Chapter 42: Chapter 42: Deadman shuffle

It was the first day of Norman’s new job and of course, he was running late. This time it wasn’t even his fault. He arrived at the same place he had done his training since nobody told him any different.

It took him ten minutes of practically harassing the trainers to get them to tell him where to go.

“Not my job to know, my ass” Norman grumbled.

The building Norman would be working in was titled as blandly as everything else the gron did. It was simply labeled ‘Corpse Disposal Center’. And it was somehow even blander than every other gron building despite it being made of the same grey building material. It was the lack of graffiti, Norman realized. Someone had painted over the graffiti in an effort to return the building to its normal dull coloring.

Unfortunately, Norman didn’t have time to ponder this mystery as he shoved open the front door and hurried inside.

“You’re late,” a balding, pot-bellied gron replied in a bored tone as he looked at a watch.

“Nobody told me where I needed to be,” Norman huffed.

“It is your responsibility to verify your work hours and location on the workboard. I will be noting this tardiness in your record.”

“What workboard?” Norman asked in frustration. Nobody had told him about a workboard.

“Ask your supervisor, that isn’t part of my responsibilities.”

Norman growled quietly, “can you tell me who my supervisor is?”

“It will be listed on the workboard. Now come along, we are behind schedule.”

Norman inhaled a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He really wanted to throttle the gron. It was the same roundabout nonsense that he got from every gron he tried to question over the last few weeks. Unless you inconvenienced them enough, they simply wouldn’t tell you anything that didn’t directly relate to their job. The only time this seemed to change was when they were off the clock.

He was tempted to take that same route with this gron but he suspected it would not end well, since this guy was his trainer or something. He obviously wasn’t Norman’s supervisor or he would have said something.

Norman glanced at the man’s name tag, it read ‘Corpse Disposal Technician,’ of course it did. “God forbid they use actual names on nametags,” he muttered.

“Did you say something?” CDT asked.

Norman just shook his head, not really wanting to engage with this guy any more than he had to. Hopefully, Norman could figure out how things worked around here quickly so he could get some experimenting in.

After walking down what seemed like an endless bland grey hallway, they came to a door. ‘At least they marked it,’ Norman thought as he looked at the cheap paper tag placed in a holder on the door labeled ‘Entry-Level Corpse Disposal Technician’.

“This is where you will be working.” CDT motioned toward the door and just stood there.

Norman sighed and opened the door, CDT followed him inside. There were eight corpses already sitting on raised metal tables which surprised Norman a bit. What also surprised Norman was that the bodies weren’t cleaned up, nor had their clothing been removed.

CDT tapped on a metal panel in the wall and a chute opened up. “Clothing goes in here.”

He moved to another chute. “All other personal effects go here.”

Then he pointed to a small slot in the wall. “Grothlo go here.” There was a pause before CDT looked at Norman. “If any Grothlo is unaccounted for, it comes out of your pay.”

“And who’s responsible for tracking that?” Norman asked. Not that he was going to be stealing from the dead… well not their money anyway.

“That isn’t one of my responsibilities,” CDT and Norman spoke simultaneously.

CDT scowled at Norman and Norman just shrugged. He already knew he wasn’t going to be friends with CDT, might as well have some fun.

“What about the bodies?”

“Bodies go in here.” CDT pulled a lever that slid a large incinerator door open along the back wall.

“No burial? How about a funeral for their friends and family?”

“That is wasted time and resources. These bodies have fulfilled their function and will be recycled.”

“Recycled into what?” Norman poked, knowing the man wouldn’t know.

CDT just stared at him for a moment before glancing at his watch with a grin. “You are behind schedule. I suggest you get to it.” And with that, CDT left the room.

“I already hate this place,” Norman muttered as he got to work.

He was glad the room wasn’t freezing cold like when he worked for the coroner. The gron had some sort of stasis spell or field over the corpses to prevent decomposition.

Norman looked around the room and found a cabinet with a clear plastic surgical apron in it. One of the drawers also contained a set of power tools and other cutting implements. He wasn’t sure why they would need all of this if all they did was remove the clothes and stuff the bodies into an incinerator but it was good to know they were there.

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In a perfect world, Norman would have simply ignored all the actual work and gotten straight to experimenting. But he needed to know how this place operated so he didn’t run into a similar issue as he did when he worked at the morgue.

He had already scoured the room for hidden cameras, not finding anything like a camera or recording device of any kind that he could make out. It didn’t mean there wasn’t one but he somehow doubted the gron would go that far to monitor an Entry Level Corpse Disposal Technician. Besides, if they had stealth monitoring tech, they would have caught that graffiti artist already. That had to be driving the stiff gron up the wall.

Norman was halfway through the first set of bodies when a buzzer went off and four doors opened along the wall opposite the one he was working at. He turned to see what it was and watched as the four more bodies were shoved out and onto the already occupied tables.

As you can imagine, the former residents of those tables did not leave on their own accord as they were unceremoniously thrown to the floor.

