THE TEMP.
Compost. Long have I contemplated how this wretched creature earned its moniker. Perhaps because he resembled more a steaming, fetid lump of bacterial discharge than anything described as human. His bulbous, shambling frame was tightly compacted into figure-hugging black jeans, as though someone had attempted to siphon 30 pounds of lamb’s neck fillet through a lipstick case. His head was a crude modelling clay tribute to some obscure demon - the flimsy, receding strands of white hair lazily plastered on as an afterthought. There was, I reflected, no despicable lagoon on this godforsaken planet that could have spawned such an organism.
The simple answer, however, was that the cleaning staff had discovered a bag of compost in the nether-regions of his desk on one of their routine rounds, to the immense amusement of the other employees. This surprised me not one iota, being that the workforce here comprised of the most half-baked simpletons I had ever had the misfortune to encounter. Their principle source of amusement consisted of cutting out pictures of one-another’s heads and crudely daubing them over various images. Even the very primordial soup itself would discard these cretinous crutons.
The nature of the office work was as much of a mystery to these buffoons as it was a non-entity to me. My day-to-day practice consisted of a series of clerical tasks so monotonous that I could practically feel my cranium shrivelling by the hour. Copy. Check. Repeat. Copy. Check. Repeat.
For one hour a day I was relieved of these duties and would consume a maverick culinary mishap that broke-down cultural boundaries and tore any prescribed notions of ‘cookery’ to shreds. A greying, wilting side-salad, that looked as lifeless and drawn-out as elderly skin in a thunderstorm, was a constant accompaniment. I would frequently marvel at Compost’s gastronomic feats, as he layered indeterminate slop upon indeterminate slop in the hope that something miraculous would emerge from the mire. He’d make regular stopovers to deposit this swill, which left his body like an old iron bolt sliding out of a rusty lock after fifty rain-lashed years.
Occasionally I’d spend meal times with Paul, a shrivelled, emaciated rodent of a man. His skull was replete with makeshift tattoos of Norse deities and his clothes bore indecipherable logos. His wiry, knotted beard was at odds with his bald pate. He spoke only in an impenetrable mumble, and I could smell the racism on his breath as I leant in to listen further. I’d nod and smile blankly whilst he plied me with another grubby tale or grotesquely humourless aside. I could imagine him grinning in his part-manic, part-inane fashion as he tortured a defenceless animal in his home, which I envisaged as a one-room, windowless angst-box. He had the air of a man who’d easily survive nuclear fallout, scavenging around the debris in search of some ersatz foodstuff. Indeed, the only food I had seen pass his lips came directly from metallic cans, the contents of which were never heated up. It was as though he already habited an apocalyptic wilderness; a far more suitable environment for him, I thought, than the droning hum of the office.
Copy. Check. Repeat. Copy. Check. Repeat.
Of course, it is fair to wonder quite why I chose to spend my supposedly ‘free’ time with such an individual. Part of this was my unashamed superiority complex. Having arrived from a (theoretically) enlightened institution, I was well aware of my intellectual authority over these troglodytes. I enjoyed both outfoxing them and wallowing in their predicament. Often I sat enraptured in mock-awe at their humdrum yarns. The subjects touched on politics, relationships and finances; rudimentary worldviews presented as epoch-making revelations. All human mediocrity was here. On the other hand I was simply bored. I’d accepted my plight – albeit as a temporary condition – and was keen to waste away the hours in whichever way possible. It wasn’t as though the work itself would quench that thirst.
For the past month all the office chatter had concerned the social event of the year. All essentially inane exertions culminated in this: a carrot-on-string moment for every employee. Malachy, a barrel-chested thug with a head like a meat hammer, spoke of the event with a filthy lustre charged by sexual violence. Despite his sobriety during office hours, his veins appeared to course with alcohol at the mere mention of the occasion. He’d regularly break out into a cold sweat, his cheap clothing sticking ungainly to him like a soiled dishcloth. Cristina giggled mindlessly before offering up some hare-brained musings on capital punishment or child abuse. Even Miriam – a profoundly religious woman, with milk-bottle spectacles and an unnervingly precise haircut – spoke of her anticipation.
