Short Story: The Grind (Patreon)

  The attached image is of the cat that lives near my local census office. It will be well-fed in my absence by my ex-co-worker Doug.

Yep, today's my last day at the census job! In honor of that, I'll post a VERY short story (less than 1000 words) I did for the local critique group a couple weeks ago. I also did another story, but I might do more editing on that one sometime, and I'm unlikely to do more this one anytime soon, so.

 It's basically Depression Thoughts vaguely molded in a story, so warning for that if you're not up for those, but it does go to a whimsical placeThe Grind

Keep trying. Keep trying. Stick it out one more day.

That’s what she told herself, when she stepped into the office every morning.

In many ways, this place was a descendant of the classrooms she’d been stuck in for 12 years. The rules were the same. Sit in rigid lines. Stay awake for the lectures. Stare into space, fake like you care, doodle a little in the margins of a paper pad, do enough to scrape by.

She’d been so eager to escape that. To be “free”. To do what she wanted to do. But then, once she was out in the world, she realized she didn’t really know what that was, or how to do it. She’d been trained too well, she could no longer function outside a place like this.---

Her one spot of warmth was the chubby black cat that lived at the edge of the office parking lot. Every day, she put a bowl of treats down, and without fail, it weaved through the tangled weeds, squeezed through the hole in the wire fence, and jumped the muddy gulch to chow down. It never let her touch it, but she was content just to kneel there and watch. After it ate, it would flop down on the ground, luxuriating in its fullness. 

“I wish I could be like you,” she whispered. “Just exist here. Without feeling trapped. Without feeling lost. Without wishing I was more.”

It blinked at her.---

She knew she was being overly dramatic. Lots of people did mindless work, then went home, where they had happy lives, did things, make meaning out of it all. They endured the monotony. They didn’t lose themselves like this.

But when she was at home there was this endless buzzing in her skull. She couldn’t focus on anything. The emptiness of apartment echoed and she didn’t know how to exist. If she tried to write, draw, cook, look for another job, that buzz got louder and louder, until it became an awful grinding that ripped at her brain and she had to lie down.

---

It was a job where people came and went, but there was one woman who, like her, just wouldn’t leave. She narrated every single thing she did, every complaint, every single computer problem, loudly that enough that even wax earplugs couldn’t block her out. 

Most of the time she hated it, hated her, but in her most honest moments, she admitted it was better than that empty buzz.

That woman asked her once why she always left that food bowl out.

“A cat lives near here,” she explained. “I like to feed it.”

“But I’ve never seen it”.

Maybe it only comes out for me, she thought. And felt just a little special, for once.---

The mantra had changed a little.

What are you doing here? Just quit. You don’t even like it here. Just quit.

But what would she even do if she did? There was nothing else. There was nowhere else. At least here, it was okay to be tired all the time. At least here, she could disappear.

But the office was getting kind of empty now too. A lot of people had walked out, citing bad policy, weird hours, lack of meaningful work, the plague that was going on, but that kind of stuff just washed over her. 

The woman who loved to talk would cry out “It’s so QUIET!” once every hour. 

“Sure wish it was,” she wanted to reply sardonically. But as always, she kept it inside.---

Her stapler was missing. She suspected the talkative woman of taking it. She’d gone to the supply guy a few times to ask for one, but he always just said they were out. She wasn’t sure she believed him.

---

Even the office cat had moved on. It never came to see her now, no matter what food she used. She wondered if it had just gotten tired of her. She couldn’t blame it. She was tired of herself. She cried silently at the thought, her head bowed over her computer.---

The talkative woman finally quit too. “Remember to pick up that cat food you leave out, it’s turned to sludge from the rain,” she said as way of goodbye. 

At this rate, she was going to be the last one left. She wondered what the woman was going to do now. 

She searched the woman’s abandoned desk for the stapler, but it wasn’t there. Maybe she’d been innocent after all.

She noticed the supply room was empty now, door open. The supply guy was out for a smoke, probably. She ventured inside the dim place and squinted at steel gray cabinets. At the end of the row, she spotted two yellow pinpricks in the darkness.

She walked over and knelt down, staring into the cats lamp-like eyes. “What…”

What was it doing here? How was it here? Had it been here the whole time?

Was that… her stapler at its feet?

The cat blinked slowly at her, and she noticed it was looking a little indistinct. “It’s your turn now,” it said as it began to fade.

Her own body was getting smaller and smaller. I’m disappearing! She opened her mouth to scream.

But then she felt her clammy flesh turn to soft fur, saw the colors shift, and her heart settled. 

The buzzing, the grinding…it was gone now. She could just exist.