facing
"The first thing they taught him was how to hold the rats..." | short fiction
The first thing they taught him was how to hold the rats. Thumb under jaw, fingers cushioning the ribs. Gentle. Not too tight. Their bodies are cotton, their eyes black jelly. The rats were a test. If he could lift them from their ammonia scented tanks and stand unbothered as their pink tails slithered down his wrist he’d earn major bona fides with Joan. He put the rat down. She rushed forward and gave him a red vest stinking of industrial pine and other bodies. He passed.
“Henry, right?” She said.
He nodded.
“Got it,” she hiccuped and continued, “We’ll get you a fresh tag made up tomorrow. In the meantime, let me give ya the tour.” Before she’d finished speaking, she’d spun a 180 and sprinted towards the fish. Henry struggled to keep pace—
“—these…these are the fishes...the ones over here are your salt, these here are your fresh…over here we got your snakes, gerbils, yada yada, birds—I’m sure you heard these guys the moment you walked in, you’ll get used to them, don’t worry, and here—here are the bunnies—main thing with these guys is don’t let people stick their fingers in the cages. Don’t let anyone feed the rabbits—actually, rule of thumb, don’t let anyone feed anything—I don’t care if the Queen herself comes in here resurrected, heart set on feeding bunnies, that’s a NO, a big time N. O.—people are always coming in here trying to feed something something…”
Henry nodded and smiled when she mentioned the Queen and the bunnies. He tried his best to pay attention but some chemicals seeping from the vest made his neck itch. Halfway through Joan’s spiel he scratched his neck raw and thought only of survival.
“…over here is our dog food, we have the raw stuff over there in the freezers—that gets shipped fresh every morning, sold out by end of day, people love that…”
His raw, burning neck made him decide, he will, he must pretend to have Crohn’s—a violent, biblical case of Crohn’s. The only way from clock-in to clock-out is to bludgeon the days senseless by frequenting the bathroom once, twice, thrice every thirty minutes. “The ADA,” he thought, “I could be a disabled American if I really tried…and I’d have like…protections or whatever…”
“Questions so far?”
By the end of the first week he still wasn’t used to the birds or the shop’s smell—its smog of wet wood and sour fur belonging to something large and unbathed. He spent much of the week in the break room—a small closet with a rickety folding table propping up an old Gateway—clicking through animated HR modules that introduced him to the products, the benefits of an all-prey diet, and the importance of not harassing his coworkers.
“…most of our products contain high-quality organ meats—kidney, spleen, brain, heart, liver, tongue, lung—from an array of locally sourced animals. Be sure to drive this point when interfacing with clients; use the phrase ‘locally sourced’ liberally…”
He never knew the world was full of harvested organs, freeze-dried and stuffed into colorful bags—piles of bags with hi-res prints of smiling pups stacked in leaning towers waiting for Pilates-toned WASPs to take them home. When he wasn’t in the bathroom performing his faux Crohn’s he was learning much about the world, most importantly, how touchy customers could get about the price of bagged organs. “We’re a locally sourced, organic-only, health-forward shop”—this is what an animated woman tells him to “default to” when the inevitable Karens and Kens raise hell about the prices, “Keep the following in your back pocket: ‘We only stock the best…you want the best for your pup, don’t you?”
It was a small team. Joan was kind and gnat-like, always buzzing around, bow-legged and hunched over, wheezing out soliloquies about price reductions or product promotions handed down from corporate. She oscillated between a hands-off “do as you please” mentality and a hands-on “I’ll just do everything myself” mentality, spending most of the day in the latter. Second in command was Troy, Joan’s gnomic assistant manager who always seemed to be tethered to the register resting his hands in the cradle of his warm pot belly holding court about crypto or David Lynch. Troy wasn’t much older than Henry, but his hair was near-grey and hugged his skull like matted grass struggling to stand after winter.
Then there was Dani, bone thin and bleak, a quiet incarnation of Hot Topic prone to leaning Dean-like against walls and clicking her tongue stud against her teeth. She took frequent vape breaks by the dumpsters and—although he didn’t vape or smoke or care much for the outdoors—Henry joined her sometimes because the outdoors, at the very least, was preferable to the moldy bathroom. He’d come to look forward to the sun on his cheeks and a few moment’s reprieve from the shop’s sour fur and rowdy birds. Also, Dani was cute.
