Sinister extremity, p.8
Sinister Extremity, page 8
As they approached the wall of the arena, Styx took advantage of The Contestant having nowhere left to go, and after ducking a wild stab from the trident, rushed in and plunged his sword into The Contestant’s lower thigh. The Contestant screamed and fell, immediately sobbing hard, snot and tears running down his face, eyes red and panicked, and began crawling away from Styx, who now lingered over his prey with absolute confidence in his victory. Styx lifted his chin to the crowd and raised his arms, eliciting deafening cheers and boos in equal measure. He took his sword and used it to gesture to The Contestant’s left arm, drawing more boos. He paused, considering this, and pointed the sword at the already wounded thigh of the man who was weakly pushing himself backward with his remaining good leg and arms. The sand under The Contestant grew dark and thick with blood and sweat and tears and snot. The crowd cheered at the sword pointed at the wounded leg, and in a showy, exaggerated motion, pulling back farther than necessary, striking a pose at the moment before reversing his momentum, Styx brought his sword down and cleaved off The Contestant’s leg just above the knee. With a final animalistic shriek of horrified pain, blood running from him in a river and the color draining from his face, The Contestant fell limp. Styx put his arms out in resplendent bravado, rotated himself for the viewing pleasure of the crowd, and bowed. A title card onscreen declared STYX - WINNER - BROUGHT TO YOU BY FAUST FERTILITY: YOUR LEGACY STARTS WITH FAUST.
A calm voice implored the audience not to worry about The Contestant. The Contestant was going to be just fine.
Griffin changed the channel and decided he should probably start looking for a job.
The next step in the process was to look for openings he could apply to. Jun made Faust Direct Sales sound like it was pretty much open to anyone who could walk in the door and speak English, and Griffin felt pretty confident about doing both of those things, so he opened up the website and went to their optimistically-named “careers” section to look for an application. He found the page, submitted his resumé, then filled out an additional form that required him to manually type out the entire contents of his resumé into separate text fields that didn’t allow copy-pasting. He hammered out a quick cover letter about how he had a life-long passion for exchanging his time, labor, and dignity for small amounts of currency over the course of his one experience of the incomprehensible cosmic miracle of life, but phrased in a way that sounded better than that.
A few seconds after he submit, his phone rang. He answered and was greeted by a pleasant young woman’s voice saying, “Good afternoon. I’m looking for Griffin Batt.”
“Speaking.”
“Hi, Griffin. My name is Clara. I work for Faust Direct Sales.”
“That… that was an extremely fast response time.”
“Well, our system flagged you as an ideal candidate because of your experience as a sinister severance specialist.”
“Oh, wonderful. I wasn’t sure if that would be seen as a transferable skill to this line of work.”
“It’s not the direct physical skills, but the work ethic it represents. Clocking in and doing that difficult, vital work every day. May I ask why you left your previous position?”
“I mean, my passion for the work was as strong as ever, but that kind of work is rather physically demanding and it was starting to catch up with me and affect my performance. I figured it was better to call it and move on to greener pastures of my own volition before my body made the decision for me.”
Griffin felt her nod before she said, “I understand. Not a line of work to grow old in. Do you have any experience in customer service or sales?”
“No. Wasn’t that clear on my application?”
“Haven’t read it. Could we do a quick test of your phone skills and etiquette? It would be a simple simulated conversation where you would play the part of yourself as a Faust Direct Sales representative and I would play the part of a customer you’ve cold called. That sound good?”
“Oh yeah, no problem. What am I selling in this test run?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just try for a cordial opening as you try to get a lead. Now go for it.”
Griffin cleared his throat and paused for a few seconds to delineate the beginning of the scene and then switched to his most pleasant and charming tone to say, “Hi, may I speak with Clara?”
He was met with a long, dead silence followed by a gruff, clipped, “Speaking.”
“Hi, Clara. My name is Griffin and I’m calling on behalf of Faust Direct Sales. Would you happen to-“
“How about I stomp your goon ass if you ever fucking call me again, you piece of shit?”
“...Pardon?”
“What if I punch you in the back of the head so hard that you die? You’ve already told me your name and where you work. Do you have any idea how easy it would be to come down there and smash your face into paste? I know where that fucking call center is. Maybe I’ll be waiting in the parking lot with a piano wire for your pencil neck.”
“I- that’s quite alright, ma’am. How about I take you off our list so you don’t get any more unwanted calls?”
Clara lapsed back into her normal voice and said, “Pause. The instincts and tone are pretty good, but the one thing you can never do at this job is offer to take them off our list or to hang up first. You haven’t even gotten to the point of starting the actual pitch for the product.”
“What product? You told me to just focus on opening.”
“I know what I said. Despite that, let’s try again. And remember what you can’t do. Now go again.”
Griffin gave another delineating pause. “That’s quite alright, ma’am. Would you happen to be interested in any of our fine products?”
