Ah Friday is here. It has been a long week. Admittedly the first week of the new year where I work the entire week always feels long because I am used to vacations popping up. I did actually have a really good week though. So let’s see what the final sentence prompt of the week brings. Timers set and off we go.
This has several elements to play with. Not sure where all of them will go. I will need to sit down and have a good think about many of them., but it could be an interesting story.
Friday, January 16th: I counted five.
I counted five. I could see the place where two more would rest, the round indentations in the foam clearly waiting to cradle the extra orbs. But there were only five. Two were missing. I looked at the inventory sheet I was given. Kyle gave it to me. It was a thick packet of papers detailing every item in the warehouse. Or at least this warehouse. Once I finished the inventory of this warehouse, he had a stack of more paperwork packets for every other warehouse in the complex. I know I would be inventorying for a long time. I half expected that by the time I finished the inventory for all the warehouses, Kyle would check the calendar and declare it was time to start all over.
He didn’t want me here. That was made plain my first day. He and the other men thought they had everything under control. They had worked together for years and had a system, a method. It didn’t include welcoming a stranger, let alone a woman into their group.
I was given inventory as a way to give me something to do that would keep me out of their way and let them pretend I wasn’t here. I was fine with that.
They may not have wanted me here, but I didn’t want to be here either.
Most of the facility was taken up with the day to day running of things. It provided the energy the rest of the city needed to function, or at least all the power the Diamete’s section required. How that happened I didn’t know. It wasn’t my thing. I knew nothing of the work that went on in the facility. I was sent to Facility 826 because everyone in my old facility wanted me somewhere they could forget about me.
I was given a new name after everything went down and I was cleared of any involvement, but too many people knew of my family. Despite my innocence and complete ignorance everyone just wanted me out of sight.
It somehow made Kyle and his friends easier to deal with. They just wanted me out of the way because I was an outsider or possibly because I was female. It was less personal.
And I didn’t mind working alone. After everything that went down, I no longer trusted my own instincts about people. Alone suited me just fine. Luckily, while I knew nothing of the energy production, this facility had the warehouse complex attached. I couldn’t do anything with the many facility, but I could inventory. Since no one touched anything in the warehouse in decades, it should be an easy job.
Just count and match to preexisting tallies.
“Except there are only five,” I reminded myself. I ran my finger down the page and saw that seven were listed in the inventory. I marked the discrepancy. It wasn’t the first I came across. There were things missing in nearly every aisle. Not a lot. A box that should hold twenty items had only eighteen. One item from a large number was the most common. They were things that could easily be overlooked as miscounted at some point in time, but staring at the two empty foam cushions., this felt less like an accident.
Ten til Midnight 