“Before this, I worked at a bookstore,” she told him once, toe-poking a piece of dog kibble that followed them outside. “I liked it better—definitely better than this, got free books and shit but they kept cutting hours.” She exhaled a cloud. She smelled like strawberry and knew where everything was. “Cheap bastards.”
Apparently, there was another employee whose name Henry never learned because no one seemed to know it. He was part-time and worked mornings and was gone when Henry clocked in at 3pm. Dani referred to him as “The Old Dude With Dumbo Ears” and that was enough of a name. The Old Dude With Dumbo Ears once left a brown bag of fruit in the fridge that dripped sticky goo on Henry’s lunch bag. On the rare occasion when he had to think of The Old Dude With Dumbo Ears, he’d picture him as a six-foot bag with elephant ears oozing rotted banana goop on the tiles as he scooped bug-eyed fish for faceless little boys to bring home and murder.
“You’ll meet him one day,” Dani said.
“Okay.”
A chihuahua peed on the floor. The little guy got spooked when his obese owner squeaked a plush pickle. “Henry!” Troy hollered, head down, looking up the SKU for freeze-dried lamb lungs. Henry was stocking shelves after the morning’s cat food stampede, counting down until his next Crohn’s break. Henry looked up and saw Troy pointing to the piss puddle. “Clean up on aisle seven!” he said, chuckling, his gut pressed into the rim of the counter.
“Sure.”
Henry went to the back room, grabbed the roll of zero-ply paper towels and slipped on the stained yellow gloves. The chihuahua was being scolded and trying to scurry towards the door. Henry smiled at it as he got on his haunches.
Dani was across the shop cleaning the rabbit cages. He absently circled the wad of towels in the warm piss, distracted by her pear-shaped butt filling her ripped jeans as she attempted to wrangle a rabbit.
The visitor bell jingled as a horde of kids ran in. They nearly stepped on his hands as they ran to slap their oily fists against plexiglass and stick their fat fingers through the ferret’s air holes.
After the piss was gone, he stood, stretching to relieve a new tightness in his lower back. He turned towards the rabbits. Dani was watching him, one hand performing a sarcastic thumbs up, the other holding a blank-faced rabbit by its scruff. He returned the gesture and spent the next twenty minutes in the bathroom trying to find her on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok…his hands smelling of melted plastic.
She blew strawberries into his face. “You go to the shitter a lot.” She took a drag and continued, oval-mouthed and ingressive, little tails of vapor thrashing in her mouth, “You like sick or whatever?”
“Not really,” he said.
“Don’t want to talk about it?”
“I guess not.”
She coughs and takes a deep sniffle. “No worries,” she said, pulling up her too-big Deftones shirt to finger lint from her bellybutton, “we all got our secrets, man. I mean…” she lowered her voice, “like…” she got closer and started giggling, “I stole a fucking chameleon once.”
Henry looked at her, his eyebrows twitching in a way that invited explanation.
“I was high,” she laughed and palmed her face, “wayyyyyyyy too high, and the thing—the fucking thing was like eyeing me down all day so I took it out and let it sit on my wrist and it was going all rainbow and shit, and we were vibing, and I kind of wanted it so I just left. I texted Joan I had my period and I’d be back soon or whatever—she doesn’t care, things escape or die all the time in here.”
She suckled on her vape’s teat; it crackled and hummed.
“I hid the thing under my shirt on the train, then I got home and put him in a dutch oven with some sticks and leaves and grass and this big ass rock I found but I guess I didn’t keep the thing warm enough? I don’t know…he was chill for a few days and then I like forgot about him for a while and then I remembered ‘oh, yeah!’ And went to check on him and he’d turned into a grey paste.”
She exhaled through her nose, rolling her bellybutton lint like a booger.
“Had to get rid of the dutch oven after that…”
She tossed the lint-booger near the dumpster and reached for the door handle.
“…those fuckers are expensive.”
