Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26525489-20170126080405

“I’ll open the door, and you just toss her in. Plain and simple.”

“I don’t know if I can, Mike.”

“Well you’re sure as hell not gonna just stand there and watch me do it. It’s your fucking job, you’re gonna have to start doing it sometime.”

Roger, the assistant incinerator operator, stood in silence, unsure of how to respond. His boss, Mike, was a grizzly old man, coldhearted after years on the job. He simply stared at Roger, daring him to defy the order again.

“Is it even safe to touch her?”

“It isn’t spread by contact, you’ll be fine. Wear your gloves if it’ll make you feel better.”

“It’s only my second week, isn’t there something easier for me to start with?”

“Easier? You just pick her up and toss her in, that’s it. It’s the fucking easiest job the goddamn world.”

Roger turned his gaze from the cold, unsympathetic gaze to the concrete floor of room B014 in the Intra Inc. headquarters, affectionately known as The Furnace Room. The room contained only the essentials between its four, bare walls. Two desks, two chairs, and a large, steel door that opened straight into the incinerator.

“I started here in order to help people, Mike. This is not what I signed up for!”

“You are helping people. If you don’t throw her in right now and she infects more people, then we’re gonna be a lot busier in here.”

Most of the Roger’s time on the job was spent reading magazines at his desk. Several times a day, a box of papers or other evidence was sent down and all he had to do was pick it up and toss it in through the steel door. Once that was done, it was back to reading. This was the first time he’d had to deal with an actual “specimen”.

“But she’s a human being. Can’t we, I don’t know, shoot her first or something? It just seems inhumane to put her in while she’s still alive.”

“You can do what you want, I don’t give a damn, but use your own gun. I’m not paying for a wasted bullet.”

Roger sighed and pulled his company-issued pistol from his belt. He pointed it at the young girl, bound on the floor of the room. Most of her face was already covered with scales and starting to ooze slime, but Roger could still see the very human fear behind her watering eyes. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen, still just a child. It nearly brought him to tears that her life had to be extinguished though it had just barely begun. He made sure the gun was aimed directly at her head. He was too close to miss, all he had to do was pull the trigger. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to convince himself to fire.

The monster on the floor took his momentary lapse in willpower as an opportunity to strike. She easily snapped her bindings and leapt at Roger, crossing half the room in a single bound. Just as she reached him and began her assault, a gunshot resonated boomingly. Roger, and much of the wall near him, was sprayed with a mixture of blood and brain matter as the lifeless corpse fell to the ground. Roger glanced across the room to where Mike stood with his gun still smoking.

“You happy now? She’s dead and you didn’t even have to get your hands dirty. Well, metaphorically.”

“Mike, you just saved my life…”

“Don’t get all mushy on me, we’ve got a job to do.” Noticing a fresh stream of blood flowing down Rogers arm, Mike added “Looks like she got ya a little?”

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s too deep, but it stings a little.”

“Yeah, that’s nothing, don’t worry about it. Let’s get rid of her, then we’ll take you to medical and get it patched up.”

Roger obliged, scooping up the girl’s remains and walking over to the steel door. True to his word, Mike opened it as Roger prepared to throw the body through. The last thing Roger felt were Mike’s hands on his back before he was pushed through the hole in the wall and into the inferno below.

Mike closed the door behind Roger and pulled a radio from his belt.

“Angela, can you send David down here? I’ve got a mess for him to clean up,” Mike said as he depressed a button on the side. “Oh, by the way, I’m gonna need another new assistant.”

“Already?!” a voice replied angrily from the radio. “Goddamnit, Mike. You’ve only had this one for a week!”

“Well maybe if you didn’t send me such soft recruits I wouldn’t burn through them so quickly,” Mike responded plopping down at his desk and pulling a new magazine out of the drawer. As he flipped through the pages, he wondered if he could convince Angela to reimburse him for that bullet. 