Welcome to My Life

by Alex Scott

ME: Welcome to Castrol, how can I help you?

GUY: Uh, Hi. I'm looking for some oil.

ME: Do you know what type of oil you are after?

GUY: Uh, no...

ME: Shall I put you through to technical advice?

GUY: Uh, no. I just spoke to them. They put me through to you.

ME: Did they tell you which oil you were looking for?

GUY: Yes.

ME: What oil was it?

GUY: Ah, sin... synthetic... something... I've forgotten.

ME: Shall I put you through to technical again?

GUY: Oh, ok.

 

I work across from the state Coronial offices and institute for forensic medicine. Most days I take at least one of my two allocated fifteen-minute walks around that block, partially because it's quieter and sunnier than the block my building is in, and partially because I have this irrational notion that this is ‘my' walking block. This is because I know other co-workers walk around the block we work in.

Anyway, so I'm walking around the block, mumbling to myself about the latest a*shole customer, presenting lecture after lecture to an absent audience: ‘The thing YOU fail to realise is...' ‘I know that in your head you're this great guy, whom the world is set against, but to the people who live in that world... you're an a*shole!' And so on.

So I'm happily ranting, chomping away on my pear that I bought earlier and am disappointed to discover is really under-ripe. Probably GM anyway, really hard. They have apples there, I think they are GM too, HUGE fugi apples. I swear I had trouble finishing one today. Too much apple.

So I'm ranting away and eating my pear and by this stage I'm round near the loading bay of the Coronial offices. I look up and there, backlit perfectly by the sun is a plume of cigarette smoke. It issues from a guy, possibly mid-30s with scruffy brown hair, but otherwise featureless due to the harsh backlighting. He is wearing a huge green surgical gown and large rubber boots. In that instant I know that this guy had been in that place all morning cutting up dead bodies. Performing autopsies and such, like on X-Files, but for real. Perhaps he has dissected a loved one of one of those families I have seen huddling together out the front of the building from time to time, on my way home from work.

And now, he's out the back having a smoke, in this light that could easily be described as magical. In a while he'll go back in and start all over again, but for now, he's just taking it easy. Getting it out of his system. He's looking at me, but I can't see his eyes because the light behind him is strong enough to turn his face into a shadow. I don't think he is pleased that I am looking his way, so I walk on. It seems my pear and a*shole customer have been put, for a moment, in perspective. Those apples are still too big though.

 

This poem is taken from Total Cardboard issue 5, and remains under copyright. For more information see www.totalcardboard.com