Clara’s voice became deeper and rougher as she said, “I am going to find out where you live and shit in your mouth. I’m going to drag you to the sewer and slit your belly open and make you watch the rats grow fat on the feast of your entrails. Your body is my canvas and my art is pain. You will forget the feeling of sunlight. You will beg for mercy as your pitiable flesh is unmade by teeth and acid and the rats will not understand your pathetic pleas and I will understand them and I will ignore them and smile and drink your tears from your mother’s skull. There is nothing to save you now— I have made up my mind. I have made up my mind that the rest of your life will be an eternity of misery and despair where the sweet relief of death is as constantly tantalizingly visible and totally unattainable as the horizon. The horizon on a clear night in the middle of the ocean, the dim and distant stars only proof of void above, the pure black of the water only proof of unending cold and pressure and inevitable drowning, the horizon only existing as the invisible line where the stars are overwritten by the heavy alien darkness of the water. And you, you will bob in the waves there in that dark, cold and scared and alone and wishing it could all end, never getting your wish, feeling your entrails floating around you, your intestines tangling your hands as you struggle to tread water, and you sink into the cold void below and water fills your lungs and every cell of your body screams out in terrified desperation for air and yet you live. You live as the water bears down heavier and heavier and heavier until you are destroyed under the pressure and dispersed through the indifferent infinite waters and yet, somehow still awake, still alive, you feel every molecule of what was once the shameful pathetic wretch known as ‘you’ float to their own individual oblivions. I. AM. NOT. INTERESTED. IN. YOUR. PRODUCTS.”
“No problem at all, ma’am. Would you like to sign up for the Faust Credit Card?”
Snapping back to her normal voice, Clara said, “You’re hired. When can you start?”
The call center office was full of cubicles that were somehow both beige and cold grey under fluorescent lights that flickered between medical green and nicotine yellow. They went on so far, and there were no windows. Clara turned out to be the actual supervisor, not just a voice on the phone delivering threats, and was perfectly cordial and professional when not channeling the mind of a homicidal maniac to test a prospective hire’s mettle. She was about five foot five with vaguely mediterranean features most obviously in the form of stunningly voluminous tightly curled hair thrown over one shoulder, though she had the same blue-grey eyes as Griffin.
She led Griffin across the floor through a long line of cubicles packed with workers in headsets, some starting to pitch a product before abruptly stopping as they were clearly starting to get yelled at, some making noises of polite agreement through strained smiles, some openly and fully sobbing. One guy was screaming that he was going to kill himself and everyone else there in a cleansing fire while a pack of security guards made their way towards him with a look of almost bored familiarity with that type of thing. As they tackled him and his screams were replaced with the sizzling snap of tasers, Griffin and Clara reached a cubicle with an empty chair that she gestured for him to sit down in. He did.
“Alright, Griffin. This will be your station. At the moment we’re selling Tag Killer, a skin tag removal ointment. It also works on moles, early stage melanomas, and really any kind of surface-level nonstandard tissue growth pattern on the skin. One important thing to mention in the disclaimer, if they express interest, is that it should NOT be used on or near tissue that has been treated with regeneratives within the past year, or it’ll dissolve it back down into a raw slurry of amino acids and lipids and the like. Any questions?”
“Yeah. Do we know if the people we’re calling actually have skin tags or unwanted moles or skin cancer, or are we just taking shots in the dark and hoping to find somebody who not only has this problem but is also cool with talking about it on the phone with a stranger who’s obviously trying to sell them something?”
“The latter. I’m sure there’s some way to buy user data from search engines to find out who’s searched for things that seem to indicate they have those conditions, but the going rate on data like that would cost enough that the method of just calling everybody and asking directly is cheaper per sale. And it turns out that most people really don’t want to talk about their most secret skin conditions with total strangers who want money from them, but you know what? You know what, Griffin?”
“What?”
“I believe in you. Good luck.” And with that, she gave him a little two-count drum on the cubicle wall, flashed a smile that did not reach her eyes, and walked away. Griffin turned to the desk, put on the headset, and activated his workstation. The screen revealed a monochrome, obsolete interface that seemed to be older than he was, and very well might have been a relic of the first rebuild systems post-wipe. Everything was rendered in painfully bright oscilloscope-style kind of green lines. The only things visible on the screen were a long list of names and a button that said CALL. Griffin selected the first name, one of those stereotypical pre-war old lady names, and clicked the button.
As it rang, a call script replaced the column of names and the CALL button was replaced with an INPUT PAYMENT INFORMATION button. There was no option on the screen to end the call. Griffin’s heart rate picked up as the ringing continued, and he felt a kind of fear he wasn’t expecting, given his past work experience and the composure he managed at the interview. When the voice of an elderly woman responded, he hesitated for a moment before launching into the script. In his most inoffensive customer service voice, he asked, “Hello, is this Olivia Huston?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, this is Griffin for Faus-“
“Griffin was my husband’s name. He passed away.”
“Oh, I- I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I loved him so much. I still love him so much. It never stops. Every day I wake up without him next to me, the hole in my heart and soul grows larger and deeper.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Ms. Huston.”
