One Month by Julie Steimle (13 ebook reader TXT) 📕

“One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love”—Leo Tolstoy—

Sweat dripped down her forehead into her eyes. She tried to wipe it off with her wrist but found the plasti-gloves twisting when she tried. Zormna Clendar adjusted her right glove, pulling it back around at the wrist. Her perspiring hands made it difficult, and the plastic made it near impossible to grip. Just as she was about done, sweat dripped down her forehead into her eyebrows, dribbling large drops into her eyes.

“Aarrgh!” Zormna growled, yanking off the plastic hat that covered her mop of fiery gold hair. 

Within one second, her supervisor snapped up and marched over to her

“Where is your hat?” he demanded.

Zormna stared down at her feet and pointed to the floor. “It was too hot, sir.”

Her supervisor picked it gingerly off the floor. He held it by one finger in front of her face with a snarl. “You are to wear a hat by health code regulations.”

“Yeah, I know,” Zormna said. “It is just that when I put it on, I sweat, and it drips all over and I can’t see a thing.”

The man tossed the hat into a bin behind the process line. He pulled another plasti-hat out of the dispenser, and he handed it to her who was now biting her lip and blinking back the perspiration that was still running down her face.

“Then control your sweat,” the man said.

Zormna took the piece of plastic rubber and pulled it on her head. Her curls squished to her scalp against her ears. She watched her supervisor marched away, brisker than a Surface Patrol Alea, checking on the rest of the line with less disdain. Zormna sighed with the closing of her eyes. She had to wait it out.

It had been nearly two weeks since she had been convicted of endangering her fellow officers and disrespecting her commanding officer. Her punishment, Zormna had decided, was severely disproportionate to her ‘crime’. Losing her position in the Patrol for a month was bad enough, but the work they had her do in the uppercity was without a doubt an unreasonable workload. She had spent the last two weeks working three jobs: the first in a food processing plant that supplied uppercity restaurants, the second as a waitress in one of the uppercity restaurant they supplied, and the last as a maid in an uppercity government building. Each job left her drained, especially the first. But after the first job, she was expected to be perky and cheerful while serving guest—and neither perky nor cheerful were Zormna’s strong points, even when she wasn’t exhausted.

The factory clock above their row of heads started to hum. The humming grew louder and then clicked into a buzz. All the plasti-hatted heads looked up. Many sighed with relief, yanking off their protective gloves, hats, and aprons then tossing them into the laundry bins. Zormna was right along with them, peeling the plastic off her sweaty skin to shake out her hair. Her golden mourning strands still stuck to her cheeks in little sweaty ringlets. She ran her fingers through her hair, straightened out the matting and let her curls breathe.

Huffs and chatter echoed to her right among the group of women co-workers. Zormna glanced down while she wiped the sweat off her forehead that still ran in rivulets to her chin down her neck. As she did this one of her male co-workers stepped up with a towel in is outstretched hand, grinning wide with a flush of color on his cheeks. She smiled and accepted it, dabbing off the dampness as all the men in the room stood back to watch with unhidden sighs.

The women’s snippety talk grew a little louder. Zormna ignored the petty glances they snuck at her, most of them through pinched eyelids over screwed up lips covering clenched teeth that seeped out bitter snippets about her. Instead, she walked past them to the door, vacating the room as soon as she could. There was no point entertaining idle gossip of the bitterly jealous. They usually hissed when she came near, and their looks were always dark and spiteful.

The man that had offered her the towel followed her out of the room. Many of the other male co-workers watched her hungrily as she walked through the door to the break room where more of her co-workers stood, staring at the small ex-Surface Patrol officer as soon as she arrived, the Air Born Dust song Those Eyes playing over the intercom like a serenade.

<<…in a sea of faces, everyone’s the same. Going to all those places, life was but a game…>>

It used to disturb her how they kept an eye on every move she made, but now not so much. She eventually figured out that it was mostly her manner that had them so captivated—so militaristic. The other reason they stared was also obvious, but Zormna tried extra hard to ignore that.

<<…until I saw someone, yet I still don’t know her name. It was a girl…>>

Of course, there also was the time when she first arrived when they tried to tease her. A man had yanked on a mourning strand, its spiraled length tempting to non-orphans’ eager fingers. But that man soon found himself lying flat on his back, as Zormna had flipped him off his feet then slammed him to the floor. He stared up, panting in horror when Zormna stepped back, shouting at him to keep his hands off. So did everyone else, especially eying how frail and tiny she looked in her oversized worker’s uniform. She was the shortest in the factory floor, not yet hitting five feet. The only reason the men still came near her was the same reason the men were watching her now.

