The clock was ticking seconds. Tac. Tac. Tac. While Betty the secretary was typing on her keyboard every two tacs. Tac. Tac. Tap. Tac. Tac. Tap. Everything's gray. Everything's old. It was slightly cold. It felt like 1970. I'm pretty sure it smelled like 1970. Even the computer Betty was typing on did not seem much more advanced than a typewriter.

– "That's no good", had said Hamed when Betty came to get me. I just shrugged as an answer.

It had been 25 minutes and I still hadn't seen of Mr. Fench. The room was deprived of anything non-functional. A clock that barely told the time, a chair that barely sat a person, four gray walls to keep the air in, a blinking neon light to alternate darkness and light into an imperfect gray light. The only piece of decoration in there was the insignificant assistant, which was definitely not fit to assist to anything.

– "Is that gonna be long? I was supposed to finish my shift 10 minutes ago"

– "He should be there any minute", she answered, as the knob turned.

– "AH! There you are!". Mr. Fench rushed out, grabbed my hand, seemed alerted, as if he had just spent the day looking for me.

– "Not much anywhere else I could be, is there?" 7 hours and a half at the production chain, half an hour here, even Betty found me. I didn't get Mr. Fench's interjection.

– "Let's walk", said he.

We escaped the small gray room that was the anteroom to Mr. Fench's office, my curiosity to see that place unsatisfied. I'd been expecting charred limbs, guts, blood, a few jars filled with heads, and the full series of Twilight. Everyone refered to it as the slaughterhouse, how ironic. To be fair, people entering this office never got to be seen again, the name was fully deserved. Although it was mostly because we didn't get to make actual friends at work. When you've killed close to 1200 animals during the day, you don't want to gather at night around a beer to discuss work.

We took a staircase that I never took before, wondering if that was effectively leading to where Mr. Fench slaughtered his minions. He preceded me, then we exited on some sort of catwalk hanging over the production chain. I'm wondering if the animals would find it ironic that the industrial thing set to kill them, is somehow called productive. 

Anyhow, my shift was finished, my colleagues had already disappeared, and the next workers were starting a new shift on a clean chain, as if left innocent after eight hours of slaughtering.

– "Ain't she beautiful?", said Mr. Fench, "we've spent 30 years tuning the process. Three shifts a day, 30 minutes cleaning stops in between, then full steam ahead into producing high quality carcasses at a rate that none of our competitors can follow".

As enthusiastic as his words were, his tone was flat and uninterested, he was talking to me as if to an investor, which I obviously was not. I couldn't blame him to not finding much enthusiasm in our line of business. At first you feel guilty because of all the killing that's going on. Then you get overflowed and stop thinking. Then you realize it's only food and clothes, only it's still moving a bit. But the killing part never completely goes away.

I didn't answer, he was not expecting any answer from me, I think he just needed to fill in the silence that was floating over the high-pressured hoses ripping out the last traces of blood from the floor. He leaned on the fence, I did the same. If he was expecting to push me over, then I certainly didn't want to disappoint him. Being killed to serve as food, I'd at least preferred to do it where I knew it would be done properly.

– "Anyway. As you might know, Mr. Gallagher is no longer with the Company, his position is free, and I thought, given your track record, and your personality, that you would be a fit to be his replacement. You're a quiet man, Mr. Hursek-- may I call you Rob?-- and I appreciate quiet men".

Bob Gallagher was the shift master supervising the upper chain, in which I worked. Receiving the animals, shooting them in the head, blooding them. The lower chain did the "noble" part-- removing the limbs, the skin, the guts, then cutting the carcass and shipping it. 

I turned to look Mr. Fench in the eyes. They were soulless. He had these large round glasses that I guess had seen light before I was conceived. Baldy. Short.

I've never had thought of advancement before. I guess I was expecting to work there until my life would magically take a turn. Maybe I would have a great idea and become a businessman. Or maybe I would get some traction and become a singer (did I mention I'm singing?). Mostly I think I was resigned to stay there for 45 years, until I could have some pension, buy a trailer somewhere in Minnesota, and die. In any case getting up in the hierarchy there did not exactly correspond to something exciting me. Nevertheless.

– "Sure", I answered. There went the food chain.

– "Then that's a deal. I'll announce it tomorrow to the team. You'll get a $2.5 hourly raise, and a bonus based on performance. I'll see to get your orientation done by one of the other shift masters."

– "k", I just said.

He brought his hand forward, we shook those, then I went back home. On the way back I thought about my raise, and all the wonders I would be able to buy with it. On the path to riches and opulence. Maybe I would get a butler. 

I stopped on the parking of the Fairview Luxury Apartments and Pool where I lived, and turned the engine off. As usual the car's radio turned on at that moment and tuned to 101.9 KCRW The best radio on earth, playing whatever shit they find, whenever they want to. I hated that radio, and shut it down with a slur. I staid for a while in the car, not sure yet whether being promoted was a good thing or not.

On the way up I passed Casey's kids, playing in the stairs, hiding cigarettes. Morons. I rushed the catwalk down to apartment C-16, my beautiful rental. It was almost 200 square feet, and had a fully functional window with view on the pool that had been dry for the past 4 years I'd been living here. I closed the door behind me, launched the car keys on the small drawer, then fell on bed. The door opened back immediately, and Julia came in and jumped in the armchair on the corner of the room.

