by Sachs, Zané
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to people, living or dead, are coincidental. If characters in this book remind you of anyone you know, please contact a psychiatrist or the police.
SADIE THE SADIST Copyright 2014 by Zané Sachs
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Cover by Jeroen ten Berge
Formatting by TERyvisions
Table of Contents
Corn
Recipe: Sadie’s Hot Shit Brownies
Going Down
Recipe: Sadie’s Anytime Fiesta Dip
Bagging
Recipe: Sadie’s Basic Soup Stock
Sex in the Bathroom
Recipe: Rockin’ Rocky Mountain Oysters
The Quiet Lady
A Boring Night
Recipe Sadie’s Southwest Chili
Potluck
Résumé
Marcus
Knock, Knock
Recipe: Sadie’s Kick Ass Slaw
Produce
Therapy
Recipe: Sadie’s Liver and Onions
Exterminator
Cybernetics
Recipe: Sadie’s Aphrodisiac Ragoût
Dinner Date
Heart
Recipe: Sadie’s Kraut and Knuckles
Mental Health
Grand Opening
Justice for Justus
Mind Games
Recipe: Fried Brains à la Sadie
Storm
Under Warranty
Sadie’s Food for Thought Book Club Discussion Questions
Acknowledgements
Contact Zané Sachs
for
all the good, hardworking people in supermarkets
and other service industries
Sadie the Sadist
by
Zané Sachs
Corn
I’m just thinking about killing someone.
Most nights, when I get home from work, I lie in bed and stare into the darkness, my hands on fire. That’s what comes from cutting, shucking, wrapping corn all day. My hands go numb, so does my brain.
But tonight my brain is working double time.
To do my job, you not only have to be a masochist, you need to be stoic: head down, no complaints, just keep cutting, shucking, wrapping. I do it for insurance and ’cause I need the money.
And maybe I’m a masochist.
Sometimes I call myself Sad Sadie, cry myself to sleep.
Not tonight. Tonight I’m sick of being sad. I’m ready to think positive, take charge and change my life.
I flip the switch. Light floods my bedroom, sends shockwaves through my brain.
My hands hurt when I flex my fingers. I imagine them encircling his neck, thumbs pressing into his larynx, his face the color of a beet.
The corporation has this slogan: Our People Count. All day long—as customers push carts along the aisles, comparing cans of beans, boxes of spaghetti, butchered animals, dead fish—the store pipes in music. Between songs they blast this message:
Enjoy shopping here?
Consider a career with us.
You’ll loooove it!
Our people count.
Count what? Ears of corn?
(My career is chopping corn.)
They keep it cold in Produce. Since they started this remodel it’s been close to freezing. The vegetables last longer in arctic conditions—keep those carrots happy. No big deal if people lose a few fingers to frostbite. It’s so cold, the heat of summer feels like the dead of winter. I wear a heavy sweater and wool socks even in the dead of summer.
Is there a dead of summer or did I make that up?
It’s the dead of summer now.
Chop, chop, chop.
Shuck, shuck, shuck.
Wrap, wrap, wrap.
No human should work like this hour after hour, day after day, for weeks on end. I told the store’s Assistant Manager they need a robot.
He was not amused.
Said, “Keep chopping.”
His name is Justus. Sounds like justice, but it’s not. He’s the kind of guy a lot of women go for: athletic, handsome, and a jerk. He struts around the supermarket looking for holes—empty spaces on the shelves. Then he comes down to Produce and tells me to chop more, shuck faster, get that corn upstairs. Once I mentioned processing so much corn is too much work for one person, suggested chopping, shucking, wrapping should be a group effort. If everyone in Produce chipped in, the job would be more efficient, go faster, could even be fun.
Not only did Justus ignore my suggestion, he added a third corn display—a huge endcap. (That’s what they call those displays you see at the end of an aisle, enticing you to buy stuff you don’t want.) Told me, “Keep it filled.”
That’s the kind of guy he is: Type A personality.
A for Ass.
That’s why I can’t sleep tonight.
His sorry ass is on my mind.
I push off the covers, get out of bed. Trying to distance myself from the throbbing pain, I pace my bedroom, stretch my fingers, shake my arms. This numbness hurts like hell—way beyond pins-and-needles, more like jolts of electricity short-circuiting my nerves. My hands look swollen and pasty, like rubber gloves filled with water.
We go through lots of rubber gloves down in Produce.
I say down, because vegetables and fruit are kept in the store’s basement. The basement is also where you’ll find the Produce cooler and the workroom where I chop and shuck. After checking on the corn displays upstairs—5-packs, 3-packs, 9s—I head down. Thanks to the remodel, we have a new freight elevator. It’s scary cool.
Management posted a day-glow pink warning sign:
Attention!
Keep all hands and body parts inside the elevator
At all times
There’s no sensor to stop the doors
Stand clear!
Body parts.
That’s a giggle.
The elevator door slides open, revealing a metal mouth. A slab of steel moves up, as another slab descends—beyond the lips of steel: a metal grill. The grill’s teeth lift and I step inside the mouth, careful not to touch triggers which (I’ve been warned) will set the jaws in motion. Once the jaws begin to close, there’s no stopping them. Those slabs of steel could crush a skull, easy as a watermelon.
