Untitled – Cole Shuherk

January 4, 2026

I was never a good worker. It’s part of how I got here. I’d have jobs and I’d drop things, and they’d say: you fucked up— you’re a fuck up. They told me so much that that’s how I knew what I was. I’d made a habit of letting people tell me what I was, and I was always sorry.
        I don’t know what I am in this place, but I’m not very useful.
        They don’t need me to be. I try not to be a problem, but that’s not new.
        Here, I’m a patient. Being a patient means lots of waiting. And waiting doesn’t matter much when there aren’t any clocks and the lights are always on.
        I wasn’t very patient at my old job. I’d ask for a raise and get told to bend over.
        I thought I had been working long enough for a raise, but I was wrong.
        My boss had eyes like ice and he never closed them. His office made me shiver and he was always smoking in there. He’d smoke white cigarettes and ice cubes and powders and hunks of dust and powder, and his pupils would shrink or they’d grow. They were always looking straight through me like I was no one and he knew it. He knew I was no one and he was someone. My boss was a rich man. I was poor and I was going to stay that way because I slouch and don’t talk right. I don’t make the rules. My boss made the rules and I had followed them for a long time. He still looked at me like he owned my shirt and my time. And he knew he owned the pain he caused me. And that was worth a raise. So I walked into his office.
        I said: I need a raise, fucker. I need a raise. Give me a raise.
        He told me to pound sand. He laughed smoke out of his mouth.

I left his office shaking, I was so scared. I felt the room shrink and customers turned to static. Their faces blurred into a mosaic of what-the-fuck’s-his-deal. I wanted to tell them not to worry, but the engines and the drills whirred in my mind like tinnitus between my ears– like a little screwdriver spinning into my eardrum. I couldn’t hear my thoughts well enough to speak, but I was sorry.
        Lights were flashing and the receipt printer felt like a phantom limb. I tried to tear a receipt off but I felt my arm shrink while I reached for it and got ink smeared on my hand. The ceiling got lower and the space got smaller and brighter. I was on the ground trying to keep it from crushing me.
        My coworker shouted from the oil change pit: OTC 4556. If I didn’t listen, I knew I’d get fired. Or someone would hit me and it would make the room even smaller and brighter.
        I got on my knees and fumbled for the oil filter while my arms and legs retracted into me and I felt every eye in the room watching them. I couldn’t let the customers see me disappear. I dropped the oil filter and it hit my coworker in the head. And he screamed, fuck, you dumb piece of shit come here you dumb fuck.

He crawled out of the pit and grabbed me by my shoulders. He pressed his thumbs into me and broke open blood vessels, and I said please, stop.
        I was so sorry. But I needed him to stop.
        I don’t have my pills, I said. I bleed easy– I bleed too much. I don’t have my pills.
        He was going to leave blue and black bruises and I’d have to explain to my mom that I fucked up my job. I said, please, stop. You’re hurting me. He didn’t like me bossing him around. I was not the boss of him. I couldn’t tell him to stop. He got vicious and I was on the ground and the steel toes of his boots were cracking my ribs. My insides were turned sideways and I couldn’t talk. A sliver of rib was cutting into my guts. I tried to tell him he was gonna make me bleed but I couldn’t get the words out.
        I was curled on the floor when my boss came out and his eyes froze us both in place. I hoped he was smoking something that sped him up, not slowed him down, because I needed help fast, or I was gonna be a problem.
        I got lucky. He was fast.
        My boss gave my coworker a talking to and told me it was time for me to go.
        I sat smoking cigarettes in the parking lot and called my mom about the bleeding pills. I waited for her to answer while I watched Ima. The sun was ducking into the treeline across the highway, and Ima was walking down the train tracks like it was a highwire. I hoped she wouldn’t fall. I thought about shouting but I knew she couldn’t hear me. It was too cold. Her dress was pajamas. If she shivered she might slip.
        My insides bled and ached. My mom didn’t pick up the phone.