Post by Floyd Looney on Feb 16, 2010 14:29:10 GMT -5
OFF HIS MEDS By John Wilson
.............
Ronald awoke because he was shaking. The shakes were worse today and he felt cold.
Weak and cold and shaky but somehow... better. His mouth was dry.
He sat up in the dim light and stretched, noticing clearly perhaps for the first time his shabby surroundings. A storeroom behind the workplace, a pallet made of collapsed cardboard boxes and a pillow of plastic packing material. The cramps doubled him over.
He rose and shuffled to the sink and drank from the tap as he had done for the past three days. Tapwater had been his only nourishment, his comfort and salvation.
His only hope of sanity and freedom.
He could hear the workplace coming to life outside his storeroom, the voices and the sounds of preparation for the day’s trade. He could remember, in a hazy way, how these sounds had always given him comfort in the past. They had provided him with a sense of place, of security.
No longer.
Now they only served to remind him of his sorry existance, his servitude, his humiliation and subjugation. He spat into the trash can.
The assistant manager arrived a few minutes later, bearing a tray of food in one hand.
She pushed open the storeroom door and Ronald noted that she would have trouble fitting herself through the door, had she tried. She was extremely fat.
She placed the tray, laden with breakfast items, on a shelf along the wall of the storeroom.
“Breakfast, Ronald. Your shift starts in twenty minutes.” she drawled. She gave
Ronald a quick appraising look and backed out of the doorway, closing the door.
He looked at the items on the tray, salivating. Three days he had been without food, drinking only tapwater. His stomach clenched. The food smelled heavenly. He tipped it into the trash.
He spat again.
Three days.
Still shaking, Ronald took stock of his mental state. After the first day without food he had begun to sense a change within himself, an ability to question. To doubt. It was toubling but somehow a relief. He had wondered how long he had been trapped here, if indeed trapped he was. He imagined the trap was somehow present in his mind more than in locks and walls.
He suspected the food. There was something in the food.
Ronald could not remember a childhood or any kind of life other than here at the workplace.
He had seen children, oh yes, children by the thousands, but could not recall having been one.
He could not remember how he got here or where he might have been before. He had no recollection of where he had gotten the ridiculous clothes he wore. It was all a blank spot.
He would not eat the food.
On the second day without food, he had begun to shake. It began with his hands, trembling inside the yellow gloves. He had begun to think critically about his surroundings, his situation. He started to contemplate plans for escape although what he would do once he accomplished this he had no idea. He had trembled and waited for clarity.
Later on the second day, he had begun to take stock of the others toiling in the workplace.
Drones, he thought. But free drones. Not compelled into a life like his own. Not property.
They did not wear the ridiculous clothes. Their coloring was different. They had places to go when their work was done. It was beyond imagining, then. He had seethed with jealousy.
He decided he hated them.
Ronald considered the assistant manager. Always giving orders, criticism and insults in her barely understandable shrieking voice, which managed to be both shrill and mumbling at the same time. Exciting new sensations filled Ronald when he thought of her.
As if summoned by the thought, the assistant manager opened the door of the storeroom and said curtly “You’re on shift, you get on out there.” She made a quarter turn and gestured impatiently.
“I don’t think so, bitch.” Ronald stepped back as he spoke. Accustomed to unquestioned obedience, the assistant manager stepped through the door, apparently meaning to grab Ronald.
She began, “No backtalk from you, clown, or I’ll report you to the corporate..” Ronald interrupted by backhanding her across the face as hard as he could. Her head snapped to the left and she slumped against the wall. He immediately took hold of her collar and, pulling her fully into the storeroom, drove her face into the stack of five-gallon jugs containing vegetable oil.
He closed the door. Exciting new sensations had taken the place of the shaking.
She was a big woman and well padded, she began to roll over while spewing unintelligible profanities at Ronald. He quickly kicked her in the head and planted his knee on her chest.
