Flash! Fiction by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

51

The Garbage Audit

Standing in the middle of a pile of garbage, he lays the clipboard on the floor and begins sorting.

Metal filings mixed with dirt and dust, twisted duct tape, rolled up sections of yesterday’s paper, shims broken and splintered, dis-posable blue latex gloves, oily red rags, safety glasses with a lens missing, candy wrappers and empty chip bags, some rusted-out metal screws, an incisor chipped on the corner, dozens of yellow earplugs on blue strings—

At the temp agency, they said he’d be sorting recyclable material in a plant and to show up at 8:00 the next morning. “Just ask someone if you don’t know. And don’t forget to get your timesheet in if you want your cheque next week.”

—a tangle of black electrical tape, a shrivelled blackened banana peel, a blood-stained tube sock, water bottles, clumps of reddish hair, dust masks torn and smudged, a couple of Coke cans, a foot from an aluminum ladder, a melon-sized mass of mucous-clotted tissue, some apple cores—

The blue shirts had ribbed him in the lunchroom just before the shift started, teasing him with names like garbage collector, litterbug, CSI wannabe, and maggot mate.

—a few soiled Band-Aids, coffee cups with the rims rolled up, some orange rinds, a used condom, a work boot with a nail clean through the heel, and a half-used roll of safety tape.

One of the old guys—wrinkled and leathery-faced but queerly futur-istic with his safety yellow ear protectors pushed up and looking like they might be permanent—had come over to join him.