Bagger On Fire - Page 2

What cacophony drills into me? I tease the beast and look up. Straight chaos widens my eyes and pours inside. The overbearing legion of moving mouths and eyes tear at me . . . sounds like a farm animal being brutalized. Just like old times, I'm becoming a little disoriented. My nerves grate with a screech and fray like an electrical wire. Maybe my caffeine pill could have helped. I don't want to run away, I just wish I could pace the floor. The comfort of fading away soothes me. Front end's maelstrom is unreal as consciousness ascends to another plane. I look back down and see only a torrent of groceries to be bagged like a puzzle.

At 8 o'clock the store went dead. Piece of cake. Front end veterans called it the busiest day they had seen in months, which abruptly became the slowest. That's the unpredictability of evenings in retail. I talked with an Egyptian cashier who claims he enjoys dealing with customers. Yeah, and he probably thought this little rush was bad. I also bagged for a cashier who used to bag for me at a previous job. We joked around yet I somehow neglected to mock his new receding hair line. Being the only courtesy clerk on duty, I juggled three registers that day. Just another screwed up day in the gutter of Hell.

It was almost invigorating to confront the action once more. Crowned with high praise from managers who were totally blown away to see a bagger actually work; I won't get another raise in this decade, so who gives a damn? No customer complaints; survival is success.

Pedaling hard on a bike with dead brakes, my mind was dark as night and a free man's life is divine. I needed the kind of thrills that satisfy only geeks and addicts, only in public this time. At the risk of hearing sports nonsense on TV or being accosted by a patron, I strolled out to a bar for the first time since 2007. My pen needs some action — time for some real work.

Fire charring my mind, sentences in Times New Roman scroll through my brain and caress my nerves. Wherever they come from, they always bring me closer to something ostensibly unattainable or unreal. Dopamine for the soul. I'm sucking tar like a fiend, but the gorgeous smoke can't give enough nicotine. Entranced blue eyes glare beneath a stern brow as an indulgent mind lays napalm on paper. Why are there mirrors behind the bar? Nervous system writhes in beauty and splendor. Times New Roman stays etched in the brain, so I pocket my notebook and shift from beer to bourbon.

Article Author: Joe Harris

Joe Harris is a disgruntled writer with an affinity for loud music and paisley ties. The misanthropic fulminator enjoys sarcasm but has a tolerance for little else than alcohol. A veteran supermarket flunkie who abhors customers, Harris copes with the tedium of menial labor by brooding on the job. …

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