Apparently her nose had been broken and was beginning to pour a bright crimson stream onto her porcine face.
She tried to speak but Ronald siezed her jaw and started pounding her head into the concrete floor, smacking it hard, punctuating the smacks with his words:
“You will not”
(Smack)
“Give to me”
(Smack)
“Any more”
(Smack)
“Fucking aggravation!”
(Smack)
The assistant manager’s head had bugun to feel mushy and Ronald ceased pounding it into the floor. He didn’t think she would be giving him any more fucking aggravation. Ever again.
His usually tidy yellow gloves had deep red stains on them now. He marveled at this.
Ronald spat onto the inert body of the assistant manager. He felt good.
He stepped over the lifeless hulk and opened the door, looking out cautiously. To his right was the locked delivery door. On his left was the walk-in cooler. Beyond that, the way branched both left and right, into the workplace proper. He flattened his back against the cooler and listened, waiting. The steel of the door was smooth and cold against his jumpsuit. He felt good.
A moment later the shift leader came around the corner, presumably to get some product out of the cooler. She was grabbed by the throat and spun into the heavy cooler door, her head making a deep thunk as it impacted the insulated steel. Something popped out of her mouth and Ronald saw that it was the golden dental jewelry the shift leader had been wearing. He stepped on it.
Ronald pulled the stunned shift leader toward him and opened the cooler door. He shoved her inside with his hip, kicking her legs into the opening as she fell. He felt along the wall inside the cooler for the light switch and flicked it on as he closed the door. He grinned, his face pale in the harsh fluorescent light.
Just inside the door was the metal bar used to prop the cooler open during deliveries. He grabbed it and appreciated the weight of it. The solidity of it. It felt good in his hand. He struck the shift leader twice with the bar, splattering blood and hair onto boxes of shredded lettuce.
Some of the blood had gotten onto his shoes, but that was of no importance.
They were already red.
He took the bloody metal bar and left the body cooling on the floor.
Outside the cooler he could hear the sounds of the other workers at their tasks.
He could hear the distorted voices coming from the intercom system as customers ordered product at the drive-through window. They sounded mechanical, ugly. Hateful.
Ronald spat onto the floor. He made himself ready.
He strode forth into the main work area, holding the bloody metal bar raised for striking.
In the preparation area Ronald immediately faced two employees, one manning the fryer and another working on order assembly. With no hesitation Ronald swung the metal bar at the head of the worker assembling product. The young man’s head caved in at the temple and he dropped, still clutching product in each hand. The head wound ceased bleeding almost immediately as the heart stopped pumping.
The worker at the fryer yelled an obscenity and turned to grab the arm that held the metal bar.
Ronald smiled at this and with his free hand he grasped the neck of the fryer-man and pushed his head down into the boiling oil of the fryer. Geysers of boiling grease erupted, splattering Ronald. The fryer-man’s body jerked and tensed and after a moment, Ronald let him go.
The fryer-man had been fried. A timer began to beep on the control panel above the fryer.
The three employees in the front, two at the counter and one at the window, turned and screamed with almost professional precision. One of the workers at the counter collapsed onto the floor, covering her head with her hands.
Customers on the opposite side of the counter began to back away and some turned to run.
One teenaged boy stood his ground, using his cell phone camera to capture the event.
“This is some kind of sick shit!” he said to himself.
Ronald still held the metal bar and he put it to immediate use, moving into the counter area.
He first struck the worker at the window with a backhanded blow. It caught her above the jaw and took out most of her lower face. A gaudy red splash spread itself on stacked cups and a rack of condiments. The headset the worker had been wearing clattered to the floor just ahead of her heavy body. The voice of the customer using the intercom continued to drone on unintelligibly. Ronald turned.
With an overhand blow he shattered the head of the counter-person who remained cringing, immobilized by terror. The young man collapsed, dragging with him a tray of product. Coffee spilled, mingling with the flowing blood in a dark oil-and-water separation. The man’s bowels let go, fouling the air.
