Archive of Our Own

SUNDAY

On Sunday, nothing happened.

MONDAY

On Monday, as Benson watched Bradley from behind, tracking the way his thin frame stretched to reach the top shelf at the back of the stockroom, he contemplated how much he hated the kid. It wasn’t the first time he had thought about it. He thought about it whenever he watched Bradley bow his head and nod obsequiously at belligerent customers. He thought about it whenever Hardy said, correctly, that Bradley would surely agree to pick up a double. He thought about it when he went home at night, imagining Bradley sitting alone in his own bedroom staring up at his own ceiling. Benson had even considered telling Bradley how much he hated him. On one particularly sleepless night, he had directed a scene in his head in which he cornered Bradley in the walk-in and pressed his diminutive form against the shelves of raw ground chuck. Thanks to the cold of the freezer, Benson’s breath ghosted over his delicate face in a small white cloud as he leaned in close and told Bradley that just looking at him made him want to rip out his own innards. 

But today, on Monday, Benson’s hatred flared hotter than usual. Bradley shouldn’t be here. He didn’t need to be here. In fact, he had requested Monday off weeks ago. It was one of those three-day-weekend holidays, commemorating either the syphilitic, braindead cunts who founded this country or the roided-out, brainwashed drones that blew themselves up to defend it. Benson couldn’t keep track. Whatever it was, Chris and Jess were headed down to Lake Pontchartrain to get drunk on their friend's speed boat in the name of uninformed patriotism. Benson had learned this when Chris cornered Bradley at the fryer last Friday. 

Last Friday, Chris had asked, “You’ll cover for me, won’t you, buddy?” Standing behind Bradley, he clapped his hands on his shoulders in an overly-theatrical show of companionship. Bradley stared straight ahead into the bubbling grease of the deep fryer, stiff.

Benson watched out of the corner of his eye, leaning against the counter behind the cash register. He absentmindedly ran a hand over his mustache, feigning disinterest. 

“You’re supposed to have your shifts covered at least five days in advance,” Bradley responded in a measured tone. 

Benson had never read the Burgers Burgers Burgers employee handbook, but he’d bet the farm that was a direct quote. He bet Bradley had every last word of that handbook memorized, down to the trivial number of days he recited back to Chris as if that number should mean something to him.

Chris’s fingers dug deeper into Bradley’s shoulders. Bradley’s jaw clenched. To Benson’s growing annoyance, however, he didn’t react any further. 

“That’s awfully selfish of you, Bradley,” Chris said, affecting a low voice he probably thought sounded threatening. “You know I’d cover for you if, by some miracle, you had any plans.”

Bradley lifted the fryer basket out of the grease. As he jostled the fries inside, a bit of hot grease landed on his cheek and he flinched. Hard. With a sharp curiosity, Benson studied how quickly the tense muscles of his wounded face twisted into a sad, defeated expression. That abrupt, searing pain was, evidently, Bradley’s breaking point.

“Okay,” he murmured. 

“What was that?” Chris asked, already smirking.

“I’ll cover for you.”

“‘Atta boy!” Chris slapped Bradley on the back hard as he walked away. 

Bradley sighed. The way his shoulders dropped reminded Benson of a balloon deflating. He watched as Bradley gently set the basket of fries back into the fryer. He slowly flexed his hands, his skeletal fingers stretching away from his palms. Each palm was now marked with neat rows of little, pink crescent moons. He turned away from the fryer and looked around the kitchen, ostensibly checking for witnesses to his humiliation. He froze when his eyes finally met Benson’s. It felt like hot grease being splashed in Benson’s face. He nearly flinched, but before he could Bradley looked away. 

Now, on Monday, as Benson loomed in the stockroom doorway with his forearm propped against the frame, he watched Bradley’s arms shake as he tried to lift a box onto the shelf overhead. Benson had never met anyone who’s outsides so perfectly matched their insides. It was as if the abject piteousness of Bradley’s personality had poisoned his bloodstream and atrophied his muscles. He needed his bones broken, Benson often mused, one by one. Then, the 206 calluses formed at the ends of each break just might add up to one passable human being. 

Graciously, Benson waited until Bradley rested the box on the top shelf to clear his throat. Bradley startled and quickly spun around with an unplaced panic in his eyes, like he’d been caught doing something embarrassing. Benson idly wondered if his mom had ever walked in on him under the sheets with a porno mag.

“Oh. Hi, Benson,” he said, trying too hard to sound casual.

“Carla needs help in the kitchen.”

“Okay.” Bradley paused. “Thanks for letting me know.”

He shuffled forward and stopped a couple of feet in front of Benson, waiting for him to move out of the way. Benson waited for him to ask him to move. Bradley’s eyes briefly searched Benson’s face before they sank to the floor to study a stain on the concrete between them. Finally, with a sigh, Benson took half a step to the right. His grip remained on the doorframe, leaving just enough space for Bradley to walk under his arm. Bradley looked back up at him. An emotion that was rough around the edges passed across his face. Annoyance? Anger? It was gone too quickly for Benson to decipher it, like a cloud ever-so-briefly blocking out the sun. Bradley ducked under his arm, his shoulder lightly brushing the edge of Benson’s chest as he passed by. Benson lingered in the doorway a few moments longer, listening to Bradley’s footsteps retreat towards the kitchen before following him.

They weren’t all that busy, but it was true Carla needed help. She was a recent hire and angry all the time. Somewhere in her late 40s, she worked full-time at the post office and only started picking up shifts at Burgers Burgers Burgers to pay for a messy divorce. She had no patience for incompetence, especially her own, which made her inability to master every new skill on the first try a problem for everyone. Her noisy and blistering frustration grated on Benson, challenging the well-practiced apathy he wore to work every day. He wanted to grab her and yell, “None of this fucking matters!” but instead, he just pawned her off on Bradley whenever she got too irritating.

