Another Black Tuesday
BY JASON GANTENBERG I AUGUST 17, 2008

Neglect hangs thick upon the machinery—coagulated lubricant, friction burns, general erosion. This is how it ends. With a whimper from the back room where the shift manager has locked himself in with the last bottle of company booze and the antique Luger he keeps in the large, metal filing cabinet next to his desk. A naked light bulb hangs from the ceiling in the center of the room. It paints the whitewashed cement walls a sickly yellow as the bloated shadow of the shift manager spreads like mercury over the productivity chart he tacked onto the bulletin board yesterday. The red line tells him that output is hovering near zero. The blue one tells him that there is no market anyway. No way out.

He laughs to himself—a wry, raspy cackle that makes the bourbon feel like sandpaper in his throat—and turns on the radio.

Pleased to meet you. Won't you guess my name?

Another slug from the bottle brings him to the floor, slowly, as if he had hydraulic legs, and for a moment he imagines that he does, that he could burst through the ground that very instant and tunnel his way to the other side of the world like a human drill, red hot and more voluminous than the Earth. He is brought back by the cold, hard sensation of vinyl tile against his cheek. He stares for awhile, almost content to be lying prostrate and defeated in the ruin of his once vast factory as his sobs echo quietly through the broken window and out into the darkness where dying machines still struggle to stay alive.

Every gear screeches with agony. Every plugged smokestack groans with each billow of soot that tries to force its way outside. Death is a cacophony in this place, of misery and despair, and the shift manager becomes a part of it, a single violin in a row of millions.

His final note rings for what seems like a life age in the cramped, little office, and receives no applause save for the sound of a ricochet and the melodious tinkling of shattered glass.

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