Employee of the Month

Farnly was exhausted after a long day of work at the Planariatarium. He removed his vinyl jumpsuit with its slowly dribbling unconstituted flatworm particles and hung it on the drying rack over the draining grate.

“You think about what I was saying about workers rights an all ‘at, alright?”

Farnly was accosted thusly by his coworker Cranford.

“Yeah yeah.”

“I mean it “ Cranford said fixing his throbbing veined bloodshot eyes on Farnly’s, and briefly digging in his teeth. “We work hard at what we’re doing. They need us. The people who need planarians need us. They can’t keep dickin’ us around. You oughta come to one ‘a these union meetings.”

“Yeah of course. You know. Just let me know.” Farnly felt extreme antipathy.

“Alright Buddy.” A hand descended to uncomfortably rest on Farnly’s shoulder, unpleasant whisps of processed corn chips intruding into his nose. Boiling vats of hydrogenated oils filled his imagination, the bubbles popping in thick clouds of gas with every word his coworker spoke. “I’ll see ya next shift.”

Freed from the oppressive manhandling of casual acquaintanceship, Farnly made his way out into the world of bleary swiftly fading sunlight. Greyness abounded and he could almost see the air shimmering in the witching hour with the tiny bodies of airborne pathogens, more than likely simply the retina-reflected pulsing and wrigglings of his own eye’s capillaries.

Keeping his head down, eyes averted from all faces of passersby, he made his way walking home as a germ alighted on the cusp of his inner ear.

“I have a message from the germ world for you Farnly…” He was silent in response

“We think what you’ve been giving the family in exchange for protection hasn’t been nearly enough. And a couple of those antibacterial soap slip ups-- tsk tsk. We cant let the genocide of your hands natural fauna go completely unaddressed now can we? All I can say is, your probiotics aren’t gonna know what hit ‘em. You owe us. The fam’ is pissed and we’re takin’ some compensation.”

Intimidation came at him from all angles, from coworkers to his body’s natural ecosystem. He ignored the germ’s warnings of bacterial warfare but ended up vomiting, hunched over the toilet, shortly after arriving home. A blow dryer was running in the bedroom so his wife didn’t observe him in his moment of weakness, which was as it should be.

“Oh honey you’re home? How was work going? I don’t like you working these long hours and then walking home, you could be robbed you know.”

“Oh. Well we started making a new model planarian today”

“Really now? Did they make them bigger again? I thought five feet long was pretty big.”

“No. The ones we were pouring out today, apparently they’re capable of love. They’re gonna be really hot, you know, might mean maybe bonuses even”

“Oh that’s terrific!” His wife’s effusion turned into materialistic babble. Farnly hated feigning interest in his work but it gave their relationship some meaning to pretend to have some kind of emotional investment or interest in their outside lives.

Sliding his body underneath the covers, Farnly stared at the ceiling, mottled from decades of patching and seemingly exuding a faint blue white light, traces of the street lamps that crept in below the blinds. After his wife’s song-like labored nostril-less breathing started, Farnly rose and traced the dark memorized footpath to the bathroom. Many hazards such as nightstands, tables, and chairs took half-formed demon-like shapes, which he knew to avoid due to past toe stubbings and habit.

Once in the bathroom, under the unflattering fluorescent light, Farnly stared into the mirror and prepared to have a silent conversation with himself.

He observed his hollowed-out looking eyes with pronounced baggage underneath, the wrinkling of his jowly cheeks, being slowly dragged from his face to the grave as he continued to age irreversibly. He stared deeply into his own passive cow-like eyes.

Abruptly his nose fell off.

It sputtered blood into the sink and was propelled downward against the drain guard. In short order, each of his other facial features and limbs fell with soft “puh”s to the linoleum, as though his body was made of poorly arranged and placed together clay.

After all bits of his human likeness had deteriorated from the outside of his body, Farnly surveyed his new limbless and slightly phallic shape with dispassion and disinterest. He wondered if he could learn by eating chopped up pieces of other people now.

He flopped his head to the ground and slithered by pushing his foot-like underbelly all the way back to the covers of his bed. His wife adjusted herself in her sleep mumbling something incomprehensible. Farnly felt it proper to respond.

“I don’t think I’m one of those ones built for love though,” he told her.