Benson might have felt bad about it, but Bradley was like a sponge. Whatever putrid mess came his way, he absorbed it. In the first few months of Bradley’s burger-flipping tenure, Benson waited with a hateful fascination for the kid’s limit to be revealed, but it never came. He could take anything. Bradley the Wonder Sponge. They should do infomercials on him.

“Hi, Carla. What’s up?” Bradley murmured as he approached her.

Carla let out an exasperated groan and threw down her large kitchen knife, letting it bounce dangerously across the cutting board. “I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me!”

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” Bradley replied softly. He picked up the knife and half of the onion Carla had been cutting, the half that she hadn’t yet butchered. “It just takes practice.”

Benson bit the inside of his cheek to stop from smirking. If she couldn’t chop an onion at her age, then there definitely was something wrong with her. 

Bradley demonstrated, slicing through the onion with an excessive degree of care. After a few cuts, he handed the knife over. “Now you try.”

Carla followed suit, her brow knitted in deep concentration. 

“Good. Now turn it and slice in the other direction.”

When she finished, Carla heaved an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Finally!”

“Great job, Carla!” Bradley smiled. Benson almost never saw him smile. There was rarely a reason to, not in Burgers Burgers Burgers, but those moments when he could help someone like Carla genuinely seemed to make him happy. Benson wondered how often Bradley might smile like that somewhere else, somewhere he could actually do some good. Sometimes, Benson liked to imagine Bradley as a vet. He imagined how his eyes might soften after a little girl thanked him for helping her sick rabbit. Or how he might laugh when an enthusiastic dog licked his face. Or how—

Benson was broken out of his trance by Donnie sidling up next to him, sporting the same dopey grin he’d had since high school. Technically, Benson had known Donnie longer than anyone else at Burgers Burgers Burgers. But thanks to Benson’s persistent truancy before finally dropping out in the eleventh grade, they had never known each other well. They’d only ever exchanged a handful of sentences throughout high school, almost exclusively in the service of the few times Benson had bought ketamine off Donnie. Apparently, that was enough for him. Enough for him to call Benson “buddy” the first time they reunited 15 years later in that gas-station-turned-burger-joint, grinning that same imbecilic grin he accosted Benson with now. 

“Happy Monday, dude! Wanna get weird with it?”

“Not particularly.”

“I think you do, pal. I really think you do.” Donnie made too big a show out of looking around, making sure no one was watching them before reaching into the breast pocket of his uniform. He produced a small baggie with a delicately folded square of tin foil inside.

Benson didn’t respond. Instead, he offered him an oblique glance. It had certainly been a while, but it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d been impaired in some form or another at work. It wouldn’t even have been the first time he had tripped with Donnie. About two years ago, Benson had joined him in his beat-up Saab after a long shift. They took a healthy dose of mushrooms and Benson silently listened to Donnie mumble nonsense over the car’s stereo until he couldn’t take it anymore. He had ended up at home, lying on his bed with the lights off and his pillow pressed on top of his face. Why Donnie would want to repeat that experience was beyond him.

“Come on!”

He shouldn’t have cared. Hardy wasn’t in today, and they rarely got much traffic on holidays. But he had already pushed Carla onto Bradley. That was bad enough. He didn’t want to think about Bradley as the only competent employee left standing, babysitting an angry, forty-something divorcee while he and Donnie spent the next several hours spaced out, (or worse). 

Benson’s neck felt stiff. He lifted a hand to rub it, the corner of his jaw pressing into his palm as he dug his fingers into the skin below his ear. Turning his head, he noticed Bradley’s eyes on him. Carla was gone, leaving Bradley to stand awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, staring. This had been happening more and more recently and it made Benson feel sick. In the year since Bradley had started working there, Benson had observed him plenty, cataloging every exasperating idiosyncrasy. It had gone one way, and Benson was fine with that. But in the past month or so, Bradley had started staring back. 

Bile rose in the back of Benson’s throat. When Bradley didn’t look away, Benson cocked his head slightly, leveling a challenging glare. Bradley blinked timidly and quickly ducked his head, pretending to inspect a stain on his shirt. It pissed Benson off even more than his staring problem.

“Fuck it.”

He grabbed the baggie out of Donnie’s hand and marched to the bathroom. Donnie followed. He produced his own tin foil square and they unwrapped their tabs together, placing the acid on their tongues in unison.

“See you on the other side,” Donnie drawled.

“Yeah, man. See ya.” 

Benson didn’t even wait for acid to start dissolving before he left Donnie in the bathroom. He hated this part, the waiting. He stalked back into the empty dining room and grabbed a mop. He hated analyzing every change in his mood, self-monitoring every little reaction to his environment that might tell him that his trip was starting. He knew what it would feel like, so why did it have to take so long to start? And where the hell was Carla? As he pushed the mop around the grimy floor, he felt like he was being followed. Like if he looked over his shoulder, he would catch the dark silhouette of a monster from some bad horror flick. 

Carla really should be the one mopping the floors, Benson thought glumly to himself. She had gotten her little cooking lesson from her barely legal coworker, now she should be out on the floor doing the real, adult work. The kind of work that gets you from one week to the next, cleaning dirt off the floors to make room for a fresh coat of dirt. He hated this feeling, waiting for his trip to start. It should be Carla out here, mopping the floor and listening to that heinous, banal adult contemporary Musak bullshit they wafted in over the loudspeakers.

He imagined Bradley in a kitchen somewhere—not the kitchen at the restaurant, but the kind of kitchen one might find in a home—barefoot and telling him that, actually, he really did like listening to the adult contemporary oldies station on the radio. And Benson would tell him, “No, baby, you don’t even know what you like yet. Just wait until we get you listening to some real fucking music.” 

