Horror corner

THE MAN WHO CHEATED THE DEVIL

Have you ever been down to Brantford? It’s not a bad place to live, although there honestly isn’t that much to see. So much is just abandoned, or so old you can’t even imagine what it was like when it was new. It doesn’t really feel like a city, more like a small town that got too big for the ‘town’ label.

Most of the places that hire are warehouses, and even then, they tend to go through the temp agencies rather than actually hire people. It’s easier to get rid of them when you don’t need them anymore that way. I don’t know how many people are stuck bouncing from temp job to temp job. I only put up with it since at the time, I was a nineteen-year-old kid, just happy to get some work. Most of it was in warehouses or factories. I preferred the warehouses. Less risk of losing a finger on some machine just because they couldn’t be bothered to actually train you.

It was one of the warehouses where I met Frank. He was one of the full-time employees, at this place called Colemans. It was pretty small by warehouse standards, and easy to miss. I suppose it didn’t help that the area surrounding it was full of run-down buildings that had fallen into disrepair. They mostly stored sporting equipment, brought in from Indonesia or Thailand and some of the boxes there were pretty old, with thick layers of black dust on them. Frank once told me he’d been there for about ten years, and the place had been just as dead, and run down even back then. He had no idea how old it actually was, and there were only him and the owner of the place as the actual full-time employees. Whenever things got busier than usual, they just brought on a couple of temps for half a day.

Back then, I was gearing up to put myself through College. My plan was to work until September of the next year, picking up odd temp jobs, and save up as much as I could for tuition. That was just about all you could do in Brantford. It’s hard to get a real job, but the staffing agencies always took just about anyone.

The first time I was sent to Colemans, Frank was out back waiting for me and the two other temps who were supposed to show. Only one of them actually did. He gave us the basic orientation, most of which I breezed past since this wasn’t my first rodeo.“We’ve only got the one truck today. Buncha little boxes, you know how it is. Which one of you is better at wrapping skids?” He asked, then coughed, covering his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. I’m pretty sure it was the first thing he ever said to me.

The other temp did the wrapping, while Frank and I ended up being the ones actually building the skids. When you’re working with a guy in a truck, doing something as boring as building skids, you inevitably get to talking.

“Might be an early day,” he said, a little relieved when we were about halfway through the truck. “It’s been pretty slow around here, given it’s the holiday rush and all that. It doesn’t bother me, though. Y’know what I heard today?”

“What’s that?” I asked him.

“I heard I’m gonna be a Dad. Imagine that, right? My wife told me this morning!”

“Oh really, well congratulations!” I said. It wasn’t much more than a formal statement made to a man I barely knew. Frank coughed hard into the sleeve of his jacket again.

“Yeah, best damn day of my life, right now. Best day of my life.”

With the skid built, he let the other temp get to the wrapping, and stepped off to the side, near the edge of the loading dock for a smoke break, and beckoned me over to join him.

“Now’s about as good a time as any for the first break. Dunno if you’ll even be here for the third… It gets too quiet around here most of the time,” he said.

“Are you staying the whole day?” I asked.“Maybe. Was kinda hoping to make it home, although Laura can take care of herself for the most part right now. I might need a bit of extra help, though, if you’re offering.” He was watching the other temp drag his feet as he took our latest skid way out to the back of the warehouse, with the rest.