Summer Serial: Part I

It’s easy for me to tell you about how all this started now. It didn’t used to be, though. Only months of shock therapy and Alcoholics Anonymous were able to bring me to the point where I could openly talk about the day that started it all. I had just come back from my lunch break where I worked as a mailroom employee at a large firm in a medium-sized city on the west coast. I’ll leave the name of the firm out of this so as to avoid another of many lawsuits I am currently facing (for our purposes, we’ll call them Young, Neil, Crosby and Garcia), but let’s just say that if you’ve ever sneered at a dirty corporate crook being defended by only the most powerful swine in the country, odds are you were sneering at our client.
I returned from my lunch break that day to find my boss, Jack asking me to serve a summons for him. This was the kind of thing we usually had professionals do, but this was a pro bono case, so we had to save money. I refused to do it, begging him to find someone else. I had the unfortunate experience of serving a man whose ex-wife was suing him for custody of their six-month-old child. He wasn’t happy about this, and decided not to shoot the messenger so much as punch him repeatedly and drag him to a ditch where he was kicked a few more times. It was a painful experience, one that caused me to spend the night in the hospital. Jack was understanding of my refusal, though I could detect a sign of resentment in the tone of his voice.
A few hours later, I went to the restroom to vomit. It was the result of a stomach ulcer I had developed as a result of the beating I had taken. It didn’t require much more than taking a few pills every day, and the occasional vomiting of blood. Thankfully, Young-Neil reluctantly agreed to pay for the doctor’s bills, something I wouldn’t have been able to afford at minimum wage. I left the urinal after a few minutes only to find a few of our younger litigators standing in front of the sink, snorting cocaine. It was well known throughout the firm that the younger lawyers were all into that shit. They’d fight a case, work for hours and then blow off some steam by getting coked up and hitting a club, looking for a fight.
When they saw me, I was offered a hit.
“No, thanks. I have to work.”
“Fuck, we’re out of shit,” said Alex Behrne, the newest lawyer of our firm. He’d only been with us for a few months, but it didn’t take him long to adapt to the rest of the firm’s mentality.
“You know the rules, new guy. Find Tito and get us some more blow.” But Behrne wasn’t in the mood, and he quickly realized he had a messenger right at his disposable. I explained to him that I didn’t have time. Not only that, but I wouldn’t know where to go, and I wouldn’t know who to ask. Behrne quickly filled me in on who their dealer was. Apparently, Tito dealt right outside our large corporate office, making it an easy score for our lawyers. The amount of business he generated from our firm alone made him richer than I could have ever hoped to be.
But I was steadfast in my refusal. I had learned a long time ago that you had to know when to say no to these people. They’d never stop making ridiculous requests unless we drew the line ourselves. Buying them cocaine was beyond any line that had ever been drawn before. I refused, so they beat the crap out of me. Behrne, probably eager to impress his colleagues, was the first to bash my head against the bathroom mirror. The other three took turns kicking me in the gut, forcing me to cough up more blood, while Behrne got on his knees and punched me in the face, saying “DON’T FUCK WITH US, FAGGOT.” They left me there with my head in a toilet, half dead.
It’s hard to say if anyone saw me in that condition because I was only semi-conscious. But it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had and chose not to do anything. Things move fast at Young-Neil, and harsh injustices like this often go unnoticed unless the victim makes enough noise. I was humiliated, and in more pain than I’d ever experienced in my life. I knew these people couldn’t get away with this, so I went to my boss and explained to him what happened.
“So, isn’t there something you can do? I know we work for these people, but I could have died in there.”
“What exactly would you like me to do?” I was a little surprised by the lack of sympathy in his voice.
“Maybe you could talk to someone in human resources, and see if I have any cause to sue.”
“So, you would like me to do this service for you?”
“Of course. These people have to realize that we’re humans, you know?” He started smiling out of the corner of his mouth, I could tell right away that I would get no satisfaction. My boss continued rubbing salt in my wounds.
“I just find it interesting that you would ask me to do you a service. After all, it was I who asked you to do a service for me not four hours ago, and you said no. And now you want me to go out of my way to help you? I don’t think it’s something I’d like to do. I’ll tell you what I will do. You look like you’re going to die at any second, and I can tell you that the firm looks unfavorably on you people dying while on the clock, so I’ll give you the rest of the day off. Get the fuck out of my office you douche bag.”
There was nothing for me to do but leave, and sleep off the pain and humiliation. That night wasn’t easy. I spent half the time vomiting blood, and the other half of the time sitting shiver in the corner of my crappy basement studio apartment. It was in a high crime area, and someone had stolen all my furniture the week before, so I’d been sleeping on the ground.

The next day is when it all started to turn around for me. I woke up feeling much better, and I started to plot the deaths of the three lawyers who had done this to me. I was going to shoot them, but I didn’t know how to get my hands on a gun. I was going to strangle them, but I was a smoker, and something like that takes endurance. I was going to stab them to death, but it seemed a little messy, and I don’t think I’d have had the balls to do it.
In the end, I realized I’d have to have my revenge another way. And that’s when it hit me. “I need to form a union!” It all seemed so obvious to me now. I’d form a union for all mailroom employees, and we’d finally have a voice of our own. No longer will we have to deal with harassment from spoiled-shitless lawyers who never put in an honest day’s work in their lives. Our bosses would be forced to listen to us when we had complaints. We would receive total medical benefits and be paid a decent wage. We’d also be able to work without fear of being asked to do something illegal, or have ourselves beaten and left for dead with our heads in a toilet. Yes, we would have a voice, and I was just the guy to give it to us. After all, who better than an actual mail employee with actual knowledge of the trials we face everyday. Life was looking up already.

To Be Continued…