On the clock

For years, I worked refining iron. My job was to take the pig iron to the cupola furnace to separate out the slag. It was always really hot in the refinery. You'd sweat through your clothes. The protective clothing was constricting. My OSHA working mask was sticking to my face.

I got to thinking about this broad that I had seen on the walk to work. She was about 5'9", a hundred and twenty-ish pounds, probably about 10 of that was pure tit. The slight drizzle had dampened her top as she walked to the bus stop. She was carrying a bag. I figured she had probably just left her boyfriend.

She wanted it. I thought about all the things I'd do to her, her moans filling the refinery. Her soaked from the rain, me drenched from the heat. The clanking of the metal, the sizzling of the iron in the furnaces.

And then I heard a scream. I snapped out of it. I wondered how long I had been thinking about that. What a great way to fuck up my day. My miserable prick coworker had taken it upon himself to leap into the molten slag. "At least commit suicide off the clock," I thought.

There's a common misconception that people have from movies and TV that if you jump into a pool of molten metal you eventually sink below the surface as if you jumped into some kind of swimming pool. I guess he had it too. Because what actually happens is much more horrible, louder, and smells awfully of a burning ham hock. A man-sized burning ham hock. A body floats in water because water is about as dense as a body. Iron, molten or not, is so much more dense than a person. A body helplessly writhes, unable to stand, unable to put out the fire, frying like a 200 lb piece of bacon. A piece of bacon that screams, for what seems like an entire shift, before the last bit of fucking stupid consciousness leaves his body.

The day now over, I punched out and wondered about the girl at the bus stop and when I'd see her again.