good chunk of the night training one of the newer peanuts---we’ll call him “Linus” for the sake of the story----all the usual rigmarole. You stop the dish machine every two hours to clean it out. You put broken glass in the trash barrel, not the pig barrel---you put garbage (food) in the pig barrel. When you mop the floor you never want to mix ammonia and bleach because that creates poison gas. All the basics.
‘Round about eleven o’clock, Eddie Kidd, the Security Guard, let me and Clem out to take out the trash. Eddie was a good guy---fat, bearded man with red, rosy cheeks and a droll little smile---he brought to mind a young Santa Claus. Clem and I made short work of the trash.
“I was hoping we’d be able to take it easy and just leave it up to you guys, but something went down out here,” said Eddie, never losing that rosy little smile.
“Yeh?” Grinned Clem. “What happened?”
“Someone took a shit out on the trash run.” My guts about seized up. I stuffed trash bags into several trash barrels.
Clem brayed with laughter. “Who the fuck woulda done that?!”
“I don’t know,” said Eddie. That goddamned smile never wavered. “But it was someone from the kitchen!”
“No shit,” chuckled Clem. “Who the fuck woulda done that?!” I grabbed a couple of trash barrels and slunk out of the glass room. What the hell was Clem thinking, engaging Eddie this way? The guy was a security guard, and it was pretty obvious to me he was playing detective. I wasn’t hanging around.
C.F. Roberts is a writer, visual artist, videographer and antimusician living in Northwest Arkansas with his wife, writer Heather Drain and a small menagerie of animals. He published and edited SHOCKBOX: The Literary/Art Magazine with Teeth from 1991 to 1996. He sings lead for the rock band, the S.E. Apocalypse Krew while also commandeering his own industrial project, 90 Lb. Tumor. He most recent publication credits are in Fearless, Paraphilia, Pressure Press Presents, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Blue Collar Review, Corvus Review, Antique Children, and Guerilla Genesis Press. His book, The Meat Factory and Other Stories, is available from Alien Buddha Press.