God. He was already tripping hard and, despite his careful vigilance, he hadn’t even been able to pinpoint the exact moment it started. He wondered how long it had been since he’d taken it. It hadn’t even crossed his mind to look at a clock. Where the fuck was Carla? She would have to finish mopping the floors, because Benson was leaving now. He was following Donnie out to his car, because Donnie’s car had a stereo that could play some better music. 

It was all feeling a little too familiar. He was stuck with Donnie in a car again, just like the last time they had tripped together, listening to him mumble over the radio about how much he loved listening to his girlfriend talk about her mom because she loved her mom so much and her mom had taught her how to be so open and warm and some of that warmth reflected back onto Donnie every time his girlfriend talked about her mom.

“What was her name? Your girlfriend?”

“Dot. It’s short for Dorothy. Like ruby slippers, man.”

Right. Donnie would not shut the fuck up about Dot. He wouldn’t shut up about all three of them, Donnie, Dot, and Deborah, and how they were all connected. Benson didn’t know why he could remember the name of Donnie’s girlfriend’s mom and not his girlfriend’s, but he hated the way their names alliterated, percussive syllables bouncing dumbly off each other. He hated the way Donnie talked about them like they were all a part of this great root system of love and consciousness. He needed to get out of that car quickly, before all of Donnie’s interminable kumbaya dribble suffocated him. 

He found himself marching across the parking lot back to the restaurant, past his car and Bradley’s, propelled by a sudden and overwhelming urge to tell Bradley how much he hated him. Did Bradley already know how much he hated him? He needed Bradley to know that he could hate him as much as he did from afar, that they didn’t need to be all tangled up like Donnie and Dot and Deborah. He needed Bradley to know that Benson’s hatred of him was Benson’s problem, and his alone. That his hatred didn’t need to touch Bradley, that it was fine if it just festered inside of Benson’s body for the rest of time, poisoning his bloodstream and breaking his bones, one by one. Did Bradley already know that? Benson felt like he needed to scream it at him. 

He had to hunt for Bradley when he made it back to the restaurant. He finally found him back in the stockroom, inspecting long-expired cans of tomatoes. 

“Bradley!”

He almost let himself enjoy how masculine and authoritative he sounded calling Bradley’s name, but Benson stopped short when he suddenly realized how their names alliterated. Just like Donnie and Donnie’s girlfriend and fucking Donnie’s girlfriend’s mom. 

“Yeah?” 

Benson looked at Bradley. He tried to remember what he had meant to say to him. Something about how much he hated him. He felt like he had rehearsed it a thousand times, but he couldn’t remember the words right now, not when Bradley was looking back at him with those eyes. Those eyes like two open, gaping holes of want and need so ready to look at Benson, so ready to receive him. How was he supposed to remember anything when Bradley kept looking at him like that?

“Where the fuck is Carla?”

“I, uh . . . what?” Bradley looked around the stockroom as if there were someone there who could tell him what was going on.

“I have to go,” Benson said slowly, hoping the words that came out his mouth were the ones he meant to say. “So Carla should look after you.” 

Bradley looked confused. Fuck. “What? I don’t need— Benson, what are you talking about? Are you okay?”

Those weren’t the words Benson had meant to say at all. He had meant to tell Bradley how much he hated him. He had meant to tell him that it wasn’t fair that Carla needed him to teach her how to cut an onion because Carla was older, much older than he was, and she should know better. All he had really meant to say was that he had to go and that Carla would be there for him, because Donnie was fucking useless and there was no one else there for Bradley in the restaurant that day. Benson had to go because Benson fucking hated him, hated looking at his open fucking face, so that left him with Carla. Carla would be there for him. Benson hadn’t meant for it to sound like they were two divorced parents passing their kid off after a long holiday weekend. 

Benson felt confused. He tried again. 

“I’m okay. I just need to leave now.” He felt horribly that Bradley thought he needed to ask him if he was okay. He should never feel like he needed to ask that of him. Why did Bradley ask that? Was Benson coming off any differently than he normally did, disaffected and cold? He felt paranoid, like he was being watched. 

“Bye, Bradley.” He grimaced at the accidental alliteration and left.

Somewhere after he left the stockroom, after he left the restaurant and set out to wander the streets of their empty town, Benson got angry with the sun. It was an overcast day, but every once in a while the sun would peek out from behind a cloud. He had been chilly, but then he would feel warm for a second, and then he would feel chilly all over again. It was pissing him off, making him lose his train of thought. What had he meant to say to Bradley? He needed to figure it out before he went back to Burgers Burgers Burgers. He needed to get it right this time so Bradley would know exactly how much he hated him.

Eventually, Benson wound up at a park. A park was as good a place as any to be. It was one of the few good things societies built for each other. Public parks and libraries. Anyone was welcome in a public park, even a guy like Benson, provided they were there within the hours posted on the city’s signage, before bored night-shift cops came to sweep out anyone who broke curfew. And according to Benson’s calculations—made difficult both by the sun’s mercurial attitude that day and his own waning grasp on the larger concept of time—it should be just about high noon.

