Sadie the Sadist: X-tremely Black Humor/Horror (2 page)

Thanks to the remodel, finding things around the store has become a treasure hunt. For example, bandages have been moved from Aisle 13 to Aisle 5 next to macaroni, and you’ll find mushrooms on the same aisle as cookie mix. Don’t ask me why garlic and shallots are now on the tomato table instead of with the onions. Justus says the corporation spends a lot of money figuring out where to put things so no one can find them.

Before I was banished to the basement, I enjoyed being upstairs helping people.

Now I spend most of my time alone.

Reminds me of my childhood.

Sometimes my dad locked me in the basement.

These days, I arrive in the afternoon when the store is crazy busy, go right downstairs, find a pallet of corn (hidden behind a mountain of grapes), and start chopping.

I use this cutter. It’s real sharp. I call it my guillotine.

Wait a second.

My fingers are killing me.

Usually, thinking about something else helps me forget the pain, but not tonight. I shake my hands, trying to wake them, walk around in circles. It feels like some kind of medieval torture. Like I’m stretched out on the rack, or hanging by my wrists. Pain pulses from my neck down through my arms, intensely hot, my nerves on fire. My fingers sting, like they’re being jabbed with thousands of electric wires. Hurts so bad, I want to chop them off.

My guillotine would do the job.

Like I was telling you, that blade is sharp enough to slice through bone. When you’re not using it, you have to keep it locked.

I place each piece of corn beneath the blade, to ensure the cut is clean and straight, chop off the shank—slicing through the soft chaff, the woody ring, the inner pith—then I flip the ear and chop off the tassel. Throw the ear into an empty box. For each crate, I repeat this process forty-eight times. If the corn is good, I get nine 5-packs and one 3-pack, but sometimes it’s so rotten and full of worms that I have to toss half of it. I’ve gotten fast at chopping; cutting a crate takes about five minutes. It’s the shucking that consumes my time: peeling down the husk, twisting off the silk, placing each ear carefully into a crate so the kernels aren’t damaged. All that twisting does a number on your wrists. After the ears are shucked, I stack them in pyramids of three or five or nine, wrap them in plastic, stick on labels. The whole process, cutting, shucking, wrapping, takes about thirty minutes per crate—no stopping, no interruptions. Corporate says each 5-pack should take 90 seconds. Four crates per hour.

Hah!

I wish some ass from Corporate would come down here and demonstrate.

They want one hundred fifteen 5-packs out on the floor each day. That’s twelve cases—cut, shucked, wrapped. It might be possible if someone besides me pitched in. Or if I were a robot.

The first day, Justus helped me for an hour. He chopped while I shucked. Slung a slogan at me, “By myself I make a difference, together we go the distance.”

No lack of slogans around here.

Then he left the job to me.

Yesterday, right after I brought up twenty 5-packs, he stomps into Produce looking for more corn, complaining the displays aren’t full.

“What if we go back to two displays, instead of three?” I say.

If the darts in his eyes were real, my face would be perforated.

“This is a display business, Sadie. I will never take down a display. Do you understand that?”

A vision flashes through my head: displays from Halloween, Christmas, Easter, destined to remain forever. I consider telling him to fuck himself and give his back the finger as he walks away from me. Remembering the omniscient security cameras, my finger quickly retracts.

“Excuse me, Justus?”

“What?”

“If I may make a suggestion, perhaps if there were two displays, instead of three, I could keep them full, and they’d look better.”

He frowns and cocks his head, evaluating the situation. Evaluating me.

“Are you up to this job, Sadie?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Why not?”

“My hands go numb at night.”

He stares at me, as if I’m lying.

“That’s not good,” he says, his eyes calculating workman’s comp. “I may have to move you to another department, but I don’t have anything.”

No offer to get me help. Just the threat of being fired.

“If you can’t do this job—”

“I can.”

“Then do it.”

I’ve decided how to kill him.