The worker who had collapsed to the floor was ignored for the moment, as Ronald had heard the opening of the office door. The door to the Manager’s office. It didn’t sound like the door to the storeroom or the door to the cooler or the door for deliveries. It was the terrible Boss Door.
“There comes the Bull, there comes the Grimace” thought Ronald. He had to move quickly.
The assembled product was staged in a warming bin, directly behind the counter, the different items separated by stainless steel dividers which were easily removed for cleaning. Each divider was thirty inches long by six inches wide, constructed of thin steel. The edges were fairly sharp. The corners more so. Ronald siezed one of these dividers. He tossed the metal bar away in the direction of the remaining customers, eliciting shrieks. He spat at them.
“The HELL is going on out here?” bellowed the manager as he waddled into the work area. He wore his tie at half-mast and Ronald could see grease stains on the man’s shirt. The manager disgusted Ronald, symbolizing everything Ronald hated about the workplace. The man smelled of body odor and fried food.
As the rotund manager rounded the corner into the counter area Ronald swung the steel divider two-handed. The shining corner bit into the fat man’s neck and continued inward, the stainless edge very nearly decapitating him. His eyes rolled back in their sockets.
Ronald pulled the divider from the manager’s neck releasing a huge splash of blood which pumped a couple of gouts before the fat man went down, a puddle spreading beneath him.
Ronald regarded the steel in his hands, no longer stainless. He grinned and turned toward the stunned customers, who took this opportunity to make a horrified rush for the doors.
The center cash register was open, above the still collapsed and trembling worker Ronald had bypassed. He leaned over her and reached into the cash drawer, removing all the bills. He looked down at the quivering woman on the floor, crouched fetally and mewling pitifully.
“You may be in shock” said Ronald, dropping a five dollar bill on top of her.
He folded the rest of the cash and put it into his pocket.
“Don’t eat the food” he told her.
He then vaulted nimbly over the counter and ran out the door into the parking lot.
Ronald McDonald was free at last.
.............
Ronald awoke because he was shaking. The shakes were worse today and he felt cold.
Weak and cold and shaky but somehow... better. His mouth was dry.
He sat up in the dim light and stretched, noticing clearly perhaps for the first time his shabby surroundings. A storeroom behind the workplace, a pallet made of collapsed cardboard boxes and a pillow of plastic packing material. The cramps doubled him over.
He rose and shuffled to the sink and drank from the tap as he had done for the past three days. Tapwater had been his only nourishment, his comfort and salvation.
His only hope of sanity and freedom.
He could hear the workplace coming to life outside his storeroom, the voices and the sounds of preparation for the day’s trade. He could remember, in a hazy way, how these sounds had always given him comfort in the past. They had provided him with a sense of place, of security.
No longer.
Now they only served to remind him of his sorry existance, his servitude, his humiliation and subjugation. He spat into the trash can.
The assistant manager arrived a few minutes later, bearing a tray of food in one hand.
She pushed open the storeroom door and Ronald noted that she would have trouble fitting herself through the door, had she tried. She was extremely fat.
She placed the tray, laden with breakfast items, on a shelf along the wall of the storeroom.
“Breakfast, Ronald. Your shift starts in twenty minutes.” she drawled. She gave
Ronald a quick appraising look and backed out of the doorway, closing the door.
He looked at the items on the tray, salivating. Three days he had been without food, drinking only tapwater. His stomach clenched. The food smelled heavenly. He tipped it into the trash.
He spat again.
Three days.
Still shaking, Ronald took stock of his mental state. After the first day without food he had begun to sense a change within himself, an ability to question. To doubt. It was toubling but somehow a relief. He had wondered how long he had been trapped here, if indeed trapped he was. He imagined the trap was somehow present in his mind more than in locks and walls.
He suspected the food. There was something in the food.
Ronald could not remember a childhood or any kind of life other than here at the workplace.