“Alright Henry, now for the fun stuff,” Joan said, one eye blinking quick, trying to fingerlessly rid her cornea of an eyelash. “Facing,” she said, pulling a stack of Tiki Cat to the exact precipice of the shelf. “Have ya done any facing before?”
Henry shrugged and itched his neck. “Nope.”
She nodded. “Okay, no worries, it’s simple— simple but crucial, very very crucial…” Her eye twitched. “Facing’s like grooming. When we face, we’re, in reality, like, brushing the shop’s fur.” She gestured to the staggered ruins of cans on the lower shelf. “See this?”
Henry saw it.
“This is a mess,” she rubbed her knuckle into her eye, “that’s a cowlick, bedhead, and we don’t want any of that, right?”
She got on her haunches and put the cans into ordered rows.
“Will folks say anything about it? Nah, probably not—not out loud at least, but they’ll feel it. They’ll feel it for sure. It’s like—like a room with a loud fly buzzing around, and you hear it but never see it and you feel this nervousness—this sense that, at any moment, it could appear out of nowhere and fly right down your throat if you’re not on edge—if you’re not aware.” She hiccuped. “and we don’t want folks on edge...”
She twisted the Taste of the Wild cans, ensuring the High Prairie buffalo were parallel. “It’s all about eye contact. All the animals on the labels should be looking out, saying hello. Everyone. Everyone facing forward and proud and hungry.”
She handed him a can of Sierra Mountain wolves. “Give it a try.”
Henry placed it on top of the other Sierra Mountain cans and twisted clockwise until the wolves were parallel.
Joan nodded fast. “Yes! Good—very good, you’ve got the touch, you’re probably a natural. Take some time and walk the aisles, brushing out the cowlicks.” She chuckled and powerwalked towards the plushies.
Henry started twisting cans and making the printed animals say hello.
“Oh yeah,” Joan said, coming around the corner, absently squeaking a plush lambie in her hand, “Almost forgot! You got a dog, right?”
He’d forgotten: he mentioned owning a dog in his cover letter, a tactic employed to seem relatable. Dani was nearby, putting a rat in a cardboard box for a dead-eyed snake owner. She looked over, flashing a quick eavesdropping smile.
“Oh, um,” he said, realizing he was taking too long to answer, “mhm, yeah…I do.”
“Okay,” she started picking at her eye again, squinting with discomfort. “Great! Yeah! So, um—when ya can, bring in a picture, like a printed picture of you’re critter…corporate does this thing where we all put a pic of our critters above the registers—I’m sure you’ve noticed, it’s a hoot!”
Dani rolled her eyes.
“Cool, yeah…yeah, I’ll find one, not—not a problem.”
Joan gave a thumbs up and squeaked the lambie before shuffling away.
There was a noticeable tang absent from the shop when Dani wasn’t scheduled. Troy held court in her absence, bragging to the revolving high school temps about the time Dani let him feel her up in the parking lot in exchange for weed. “Don’t let the skinny goth thing fool ya boys, she’s got a kick ass rack under there,” he waxed, “and goddamn lips like pillows!”
Henry worked to spend most of the no-Dani days in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, thinking about her, what she may be up to and how much he’d like to tell Troy to shut the hell up. As he sat, something in his chest wanted to surprise her with a new dutch oven or come in one day with a tattoo of a chameleon on his forearm that makes her laugh strawberries into his face. Maybe he is sick after all, maybe this is what Crohn’s is.
Henry printed a picture of a snow-faced dachshund mutt off Petfinder.com and presented it to Joan. She got out her wobbly step ladder and the staple gun and affixed it to the cork above the register alongside Joan’s five cats, Dani’s pit bull, and Troy’s schnauzer.
Henry stood awkwardly, not knowing what to do with his hands. He didn’t want to cross them and risk being seen as standoffish, and he wasn’t sure hiding them in his pockets was appropriate, as this was a ceremony of sorts and deserved some respect, so they just floated and jittered.
Dani came in from the storeroom with a box of training treats ready for the shelves. She saddled up next to him and nudged him with her shoulder.
“That your pup she’s putting up?”
“Yeah”
She snorted. “You’re one of us now. You’re stuck here now, boyo.”
