Artificial Honey
We were finally getting new work assignments today. Staring up at the sterile gray drywall from my cot on the concrete floor, I glowed with anticipation even though I could feel my back and quad muscles aching from the supply haul yesterday. No clue what assignments Seed and I would get, but we had the absolute worst one for the past three months: warehouse. Barrack rules dictated we couldn’t be assigned a job more than once a year, so we’d be flying high for a while. I’d take generator maintenance over heatstroke risk in an industrial building any day. At least gen crew got to work at night. We were remote out here in Hemet, so when deliveries got here, that’s when we worked, even at noon when everyone else was in the mess.
My lats screamed as I propped myself up. My boots and belt were on the floor, but I was still wearing the beige Dickies and teal Boys and Girls Club shirt marked “STAFF” on the back. The pipes in the walls were screaming from the AM shower rush and there were already the sounds of boots on concrete and men’s voices outside in the hallway. We slept in, for sure. The toilet flushed as Seed walked out of the bathroom, already dressed in the same pants but wearing a Spiderman t-shirt in a kids’ large. I was not a particularly large woman but I could still throw Seed across a room. She looked fresh-faced as she twisted her thick and wavy, light brown hippie hair into an alligator clip.
“Think we’ll get mess? I heard the new union lead is sexist.”
She was referring to a cushy kitchen job in a temp-controlled kitchen. An envied post.
“I think the whole point of the union is to ensure fairness, yeah? I don’t think Director Guerrero is going to reshuffle the assignments just because we flash our ankles.”
“Better not flash those cankles of yours or they’ll change the rules so they can put us in warehouse again.”
I chucked my disgustingly old bumble bee Pillow Pet at her, which bounced off the thin drywall of our bunk-less bunk room as she casually dodged it.
“Ewwww don’t let it touch me.” She loved talking like a valley girl and had the most exaggerated vocal fry I’ve ever encountered. “You better wash that thing next trip into town or I’m throwing it away.”
“Noooooo, not my only friend in this hellhole authoritarian bunk ruled by Supreme Leader Mustardseed!”
We cracked up and I hobbled to the bathroom. God I was sore. Seed had just flushed the toilet, so I decided to hold it until we got to the mess. We could only flush every twenty-four hours so going number two in a small space was a fast way to get served a bunk reassignment. I grabbed my face towel from our shared vanity drawer, filled with regulation toothbrushes and hairbrushes, bobby pins, boxes of soap, sanitary pads, the harshest cardboard tampons in the world… those were Seed’s, not mine. I dipped the towel in our wash bowl and wiped my face down before rubbing zinc all over it and every inch of exposed skin.
“You make fun of my name like yours isn’t totally insane. Who names their kid X’Stacey!?” she poked.
“Meth addicts, that’s who.”
She was being insensitive, for sure, but I don’t mind. My foster parents loved me before they died in the Sarin attacks in Andorra la Vella during Christmas, eleven years ago. They encouraged me to keep the name my unfortunate birth parents gave me. They also encouraged me to stay home and work my retail job during the busy holiday season since travel was so expensive. I learned about the attacks, and they never came home or answered their phones again. I put two and two together when the house was foreclosed on and then I was alone again. It was why I ended up at a protection agency, private mercenary companies that functioned like an old-school national military. It was shit work but they took care of you. Tons of people like me were here, too. We all got each other. Not Seed, though.
“Speaking of meth addicts, my parents say hi,” she said.
“Do they still want you to go back home?”
“Yeah, they want me to be in their weird cult. I hate visiting them. It’s the same work we do here but less freedom.”
“It can’t be that much of a cult… it didn’t brainwash you, right? Otherwise, you’d be there now being a good little homemaker like baking bread or braiding hair or some shit.”
“Shut UP! Are you ready yet? We unloaded artificial honey last night and I want some on my Cream of Wheat. Let’s go before it’s gone.”
She crouched to grab her pack and shuffled to the door.
“Fuck, I think I fucked up my knee last night. Lifting with your legs isn’t safe if you do it three hundred times in a row,” she whined.
“I think Arjun has a brace. Let’s ask him at breakfast.”
I grabbed my pack and we headed to the mess.