Benson sat on a bench. He closed his eyes. When that didn’t feel like enough, he brought his hand over the brim of his work cap and pressed it into his eyes, making stars shoot out across the back of his eyelids. It was easier to concentrate that way. He thought about how he would tell Bradley he hated him if he had the chance to try again. He would tell him in their imaginary kitchen, after Bradley got back from his imaginary job at the vet clinic. He’d make Bradley sit down at the table, he’d even let him pick the music as long as he promised not to lift a finger and just let Benson cook for him. Bradley didn’t need to teach him how to cut an onion because he was a fucking adult. He’d cook him a nice meal before he told him how much he hated him, maybe a quail gumbo. He had seen that once on a menu taped to the window of a fancy restaurant in New Orleans. He had scoffed at first, rolled his eyes at how all those trendy restaurants felt the need to complicate good, simple cooking. But it sounded nice. He wondered if Bradley would like it. Hell, Benson wouldn’t even need to go to the supermarket. He could hunt the quail himself and throw it in a pot with some vegetables from their imaginary garden. Did Bradley—the real Bradley—even know what a good cook Benson was, beyond flipping burgers? Maybe he should tell him that before he told him how much he hated him.

To Benson’s horror, he realized he was getting hard. He opened his eyes and cleared his throat, fighting the urge to palm his dick through his slacks. Instead, he rubbed at his chest where Bradley’s shoulder had brushed it earlier that morning. He looked around the park and found a small, straw-headed child looking back at him from a sandbox not even twenty feet away. 

“Ah, Jesus fucking Christ!” 

He hadn’t mean to yell, but he was startled. It was the wrong move, because all of a sudden a young woman, presumably the child’s mother, was yelling back at him.

“It’s a park! What, did you think there wouldn’t be kids here, ya freak?!”

Benson wanted to get defensive. He wanted to tell her that it was a Monday and her kid should be in school. But he couldn’t. For starters, it was a holiday, and the schools wouldn’t even be open. And, despite himself, he didn’t feel the slightest bit defensive. All he felt was sorry, a deep, cavernous gulch of guilt for sitting there in a public park with his eyes closed thinking about touching himself to the slideshow of his coworker playing inside his mind. He hadn’t actually touched himself, thank god, but he still felt the need to walk to the nearest police station, offer his body up, and say, “Look at this fucking freak I found loitering around the park.”

“Sorry, I didn’t realize—Shit. Sorry!” He hated how much he sounded like Bradley. 

He didn’t know the way to the nearest police station; he couldn’t even tell east from west when the sun wasn’t out. So he just did the best he could in that moment, which was to walk to the other side of the park.

On the other side of the park, Benson found a tree. This was good, this was what an acid trip was supposed to be—just a guy chilling out under a nice tree. Benson laid his body down at the tree’s base.  He watched the branches above, how they moved this way and that with the gentle breeze. He tried his hardest to match his breathing to the movement of the branches. His fingers dug into the earth, grabbing handfuls of soft dirt. He repeated the motion again and again and wondered how big of a hole he could dig in this fashion, if he could dig out all of the dirt beneath his prone body and fall into the earth below. The thought introduced in him a new vigor. He redoubled his efforts, pulling up clumps of grass with each new handful of earth. Glancing down, he noticed two small mountains of dirt rising on either side of him, the positive figures cut from the negative space he had been trying to fall into. He needed them gone, so he did the first thing he could think of. He grabbed a handful of dirt and shoved it into his mouth. It tasted like iron, almost like blood. That mom was right. He was a freak. 

Just as Benson swallowed the dirt, he was startled by an inhuman scream. He craned his neck, searching for the kid from the sandbox when he spotted something white running over the crest of a nearby hill. It bleated again and Benson recognized the animal as a lamb. It ran past him. As soon as it vanished, another one appeared, running over the crest of the hill. And then another, and another, until a small herd had formed, stampeding past Benson, forming a din of frightened bleating and hooves stamping against the earth. 

Benson idly wondered if Bradley had even seen Silence of Lambs. That must be what all these fucking lambs were about, right? Benson had always liked that movie. Clearly he was going through something right now—even he could admit that—so it was awfully nice of his drug-addled brain to offer up images from one of his favorite movies. (Even if an angry, frightened herd of baby sheep like the ones rampaging across the park now had never actually been pictured in the movie).

He hoped Bradley hadn’t seen it yet. He would like to be the one to show it to him. He wondered what Bradley would think of that scene, the one where Jodie Foster tells Hannibal Lecter about the screaming lambs. God, what had been the point of that scene? It had to have had a point, they named the whole movie after it. What had she said to Dr. Lecter? Benson could affect her accent if he wanted to, but he couldn’t quite remember her lines. He felt himself growing frustrated. It was his favorite movie. He had to know the point of his favorite movie. He had known it at some point, he just couldn’t remember it right now. He wanted to yell at the hallucinated herd running past his feet to shut the fuck up while he tried to recall their significance. He would have to figure it out before he showed the movie to Bradley. He didn’t want Bradley to think he just liked the movie because he saw it as a teenager and thought the idea of a cannibal serial killer was cool. That would be dumb. Benson understood the deeper significance of the film, he just couldn’t remember it right now. He didn’t just like it because he had never felt more alive than the first time he watched the scene where Buffalo Bill stalks Jodie Foster around his basement with his night-vision goggles, so sure that he would catch her right up until the moment she shoots him. That was a good scene, but cheap thrills didn’t make a good horror movie. Good horror movies had a point, and if he ever wanted to show this movie to Bradley, he should better be able to clearly articulate what made it so good.

Benson opened his eyes, which he hadn’t realized he closed, and surveyed the herd of rampaging lambs. At the rear of the herd appeared a man with a stocky build. In his right hand he carried a shepherd’s crook. He was shouting at the herd. What exactly, Benson couldn’t tell. One of the lambs spotted Benson and began to make its way towards him. After only a few steps, the shepherd swung his crook and hooked the lamb by its neck. He pulled the lamb back and then up into the air by its neck, taking it into his thick arms. The lamb struggled, but the shepherd held tight. None of the other lambs seemed to notice.