I press B, hear the beeping sound, and stand back from the door.
The elevator deposits me in the bowels of the building, next to Produce, across from the trash compactor. The compactor is big and smells like crap. Not surprising, since we toss a ton of rotting food into the pit. They tell you, don’t climb into the compactor. Like anyone would step into that hole of filth. But I guess someone has, or why mention it?
When you open the compactor door, a blast of stink comes out: moldy vegetables, putrefying chicken, fish guts, the Assistant Manager’s decomposing torso. (Wishful thinking.) To dump garbage, I lift the bag past my shoulders, above my head. I’m in good shape, but I’m only five foot two, and bench pressing trash bags filled with corncobs isn’t easy. Bits of corncobs weigh a lot. The bags are too heavy for me to toss, so I use a broom to shove the trash all the way in. Then I press a button and the compactor crunches everything. The compressed trash is deposited into a giant dumpster. They keep the dumpster locked, so divers can’t steal food. You wouldn’t believe how much good stuff we throw away.
Once, I asked Justus if I could buy a roasted chicken for half price.
He looked at me like I’d suggested he rob a bank, and said, “That’s against corporate policy, Sadie.”
Then he tossed a dozen chickens into the compactor.
The basement is a
twilight world, shadowy and creepy. To save energy, the lights are on a sensor, so unless something is moving, the hallways and the rooms are dark. No windows. I push through the heavy plastic doors leading into Produce, catch a whiff of cilantro, and wait for the sensor to detect me. The fluorescents flicker on, revealing crates of vegetables and fruit stacked to the ceiling, some on carts called U-boats, others on square pallets, so big and heavy that you need a pallet jack to move them. I can barely squeeze into my station. Any day now, I expect an avalanche of vegetables will smother me. The Produce guys process celery, lettuce, broccoli, that kind of stuff, at the sink up front. They pull off bad leaves, wash the produce in a salt solution, and wrap it with a band, so it looks nice.
I work at the triple sinks, in back, near the walk-in cooler. Actually, my workstation has four sinks. One for washing Salad Bar containers and utensils, a middle sink for rinsing, and a third sink for soaking in a chlorine solution. Across from the triple sink, there’s a stainless steel counter and a deep utility sink with a garbage disposal—that’s where I wash my fruit and vegetables. A line of knives hangs on the wall: three machetes for cutting things like watermelon (or heads), two chef’s knives, and a selection of paring knives.
Did you know a sharp knife is safer than a dull one?
A sharp knife leaves a cleaner cut.
My job title is Salad Bar. Before corn season hit, my days were varied. First thing, I’d check the Salad Bar and process the vegetables we needed, then I’d work on fruit. I especially enjoyed cutting and arranging fruit, because it made use of my artistic talents—carving melons, selecting berries, peeling kiwis—paying close attention to color and texture as I arranged fruit in containers. Then I’d make specialty items like stuffed mushrooms and veggie kabobs, assembling them so they look appealing. I consider myself an artist of found objects. Right now I work with fruit and vegetables, but I plan to experiment with different mediums.
The point is, before corn season, my hands never went numb.
Before corn season, I enjoyed my job.
Cut fruit was my priority. I’d design it, bring it upstairs, and display my creations in the cut fruit case at the entrance of the store. I took pride in my work and enjoyed interacting with customers. I’d give out samples, make suggestions, help people find things—spent lots of time doing that.
Thanks to the remodel, finding things around the store has become a treasure hunt. For example, bandages have been moved from Aisle 13 to Aisle 5 next to macaroni, and you’ll find mushrooms on the same aisle as cookie mix. Don’t ask me why garlic and shallots are now on the tomato table instead of with the onions. Justus says the corporation spends a lot of money figuring out where to put things so no one can find them.
Before I was banished to the basement, I enjoyed being upstairs helping people.
Now I spend most of my time alone.
Reminds me of my childhood.
Sometimes my dad locked me in the basement.
These days, I arrive in the afternoon when the store is crazy busy, go right downstairs, find a pallet of corn (hidden behind a mountain of grapes), and start chopping.
I use this cutter. It’s real sharp. I call it my guillotine.
Wait a second.
My fingers are killing me.
Usually, thinking about something else helps me forget the pain, but not tonight. I shake my hands, trying to wake them, walk around in circles. It feels like some kind of medieval torture. Like I’m stretched out on the rack, or hanging by my wrists. Pain pulses from my neck down through my arms, intensely hot, my nerves on fire. My fingers sting, like they’re being jabbed with thousands of electric wires. Hurts so bad, I want to chop them off.
My guillotine would do the job.
Like I was telling you, that blade is sharp enough to slice through bone. When you’re not using it, you have to keep it locked.
