I Am The Local Atheist (24 page)

“
Yeah, hangin’.”

I looked at
him swirling his foam expecting a bit more but he was silent. “Oh
for fuck’s sake Lucas. Spill the beans if there’s any to
spill.”

He laughed.
“No beans.” He sat up and locked his hands together behind his
head. “Well, except for coffee beans. But we weren’t doing any
spilling of them, that was more the girl behind the counter. Nah,
we’ve just been having coffees and chatting about Invercargill. I
think she likes having someone her own age to talk to.”

“
Sounds like fun.” I was being sarcastic but he wasn’t
listening.

“
I took her for a walk through Queens Park…”

“
Ooooh, romantic!”

“
Yeah, whatever! She had a habit of sneaking ‘Thank God for
such a beautiful world’ in whenever I mentioned how nice some
flowers looked.”

“
That must have really bugged you.”

“
Yeah, it did.” He paused to cross his arms. “For a while.
Guess I got used to it. I just really like being around her even
though she is Christian, y’know? Just this really cool vibe that
doesn’t ever seem forced.”

“
Right.”

“
She’s been asking if you’re gonna come back and help out at
Charge Up.”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Didn’t enjoy it?”

“
Nah. Well sort of. It’s different from working with
teenagers.”

“
I guess it is.” Lucas sucked on the last of his cigarette as a
questioning look passed across his face. “I find the games to be
just a bunch of fun. I mean it’s not like I actually contribute
much. Alice and Christie just appreciate having a male there I
think, to help out, or at least to yell at the top of his voice
when the kids aren’t listening to them.”

“
I’m not saying I didn’t have fun, just that I didn’t find
myself fulfilled in any way doing it. Not like you seem to be. I
think… I think I just want to focus on doing some work at the
moment, some physical work; something that gives my body a reminder
of why it’s alive.”

Lucas tapped
his beer glass. “I’m alive because my parents fucked.”

“
Umm, yeah. Well, y’know, physically, that’s why we’re
here.”

“
Should there be another reason?” He lit up another
cigarette.

“
Well, I just mean, like on some kind of spiritual level. Not
necessarily religious, just something that makes a person realise
that ‘this is the reason I’m alive’.”

“
Sounds religious to me.”

“
It doesn’t have to be. I mean, take your friend Callasandra
for example, don’t you think that at some point she realised that
she was a painter and that was what she would do with the rest of
her life?”

“
I think that recognising a talent and then naming that as the
‘reason’ you are here on earth is vastly different from just
accepting the talent and choosing to pursue that for the rest of
your life.”

I didn’t think
it was vastly different at all. “Haven’t any of your own friends
ever said ‘this is why I’ve been put on earth, to do this…’?”

“
No. I’ve heard people say that – parents, maybe some people
I’ve known; definitely hear it from some famous people – but I
always remind my friends that what they do with their own talent is
their own choice. It’s not a reason for existing, it’s a reason for
living.”

“
Well okay, tell me what particular talent you have that is
your reason for living.”

“
I don’t have any talents. I choose to live because I see life
as a better option than being dead and buried in the
ground.”

“
Everyone has a talent of some sort.”

“
Not me. My parents fucked, Mum didn’t abort me, and now here I
am: A walking talking scourge on the face of the
planet.”

I remembered telling troubled teenagers over and over that
they were not the ‘source of suffering’ that they often felt
themselves to be, that they were beautiful people about to be
enveloped by the love of Jesus, that there was nothing to stop them
from being loved and loving life except their own will to not
accept Jesus into their lives. I had encountered Lucas’s attitude
so many times in Youth Group; teenagers who were being blamed for
any kind of suffering at home, a suffering I could relate to but
understood to not be my own. I used to tell them that God had put
them on the planet for a specific reason, that they were all part
of God’s great plan and I had thought that that was the reason God
had put
me
on the
planet, to bring
that
message to them. My home life made so much sense in that
light. I saved Lisa because of that, but I hadn’t known how to save
Mum and…

and myself.
This wasn’t the life I was supposed to be leading. I could swear
it.

Lucas stubbed
out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Ah fuck it. I can’t be stuffed
having this convo today.”

“
Yeah, it’s bringing me down too.”

We
laughed.

“
How’s the job at the Freezing Works?”

“
It sucks.”

“
No surprises then?”

“
Nah. Have to get up at five o’clock and be there at six. And
then spend the rest of the morning bagging laundry that smells like
your insides. It’s really weird though, because so much of the
environment feels familiar. It feels like a place I’ve occupied
before.”

“
Another life, eh?”

“
Yeah,” I said. “Another life.”

* * *

On the fifth
day things changed.

I had had
enough. I hated the job, but I had to see it out.

I walked
through the gates that morning and up the steps, entering the
building and walking down the concrete corridor like a man who had
traversed these walls for so many years of his life as other
workers shuffled past, some rushing ahead, late for their duties. I
took my time, I didn’t care. It was just another day at the office;
the smell of blood was everywhere, and its depressive smell clung
to me.

“
Good morning, and welcome to the Southland Freezing Works
Complex. This automated message is provided for the security and
convenience of the Southland Freezing Works personnel. The time is
five-forty seven A.M. Current outside temperature is twelve degrees
Celsius with an estimated high of sixteen…
”
I rounded the corner that took me to my station. The electronic
voice babbled on… “
Due to the health
regulations, the high possibility of infections of meat routinely
handled in the Southland Freezing Works compound, no smoking,
eating, or drinking are permitted within the Southland Freezing
Works gates. Please keep your protective gear on at all
times…
”

I entered Ed’s
office.