The lamb in his arms suddenly stilled. Its neck began to grow, stretching out far beyond what it should have been capable of. Its legs grew too, and soon enough it fell out of the shepherd’s arms, not because it had struggled but simply because it had grown too massive for him to hold onto anymore. 

Well, shit, Benson thought. That wasn’t in the movie. 

Just as the long-necked, Lovecraftian monster-lamb began to bare its teeth at the shepherd, Benson stood to leave. He didn’t need to see what happened next. As he walked out of the park, he aimed a swift kick at a lamb that tried to follow him. He missed and rammed his foot into the tree instead.  

A few blocks from the park he found a gas station. Things were getting weird, so he emptied his wallet to buy as many black coffees as he could stomach, which at that moment happened to be five. He bought one, went outside to drink it, walked back in to buy another, and so on until he finally felt like he was beginning to calm down. He crumbled up the cup of his fifth black coffee and threw it at a nearby trash can. He missed. Whatever, that didn’t matter right now. He started to make a plan. He would walk back to Burgers Burgers Burgers. He had no idea how long it had been since he left, but it shouldn’t take him long to get back. Fifteen minutes tops. He would walk back and not even bother to go inside. He would just walk to his car and drive off, go home. He would hunker down and wait out the rest of his trip there in his childhood bedroom, the one he still occupied well into his thirties. He didn’t need to go back inside the restaurant today. He didn’t need to tell Bradley how much he hated him today, he could save that for later, after all the weirdness of this day had been washed away. He would give himself ample time to wash away all of this day’s dirt, making way for a fresh coat. He’d give himself ample time to think of what to say. He would do it right, cook Bradley a nice meal and then sit him down to watch a movie. Maybe by that time he’d remember the point of Silence of the Lambs . And Bradley would like it, because it was a great fucking movie. At the perfect moment, Bradley would be well-fed, he would understand why Benson liked his favorite movie so much, and Benson would be ready to tell him how much he hated him. 

But that moment was not today.

As he began his walk back to Burgers Burgers Burgers, Benson felt good. The coffee had reinvigorated him, made his head feel clear. The sun was out now—properly out, not ducking behind the clouds anymore—and it made his body feel warm. He was incredibly proud of his plan. It would be easy to wait until the next time he saw Bradley to tell him how he felt. It would happen during their next shift together, whenever that was. Hell, he could even wait until the shift after that. Or maybe even the shift after that. Maybe he didn’t ever have to tell him. After all, Benson’s hatred of Bradley wasn’t Bradley’s problem, it was Benson’s. Why should he bother the kid with it? It would just be cruel. How would that feel for Bradley to have his quiet, oddly-menacing coworker come out of the blue one day and tell him, “Hey, kid, I hate your guts!” It wouldn’t even make any sense to Bradley, because Bradley hadn’t been living inside Benson’s head. He hadn’t lived through the thousand fantasies Benson had dreamt up since they first met a year ago. Benson didn’t know what kind of music he listened to, what kind of movies he watched, if they would even enjoy any of the same ones. They were still strangers. It would be cruel of Benson to expect Bradley to be anything more to him. “Coworkers” was pushing it.

By the time he finally spotted Burgers Burgers Burgers on the horizon, Benson had come up with a new plan. He wouldn’t wait to tell Bradley how much he hated him. He simply wouldn’t tell him. And he wouldn’t wait for anything ever again. He would walk the remaining distance to the restaurant, he would get in his car and then he would drive home. Once he got home, he would grab the shotgun his dad had left him from his bedroom and then he would drive out to the quarry where he shot cans for target practice and then he would look out over the water and then he would shoot himself. Now that was a plan. 

The first hitch in his plan arrived when he spotted Carla sitting outside the doors of the restaurant. She looked angry. And she should be angry with him, he realized, because he had the keys to lock up. Shit.

“Where were you?” she demanded.

“Sorry.” He knew he owed her an explanation, but that was as much as he could manage now. He did want her to know, though, that he was sorry. Benson didn’t often feel sorry, but today had been a weird day. He was sorry for all of the mean ways he thought about her and never told her, even if he was right to think them. He was sorry for not being a better coworker that day, for not sticking around. Never in his five years working at Burgers Burgers Burgers had he ever walked out on his shift. He had zoned out, he had gotten fucked up, he had even entertained homicidal fantasies on company time, but at the end of his shift, the floors were always clean.

Today, however, the damage was done. “Sorry” didn’t cut it for Carla. She watched him lock the doors and then walked away in a huff.

Benson looked around for Donnie. He was nowhere to be seen, probably legged off a while ago to go hang out with Dot. Good. If Donnie had already left, then maybe Bradley had the good sense to leave when his shift was over, too.

The second hitch in Benson’s plan came when he turned around. Bradley was standing by the trunk of his car, parked right next to Benson’s. And he was staring right at him. 

It felt like hot grease being thrown in his face, but Benson didn’t look away. Instead, he watched Bradley as he walked to the driver’s side of his Chrysler, still limping slightly on the foot he kicked the tree with. Bradley didn’t look angry with him. He wished he had been—it would have been easier. Instead, he looked a little annoyed, maybe even a bit concerned. Mostly, though, he just looked beautiful.

“Are you okay, Benson?”

Benson nodded slowly. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Bradley waited for more. When Benson didn’t give him any, he nodded back and fished his car keys out of his pocket. “Alright then. Goodnight,” he said cordially as he climbed into his car. Benson watched as he carefully backed out of his parking spot and then paused. He rolled his window down.

“I’ll see you on Saturday.” With that, he drove out of the parking lot and headed home. 

Benson cursed under his breath. That really ruined his plans for the evening. If Bradley was expecting to see him again on Saturday for their next scheduled shift together, then it didn’t make a whole lot of sense for Benson to kill himself tonight. He didn’t know why it didn’t make sense. He just knew that if Bradley was expecting to see him on Saturday, then he had better wait until after their shift to drive out to the quarry. He could wait until then.

