Post by anjouleme on Mar 3, 2008 15:07:40 GMT -5
Rated T
Author note: This is piece that I wrote from an exercise in expressing character emotions.
The objective was to create a character in a one page sketch who is indifferent to his surroundings and to make that apathy believable. If anyone reads this and would like to give me their opinion on whether or not I accurately portrayed Apathy, I would love to hear it.
Some live and some die, there is nothing that can be done to change that fact. It is just the nature of the business and business is booming.
Night after night I mop the blood from the floors, sometimes scooping up bits of bone and brain along the way.
Raw material, that’s all it is, bits of debris left behind from the demolition of human bodies.
The cries of grief often echoed down the hall, and I know that soon I will be called to make that long trip to the basement. Wheeling my cargo to the last stop before it is sent on to its final destination.
It’s quite down there, save for the humming of the refrigeration unit that reverberates off the rows of shiny metal doors.
I will be hauled down there myself one day. I do not expect the person who wheels me down to shed a tear.
A death is a death no matter what the cause or age, whether it be at 23 or 83, it is but one soul in the world of many.
Should I care more for the teenage gunshot victim? I care no more than I do about the 76 year old who’s heart just ceased to beat.
Sometimes as I slid them in the sheet will slip. I often find the eyes to be open, dull and opaque. I feel my own eyes mirror their dull gaze. They feel nothing just as I do.
Death cares little for age, race, gender, it will take any and all that meet its qualifications. A severed artery…brain trauma…heart failure…asphyxiation… . death cares little and I care little of death.
It is just another night at the office. People often ask me how I can sit and eat my dinner down there.
It just a room, I reply. They communicate their aversion to my response with a reproachful glare.
My job is not to mourn their passing. My job is relegated to clean up and transportation, which I do the latter with utmost professionalism.
Unlike the disrespectful antics of Dean Scott. Who on several occasions I have witnessed holding ridiculous one-sided conversations with them, as he wheels them through the dim halls.
Patting their cold hands consolingly before he slides them in. Shameful and yet he has the nerve to call me heartless.
So I lack a heart simply because I refuse to waste energy on the deceased? According to Dean, that is the case.
Every night is busy and tonight is no exception. I look up at institutional clock nailed to the cinderblock wall, Dean should be here already.
Three minutes later he burst though the heavy metal door, a brown paper sack clenched between his teeth.
His arms wrapped around a file box, which he promptly dumped onto the steel counter, “Top of the morning to you Chuckie, what’s come in tonight?”
“I have told you not to call me Cuckie.”, my only response.
“Lighten up Chuck”, Dean snickered as her repeated the words up and chuck beneath his breath. He opened one of the metal doors and slid the body out, pulling back the sheet.
He clicked his tongue against the front of his teeth, “Good god what happened to this unlucky B*st*rd.” He bent over for further inspection, “Where is his left ear?”
I didn’t bother looking up and continued on with my paperwork, “He did come with one.”
Dean flipped the sheet back over, pushing him back in, “Poor family, they shouldn’t have to see him that way, they couldn’t find his ear?”
I continued to scribble with my pen, “Missing ear or not, it doesn’t make him any less dead. Personally I don’t see any point in having a viewing.”
“The point is to say goodbye and to pay respect, its more for the living than the dead.”, Dean asserted.
I set my pen down and swiveled upon the stool, “Fist of all it is pointless to say goodbye to someone who no long exists, that can neither see nor hear you. Secondly, I find nothing respectable about the dressing and painting up of corpses, like giant dolls, sticking them in the front of a room for everyone to gawk at.”
Dean hopped up onto the metal counter top, “Haven’t you ever lost someone you loved?”
“Of course I have”, I snapped. “But you need not mourn a person like they belong to you.
Human beings are not possessions to be covet therefore you need not cry like children when they are taken away.
I simply acknowledge their absence in my life and go on, there is little use in doing anything else.”
“d**n Chuck, when is the last time you got laid?”
His sophomoric jibe didn’t bother me in the least, “If you would like to know the answer to that Dean, perhaps you should call you Mother?”, a smug smile spread across my face.
To my dissatisfaction, Dean was not insulted in the least. In fact he clasped one hand upon my shoulder as he leaned forward, seized by a spasm of uncontrolled laughter, “Good one Chuck!”, he wiped a bit of fluid from the corner of his eye.
I stood abruptly, my shift was over and I felt no need to suffer his presence any longer. “See ya later Chuckie!”, Dean called out after me.
He would never understand my views, or me for that matter and honestly I prefer it that way. I made my way up through the stairwell and out onto the main floor.
Weaving my way through the throng of people clogging the hallway. I had seen all those looks before, tired and red rimmed eyes stared at me as I passed. Fear and grief had the same features no matter the face.
I waved a goodbye to Grace as I passed the nurses desk. “Night Chuck.”, she called out before resuming her slouch over the file cabinet.
I approached the exit, the doors retracted and I stepped out beneath the florescent glow the large sign above that read Emergency Room.
I jumped out of the way as a car squealed into the drive thru. The young male driver jumped from the vehicle and ran around the front of the car to the passenger side, the engine still running. He opened the door drug the limp occupant out with his arms hooked beneath theirs.
He pulled him along, the bullet holes in his back painted a bloody trail along the pavement. I stepped over the red smear, some lived and some died and that one was defiantly dead.