“
For fucks sake,” he said looking at me. “Bout time ya fuckin’
showed up!”

I stared at
him as if I was stupid.

“
Put your damn overalls on.”

I went to the locker and stepped into my hazardous environment
suit. It spoke to me – “
vital sign
monitoring activated
”
– which I thought was weird, to say the least, considering, I
had put on just a normal pair of overalls.

“
I’m afraid we’ll be deviating a bit from standard procedures
today, David. Hold the fort here while I check the supply
room.”

I sat down in
Ed’s seat as he left. Workers eventually started entering and
asking for overalls. Some even asked me if I knew if their lockers
were going to be fixed. “I don’t know” was the only reply I had for
them, but it made me realise why Ed had left me here – so that he
didn’t have to deal with these problems himself.

“
My locker has been broken for two weeks now. When’s it gonna
be fixed?”

“
I don’t know.”

She looked
annoyed. “Give ya’ a bet he’s fixed his own damn lockers though,
right?”

I shrugged my
shoulders.

She pushed her
way past me to the lockers against the wall where Ed kept his
belongings and rattled the doors, banging her fists against them as
if trying to make them break open. They wouldn’t budge.

The worker
looked at me. “Just give me my damn overalls.”

“
Sure,” I said passing a clean pair to her.

I sat for
about half an hour looking at the computer screen, looking at the
staples on the desk, looking at notes that people had left, looking
through the draws to see if there was anything worth stealing
(there wasn’t). I decided to go into the room next door and start
sorting the overalls that had come down the chutes.

I was at that
for only fifteen minutes before Ed came through the side door
shuffling the little mat trolley towards me like a man on a
mission. His face lit up with fury. “For fuck’s sake! You were
supposed to be doing the mats half an hour ago!”

He gave the
trolley a hard shove. It slammed into the wall next to me, narrowly
missing my legs but hitting a floor-level fuse box, toppling over
and spilling the mats all across the floor. Circuits overloaded and
sparks flew sending green streaks of lightning into my visual
cortex. And then the lights died blackening out the room.

Silence,
except for some fuses snapping.

And heavy
breathing,

and swearwords
being mumbled.

I blinked and
saw hunched creatures with long arms and legs mulling about, and
then looking at me with one big red eye on each of their foreheads.
I tried backing away into the darkness but the lights flickered
back on and I was looking around wondering where the creatures had
disappeared to. Ed was gone too.

The mats lay
in a sprawled out mess on the floor. I kicked a few away from the
fuse box but left the rest as I exited the main building and made
my way through the still dark air, onwards on my mission to bag
blood splattered overalls into blue bags ready to be whisked away
by the laundry truck later that day.

I started at
the place next to the cafeteria. I had no idea what they did in
there but the smell wasn’t half as bad as some of the other rotten
places.

More of the
same lockers that the workers used hadn’t been fixed and some swung
open as I walked past banging my fist against them leaving
cigarette packets, wallets and keys open for anyone to come in and
ruffle their way through. I could imagine Ed checking everyone’s
gear as though he was some kind of security inspector instead of
just being in charge of the laundry and being the general caretaker
that he was employed as.

I decided to
steal some wallets. It was risky, but it made my heart beat faster,
and I knew that people were more likely to blame Ed anyway, at
least in the long run for not fixing the lockers.

The thought
brought a smile to my face.

I grabbed two
wallets, a bag of chips and a couple of sandwiches, placed them in
one of the empty bags, scrunched it up and held on tight.

I made my way
around to the loading shed where long vent shafts passed across the
ceiling to the other end. The lights in between dispersed an orange
glow against everything, and threw strange shadows against the
lockers where blue overalls were overflowing.

I took an
empty bag that I had brought with me and started stuffing the
overalls in as they fell out of the locker and piled their dirty
and stinking bloodstains up against my arm.

There weren’t
many other workers in this area. In fact for a while I was pretty
sure that I was the only one.

To my left
crates were stacked up high, almost to the ceiling where the vents
made highways of their own against the tin roof. A large propeller
sat lodged in the wall at the end of one of the shafts. It was most
obviously an air coolant system sucking the cool air in or the hot
air out. At this time of the morning it was turned off. I imagined
crawling through the vents and coming out at a similar coolant
system, but not being able to get past and lodged in some trap
created by game designers to piss the player off.

Something
moved – from out of the corner of my eye; something with red
tentacles, but when I looked over to the storage area it was gone.
I shoved the rest of the overalls into the bag, tying the end and
shouldering it, ready to carry it to the end of the bay where later
the laundry truck would pick it up.

I heard a sound – a squishy
flap
flap
sound, kind of like a tail pounding
wet floorboards. It came from behind the crates. There was
definitely
something
hiding over there.

If I moved now
I would be an open target, so I shouldered the bag of overalls and
decided to change direction. I made a full circle around the
crates, heading for the opposite side of the storage area, passing
through and around several pathways before hitting a complete
blockage. A dead end.

Damn these linear games!
There were
never any alternative routes. I had to go back and carry on exactly
as I had planned originally.

But as I walked out into the open space, the creature charged
at me from behind the crates on it’s two stumpy legs; its
red-tentacle face firing toxic phlegm which I managed to dodge the
worst of, but the off-spray hit me and my suit reacted:
“
Armour compromised.
”

I fell over
but crawled desperately forward gaining my feet again, and diving
to my right into a new locker bay where some more doors swung open
invitingly.