Rabbit

a short story

i need a break so i go to the manager’s office and tie a noose with the shittiest rope i can find, the kind with all the fibers fraying prickling the lifelines on the palm of my hand, slip the teardrop lasso over my head and kick the chair out from under my sad spindle legs. i guess i forgot to tie the noose to anything else so i just drop to the hard floor with an embarrassing little grunt. nothing lost, nothing gained, but certainly there is nothing. i chew on the noose for a bit like a dog, untie the knot and put the rope back where i found it, its killing power done and undone rather simply. i prop the office door open with a door stopper that looks equally chewed up and worn down, the plastic sides all squished and peeling from being kicked under a door over and over by a hundred dirty shoes so that it can barely do its job anymore, letting the door swing just a few inches before sighing and digging in its heels. i laugh low in the back of my throat at the sight of it. that’s me! i think. i’m like that. it’s not very funny so i make sure to laugh again. 

i slide the hard plastic ear piece over my ear and it squeezes the cartilage in a minorly painful way, which is either a symptom of my ears being stupid or the technology being designed for a universal ear shape that doesn’t exist. i try to imagine myself with petite, feminine ears and then decide this is a body dysmorphia i do not need to submit myself to. there’s some back and forth chattering over the walkies about, i don’t know, a railing coming a little bit unmoored on the staircase and a customer commented on its delicate rattling and it seems everyone is annoyed by it and needing to deepen the annoyance by all chiming in about their own specific ways in which they are annoyed. the whole ordeal is built on the bones of a thousand frustrations, most having little to do with a single loose screw and more to do with how many loose screws came before and if this is the one worth giving up over. i turn the volume down and return to the floor.

i’ve left for only thirty minutes rather than my entitled hour, but it seems that a day’s worth of messes have accumulated anyway. i collect loose hangers through my belt loop and they jangle as i move like keys on a carabiner. i hurry around the tables straightening out tilting piles and folding t-shirts that say FIND YOUR BLISS 1969 LOVE I NEED A NAP BREAKFAST ANYONE? and it’s very possible they are all different t-shirts but the vacancy in their messaging knits them all together into a formless blur that dowdy women with short, dry hair find endearing. the vacancy seems to make the women gluttonous, they can’t get enough of the emptiness, it makes me sickly cynical to find their consumption tacky. there are a thousand ways to be better than someone you do not know. put that on a t-shirt.

a sixteen year old employee says hi to me and i say hi back and include her name too like an affirmation, though whether i’m affirming her existence or convincing myself i’m a good boss for remembering i can’t be sure. her hair is very stylish and she looks so tired because she learns one thousand things every morning and then comes to a job where she is expected to know how to be a person already, and still i ask if she can stay late because thirteen people called out sick and she agrees because money has to be worth something. a customer filled up a large bag with clothes and then left it all on the stairs so i spend several minutes putting it all back. another customer points at a sign that says ‘all sweatshirts 19.99’ and asks these are all 19.99? she’s serious about this so i get really serious too. absolutely. yes. incredible, huge deal. she unfolds the sweater she’s holding then drops it on a different display and leaves.

i need another break so i slip into the stairwell to find that loose screw in the railing and it falls into my hand like a child’s baby tooth. it’s long and slightly rusted so i grip the fat end with two fingers and stab myself in the chest over and over beneath the fluorescent lights but my plastic name tag keeps leaping in to stop the penetration like some cursed amulet i don’t remember raiding a pharaoh's tomb for. a customer is struggling up the stairs so i stop stabbing myself and say hi how are you and can i get you a shopping bag and would you open a store credit card if i fell down the stairs forever like a slinky? he just smiles, doesn’t speak english. spend your money, i tell him. spend it all, there’s always more, spend spend spend, what else is there? he laughs so i laugh too.

then they need me at the registers because a line is forming around the whole men’s department and everyone is mad enough at each other that it might manifest a vicious storm cloud in the dusty rafters and we’ll all be fucked if it starts raining indoors. like, i’ll be so mad. so i hop on–this is industry speak. can you hop on the registers? like a bunny rabbit, hop to it. no dawdling, shake that tail and get over here lest someone with chunky sunglasses and linen capris decides to drop a one star review about the long wait, and the corporate overlords are left no choice but to skin us all for our fur and our lucky rabbit feet. my feet are consistently sweaty and aching, anything but lucky, but who am i to kink shame? who am i to complain about anything?–so i hop on and the customers in line look no less upset about the prospect of additional help, maybe even getting more riled up like oh great, finally. finally i matter, just too late for me to not be upset for the rest of my important day about it. they look hungry, this endless line of tank top buyers with messy hair in scrunchies and wallets thick with credit cards, their dull eyes spark up like i’ve never tasted rabbit before but there’s a first time for everything.