I place each piece of corn beneath the blade, to ensure the cut is clean and straight, chop off the shank—slicing through the soft chaff, the woody ring, the inner pith—then I flip the ear and chop off the tassel. Throw the ear into an empty box. For each crate, I repeat this process forty-eight times. If the corn is good, I get nine 5-packs and one 3-pack, but sometimes it’s so rotten and full of worms that I have to toss half of it. I’ve gotten fast at chopping; cutting a crate takes about five minutes. It’s the shucking that consumes my time: peeling down the husk, twisting off the silk, placing each ear carefully into a crate so the kernels aren’t damaged. All that twisting does a number on your wrists. After the ears are shucked, I stack them in pyramids of three or five or nine, wrap them in plastic, stick on labels. The whole process, cutting, shucking, wrapping, takes about thirty minutes per crate—no stopping, no interruptions. Corporate says each 5-pack should take 90 seconds. Four crates per hour.
Hah!
I wish some ass from Corporate would come down here and demonstrate.
They want one hundred fifteen 5-packs out on the floor each day. That’s twelve cases—cut, shucked, wrapped. It might be possible if someone besides me pitched in. Or if I were a robot.
The first day, Justus helped me for an hour. He chopped while I shucked. Slung a slogan at me, “By myself I make a difference, together we go the distance.”
No lack of slogans around here.
Then he left the job to me.
Yesterday, right after I brought up twenty 5-packs, he stomps into Produce looking for more corn, complaining the displays aren’t full.
“What if we go back to two displays, instead of three?” I say.
If the darts in his eyes were real, my face would be perforated.
“This is a display business, Sadie. I will never take down a display. Do you understand that?”
A vision flashes through my head: displays from Halloween, Christmas, Easter, destined to remain forever. I consider telling him to fuck himself and give his back the finger as he walks away from me. Remembering the omniscient security cameras, my finger quickly retracts.
“Excuse me, Justus?”
“What?”
“If I may make a suggestion, perhaps if there were two displays, instead of three, I could keep them full, and they’d look better.”
He frowns and cocks his head, evaluating the situation. Evaluating me.
“Are you up to this job, Sadie?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why not?”
“My hands go numb at night.”
He stares at me, as if I’m lying.
“That’s not good,” he says, his eyes calculating workman’s comp. “I may have to move you to another department, but I don’t have anything.”
No offer to get me help. Just the threat of being fired.
“If you can’t do this job—”
“I can.”
“Then do it.”
I’ve decided how to kill him.
That’s wishful thinking, Sadie.
“NO IT’S NOT!”
I’m sick of being a masochist.
I stop pacing, stand by the sliding doors that lead out to my tiny balcony, listen to passing cars and the neighbor’s dog that won’t stop barking. A breeze slips through the screen door; the air smells of smoke. Forcing my numb hands to work, I slide the screen door open, step onto the miniscule deck. Up here, on the second floor, I have a fine view of the wooden fence and the road beyond it. I unfold the chair I found down by the dumpster. It wobbles, creaks when I climb onto the seat. Standing on the chair, I can see over the fence to the bike path that runs along this side of the road.
Passing cars streak by.
If I had a water balloon, I bet I could hit that Subaru.
Justus rides his bike along this path every morning on his way to work.
The pain in my hands has changed from burning to pins-and-needles. A good sign. It means they’re coming back to life. I climb down from the chair, go back inside, and flop onto my bed. I lie on my stomach, my left arm dangling off the mattress. For some reason this helps
to alleviate the tingling.
I’ve been reading up on sadomasochism. A masochist is passive and a sadist is active, but both traits can exist within one person. Really, a masochist and a sadist are part of a whole, like yin and yang, negative and positive, me and Justus.
I need to reframe my reality.
No more Sadie the Wimp, Sadie the Downtrodden, Sadie the Masochist.
I fall asleep listening to a self-help podcast about the power of positive thinking, and I feel positively positive about my transformation.
Recipe: Sadie’s Hot Shit Brownies
Baking calms my nerves, and my favorite ingredient is chocolate. Chocolate hides a multitude of sins, so if you screw up a recipe no one notices. I always use dark chocolate, because it contains antioxidants. Antioxidants lower blood pressure and, since I started working at the supermarket, mine is rocketing.
This is my mom’s recipe. She used to make brownies when my father was in a lousy mood, so she made them a lot—until the day she slit her wrists. (I found her in the bathtub.) My mom never added nuts, but I do—walnuts, pecans, whatever nuts I have on hand. If you like dark and intense, check these out.
Hot Shit Brownies
Ingredients:
¾ cup butter, melted
1 cup white sugar
½ cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1½ cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ cup dark chocolate chips (Can also use part butterscotch, white chocolate, or any shit you like.)
½ cup nuts, chopped
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease an 8x8 inch, square baking pan. Using a whisk, combine the melted butter, sugar and vanilla. Add eggs one at a time. Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt in another bowl. Add dry ingredients slowly to wet, stirring until blended. Stir in nuts, chocolate chips, etc. Spread batter into pan. Bake 30—35 minutes, or until tester comes out clean. Do not over bake. Cool before cutting—I know it’s hard to wait! I recommend removing yourself from the kitchen. Time passes faster if you do something productive, like vacuum or masturbate.