That’s wishful thinking, Sadie.

“NO IT’S NOT!”

I’m sick of being a masochist.

I stop pacing, stand by the sliding doors that lead out to my tiny balcony, listen to passing cars and the neighbor’s dog that won’t stop barking. A breeze slips through the screen door; the air smells of smoke. Forcing my numb hands to work, I slide the screen door open, step onto the miniscule deck. Up here, on the second floor, I have a fine view of the wooden fence and the road beyond it. I unfold the chair I found down by the dumpster. It wobbles, creaks when I climb onto the seat. Standing on the chair, I can see over the fence to the bike path that runs along this side of the road.

Passing cars streak by.

If I had a water balloon, I bet I could hit that Subaru.

Justus rides his bike along this path every morning on his way to work.

The pain in my hands has changed from burning to pins-and-needles. A good sign. It means they’re coming back to life. I climb down from the chair, go back inside, and flop onto my bed. I lie on my stomach, my left arm dangling off the mattress. For some reason this helps to alleviate the tingling.

I’ve been reading up on sadomasochism. A masochist is passive and a sadist is active, but both traits can exist within one person. Really, a masochist and a sadist are part of a whole, like yin and yang, negative and positive, me and Justus.

I need to reframe my reality.

No more Sadie the Wimp, Sadie the Downtrodden, Sadie the Masochist.

I fall asleep listening to a self-help podcast about the power of positive thinking, and I feel positively positive about my transformation.

Baking calms my nerves, and my favorite ingredient is chocolate. Chocolate hides a multitude of sins, so if you screw up a recipe no one notices. I always use dark chocolate, because it contains antioxidants. Antioxidants lower blood pressure and, since I started working at the supermarket, mine is rocketing.

This is my mom’s recipe. She used to make brownies when my father was in a lousy mood, so she made them a lot—until the day she slit her wrists. (I found her in the bathtub.) My mom never added nuts, but I do—walnuts, pecans, whatever nuts I have on hand. If you like dark and intense, check these out.

Ingredients:

¾ cup butter, melted

1 cup white sugar

½ cup brown sugar

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1½ cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

½ cup dark chocolate chips (Can also use part butterscotch, white chocolate, or any shit you like.)

½ cup nuts, chopped

Preparation
:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease an 8x8 inch, square baking pan. Using a whisk, combine the melted butter, sugar and vanilla. Add eggs one at a time. Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt in another bowl. Add dry ingredients slowly to wet, stirring until blended. Stir in nuts, chocolate chips, etc. Spread batter into pan. Bake 30—35 minutes, or until tester comes out clean. Do not over bake. Cool before cutting—I know it’s hard to wait! I recommend removing yourself from the kitchen. Time passes faster if you do something productive, like vacuum or masturbate.

I wake up late, stay in bed sipping coffee and nibbling brownies—my hands so numb that I can barely hold the cup. They’ll get better as the day goes on. After streaming a few episodes of
Deadly Women,
I stare at my ceiling, daydreaming.

Then it’s time for work.

I put on my uniform: black pants and the dreaded shirt we have to wear on Fridays. Banana yellow with tomato red letters running across the front and back, stating:
My Job is to Serve You!
On yellow shirt days, I feel like a billboard for masochists. I plan to cover
My Job is to Serve You!
with my apron and a sweater. I slap the company ball cap on my head, grateful that the brim hides my eyes.

I ride my bicycle to work, saves on gas, and I don’t have to find a parking space. Employees aren’t allowed to park cars in the store lot—we have to park in back, on a street that has no lights, and hope vandals don’t destroy our cars.

I coast along the bike path, glance at the river. The water is green and kind of muddy, running slow due to lack of rain.

The sky would be clear blue, typical for Colorado in early July, but there are wildfires up north. The sun struggles to shine through gray haze, and smoke has settled on the mountains. I pedal past the science museum, past the library, past Happy Valley—the old folks’ home. When I hit a hill, I have to pump and my lungs sting. So do my hands, but the familiar pain propels me faster. Today I’m eager to get to work, excited to see Justus.