“Mrs. Huston. Either call me Mrs. Huston or Olivia.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Huston. Uh, that being said- let me start over. I’m calling on behalf of Faust Direct Sales. Do you have a moment today to talk about Tag Killer?”
“I’ve got plenty of time to talk, even if I don’t know how much time I have left on this Earth. And what is Tag Killer?”
“It’s a revolutionary new topical skincare product for the removal of skin tags, raised moles, or melanomas.” Griffin paused, then mumbled to himself, “Why don’t they list that first?” before continuing, “It makes your skin smooth, insofar as it will be devoid of unusual growths.”
“My Griffin was the smoothest man I’ve ever known. Every inch of him below the eyebrows was gleaming and hairless. He looked like a bronze statue come to life. I would lick the sweat from him whenever he came in from working in the yard on hot days. He never used any such products. The only treatments his skin would get were from working up a good honest sweat and me licking it off him. And I stayed good and youthful for a long time with the routine consumption of his sweat and the facial application of his hot white cum.”
Griffin stared into space while considering how to proceed before deciding on saying, “So would you like to try Tag Killer now that you no longer have access to that?”
“Hmm.” About a five second pause. “No.” She hung up.
Griffin looked around and saw Clara making her way back down the cubicle aisle with a fresh mug of coffee billowing steam. He gave her a thumbs up over the cubicle wall and twisted his mouth into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes either, which caused Clara to stop in place to return the gesture, but the inertia of the coffee carried it forward over the lip of the mug and down onto her shoes, at which point she looked down, then back up at Griffin, and flipped her thumb downward, never changing the look on her face.
Griffin turned back to his station and pressed the call button again and was told to go fuck himself and hung up on before he even heard any ringing.
The rest of the morning passed in much the same way, in the form of a series of instantaneous rejections, and Griffin fell into a rhythm of getting told to fuck off. The immediate and impersonal nature of it was a soothing relief compared to the slow and directly dehumanizing humiliations he had endured recently.
At noon he went to ask Clara what she usually did for lunch and she said he should come with her to the Waffle House across the business park. In the parking lot, an EMT crew was visibly in the process of loading two sheet-covered bodies into ambulances, and the cook was leaning against the wall outside, smoking a cigarette and checking the action of his standard issue Waffle House pistol. As they approached, the cook saw them coming, checked his watch, said, “Oh fuck, lunch already?” and threw the cigarette straight down to smash underfoot before holstering his weapon.
Inside, they both got burgers and hashbrowns and were eating together in the unexpectant silence of colleagues who truly do not give a shit about their work or each other. Griffin noticed her watching him eat, and she noticed him noticing and opened her mouth, which had no cheeseburger in it at that moment, to ask, “You know you can eat with both hands, right?”
“What?”
“You’ve been eating with only your right hand and keeping your left below the table. I couldn’t figure out what looked off about the way you were eating but you just aren’t using your left hand at all, are you?”
“Oh. Huh. I didn’t realize I was doing that. Yeah, I guess my body sort of forgot it was an option to use my left hand during a workday lunch.”
“You mean you would eat lunch with your hand still off?”
“Yeah. And worse, my last job fired me right after my last lunch break, so they didn’t even let me finish out the day to reattach it. Had to get gel myself and reattach at home.”
“I thought you said you decided to quit on your own.”
“Oh. Right. Well. You’ve already hired me. No takesies-backsies. Please. I hope.”
She laughed. “I’m not going to call headquarters and tell Roderick Faust himself that you’ve slipped through the filters on a lie. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, I’ll worry about it as much as I please,” said Griffin, and he carefully gripped the burger with his left hand.
The afternoon passed much the same way as the morning, and as he was subject to an unending barrage of verbal abuse he fell into a trancelike state, barely present in his own body, becoming merely the delivery mechanism for a script. The day ended, he left his station, and he took the bus home, watching the lights outside switch from cool blue to piercing orange. He texted Jun and asked if he wanted to meet up for a drink later and his left hand went numb for a moment as he typed.
When he got home, as he entered the building he saw a masked man carrying a knife and wearing a blood-spattered jumpsuit pounding on his apartment door.
9
The man turned to face Griffin. He was wearing something between a full hazmat hood and a welder’s mask, a head-engulfing opaque polyhedron with one shinier tinted see-through section around where the eyes would be, spatters of blood across it all. The knife in his hand was small and curved in a J-shape, dirt-smeared crimson soaking his gloves. Griffin was shaking, frozen where he stood. His heart was pounding. A sharp pain shot through his left hand at every heartbeat. He reached back behind himself to try to open the door and found his hand wouldn’t close on the knob.
The man in the mask turned and faced Griffin and said, “Don’t worry. I am not going to hurt you.”
Griffin did not believe him. Griffin, in his panic, was sending his increasingly numb left hand frantically scrabbling blindly against the door while keeping his eyes locked on the masked threat. Griffin pressed his back against the door while the figure walked towards him calmly, pausing dramatically to pull its mask off, though as it did so Griffin was already turning away and starting to beg, “Please, if this is about the fundraiser, I already took the photos of my feet and my asshole.”