To the driver he was a friend, but to me he was no more than a job and I was currently off duty.
Author note: This is piece that I wrote from an exercise in expressing character emotions.
The objective was to create a character in a one page sketch who is indifferent to his surroundings and to make that apathy believable. If anyone reads this and would like to give me their opinion on whether or not I accurately portrayed Apathy, I would love to hear it.
Some live and some die, there is nothing that can be done to change that fact. It is just the nature of the business and business is booming.
Night after night I mop the blood from the floors, sometimes scooping up bits of bone and brain along the way.
Raw material, that’s all it is, bits of debris left behind from the demolition of human bodies.
The cries of grief often echoed down the hall, and I know that soon I will be called to make that long trip to the basement. Wheeling my cargo to the last stop before it is sent on to its final destination.
It’s quite down there, save for the humming of the refrigeration unit that reverberates off the rows of shiny metal doors.
I will be hauled down there myself one day. I do not expect the person who wheels me down to shed a tear.
A death is a death no matter what the cause or age, whether it be at 23 or 83, it is but one soul in the world of many.
Should I care more for the teenage gunshot victim? I care no more than I do about the 76 year old who’s heart just ceased to beat.
Sometimes as I slid them in the sheet will slip. I often find the eyes to be open, dull and opaque. I feel my own eyes mirror their dull gaze. They feel nothing just as I do.
Death cares little for age, race, gender, it will take any and all that meet its qualifications. A severed artery…brain trauma…heart failure…asphyxiation… . death cares little and I care little of death.
It is just another night at the office. People often ask me how I can sit and eat my dinner down there.
It just a room, I reply. They communicate their aversion to my response with a reproachful glare.
My job is not to mourn their passing. My job is relegated to clean up and transportation, which I do the latter with utmost professionalism.
Unlike the disrespectful antics of Dean Scott. Who on several occasions I have witnessed holding ridiculous one-sided conversations with them, as he wheels them through the dim halls.
Patting their cold hands consolingly before he slides them in. Shameful and yet he has the nerve to call me heartless.
So I lack a heart simply because I refuse to waste energy on the deceased? According to Dean, that is the case.
Every night is busy and tonight is no exception. I look up at institutional clock nailed to the cinderblock wall, Dean should be here already.
Three minutes later he burst though the heavy metal door, a brown paper sack clenched between his teeth.
His arms wrapped around a file box, which he promptly dumped onto the steel counter, “Top of the morning to you Chuckie, what’s come in tonight?”
“I have told you not to call me Cuckie.”, my only response.
“Lighten up Chuck”, Dean snickered as her repeated the words up and chuck beneath his breath. He opened one of the metal doors and slid the body out, pulling back the sheet.
He clicked his tongue against the front of his teeth, “Good god what happened to this unlucky B*st*rd.” He bent over for further inspection, “Where is his left ear?”
I didn’t bother looking up and continued on with my paperwork, “He did come with one.”
Dean flipped the sheet back over, pushing him back in, “Poor family, they shouldn’t have to see him that way, they couldn’t find his ear?”
I continued to scribble with my pen, “Missing ear or not, it doesn’t make him any less dead. Personally I don’t see any point in having a viewing.”
“The point is to say goodbye and to pay respect, its more for the living than the dead.”, Dean asserted.
I set my pen down and swiveled upon the stool, “Fist of all it is pointless to say goodbye to someone who no long exists, that can neither see nor hear you. Secondly, I find nothing respectable about the dressing and painting up of corpses, like giant dolls, sticking them in the front of a room for everyone to gawk at.”
Dean hopped up onto the metal counter top, “Haven’t you ever lost someone you loved?”
“Of course I have”, I snapped. “But you need not mourn a person like they belong to you.
Human beings are not possessions to be covet therefore you need not cry like children when they are taken away.
I simply acknowledge their absence in my life and go on, there is little use in doing anything else.”
“d**n Chuck, when is the last time you got laid?”
His sophomoric jibe didn’t bother me in the least, “If you would like to know the answer to that Dean, perhaps you should call you Mother?”, a smug smile spread across my face.
To my dissatisfaction, Dean was not insulted in the least. In fact he clasped one hand upon my shoulder as he leaned forward, seized by a spasm of uncontrolled laughter, “Good one Chuck!”, he wiped a bit of fluid from the corner of his eye.
I stood abruptly, my shift was over and I felt no need to suffer his presence any longer. “See ya later Chuckie!”, Dean called out after me.
He would never understand my views, or me for that matter and honestly I prefer it that way. I made my way up through the stairwell and out onto the main floor.
Weaving my way through the throng of people clogging the hallway. I had seen all those looks before, tired and red rimmed eyes stared at me as I passed. Fear and grief had the same features no matter the face.
I waved a goodbye to Grace as I passed the nurses desk. “Night Chuck.”, she called out before resuming her slouch over the file cabinet.
I approached the exit, the doors retracted and I stepped out beneath the florescent glow the large sign above that read Emergency Room.
I jumped out of the way as a car squealed into the drive thru. The young male driver jumped from the vehicle and ran around the front of the car to the passenger side, the engine still running. He opened the door drug the limp occupant out with his arms hooked beneath theirs.
He pulled him along, the bullet holes in his back painted a bloody trail along the pavement. I stepped over the red smear, some lived and some died and that one was defiantly dead.
To the driver he was a friend, but to me he was no more than a job and I was currently off duty.