Copy. Check. Repeat. Copy. Check. Repeat.
It was the evening before the event and Compost stalked the aisles of the workplace, waddling like a miasmic spider that had been roughly disassembled. He had shut one of the other temporary workers’ fingers in a window before proclaiming her to be a “sodding bitch”. Compost’s misanthropy came as no surprise to the masters of the floor. In fact it was expected, as though his countless years of service to an ultimately fruitless cause gave him free reign to exercise his revulsion. I had heard that, years ago, the company dispensed of his services, casting him unceremoniously back into the world. However, he’d simply returned to work the next day, wedging his frame back into the same chair in which he’d festered for the previous 30 years. The company simply took pity on him, and Compost’s stay became indefinite.
He proudly returned from one of the cubicles, where he’d ejected some kind of violent, mammalian clay cigar.
He proceeded to lecture Maya - a blank, inoffensive woman - about some sporting endeavour, in his curiously – and somewhat unexpectedly – shrill tone. It was as though the words struggled to bubble to the surface, working their way with considerable effort through his revolting form. “Right there, on the village green…” he wheezed. The folds of his body threatened to swallow one another. Maya cowered from him in the most polite way possible, eyes fixed on the mystery meat plastered across his jaws.
I awoke in the middle of the night. My bedclothes were damp with perspiration. My heart fizzled awkwardly within my chest. I stared at my reflection in the bedside mirror.
“You know what I’d really like to do? Kill a fucking shark. Imagine harpooning the bastard.” The night had come, and I had already been cornered by Tevis. He was a squat man, with eyes uneasily close together. He’d long spoken of his desire to set up a hotel in a remote outpost which could only accommodate two people at any one time. The financial instability of such an endeavour seemed lost on his frazzled mind. “What do you think?” he slurred.
I gracelessly darted the question and suggested I retreat downstairs to fetch more alcohol. What was ordinarily the office refectory served as some kind of temporary hub for the gathering. Plates of cold meats, grey and sterile, lurked under rolls of cling film. Decorations had been joylessly papered across the walls and ceiling, salvaged from boxes for their yearly summoning. These were presumably once flamboyant and vibrant, but the years had left them colourless. Some of the workers’ grim images were peppered across the room. Miriam’s innocuous face had been coated over that of a lame horse. Cruel, I thought. She found God after years of service to the company, which to some extent I could appreciate.
I gripped a couple of half-empty bottles of wine and returned to the asphalt area above ground where the dregs congregated. Various lamps and sources of heat had been set up. Compost’s palpating figure swayed in the near-distance. Tevis had been joined by Latchman. Latchman, a balding male in his mid-fifties, was a harmless but pitifully odd sort. He was bow-legged and distressed by the lights, like a hitherto undiscovered species reaching the earth’s surface for the first time. He still lived with his mother; he shamelessly referred to their home as ‘The Hive’. He spoke of her with disdain, creating the impression that he was planning to leave home imminently, which of course was a fallacy. He had a tendency to smack his lips repeatedly, as though he were trying to work out the various components of a complex beverage. “Yes sir!” he proclaimed as I arrived. He raised his right hand up against his ear, like a puppet disclosing some salacious gossip. “Mr.Latchman is loose!”
I pretended not to notice Malachy groping some sorry figure against a fence, and nodded at Latchman. He was reeling off a story that I’d heard on countless occasions. He’d been employed by a rival company for years before receiving a considerable sum of money, following a complex and drawn-out dispute. Of course, Latchman – being a prudent and frankly tight-fisted person – hadn’t spent the money. He’d simply let it accumulate, and even in his advancing years he’d found nothing that he deemed appropriate to put it towards. It was as though he was saving it for an afterlife which would surely be as pallid as his present existence. Nevertheless, he spoke with great pride of his supposed success.