He had seen children, oh yes, children by the thousands, but could not recall having been one.
He could not remember how he got here or where he might have been before. He had no recollection of where he had gotten the ridiculous clothes he wore. It was all a blank spot.
He would not eat the food.
On the second day without food, he had begun to shake. It began with his hands, trembling inside the yellow gloves. He had begun to think critically about his surroundings, his situation. He started to contemplate plans for escape although what he would do once he accomplished this he had no idea. He had trembled and waited for clarity.
Later on the second day, he had begun to take stock of the others toiling in the workplace.
Drones, he thought. But free drones. Not compelled into a life like his own. Not property.
They did not wear the ridiculous clothes. Their coloring was different. They had places to go when their work was done. It was beyond imagining, then. He had seethed with jealousy.
He decided he hated them.
Ronald considered the assistant manager. Always giving orders, criticism and insults in her barely understandable shrieking voice, which managed to be both shrill and mumbling at the same time. Exciting new sensations filled Ronald when he thought of her.
As if summoned by the thought, the assistant manager opened the door of the storeroom and said curtly “You’re on shift, you get on out there.” She made a quarter turn and gestured impatiently.
“I don’t think so, bitch.” Ronald stepped back as he spoke. Accustomed to unquestioned obedience, the assistant manager stepped through the door, apparently meaning to grab Ronald.
She began, “No backtalk from you, clown, or I’ll report you to the corporate..” Ronald interrupted by backhanding her across the face as hard as he could. Her head snapped to the left and she slumped against the wall. He immediately took hold of her collar and, pulling her fully into the storeroom, drove her face into the stack of five-gallon jugs containing vegetable oil.
He closed the door. Exciting new sensations had taken the place of the shaking.
She was a big woman and well padded, she began to roll over while spewing unintelligible profanities at Ronald. He quickly kicked her in the head and planted his knee on her chest.
Apparently her nose had been broken and was beginning to pour a bright crimson stream onto her porcine face.
She tried to speak but Ronald siezed her jaw and started pounding her head into the concrete floor, smacking it hard, punctuating the smacks with his words:
“You will not”
(Smack)
“Give to me”
(Smack)
“Any more”
(Smack)
“Fucking aggravation!”
(Smack)
The assistant manager’s head had bugun to feel mushy and Ronald ceased pounding it into the floor. He didn’t think she would be giving him any more fucking aggravation. Ever again.
His usually tidy yellow gloves had deep red stains on them now. He marveled at this.
Ronald spat onto the inert body of the assistant manager. He felt good.
He stepped over the lifeless hulk and opened the door, looking out cautiously. To his right was the locked delivery door. On his left was the walk-in cooler. Beyond that, the way branched both left and right, into the workplace proper. He flattened his back against the cooler and listened, waiting. The steel of the door was smooth and cold against his jumpsuit. He felt good.
A moment later the shift leader came around the corner, presumably to get some product out of the cooler. She was grabbed by the throat and spun into the heavy cooler door, her head making a deep thunk as it impacted the insulated steel. Something popped out of her mouth and Ronald saw that it was the golden dental jewelry the shift leader had been wearing. He stepped on it.
Ronald pulled the stunned shift leader toward him and opened the cooler door. He shoved her inside with his hip, kicking her legs into the opening as she fell. He felt along the wall inside the cooler for the light switch and flicked it on as he closed the door. He grinned, his face pale in the harsh fluorescent light.
Just inside the door was the metal bar used to prop the cooler open during deliveries. He grabbed it and appreciated the weight of it. The solidity of it. It felt good in his hand. He struck the shift leader twice with the bar, splattering blood and hair onto boxes of shredded lettuce.
Some of the blood had gotten onto his shoes, but that was of no importance.
They were already red.
He took the bloody metal bar and left the body cooling on the floor.
Outside the cooler he could hear the sounds of the other workers at their tasks.