Henry smiled.
“One of us! One of us!” She chanted as she walked towards the empty shelves. His shoulder sang blood into his penis. He put his hands in his pockets and tightened every muscle, wrestling the blood back in an effort to remain professional.
They kissed once in the storage room. Joan had them both on inventory, sorting and stacking bags of dried-up organs onto dollies.
“Hey,” Dani said, suddenly behind him.
He straightened and turned, his hair sweat-matted against his forehead.
“Come here.” She put both hands on his face, one on each cheek, reeled him in and kissed him.
He let it happen. She grabbed his hand and snaked it up her shirt. Her breast was cold; she exhaled stale strawberries as her nipple got hard.
In a moment of sudden force, Henry thrashed his tongue around her mouth. She pulled back, grinning, and stuck a finger in his mouth.
“Suck it.”
Henry closed his eyes and sucked it, tasting the bland cardboard of kibble dust. He opened his eyes. She was staring into him, through him; his hand still cupped her breast, cradling it rat-like—thumb under jaw, fingers cushioning the ribs. Gentle. Not too tight.
She slowly removed her finger and moved Henry’s hand from her rat-breast. She kissed his cheek and wiped the soggy brown kibble dust clinging to her finger against his vest.
Henry stood scissor-legged, desperate to hide his erection. Dani smoothed out her T, winked, and, with bovine grace, slung a fifty-pound bag of kibble over her shoulder and headed out into the world.
It happened a few hours after the kiss. The store was nearly closed. The sun was strong and low; if he looked at the west-facing windows his face scrunched infantile to protect his eyes.
Henry felt the sun licking his back as he faced, assuring all Southwest Canyons looked into the sun and screamed hello. Dani was in the store room, locking the cash in the safe.
The last hour was quiet. Thirty minutes to closing. Then the visitor bell jingled. He turned to look. The door was open, but he saw nothing. He looked down and found a loose dog—a mastiff or something, the size of a walrus. It growled low and wet, pacing about the linoleum, nervous and sniffing, yo-yoing between whines and growls. A red leash trailed behind it; a distant voice yelled a name that wasn’t working.
Henry froze.
His neck itched, but he didn’t dare scratch it. One of the HR animations said this type of thing happens, par for the course: "Don’t worry…remain calm. " He listened to the animation and became a statue, counting the panting wolves on the scarlet Southwest Canyon label.
He caught a whiff of the kibble dust Dani wiped on him. Blood tickled his penis. He finched, and the metal of the Southwest Canyon reflected the light on the dog’s face. Its hackles went up. It bared its teeth and lunged.
There was a mid-air moment when its mouth was just an open shape, an unformed shape moving through space, a museum piece lacking agency, something to be looked at and discussed over tea. Then the shape closed around his torso; 180 pounds of K9 through him against the shelves.
Cans rained down. He felt the dog’s weight before the pain, the pressure of the huge head tearing at his side, something crunched—maybe a rib? maybe a can?
He let himself whip side to side on the linoleum, becoming no good zero-ply sloshing in chihuahua piss remembering Dani’s butt and how pear-like it was.
He heard Dani shouting something at someone, but he didn’t hear the dog—or the dog made no sound, its only expression being the deep hydraulic movement of its jaw, the thick sinews in its neck thrashing and pulling, wrenching, trying to unmake him.
Someone threw something. A bag of food or a box of treats. The impact startled the dog just enough for its grip to loosen and Henry’s head hit the floor. He felt warm and wet and the air was iron and pulsing. It was hard to breath. He saw the dog being pulled away, saw Dani’s earrings catch the store’s fluorescent light, the waterlogged ceiling tiles above him, horridly browned, deformed, then the smell of strawberries pushing into his nose, then 104 bpm into his sternum, and the glint of a metal tongue snaking in.
Something inside him said: Oh.
Then nothing.
I sometimes stock soda in the fridges of the office I work in and I make sure they are perfectly 'facing' every single time. Working retail really made that a permanent muscle in me. People in the office love it so much, it really does do somethin'
Will, you are a mad genius. Vivid and expertly drawn. Only you can twist tedium and banality into utter chaos. Loved it!