“Goddammit, Bradley.”

TUESDAY

On Tuesday, Benson woke up feeling refreshed, so he called in sick to work. He might have to wait until Saturday, but he could start making preparations today. He moved the shotgun from his bedroom to the trunk of his car.

Later, when he was watching TV with his ma, he wondered what she would think of the news. She’d probably hear his name read aloud right there on the television during the Sunday morning newscast. He couldn’t imagine what else they would talk about. Nothing much tended to happen on Sundays.

WEDNESDAY

On Wednesday, he started having second thoughts. Wednesday was his scheduled day off, and he spent it fretting about the house, anxious energy crawling over his skin. He cycled through cassettes as he cleaned—Fugazi, Scratch Acid, Danzig. In their crowded house, cleaning mostly meant moving junk from one surface to another. 

His ma kept huffing at him, jamming the volume button on her remote as she cranked the TV louder and louder.

Finally, she yelled, “Benny, turn that goddamned shit down or so help me God!”

Benson grabbed the remote out of her hand and threw it across the room. “How about I turn the music down when you get up and fucking help me for once!”

She threw him a poisonous glare before turning pointedly to face the TV. Benson rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. He wasn’t going to miss this, the bickering. He didn’t apologize, but he did walk across the room, pick up the remote, and silently hand it back to her. Instead of turning the volume up again, she turned the TV off. 

“Get me my cards.”

Benson did as he was told, grabbing a small folding table, too. As he stood there, dumbly watching her deal out a hand of solitaire, he wondered what the bullet would feel like when it entered his skull. He’d seen it happen plenty of times with skulls of various shapes, different animals he had hunted for food and for sport. He had even seen a bullet pass through a human skull in a snuff film that got passed around his middle school. He knew what it felt like to kill and to spectate a killing. Both, he found, offered a similar exhilaration. What would it feel like to kill and be killed at once? He desperately wished he could spectate his own death, watch his own snuff film. Maybe he could videotape it. Maybe, if he asked nicely, he could get Donnie to deliver the tape to Bradley. He wondered if Bradley would understand the point of it.

Would his ma watch his snuff film? He imagined her startling at a knock at the door, and then slowly and painfully making her way to answer it, only to find the tape left on the doorstep. If she managed to jam it in the VCR, would she cry when she discovered what it was? Or would she chainsmoke and watch passively, then turn it off and pretend like it never happened? She had always been good at that.

Benson imagined his blood bursting from the TV and splattering across her stony face. He shuddered inwardly. He grabbed a large container of Fabuloso and set it down next to his ma’s hospital bed, as if his daydreams might come to life. She glared at the cleaner, probably thinking Benson meant for her to get up and use it. But Benson just sat down next to her and lit his own cigarette. He quietly watched her play her game, occasionally pointing out which cards could go where.

At sunset, they migrated to the porch. They did this frequently. The doctor had told him it was good for her to get fresh air, so Benson insisted on shuffling her out there with a shoulder under her arm at least three times a week. They would shoot the shit, they would smoke, they would bicker, they would gossip about their neighbors, they would sit in silence. That particular Wednesday evening was dedicated to smoking in silence. 

As the sinking sun set the sky on fire, Benson studied the lines across his ma's face. She was old, but not old enough. She’d had him too young. She had wanted an abortion, but his dad had saved him. Those were the words his dad used to use, at least. “I saved you, you ungrateful shit!” Benson wished he hadn’t—he wished he'd saved his ma instead. 

Maybe that was the point of Benson’s drive to the quarry on Saturday. He was saving his ma, he thought with pride, giving her back the childhood his dad robbed her of. But the lines on her face didn’t exactly look childish. Benson wondered how long she would outlive him. According to the doctor, the progressive muscular atrophy was not progressing quickly, but it would catch up to her eventually. In the meantime, she needed someone to be there for her. Some days were better than others. Some days she could still be fairly independent. But those days were growing few and far between. She relied on Benson to dress her, to bathe her, to bring her the little days-of-the-week pill box with the Riluzole and the Tramadol she sometimes shared with him. 

A wave of doubt crashed over him. What was he doing? He was 32. In just a couple of months, he’d be 33. Benson was too old to be thinking about something as childish as suicide. He should have done it when he was 16 with acne on his face and uncontrolled fury in his belly and dyed hair falling over his eyes. Now, he had self control. Sure, he drank too much and let his anger burn a little too brightly at times, but he never went too far. Throughout every little indulgence that helped him cope with the pain of being him, he maintained an incredible degree of composure. He kept his shirt tucked in, he curbed his fists, and he never let anybody see him sweat. Even during his trip on Monday, he had managed to carry on cogent conversations with his coworkers. Even with Bradley. Because he was 32 now, almost 33. He didn’t have the luxury of breaking down, because he had responsibilities. There was someone at home who needed him.  

But he was almost 33 now, and what did he have to show for? He had a few lines of his own on his face, but that was about it. He stuck around and worked at that shithole because his ma’s disability payments were never enough. He stuck around because there was no one else to stick around for her, but she wasn’t exactly gonna stick around for him. Benson’s paychecks were just sponsoring the prolonged inevitable. And after that, after she was gone, then what? Medical debt, a crushing mortgage, and him. What a waste of money. 

Benson stared at his ma’s hand resting atop the arm of the chair. He briefly considered taking it.

“I take good care of you, don’t I, Ma?”

She looked at him skeptically, like she wanted to ask what was wrong with him. It was an absurdly sentimental question coming from him. He held his breath, waiting for her to confront him about it. Instead, she gestured to the pack of cigarettes resting on his knee.