I caught snatches of various conversations. Two of the other temporary workers, who joined shortly after me, were making an inebriated pact – promising one another that they wouldn’t be here next year. It seemed that each was trying to convince himself rather than his companion. As the very fabric of my mind began to unravel, Latchman reeled me back in. He spoke of how he would travel to foreign lands to teach English. It struck me as unusual - he struggled with his own mother tongue as clumsily a cloven-hoofed animal on a frozen lake. Tevis nodded, his boggle-eyed stare giving nothing away.
The head of the department- a lank, bearded man, with dark hair that oozed as if it lubricated itself – stood nearby. His outstretched arm was positioned above the head of Cristina. He leant in towards her, ensnaring her, trapping her in his sordid silhouette. He swirled his drink around in his other hand in a desperate attempt at sophistication. She seemed oddly at ease with the situation, which I found troubling. Catching wind of our non-conversation, he turned around. “My boys!” he blurted. “What’s the word on the street?”
His overcooked attempts at being affable were, as ever, utterly nauseating. They felt especially insincere to me, as I’d recently witnessed the man’s searing, self-righteous rage in full effect. I bore the brunt of this after mislabelling a series of documents – a perfectly innocent mistake. He took me aside into a cramped room and scrawled every single one of my errors in large letters on a board. He ground his authority into me; the omniscient teacher to my naïve child. But now, in the glassy-eyed fug of the gathering, this was all forgotten - to him at least.
“So I was saying to my partner...I beg your pardon, my fiancé”, said the head of the department. This was no accident. It was an attempt to prove that he was the sort of character who could hold-down a bona fide relationship with another living soul – a long-term one, at that. He was the louche lothario to our mild mildew. The vacuity of the workplace meant his abominable persona was something of a standout. He was holding court with gormless fungi, and he knew it.
I could stomach no more of this. Unfortunately, physical courageousness – or simple bleeding-heart brutality – is not my forte, so I made my awkward excuses and walked away. I staggered from the asphalt area, the violent vinegar of the wine now taking effect. I stumbled down a small mound, where the more intrepid employees ate their meals on clear days. I slipped, the grooves on my cheap leather soles failing me. I sat on the grass in near-darkness. I wasn’t injured; rather, this provided some relief from the ritual horror happening only yards away.
Then the darkness was callously broken by laboured, subterranean breaths. I turned my head. I could only make out a shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist. Pussy, gelatinous flesh spilled from it, like fish wriggling to escape an over-stuffed net. The panting was relentless now. I looked up. Compost. Before I could pull myself to my feet he’d already reached me. His face, pock-marked with nuggets of scaly skin, bulged with thread veins. The viscous frog chin that was his head loomed over me.
Before I could let out a scream, he heaved out a series of words. “You can’t hide here forever!” he groaned. I wasn’t sure whether it was intended as a threat or an invitation back to the festivities. I was frozen – statuesque on the ground, the crippling fear and nausea tempering the effects of the alcohol. “Calm yourself,” said Compost, sensing my anxiety. “Here”, he said, extending a violently pink trotter towards me. “Let me help you”.
Compost pulled me to my feet with all the grace of a dying ox pulling a dilapidated, one-wheeled cart. Before I had time to thank him, he continued. “I was like you, once. Young. An idealist. A dreamer.” It was odd that he could make such assumptions about me, being that we’d never previously exchanged so much as a pleasantry, but there was no stopping him. “But it’s not so bad. We’re a family. We’re tightly-knit. A unit. A team. “
Suddenly, we were away. Compost hauled me by the arm, back up the knoll and towards the congregation. I didn’t resist. We lurched past Miriam, who was spasmodically shuffling to an atonal din. We tottered past the old-guard of the company, who were struggling not to talk about work. We arrived at an outdoor cubicle, situated away from the hoard.
“Here” said Compost, pulling back the cubicle door. “Step into my office”. I peered nervously through the smog. I expected to find a duodenal effigy of Compost himself; claws out, mouth open and knees bent. Instead, the whole scene resembled some arcane bird’s nest with various hungry, brown sparrows - all blind and helpless - eagerly looking back at me. The rolling waves of urea served, in some way, as a final resting place for their beloved rectal godhead.
“Come to Papa”, he beamed.
Copy. Check. Repeat.
(End)