next! i call out with the confidence of a casting producer searching for the next hot young teen boy for grown men and women to be uncomfortably attracted to. the woman takes her time approaching the counter with four youngish kids in tow, all picking up the socks and underwear that are laid out for the last minute add-on purchase and they take turns dropping the items in the middle of the aisle which they find very funny but generally they’re managing to be in every single person’s way at the same time like quantum particles in each possible place at once.

the mother asks me to tell her the price of each thing as i ring it up and i tell her she can see it on the screen in front of her but she asks me to recite it aloud anyway. so i scan a pair of clearance jeans and say 11.99 and she looks really hard at the screen and says, those are 11.99? and i say, yes, these are 11.99. this is the price it says on the tag as well. the jeans are 11.99. i let everyone in line behind her know that the jeans are 11.99. she does not want them.

one of the kids—i guess it’s a sort of baby that can walk—is teething on a pair of plaid men’s boxers now. which isn’t inherently gross, like it’s just fabric, but it does feel like the kind of thing they might develop a weird fetish about when they’re older. not that it’s any of my business. i just work here. i keep looking purposefully over the mother’s shoulder at the kids who are making every possible mess so that the mother might tell them to stop but there are too many numbers happening on the screen for her to focus on anything else. the ribbed tank top that says SUNSHINE is 7.99 i say. upstairs the sign said 6.99 she says, which i know isn’t true but i walkie for someone to check anyway and they don’t know what tank tops i’m talking about so i have to close my eyes and direct them to the right display like ariadne with her thread in the labyrinth. sign says 7.99, the sixteen year old confirms, but the mother doesn’t believe me so she goes to check for herself and takes the elevator so it’s gonna be a while.

abandoned, her kids have stopped their destruction and are staring at me with wide eyes. they blink, holding socks to their chest, as if this is the first time they’ve ever seen another person. the line now wraps all the way up the stairs and back down again, then out the emergency exit and down an alley and probably out into the parking lot. i can’t be sure because there is a wall in the shape of a line of registers that separates me from the careless world.

it’s like a barless prison, i say to the kids. they keep blinking. i’m like my own jailer, i tell them, i keep myself trapped here and do whatever i’m told and let people talk to me however they need to even if they have to kick me and cut my feet off or throw bags of shit at me. the young kid-baby chews on the boxers. i rest my elbows on the counter and place my chin in my hands and tell the kids, that’s a true story. i’ve had bags of poop thrown at me because a customer didn’t understand that promotions changed weekly. she called me racist about the single dollar change in price for a hoodie she’ll give to goodwill in a year, then she took a bag of shit from another bag and threw it at me. maybe it was dog shit but i don’t really know, she didn’t have a dog with her. i’ve been threatened with knives before because i looked too long at a guy who was stealing an entire display of sweatpants. i didn’t even say anything, i was just watching because it was sort of funny. like, what are you gonna do with all those sweatpants, homeless guy? where do you sell them? he didn’t think it was very funny so he took out a knife and called me a faggot then threw the sweatpants on the ground and left.

i wish he’d done it, i tell the kids. no matter how i try to kill myself it doesn’t seem to stick but i bet he could have made it work. he appeared like an animal to me and i bet i looked the same to him, both of us scared enough that it’s not really clear who’s predator and who’s prey until the teeth are tearing. i would have let him rip the skin from my body and spit my blood from between his sharp teeth, gnash my bones into dust if it meant i could finally be fucking done and he could have something to sell to afford dinner. i don’t blame him. i only keep myself in this invisible cage dancing like a starved circus monkey for people just as poor as me so that i don’t end up homeless like him. i’m no better than him or your ugly mom or any of the people buying our shitty clothes made in Bangladesh that they don’t really need or even like. we’re all dancing in our cages for someone in their own cage, all looking for different ways to die, as if death is the only escape. i don’t see any other way out. do you guys?

the kids drool, placidly. the boxers are wet and fraying. the line is stretching now outside up the adjacent building and into the sky; the very last customer in line doesn’t know it but they’re the first nonbinary latinx person to exit the stratosphere and float in space. the customers are furious tapping at their phones and scolding their kids and letting someone know they’re gonna be late to lunch but the sweaters are only 19.99 today and say COFFEE PLEASE so it’s worth the wait.

the mother returns looking no more or less upset than before. okay, i don’t want it, she says. great, i say. how much is this, she says. this tomato red blouse with a garish blue flower print that will give you a skin rash is 24.99. she wants this one so i bag it and she pays like how a transaction normally occurs and then she herds the kids from the store, the young one still holding the chewed up boxers and i let him have it lest he pulls out a knife and guts me for questioning his ownership of the item.

i tell my coworker i need a break, then curl up behind the registers like a dog with my head next to a bunch of hot wires hoping my hair might spark an electrical fire and melt my brain inside my smart skull but i know it won’t. i sleep like an inmate in solitary until the store closes then opens again in the morning and the line is still there so i hop on and keep hopping on, my feet falling off the whole time but the hopping never stops so i keep going until my next break affords me some time to break and be dead for a while

i looked at a sign today / it told me that i could be saved / i’m just tryna get paid