“Gimme another.”

As Benson handed her the cigarette, his hand brushed gently against hers, and he realized that all his doubt about Saturday had vanished.

THURSDAY

On Thursday, Jess and Chris were fighting. It happened from time to time. If they weren’t draped over each other and flirting at obscene volumes, then they were either ignoring each other with obnoxiously obvious passive aggression or screaming. Right now, they were screaming. Benson didn’t know about what. There was a ringing in his ears, drowning them out as he scrutinized the shift schedule on the wall of Hardy’s empty office. He was looking at Tuesday, last Tuesday, when he had called out sick. On Tuesday, Hardy had crossed Benson’s name out and written “Bradley” above it in thick, red ink.

“Fuck you, and fuck this!” he heard Chris yell. He sighed. He should probably go see what that was about.

As Benson walked through the entrance to the dining room, Chris was walking out. He violently shrugged on his tacky leather jacket and shoved through the entrance of the restaurant, slamming the door behind him. 

Jess whipped around to look at Benson, bewildered and furious. She expected him to do something, but he just gave her half a shrug. He was shift manager, but only nominally. Like how a two by four is never really two by four inches—Benson was fine with coming up a little short.

Jess glared at him before stomping off to the bathroom. 

Behind the counter, Carla laughed humorlessly. “Kids, am I right?” 

Benson shrugged again. She was right, he supposed, but he didn’t appreciate how old her comment made him feel.

The rest of their shift unfolded without incident. In fact, it was one of the more tolerable shifts Benson had worked in recent memory. After Jess reemerged from the bathroom, her eyes rimmed red and her mascara slightly smudged, they worked in comfortable silence. With few customers and without Hardy there to micromanage, they were actually quite productive. They cleaned and prepped for the day to come. Benson liked the feeling. Like a tool being put to good use.

It wasn’t until they were closing up that Jess struck up a casual conversation with Carla. She asked her about her kid. Benson hadn’t even known she had a kid. Carla beamed when Jess asked, her face brighter than Benson had ever seen it. He was doing well, Carla told her, really well. He was halfway through the third grade. 

“Good night,” Benson interrupted abruptly. When both women turned to look at him, confused, he realized he’d never said that to any of his coworkers before. 

“Good night, Benson,” Carla parroted back politely. Benson pushed past them to leave.

Instead of getting in his car, he wound up in one of the two plastic lawn chairs set up behind the building for their breaks. He watched the setting sun and smoked, willing his mind blank. As the week had progressed, his emotions had begun to dull. He was grateful for that. It was easier this way to wipe his mind clean of anything other than what lay ahead. He listened to the sounds of Jess and Carla exiting the building, getting in their cars, and leaving. Or so he thought, until he spotted Jess in the corner of his vision.

“Can I have one of those?” she asked.

Wordlessly, Benson handed her a cigarette along with his lighter. She took it and sat in the chair next to him.

“I didn’t know you smoked.” 

It was a stupid thing to comment on. Benson didn’t usually feel the need to fill the air with such trite bullshit, but Jess was a total unknown to him. Usually, he just saw her as a parasite hanging off of Chris.

“I don’t,” she responded with a defensive edge, expertly lighting the cigarette and taking a long drag. 

They fell back into the comfortable silence they had found during work. As Jess watched the sunset, Benson watched the side of her face. She wasn’t quite as young as his ma when she’d had him, but the evidence of her youth still disquieted him. Her skin was pale, unblemished, and smooth. He wondered what would happen with her and Chris down the line. If he knocked her up, would he stick around? Would she keep it? Would she force it out of her and drag it to school each day? Would she shove a thing of Lunchables in its hands or would she let it dig around the couch cushions for lunch money?

Jess finally seemed to feel the eyes of the side of her head. 

“What.” Not a question, but an accusation.

“Nothing.” 

Benson let his eyes drift away. They settled on his own car, first the taillights, then the trunk.

Beside him, Jess scoffed. Whatever, Benson thought. She can leave if she wants to. This was the first time they’d ever been alone together in the two years since she started. It was also the first time they’d ever shared a shift without Chris. Benson had suspected for a while now that it was by design—Jess probably asked Hardy not to assign her to shifts with him without Chris present. It was easy to see that Benson made her uncomfortable. 

Jess, however, waited until she finished her cigarette to leave. She crushed the butt under her high-heeled boot and attempted a smile in his direction. It looked more like a grimace.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Any time,” he lied.

That night when Benson got home, he stayed up for hours pouring over the phone book. He circled the names of five different home healthcare providers. If he left a key under the mat, he figured, they could be helping his ma by Sunday. He left the phone book open on the floor by his bed and promised himself he’d make the calls in the morning. 

FRIDAY

On Friday morning he stepped over the phone book and went to work. He told himself he would wait until the evening to call.

Hardy had managed to show up today, but squirreled himself away in his office the second he got the chance. Chris, Carla, and Donnie were all on the schedule. It was an awkward dynamic between the four of them. None of them particularly liked each other, save for maybe Donnie, who found a way to like everyone. In Bradley’s absence, Chris would often taunt Donnie instead. But any insult he lobbed at him was like water off the back of an incredibly stoned duck. Today, Donnie kept on replying with the same phrase:

“You’re silly, man. You’re just too silly.”

Eventually, Chris gave up, frustrated and dejected. It irritated Benson, poking through the emotional doldrums that now pervaded his body. Chris deserved more than what Donnie gave him. He wanted Donnie to snap at Chris, kick him in the shin, punch him in the jaw. Maybe Benson could teach Donnie how to throw a punch. But that wasn’t exactly Donnie’s style. Too much peace, love, and understanding weighing him down. Carla, on the other hand, knew how to get angry. She did it every day. But she always ended up turning it on herself. If Chris ever had the bad sense to provoke her, she’d bite his head off and then pull out her own teeth.

