Outside Money by J.S. Douglas

A long long time ago in a Wordpress galaxy far far away, I had a blog that I set up to document my progress as I worked on an ill-fated YA dark fantasy manuscript about a drug addicted girl who is determined to find her friend. It turns out the friend has been transformed into a blood-thirsty mermaid. Maybe one day I will return to the manuscript and redo it and publish it, because I’ve always loved the blood-thirsty mermaid idea. But, today is not that day.

Instead, I wish to bring my old short stories to your attention. I did a series of shorts and published them on the blog. Some are not very good, some I quite enjoy.

So, I will be editing and republishing them here, on my current website. These are pretty much all prompt-inspired stories, but they are also mostly all about a decade old. So, I will be dropping them every once in a while on a Tuesday. Hopefully, you will enjoy them.

Here’s the first story based on my husband’s prompt: “A day in the life of a poor person who lives in a giant metal shack.”

Outside Money

by J.S. Douglas

1

Sun glared through the rusted metal roof, waking Maggie. Curled on her side, she stretched out the kinks in her neck, legs, and back without touching the people just above and below her. As she pulled herself out of the black of unconsciousness, the constant rustling of hundreds of people slowly waking hit her ears. The sound was like a constant static, a soundtrack to her life she could never shut off.

Curling back into a ball, Maggie covered her exposed ear and tried to ignore the pressure of her bladder. Just a few more minutes of silence, of feeling alone. That was all she needed to face the day. Squirming uncomfortably, she finally gave into the call of her bladder. Sitting up, she swung her feet off the low cot, carefully slipping on her threadbare slippers.

The room stretched into the semi-darkness. Maggie knew that, if she walked for ten minutes, dodging bodies and cots, she’d reach the far wall. But that wasn’t the way to the lav shed or the communal showers. Instead, she stood and walked the fifty steps to the nearest doorway. Many of the cots were empty. She sighed. The showers were going to be crowded, and only scraps would be left in the dining shed.

“I should have slept longer,” she muttered, remembering her dream. She’d been a princess in a high tower, contemplating the long, winding stairs and wondering when her servant would come up with chocolate cake. In the meantime, she’d munched on a pomegranate. But, instead of sucking the pulp off of every tiny jeweled fruit, she’d eaten it like an apple.

“Good morning, M,” said the door monitor, Jess. Maggie snapped back into reality. Jess marked the time on her clipboard. “Getting a late start, are we?”

Maggie knew she should have some excuse, like she was working late at the presses, stamping out additional license plates, or that she was filling in for a friend in the company garden. Instead, she nodded.

“Well, the company will be docking a half an hour off of your pay if you don’t get a move on. Why not show some initiative and try to be on time anyway?”

Maggie’s head bobbed like a marionette. If Us Corp docked her pay, she was doomed. She could barely afford to rent the bed, buy a ration book, and pay for the lav and showers every day. She knew she’d have to skip breakfast.

As Maggie walked by Jess, the door monitor called after her, “Don’t forget that three o’clock appointment with HR. Better dress sharp today.”

“Right,” thought Maggie, inventorying her meager wardrobe, “like my day could get any worse.”

After her allotted lav and shower time, Maggie rushed back to the living shed. The night shift was still sleeping, so she donned her best clothes in a silent frenzy. In the end, she opted for a pair of jeans with only two holes at the knees, a flannel shirt with patches on her elbows, and her work boots. She thought about the dregs of a breakfast she was skipping and told herself she didn’t care.

The presses were burning hot, dangerous, and dirty. Maggie hated them. She couldn’t afford work gloves and small scars as well as shiny, unhealed burns littered her skin. Barely able to afford salve to treat her wounds, she often ignored the pain, only applying salve immediately before bed so that the itching fire wouldn’t course up her arms. Being extra careful to avoid such injury usually meant slowing down, and the company docked your pay if you didn’t stamp enough license plates in an hour. “Enough” was dependent on the day and on the fastest worker. So, her speed and consistency changed from day to day.

Maggie often wondered who could be buying all of these plates. Were there really so many cars in the world? She vaguely remembered seeing cars zip and zoom around her the one time she tried to leave the confines of the shed. She’d stepped into a world she didn’t understand. The Outside stretched around here. A world in which it was free to walk or sit, and no one monitored you. She’d hoped to make a place in that world, but when the bus wouldn’t take her company money, she turned around and ran back to the shed.