“What the fuck?” Norman stared at the scene in confusion before another buzzer went off.

He moved aside just in time to avoid having the body he was finishing up on land on top of him.

Norman glanced at his phone for the time. It had only been an hour since he had arrived. “They can’t seriously expect me to prep eight bodies an hour… can they?”

Not wanting to wait and find out, Norman started to hustle on the now thirteen bodies he had to dispose of. The worst part was dragging the naked corpses to the incinerator. At least when they were on the tables he could slide them onto the transfer cart.

The gron may not be very tall, but they had to weigh like three hundred pounds each. Norman struggled to get the five on the floor to the incinerator, wasting almost half an hour.

He rushed about stripping the clothing from the dead as quickly as possible, not caring if he ripped the clothing. He could quickly speed this process along by using his spells to convert the dead into either Bone Walls or Bone Armor. But again, he didn’t know if that was a good idea just yet.

Norman was down to his last three bodies when the damn buzzer went off again. Thankfully he had already cleared that side first. That only gave him a minute or so to finish clearing this side of his work area.

There was no possible way for him to make it in time. Two bodies were shoved to the floor to make room for the new ones. Thankfully, Norman had gotten the transfer cart in place for the one he was working with and it was shoved onto the cart.

It went like this for another two hours before a different tone sounded. Norman froze up, waiting for more bodies to come flying into the room. He already had six sitting on the floor he hadn’t gotten to yet. Keeping up that initial pace had been too much for him and he fell behind once again.

When no more bodies came streaming into the room, Norman sighed in relief. That was until CDT entered.

The man glanced around the room once, took out a tablet, and marked something down. Then he looked up at Norman. “It’s break time. You must empty your workroom before you can take a break.”

“What, that’s bullshit. How am I supposed to keep up with this workload?”

“This is light work. After your probationary period, you will be assigned a standard-sized room of sixteen.”

Norman just gaped at the man.

“I suggest you hurry. The break ends at the hour.” With that pronouncement, the man left.

“Shit!” Norman hurried to the door and stuck his head into the hallway to ask CDT where the breakroom was. But the man was nowhere in sight. That was some magic bullshit right there. The hallway ran straight for far longer than that short-ass gron could have covered in that small amount of time.

It was safe to say, Norman did not get a break. He struggled right up to the quitting bell. Or he assumed it was the quitting bell since no more bodies were dropped into his room. CDT sure as hell didn’t come by to tell him it was time to go.

Not that he could just leave the piles of stuff littered about his room. It wasn’t that he cared about the mess, he just knew it would slow him down tomorrow. So Norman spent the next hour picking up the discarded clothing and other items that he had just haphazardly tossed on the floor just to save time. It took him another two hours to clean everything up and shove it in its correct bin.

He had no clue how the other gron managed with double the workload. He decided to take a look around and see if he could figure out the secret. As well as find this mythical workboard that CDT had been going on about.

It was a bit eerie walking through the building after hours. Everything was so quiet. He did run across one gron who was cleaning the floors. Norman tried to get his attention but the man stubbornly ignored him. Although, he did get a good look into the room the man was going in to clean.

It looked like a bomb had gone off in the room, with scattered clothing and items everywhere.

“Those lazy, hmmm,” Norman stifled the tirade he was about to go on after seeing the room.

It seemed one of their tricks to keeping up was just not to do most of their assigned work. Or at least it seemed that way for this person's room in particular. The cleaner seemed nonplused about this as he started stuffing clothing into a trash bag, and anything of value – including Grothlo – into his own pockets.

Norman supposed he wouldn’t much mind cleaning up this mess either if it meant a huge payday. CDT said any Grothlo that was unaccounted for would come out of Norman’s pay. So why did this guy get a pass? Or had CDT just said that to him because he was human? It did seem that humans weren’t all that well-liked by the gron.

It was a mystery he was too tired to solve. Norman continued exploring the building and eventually found the cafeteria. It was on the exact opposite side of the building from his workroom. Norman figured even at a dead sprint, it would take him fifteen minutes to get there.

It was also where he found that stupid workboard CDT had been talking about. His supervisor turned out to be a gron designated, you guessed it, ‘Supervisor of Corpse Disposal Technicians’. Norman wanted to scream, in fact, he did scream.

He screamed about the shitty fucking job, his shitty coworkers, his shitty supervisor – who was such a shitty supervisor that he couldn’t spend an ounce of effort to get his employee the information he needed to do his job – and last but not least Toby for thinking this was a good idea.

Oh and screw that stupid workboard that said you could come in whenever. Because Norman knew for a fact, that if he didn’t arrive on time, there would be a stack of corpses waiting for him when he arrived.

When Norman got home, he wasn’t going to sleep until he got that stupid spell he was working on to function properly. If he did, it would make this job a breeze. The gron could screw off with their asinine rules and regulations. He doubted anyone would even notice what he was going to do based on what he had seen tonight.

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