He could hear the distorted voices coming from the intercom system as customers ordered product at the drive-through window. They sounded mechanical, ugly. Hateful.
Ronald spat onto the floor. He made himself ready.
He strode forth into the main work area, holding the bloody metal bar raised for striking.
In the preparation area Ronald immediately faced two employees, one manning the fryer and another working on order assembly. With no hesitation Ronald swung the metal bar at the head of the worker assembling product. The young man’s head caved in at the temple and he dropped, still clutching product in each hand. The head wound ceased bleeding almost immediately as the heart stopped pumping.
The worker at the fryer yelled an obscenity and turned to grab the arm that held the metal bar.
Ronald smiled at this and with his free hand he grasped the neck of the fryer-man and pushed his head down into the boiling oil of the fryer. Geysers of boiling grease erupted, splattering Ronald. The fryer-man’s body jerked and tensed and after a moment, Ronald let him go.
The fryer-man had been fried. A timer began to beep on the control panel above the fryer.
The three employees in the front, two at the counter and one at the window, turned and screamed with almost professional precision. One of the workers at the counter collapsed onto the floor, covering her head with her hands.
Customers on the opposite side of the counter began to back away and some turned to run.
One teenaged boy stood his ground, using his cell phone camera to capture the event.
“This is some kind of sick shit!” he said to himself.
Ronald still held the metal bar and he put it to immediate use, moving into the counter area.
He first struck the worker at the window with a backhanded blow. It caught her above the jaw and took out most of her lower face. A gaudy red splash spread itself on stacked cups and a rack of condiments. The headset the worker had been wearing clattered to the floor just ahead of her heavy body. The voice of the customer using the intercom continued to drone on unintelligibly. Ronald turned.
With an overhand blow he shattered the head of the counter-person who remained cringing, immobilized by terror. The young man collapsed, dragging with him a tray of product. Coffee spilled, mingling with the flowing blood in a dark oil-and-water separation. The man’s bowels let go, fouling the air.
The worker who had collapsed to the floor was ignored for the moment, as Ronald had heard the opening of the office door. The door to the Manager’s office. It didn’t sound like the door to the storeroom or the door to the cooler or the door for deliveries. It was the terrible Boss Door.
“There comes the Bull, there comes the Grimace” thought Ronald. He had to move quickly.
The assembled product was staged in a warming bin, directly behind the counter, the different items separated by stainless steel dividers which were easily removed for cleaning. Each divider was thirty inches long by six inches wide, constructed of thin steel. The edges were fairly sharp. The corners more so. Ronald siezed one of these dividers. He tossed the metal bar away in the direction of the remaining customers, eliciting shrieks. He spat at them.
“The HELL is going on out here?” bellowed the manager as he waddled into the work area. He wore his tie at half-mast and Ronald could see grease stains on the man’s shirt. The manager disgusted Ronald, symbolizing everything Ronald hated about the workplace. The man smelled of body odor and fried food.
As the rotund manager rounded the corner into the counter area Ronald swung the steel divider two-handed. The shining corner bit into the fat man’s neck and continued inward, the stainless edge very nearly decapitating him. His eyes rolled back in their sockets.
Ronald pulled the divider from the manager’s neck releasing a huge splash of blood which pumped a couple of gouts before the fat man went down, a puddle spreading beneath him.
Ronald regarded the steel in his hands, no longer stainless. He grinned and turned toward the stunned customers, who took this opportunity to make a horrified rush for the doors.
The center cash register was open, above the still collapsed and trembling worker Ronald had bypassed. He leaned over her and reached into the cash drawer, removing all the bills. He looked down at the quivering woman on the floor, crouched fetally and mewling pitifully.
“You may be in shock” said Ronald, dropping a five dollar bill on top of her.
He folded the rest of the cash and put it into his pocket.
“Don’t eat the food” he told her.
He then vaulted nimbly over the counter and ran out the door into the parking lot.
Ronald McDonald was free at last.