That was two years ago, and since then, she’d tried to be a good worker, tried to rise in the ranks of the teaming masses. Maybe, one day, she’d get a chance to earn Outside money and attempt another escape.

2

The clock struck 2:59 and Maggie speed walked for the door. She’d worked through breakfast, lunch, and up to the last second, hoping to impress HR and the foreman with her dedication. She zipped by the press room monitor, calling “appointment with HR” over her shoulder.

Maggie arrived, sweating and puffing, at the HR office right at 3 o’clock.

“I’m here for my appointment, Maggie Albreicht,” she wheezed at the door monitor. He looked down through a pair of half glasses at her.

“Ah,” he said, “wait here.”

Disappearing into the dark doorway, he left Maggie in the hall.

Maggie stood, trying to find a place for her red, sore hands. New burns flecked her palms, so she did not want to put them in her pockets and risk scraping the battered flesh. Instead, she tried to breathe in slow and deep. Her empty stomach rumbled up at her and her head swam. Inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth, she checked that her knees were bent. The last thing she needed was an HR representative to find her passed out on company time.

Seconds ticked by, turning into minutes. Her head and stomach settled, the sweat cooling on her face. Maggie smoothed her hair, hissing as her palms flared up. More minutes crept past, and she tried not to think about the additional five hours she needed to work to make her daily twelve so she could earn enough to get a quick meal and a bed for tonight. She used to have some extra funds, but paying for the application to Assistant to the Assistant Press Foreman had wiped her out.

“She will see you now,” said the monitor, appearing in the dark doorway.

Maggie gulped down the lump in her throat and nodded, breathing slowly and deliberately as she walked through the doorway, her steps as precise as possible. The dim doorway led to a short, dark hallway, the walls lined with dingy metal, much like the rest of the complex. At the end of the hallway stood a wooden door. Maggie almost stopped in her tracks. As far as she knew, there was no wood in the entire complex. But here it was, a wooden door, staring her in the face. She lifted her hand to knock and then stopped. Instead, she rested her hand on the door, feeling the silky smooth finish. The door squeaked and moved inward as she touched it.

“Enter,” said a sparkling voice from the other side.

Warm, yellow light spilled into the dark hall as Maggie pushed the door open. The interview room was whitewashed and sparsely furnished with a large wooden desk and two cushioned chairs. Behind the desk sat a blonde woman dressed neatly in a navy suit. The air wafting from the room was warm, making Maggie realize how very cold she was and how much her unhealed burns stung.

“Maggie Albreicht?” said the woman. Her voice had a lovely, musical quality.

“Yes,” said Maggie.

“Well, come on in and shut the door. It’s freezing out there.”

Maggie walked into the HR office, stroking the warm wood as she closed the door. She felt as if she were in a dream. She’d never seen a place like this, not when she was first officially hired onto the company payroll when she was twelve, not when she was a child growing up in the company nursery, not even on her one excursion to the Outside. Wood was so rare that most of her Outside experience was filled with gaping at the trees in the outdoor common area.

“I know,” said the woman, “it’s all rather extravagant, isn’t it? This is an ancient section of the building. I was all for taking the wood out and replacing it with solid steel, or at least chrome and plastic, but the company didn’t feel it was necessary to spend the money.”

“Very, um, frugal,” said Maggie.

“Take a seat, Maggie, or is it Margaret?”

“Maggie is fine.”

“Well, Maggie then. You’re here to apply for the Assistant to the Assistant Foreman position, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, I am,” Maggie’s throat closed around her words. She had to squeeze them out in a whisper.

“Don’t be nervous,” said the woman, “I know it can be overwhelming in here, but just power through. If you were to get promoted one day, you would need to show some authority.”

Maggie straightened and nodded, thinking of that shadowy figure, the foreman, looming over all of the workers on the catwalks overlooking the press room.

“That’s better,” said the woman. “Now, we already have the position filled – we had it filled months ago, actually, I was surprised when I got your application, but since you paid for it, I have to give you the time.”

Maggie’s heart fell into her growling stomach. “It’s already filled?”

“Oh yes, haven’t you met him? It was filled by Daniel Carnackie. Nice boy, if a bit dull. Between you and me, he only got the job because he has family in management.”

