Lamplighter in the Yule Black by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

Life Noir

(2022)

A sheen of grease coated his exposed skin. It was 7:00 AM and he should’ve been just now getting out of the shower and making a beeline for his bed but he’d been asked him to stay late. The negative number in his bank account gave him no choice. Owen’s Diner was the only hole-in-the-wall eatery still open 24-hours in Lincoln. The Adam that he’d been in his twenties or even his early thirties would’ve jumped at the chance of snagging overtime—not that he would’ve ever settled for a third-shift line cook position back then—but now he dreaded it.

It was the kind of fast-paced work that, no matter how busy it became or how much work was accomplished, just dragged on forever. The clocks ticked in slow-motion. Meal breaks were unofficially prohibited and reduced to discrete bites of granola bars between answering phone calls and a quick swig of an energy drink before and after dealing with drunks and Karens.

“ Wake up ,” his favorite coworker jabbed, smiling her toothless smile over at him. Her diet was made up entirely of cigarettes and diet pop. “No sleeping on the job”

Kyle had been right. No matter how desperate for help a company was or how handsome his resume looked, no one wanted to hire him. All of his hard work had turned to dust. His college degree was little more than an expensive piece of paper; a trophy that would forever remind him of the life he was no longer welcome to. What had once been the bright stripe of blood on his threshold to ward off societal scrutiny was now just a pale protest.

Not good enough.

He was a nobody now. Slaving away—working much harder than he’d ever worked before in his old cubicle—at a shitty job for shitty pay. And after he was done here, he would go home to his shitty apartment. The bottom of that Giant Ladder of life was a sad place to be. The next couple rungs above it were fragile, if not broken completely. The Ladder was designed, through an intricate web of unspoken rules and systemic misandry, to be a life sentence if a man should fall to the bottom of the Ladder. People pitied the homeless, but where he was now was a place that received the coldest of judgements from those who had the luxury of looking down on it. It was the butt of cubicle jokes and general source of public contempt. Unless he turned to riskier and less legal endeavors, his debts would never be cleared.

The ventilators made a lot of noise but the smoke continued to linger. An overpopulated fly ribbon twirled in the breeze provided by a grime-browned oscillating fan. Adam wondered how many little legs and wing bits ended up in the meals he prepared.

Kyle had helped him auction off most of his things to afford the apartment, keeping only his bed and the basics as if he’d gone through a bad divorce. There was only one dress shirt in his closet now.

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