Acme Bio-Refrigeration Services,
Inc.
Hillary Lyon
Diving home on Mabry Avenue, the setting sun is
positioned just right to
induce blindness; it’s too low for the visor to block. Paying more attention to
this than to traffic, it came as no surprise when the Acme Bio-Refrigeration
Services truck hit me broadside. The driver said I ran a red light; maybe, but
how would I know? I couldn't see it.
One minute I’m listening to talk radio,
messing with my visor, and planning
dinner, then the next minute I’m smothered by the air bag and tasting blood. My
whole body is limp and numb. Someone opens my door and pulls me from my mangled
car.
Between the driver and his companion there is
much discussion as to my
condition, and what an unhappy situation this has put him in: now he'll be
late, if the police get involved he'll be fired for sure, ambulance drivers
will ask too many questions, and the collision destroyed one piece of his
precious cargo—which must be replaced ASAP.
Somebody wraps me in rough blanket. They lift
me up, then gently lay me
down on something cold and corrugated. I hear a heavy door slide down, and
clang shut. A lock clicks, a generator hums, and clouds cold air float down to
bury me.
***
I wake up—where? On a bunk, I think; maybe
more like a shelf. Several feet
off the ground. I feel so small. If I twist my shoulders, I can turn
enough to look around the room. So I twist, I turn. I float. If I could
bring my hands up, they would press against the glass confines of my pod. I
don't know what liquid fills this glass prison, but it tastes slightly salty,
like thin sea water. Through it, the room has a vaguely green cast.
The door on the other side of the room opens.
I see someone’s moving
silhouette. I don’t hear footsteps so much as feel the vibrations in my jar.
Yes, my jar. That's what I call it now, as it's sides are rounded. The
shadow walks over to the wall closest to my jar. It's a man, and he reaches up
to the dial on the wall—the thermostat—and adjusts it. This means it's going to
get colder. He comes to my shelf, to my very jar. He looks right at me—we
make eye contact! I blink at him, hard, and say the brine-muffled words, "Jose
TKO'd in the fourth round!" Exactly what this refers to, I don't know,
but it made him flinch. He cocks an eyebrow, squints at me. Looks down,
scribbles something on his clipboard, leaves. And with him the lights go too;
the temperature drops. Who said Hell had to be hot?
***
Some clumsy dolt is moving my jar, rudely waking
me up. A pair of enormous
man-hands lifts my habitat, sloshing me around in it as he walks across the
room. He places me—not very gently!—on a cart with several other jars. I
twist around, coming face to face with the jar next to mine. Howdy, neighbor.
Damn! He looks like a freakishly large fetus with a man-head stuck on top. A
sleepy-eyed, slack-jawed, waxy-fleshed, man-head. Maybe once handsome in a
cave-man kind of way, but definitely not viable breeding stock now. I
mean, really.
The cart lurches, shaking me out of my musings.
I now see the rest of the
room. More metal shelves, with hundreds of jars just like mine.
We trundle down a wide aisle, towards a flickering
light. The fluid in my
jar gradually warms up. We approach a blindingly bright, increasing hot
place—like flying up to the sun. If I was wax, I'd begin to melt. I wonder if
waxy-fleshed man-head beside me is melting? If I was on a beach, I'd begin to
tan. No, now it's more like burn.
Man-hands lift jars off the cart, out of my way.
I see the source of the
heat—a marvelously massive hearth! Like something out of a frightening
fairy-tale. Brick floor, soot-blackened walls. Roomy enough for a grown man to
walk into without bending over. Man-hands methodically unscrews the tops of
the other jars, and unceremoniously pours the contents onto the blazing
fire. Steam and screams and smoke. Crackling and hissing. Did I really hear
tiny shrieks? Maybe not. Maybe that's the sound of green wood burning.
Man-hands comes to my jar last. We make eye contact.
My eyes flare, and I
say, "Daisy Dumpling takes the triple crown!" He laughs, and replaces
my jar on the cart before wheeling me back down the aisle.
***
Man-hands calls me Miss Sibyl. When he
asks me questions, I provide
answers. Sometimes when we make eye contact, I spontaneously mumble absurd
combinations of words. Which must mean something to him.
Now he wants to share me with the world, because lately
he brings other
people in, one at a time, to ask me whatever is on their mind. Their questions usually
concern professional sports.
Man-hands keeps my jar on a polished brass platter,
suspended from the
ceiling with red silk ropes. Classy! I like that. In winter-time I'm hung
close to the fireplace and TV, so I stay toasty-warm and amused. In summer, he
hangs me near the window unit A/C, so I stay relatively cool—cool, but never cold,
like in that old Acme Bio-Refrigeration Services warehouse. In spring, my most
favorite time of year, I hold court outside, on his lush and dappled patio,
atop a small pedestal fashioned to resemble a Doric column. And every night,
without fail, he smiles at me, tells me what a wonder I am. Unscrews my
lid, scatters flakes of dried fish food for me to nibble. Yummy! The flakes
fall like angels, drifting down in my jar—I pretend I'm in a snow-globe!
Life is good.