“Oh,” said Maggie, thinking of the fifty company dollars, three weeks of labor saved up over a year’s time, that she had paid for this interview. She tried to remember Daniel. He was already fourteen, but new to the press floor. She had figured he was a slow learner, but now she knew that he was in management training during those extra two years.

“Yes, well, you can apply next time there is an opening, but I recommend that you get your management degree first. I know you’ve done a few classes, but you keep starting and stopping your education.” She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “I know management training is hard, but you need to show the company your dedication to the position. You know, lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.”

Maggie nodded, remembering the three classes she’d taken. They were maddeningly easy, not worth the fifty-dollar price tag she’d scraped together every time she took one. She had hoped that with an assistant’s salary and reduced hours, she would have the time and money to take the additional seventeen classes required for a degree.

“Well, it was nice meeting you, Maggie. I look forward to talking with you again when you have your degree.”

“It was nice to meet you too,” said Maggie hollowly.

The HR representative looked down at a file on her desk, and Maggie got up, realizing she hadn’t heard the woman’s name. She caressed the wooden door on her way out.

3

Maggie finally gave in to hunger at nine pm, when her twelve-hour day was finally over. She was happy that she had skipped her fifteen-minute lunch break – it meant that the hour-long HR meeting only set her back by forty-five minutes.

“Hey M!” Her friend Vanessa trotted up to her in the dinner line.

“What’s up?” asked Maggie as she spooned out the thin soup and grabbed the hunk of day-old bread she’d paid extra for.

“A bunch of us are going to the library to see that Margot Carter film again. Do you want to come?”

Maggie loved Margot Carter, a woman who truly pulled herself up by her own bootstraps. But she didn’t have the funds to make it.

“No, I can’t. I’m broke.”

“Just borrow from the company, silly. You know we all do it. The interest rate isn’t that bad – it’s only an extra thirty minutes of work a day. Heck, you worked an extra forty-five today.”

Maggie thought about it. She’d been tempted to borrow from the company before, but she’d never been this broke. Even though she wanted to, the time wasn’t right. An extra thirty minutes a day for however long wasn’t worth seeing the movie with her friends. She needed to think about her future.

“Maybe next time, Ness,” said Maggie.

Vanessa shrugged. “Your loss,” she said. “I’ve got to head out now, or I’ll miss the beginning. See ya!”

Maggie dipped her bread in the gritty soup and ate mechanically. Maybe borrowing from the company would be her ticket into management. Her parents had always told her it was a bad idea. They told her it wasn’t worth it. In fact, the reason she and so many had worked part-time from ages seven to twelve was to help pay off their parent’s debt. But she had seventeen more classes to take. That was 850 company dollars, over a year’s worth of work. It had taken four years to save the $150 for the three classes she had taken, plus the money for the interview. So, maybe it was worth it. So what if she had a child and he or she had to work hard at a young age? She’d had to do it. And wasn’t it worth it?

Maggie finished her meal and went to bed with hunger gnawing at her ribs, imagining her future in middle management. Imagining that she might one day make Outside money.

The End

—

I wrote this story in December of 2016. Here’s what I had to say about the story at the time:

I was inspired by a segment in the podcast On The Media about the lives of the poor in America. Many poor people are considered “lazy” or “taking handouts” when they very often are working hard against a system that is created to keep them “in their place,” as it were.

Also, I have been thinking about the enslavement that happens in prison, where prisoners are expected to work for very little while their conditions are getting worse and worse due to corporations now running prisons instead of the state or federal government. This was brought to the public’s attention in the 2016 prison strikes and was supposed to change after the Attica uprising – but it really hasn’t.

Additionally, I have been thinking about student loan debt and how we put a huge burden on young people or their parents just so they have the opportunity to get a leg up or apply for jobs that require a degree.

These systems are broken but are also often hidden from view – or are something that we think one day will be fixed while we feed into them. So, I hope this story makes you and anyone else considering the state of our nation stop and think about the individuals living and working here.

Another inspiration was Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammet, which I read long ago but has stuck with me for years. The concept of company towns is not new, but it is also one that I find incredibly ominous and upsetting.

I will keep editing my older short stories and plug them in here. As I do this, I’ll be taking them down from my original WordPress blog, just so I don’t get accused of duplicative content by the SEO gods.

See you again next time!