<<…It’s those eyes, those eyes sparkling like fire. Those eyes, those eyes, fill me with desire…>>

Zormna frowned. In the Patrol, all the officers had been used to seeing her around so they did not stare, either that or she did not notice their stares because even the men envied her due to the Kevin’s favoritism. She knew the girls in the Patrol were just as snippety, but she had always thought it was for the same reason the boys had been. Now she started to wonder.

<<…Those eyes….>>

“Hey, flymite,” one of the male co-workers at last approached her, grinning eagerly.  “Are you going to hang out with us after work?”

Zormna scowled. They knew full well she was there as punishment and that she still had two jobs to go. Several of them cackled behind covering hands.

With a wincing smile, she replied, “No, I’m afraid I’m occupied—for the next eight hours.”

They busted up more, the song crooning behind their laughter with perfect disparity. <<…as yellow flowers, curling bouquet bowers…>>

She snappishly opened her clothes locker and pulled out her flight jacket. It was perhaps the only thing they let her keep from the Patrol since it wasn’t actually part of the uniform. Though they would not let her fly anywhere on her own in the city—another punishment-specific detail she just loathed—the smell of the surface lingered on the jacket and she wrapped herself in it like a security blanket, breathing it in.

As the other men walked off, chumming their way out the door to their favorite haunts, the man that followed her out of the processing line continued to follow her to the outside door. His gazing eyes always followed her everywhere she went, something she never quite got used to. It was starting to make her really uncomfortable. Zormna tried to ignore her personal voyeur, pressing the door button so she could leave quicker. It slid open and she marched out into the hallway, leaving the singing behind.

<<…eyes, those eyes…>>

The man followed.

Zormna walked out a few paces before throwing back her head with a stomp and turning around. Facing him, he was just three feet behind her, standing chunky and hunching, his eager eyes smiling with his hands cupped in front of him. A small wrapped package rested in the center of his meaty palms, extended to her.

She hung her head. “Dren, why are you following me? I have to get to my next job.”

The man just smiled, holding the package out farther.

Zormna sighed and took it. “There, now go on home.”

The man nodded, but he motioned for her to open it.

She cringed, turning it over to look at it.

Dren was not the most intelligent person she had ever met. He was thirty Parthan years old, and he had a kind heart, but he mentally challenged—not at all the type of man that could ever keep up with her. Perhaps that was why she stopped and listened to him. He did not know any better.

“Open it,” he said in whispers.

Zormna gazed up at him with another sigh. She unfolded the old plastic wrapping he must have dug up from some scrap pile. Inside was a neatly carved stone amulet. It had a flower etched in the center with writing engraved all around the outside, surrounding the flower. Zormna fingered it with amazement.

“You made this?” she asked, surprised.

The humble man nodded. Then speaking more plainly, he said, “If you marry me I can make many of these for you.”

Zormna blushed and put the necklace back inside the wrapping.

“Dren, we’ve been through this before. I’m only six[1]. You’re more than twice my age.” Then looking down at the wrapped stone she shook her head. “Besides, I don’t intend to stay here forever.”

Dren gazed sadly at Zormna as he took a step closer. “But if you did stay with me I could make you happy. You would not have to work three jobs. You would not have to go back and work with those P.M.s.”

Zormna stopped him, pushing her hand against his chest to keep him back. She never could break his determination. Ever since he saw her he had asked her to marry him, nearly daily. She had to say no.

“Dren, I love the Surface Patrol. I was raised there,” she said. Looking around herself in disgust, she added, “I don’t want to live here the rest of my life. Remember I told you that I’m only working her for a month. Then I’m back in the Patrol? Remember I told you I will not be working three jobs in the Patrol? Remember I told you I can handle those P.M.s?”

The man nodded, frowning.

The best and the worst timing, the P.M. flight scooter Zormna had been waiting for landed at the end of the hall, parking outside the factory exit. Zormna winced then glanced back at Dren.

“I have to go,” she said.

She was about to hand back the necklace, but Dren shook his head. “Keep it. I made it for you.”

The man sadly turned and walked back through the factory room door. Zormna watched him, sighing.

“You coming or not?” the P.M.’s voice echoed inside the hall.     

She rolled her eyes and turned. “I’m coming!”

[1] Arrassian years

Well-dressed people dined,