Shred

Main story

"Achoo!"

The massive sneeze blew mucus all over the books Vera had stacked.

She pulled a rumpled handkerchief from her pants pocket and blew her nose for the umpteenth time in the last five hours.

"Are you alright?" Jean asked, coming from the other side of the machine.

"I wish I wouldn't have signed up for overtime," Vera said.

"Why don't you go home then?"

"I can't. Alvin's working in the shred room, so we came together."

"I never understood why you married him. He treats you like garbage."

"I... I... Achoo!"

"You need to go home."

"Maybe you're... "

"Oh shoot, my books are overflowing."

Jean disappeared around the corner of the machine.

Vera's books were also piling up. She stacked a few, then pulled some mangled ones out. She carried the pile of books over to the trash cart to throw them in.

"Achoo!"

She sneezed so hard she lost her balance and fell into the cart. The books toppled in on top of her, covering her.

Jean came around the edge of the machine.

"Like I was saying, you can find your self a better man."

But Vera was nowhere to be found.

Just then, Alvin came around the corner, pushing an empty trash cart.

"What do you want?" Jean sneered.

"I came to check on Vera," Alvin said. "Where is she"

"I don't know but you should be ashamed of yourself for forcing her to come to work in her condition."

"What? I begged her to stay home and get better, but she insisted on coming."

"So you say."

"Ok, whatever. Tell her I checked on her."

Alvin started to walk away.

"The least you could do is take her garbage cart," Jean groused.

Alvin looked at her, then the cart. He shrugged.

"Ok."

Then he pushed the cart along back to the shred room.

"She must've thrown away a lot of books today," Alvin said to himself. "This cart is pretty heavy."

He mentally shrugged the thought away as he trudged toward the shred room.

The jostling around revived Vera.

She woke to suffocating darkness. The books pressing down on her would've been a challenge to move in the best of circumstances. In her weakened condition, it was futile. Panic crushed Vera as hard as the books. Breathing was becoming a problem. The weight of the books blocked out most of her air and also pressed down on her.

Her lungs ached for air.

White spots appeared before her eyes. She knew she didn't have much time.

She mustered every ounce of energy into one blood-curdling scream.

***

The shred room was tremendously loud when the machine was running. In fourteen years, Alvin could only think of a handful of times it had been off. Day and night the metal cutters ground up anything that was fed into it. He even remembered the day a trash cart had accidentally fallen in. It came out the other side in tiny pieces, metal frame and all.

As he pushed the cart up to the door, he could hear the thunderous din on the other side. In his more imaginative moods, he thought it sounded like a great dragon, roaring for its supper. Alvin smiled as he shook the thought away and donned his earmuffs.

He pressed the button to open the door and pushed the cart inside at the same time Vera screamed.

Alvin paused.

He waited for what seemed like an eternity.

Finally, the automatic door closed behind him.

Vera's scream had gone unheard and unheeded.

He struggled to push the cart up the ramp.

"What did Vera put in this thing, a dead body?"

He pushed it up to the dumping platform and secured the wheels. Then he stepped over to the safety platform. Many times he had stared into the metal maw of destruction that was the shredder. The thought of falling in always made his blood turn to ice.

He pressed the 'unload' button and the cart angled up to empty its contents into the shredder.