The Temps by Andrew DeYoung

Author:Andrew DeYoung
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Keylight Books

INTERLUDE

• • •

Time passes for the temps both slowly and quickly, the moments seeming at once brief and infinite in their duration. This strange dilation owing in large part to the obliteration of the temps’ former routines, the rituals they once used to parcel out their days—morning hygienic practices, bus commutes, post-work happy hours, grocery shopping, the binge watching of streaming TV. Without these customs, time stretches out vast and desolate like a desert, until new patterns, new habits gradually grow to take their place. New ways of marking time. And so, when the temps think back to the horrible morning of the gas, it sometimes seems to them that months or even years have elapsed, sometimes that it’s only been a week or two. To know for certain how long they’ve been marooned inside the headquarters of Delphi Enterprises, they must consult the white board in the cafeteria that used to hold the day’s specials—chicken and wild rice soup, tempeh reubens, fajita salad with cilantro-lime dressing—but which Brent now uses to track the days. Six vertical lines and a diagonal slash to mark the passage of every week. Here, they count, their eyes brushing over the place at day twelve where Brent switched from red to blue when his dry-erase marker ran out of ink.

Days, then weeks, then a month, then more.

The temps split up into search parties and fan out across the building. First they look for food, empty the restaurant freezers and break room refrigerators of everything edible. Plastic bags of shredded iceberg lettuce, frozen reconstituted veggie patties, Lean Cuisines, granola bars, beef jerky, salted sunflower seeds. Bulk-sized containers of salsa, ranch dressing, sour cream. Giant jars of dill pickle spears.

Then, having collected every edible morsel, they go back for more. The purpose of returning is unclear, but the temps have nothing better to do, and so they keep coming, wave after wave of scavenging trips. Their eyes passing once more over surfaces they’ve already searched, reconsidering the utility of objects they formerly passed over. The temps ransack every cubicle, every drawer, every file cabinet and supply closet. They strip the office bare, like locusts ravaging a field of crops. And then, at the end of the day, they return to the fourth floor with their items, things they grabbed because they thought they might be useful, or—later, when most of the good stuff has already been taken—because they simply want them. The objects becoming stranger by the day.

Scotch tape. Scissors. Staplers. Pet rocks. Stress balls. Stuffed animals. Empty Pez dispensers with cartoon heads—Tweety Bird, Homer Simpson, Wolverine. Knitted blankets. Ironic needlepoints, posters with funny phrases. “Take a Number.” “Don’t Mansplain Me, Bro!” “YOLO Bitches!” The temps spread out through the top floor, each picking a cubicle to call their own. A place to store the items they find on other floors, a desk to sleep under. Most call their cubicles “apartments,” though some think privately that the ten-by-ten living spaces are more like cells. The temps furnish their apartments with items recovered in scavenging parties.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.