This town is full of bike fanatics, and the racks outside the store are crowded. A lot of people ride their bikes to work, like me. And Justus. But he doesn’t use the bike rack. Because he’s Assistant Manager, he gets to keep his bicycle downstairs in the meat locker.

I spot him as I enter. He’s up front by the cut fruit case, inspecting the corn display. Six shelves, and four are empty. Each shelf holds twelve 5-packs. I do the math. I need forty-eight more 5-packs to fill the sucker—240 ears, so five cases. And that’s just one display; there are two others.

But today I have a plan, and nothing brings me down.

I nod hello to Checkers and Courtesy Clerks as I pass them. Courtesy Clerks are the lowest of the low in the supermarket hierarchy. I know. I used to be one—then I got promoted to Salad Bar. Courtesy Clerks get paid less than anyone else. They bag groceries, run around the parking lot corralling shopping carts (people abandon carts in the bushes, behind the dumpster, by the bus stop), empty trash, clean bathrooms (including the disgusting
Men’s Room
), and are generally bossed around by Checkers. Checkers are the supermarket rock stars. Once, when I was a Courtesy Clerk, I referred to myself as a Bagger, and the CRM in charge corrected me:
Courtesy Clerk, not Bagger, Sadie.
But when I checked the company website, my job status said:
Bagger.

By the way, CRM stands for
Customer Relations Management
. They’re the people you see standing around watching the Checkers. The ones who look like they’re not doing anything.

I clock in, smile at the woman behind the service desk.

“Have a great day, Doreen.”

She eyes me suspiciously.

“Why’re you so happy?”

“No reason.”

I head toward the cut fruit and Justus. He’s speaking to the Produce Manager, the head of my department. Maybe you didn’t know this, but each department has a manager and an assistant manager. Justus, the Assistant
Store
Manager, is in charge of all the
department
managers, and the
Store Manager
is in charge of Justus. This place is full of bosses. The Produce Manager is a nice guy, consequently Justus spends a lot of time trying to
improve
him
.
They watch me as I approach, the Produce Manager smiling, Justus scowling.

Usually I’d feel nervous, but today I’m whistling along with the piped-in music. Everything I do here has a soundtrack. Right now it’s “Never Rains in Southern California,” a song I despise.

Justus zeros in on me.

“Chop, chop,” he says as I walk past.

I imagine his head, bashed-in like a Jack-O-Lantern after Halloween.

Grinning, I turn back to him.

“I’ll get right on it.”

“How are your hands?” His tone sounds concerned, but his eyes bore into me, noting all my faults.

“Better,” I lie. “The gloves help a lot.”

After our little chat about corn, when he hinted he might fire me, he called me into his office for a
safety meeting
and gave me two flimsy wrist braces. At first he only gave me one, no doubt wanting to avoid too much of an investment, but I mentioned that I have two hands and finagled a second glove. They help a bit, but what I really need is less time spent shucking corn.

“Glad to hear it,” he says now. “We need this display filled ASAP.”

“Okay,” I say, and head to the Salad Bar.

Low on lettuce and Ranch dressing; it could also use a refill on red onions and chick peas.

I glance at Justus, see him watching me.

I hurry past the new fake robot in Deli—part of the remodel. The thing doesn’t move like a real robot. It stands stationary, has some kind of sensor so it speaks to people as they pass, “May I take your order? You can save a dollar.”

“Fuck off.”

Damned thing wants my job.

I sprint through the remodeled bakery, duck into the same old, dreary
Employees Only
area, and hit the button for the new freight elevator. Someone must be loading stuff downstairs. I keep hitting the button, even though I know it won’t light up while the elevator is in use. I consider taking the stairs, but they’re on the other side of Meat and Seafood, and I don’t want to risk running into Justus again.