– "How are you fuck-face?", she said

I didn't remember how Julia came into my life. But sometimes I fantasized about finding the person responsible for it, and making him or her pay for it.

– "I'm in no mood Jules' ".

She stood up, and helped herself to the beer-fridge, only actual luxury I had in my life: a separate entity to keep my beverages cold and numerous. She twisted the cap off, even though it's not a twist-off cap. Julia was, if I may, the stereotype of a manly lesbian. Short dyed hair, large and proud of it, tattooed, cow piercing in the nose, doing more pushups every day than I walked steps. Adept of beer, burping and farting as much and as publicly as she can, fighting, and keeping away from anything you would consider girly. In many, very frightening ways, she was much more of a stereotypical maly-male than I was. To top it all, she was not a lesbian. She was more of a gay guy with a vagina.

– "What seems to be of the matter, mister his lordship", she told me while getting a beer. 

She had started talking weirdly shortly after having discovered Downton Abbey. She would never admit watching it, but I had caught her in front of the show a couple of times.

– "Bah, same shit, different day".

– "How positive you are for a change"

– "I got a promotion"

– "Poor thing"

– "You don't get it", I said

– "Oh I do get it. You've got a promotion, and now you're complaining about it"

– "I got to stay an additional hour every day at a job I don't like doing more stuff I don't like for the price of two beers a day. Oh yeah, I'm thrilled".

– "But that's good beer!", answered Julia, drinking my beer.

Then she booted up my PlayStation, playing a game I didn't even know I had, where you were apparently impersonating a zombie and had to bit as many rabbits as possible with a duck-shaped stick. Not trying to make sense out of that, I grabbed what was left of my energy and crawled to the shower.

I got out dressed with a towel, mainly to hide to Julia that my manhood was smaller than hers, but only her empty bottle of beer was left. Smelling of bleach and chloride, I opened myself one, got a meal in the freezer, and started eating in front of America's Dumbest Singers, then got to bed after the fifth interpretation of "I dream da dream" by Susan Boyd, which I'm pretty sure was not her name, neither her song, nor the actual title of the song.

Awoken half an hour earlier than usual, I jumped into a smelly pair of jeans and rolled down the stairs to my car. It was the end of October and mornings started to be quite chilly. The motor took a good minute of negotiations to start revving, then I put the heater to maximum heat, and headed out. An acrid smell of cigarette smoke invaded the car. I pulled over, cigarette butts in the air intake. Morons!

Arrived at the factory, I got dressed, then got out of my stupor as Mr. Fench was waiting for me, as it turned out. He was quite scary now that I noticed. Almost inhuman. I briefly wondered if he was living in there, and if he was sleeping at all. Betty the useless secretary was standing behind him.

– "Congratulations again Rob! The first promotion to a lot of others I bet!"

I honestly didn't know what was past shift-master. My understanding of the organization was that it was pretty flat. At the top Mr. Fench, below him three guys like me, below them all the other employees like I was the day before. Maybe he was considering me to replace Betty. If that was the case, I could always just grab the captive bolt pistol and use it on myself.

– "Let's get you started!", he said, " I'm sure you know Rick, who's responsible of the previous shift. Unfortunately he could not make it so I would do the orientation". 

What a treat. We headed to the entrance of the chain I had had plenty of time to study, having worked there for 4 years. But showing off was apparently important for Mr. Fench. Betty was trying to follow us with her small legs perched on high-heels that I sensed she'd been worn for years and were somehow too large for her feet, given their state and that she lost a shoe twice in the two hundred feet we walked. The guys from the previous shift were finishing clean-up.

– "The animals get there at least a day before they get killed. We feed them for 24 hours continuously with the special paste, then they get processed. Always make sure they never get short on special paste, they have to gorge on it"

– "What's in it?"-- I'd heard of it but never had a chance to ask what it was

– "You focus on your job, this has all been planned out."

That closed the conversation pretty well. I didn't really care about the content, but he had just exacerbated my curiosity.

– "Yeah, so", he started again, not one bit disconcerted, "you make sure of that, this is important. Then as you know the animals are directed to the chain. They sense what's coming, remember we are alike-- mammals. It is stressful for them, so we need to be careful that they don't panic. If they panic, they might damage other animals. Always put somebody here who's reassuring. And remember: the intake here is crucial for the output. We need to never stop working, so make sure there are no gaps in the input of animals."

Mr. Fench was gesticulating as he talked, while a guy in a white blood-stained work outfit was cleaning the floor of the intake channel. A disgusting mess of shit and vomit. Surely a nice thing to see at 6:30 in the morning.

-- "Then they're directed into the trap. Once in there, it is vital they stay as short as possible. This is the bottleneck of our organization. The law authorizes us only one numbing trap, so we need to make the most of it. Every shot counts. Always be quick about it, this is the instruction you'll relay".

-- "Sure", I answered. 

I knew that, I had been manipulating that crazy thing for a year. It's hard to aim at the beginning. Believe it or not, but animals don't like to get killed, so they'll try to fight it. And it's kind of a precise procedure. You get better after some time, but that's a hundred dozens animals you'll see each day. Even just statistically, you'll always miss a few shots a shift. And you don't control it, everything is automated as much as you can. Once you shot, the animal is taken forward by a treadmill, then attached by the posterior limbs. If you didn't numb it, then it will have a pretty traumatizing half an hour to continue with… so you learned to aim correctly.

– "of course after the beast is numbed, you'll have to make sure it goes smoothly through cut