Benson thought of Bradley. Maybe Bradley—but he cut himself short. Maybe Bradley nothing. Tomorrow would be the last time he ever saw him, and it was only because Bradley was expecting to see him. Benson had moved his whole week around for the kid, his whole life. Bradley wasn’t getting anything more from him. He didn’t deserve anything else from Benson. 

Bradley didn’t deserve the way Benson had thought about him on Monday. Sitting in the park, acid-tainted domestic fantasies spinning through his head, dick growing hard in his work slacks. And Bradley certainly didn’t deserve the way Benson had thought about him at the end of the day. How beautiful he was. 

So Benson would show up to work tomorrow and not say a goddamned word to him. He would nod when Bradley greeted him in the morning like he always did, and then he would watch him move about his day in detached silence. He would resist the urge to teach him how to throw a punch at Chris, or to invite him over for dinner and a movie, or even to tell him how much he hated him. At the end of the day, he would nod at Bradley again when he bid him farewell like he always did, and then he would drive from Burgers Burgers Burgers out to the quarry. Anything more would just be too silly. 

Benson’s irritation was gone now, replaced by an increasingly familiar dullness. It suddenly dawned on him that today, Friday, was his last full day on earth. Why the fuck was he spending it at Burgers Burgers Burgers? 

“Tell Hardy I’m sick,” he told Donnie. For the second time ever and the second time that week, he left his shift early, not bothering to wait for Donnie’s response.

When he got home, he walked right past his ma and straight to his bedroom. He stepped over the phone book and climbed into bed. On his back, he stared at the ceiling. He tried to feel something. When nothing came, he pressed his pillow into his face, hoping to kick-start some adrenaline. Still, nothing. Finally, he let up, gasping as oxygen rushed back into his lungs. He let his hands fall uselessly by his side. Whatever, he thought. If he didn’t feel anything now, then tomorrow would be easier. He fell asleep with the pillow still resting on top of his face. 

SATURDAY

At around 5:00 that morning, Benson stood in front of his refrigerator. He was staring at a calendar pinned to the fridge door with magnets. Each new month had a photograph of a different national park. This month was an autumn scene of Shenandoah, up in Virginia. Low white clouds cut between auburn-crowned trees and distant, blue mountains, like something out of a John Denver song. Benson had never been to a national park, not even Jean Lafitte right there in Louisiana. Now, he realized, he never would. He tried to feel something about that. He couldn’t quite manage to. 

Benson did, however, feel confused. Why did this photo, dedicated to a late winter month, depict Shenandoah in the fall? Whoever had made this calendar was out of step with time, Benson decided. Back in his twenties, there had been a spell when he’d tracked time religiously. He bought calendars just like this one and pinned them right here to the refrigerator door. Each morning, he would cross out a new date with a Sharpie. It brought him an incredible sense of control, slashing through each successive day in bright red ink. The habit didn’t last long, though. It got stale once he realized how trivial it was. 

Benson had no idea where the national park calendar had come from. It had been years since he bought a calendar himself. Had it been here since the New Year, narrowly escaping the periphery of his vision? His ma must have bought it on one of her infrequent, independent outings to the supermarket. Why she felt she needed a calendar was beyond him. 

Benson surveyed the empty days in front of him, counting slowly until he reached today’s date. Then, he dug around the junk drawer until he found a red Sharpie. Holding his breath, he crossed out Saturday. 

Before he walked out the door to go to work, he kissed his ma on the cheek. She was sound asleep. No need to wake her up, he decided without feeling. When he got to his car, he popped the trunk to check that the shotgun was there. He climbed in the driver’s seat, closed the door, then opened it again and got back out so he could double-check that the shotgun was still there. Satisfied, he finally drove to work. As he drove, he calculated how much time he had before he could drive to the quarry. Seven hours. 

* * *

Benson never made it to the quarry on Saturday, because on Saturday, Benson watched Randy Bradley eat a day-old, mold-covered burger. 

* * *

By Saturday evening, any numbness Benson had felt was obliterated. Every feeling under the peak-a-booing sun had coursed through his body that day like a current through a live wire. As he stood there in the Kutzberg Diner, cowering from the gaping, open eyes of his hostage, he wondered what he would have felt like if he could have just waited to do this all at the quarry. He would have felt nothing, he ventured. Looking out over the still waters of the gulch below, he might have even confused the feeling of nothing with a sense of peace. There, at the quarry on a sunny Saturday afternoon, he would have maintained his composure as he nestled his shotgun beneath his chin. 

But there was none of that here for him in the Kutzberg Diner on this long Saturday evening. No peace and no composure. He’d had a plan. How did he let it all get so fucked?

“When I came home, I decided I wanted to be a giraffe when I grew up,” he admitted quietly. “I was never in charge, Randy.” 

And how pathetic was that? Not Bradley, but Randy. All this time, he never even knew the kid’s name. He didn't know anything about him. Randy was crying again. Benson recalled the feeling of Randy turning his face into his palm as he wiped away a tear. He rolled his head and tried not to think about a crook around his neck. 

“Benson,” Randy called after him as he walked out the door. His voice was as soft and sweet as ever, but now it carried a strength Benson had never heard before. A feeling close to pride followed Benson out the door. 

In the parking lot, Benson tested the weight of the handgun. He missed his shotgun, but this would do just fine. He wondered if he could manage to take out any cops before they mowed him down. Judging by the scream of the sirens, they were about five blocks away. 

“Benson!” Randy followed him into the parking lot, but it sounded as if he were keeping his distance. Probably didn’t want to get shot a second time. 

“Go back inside, Randy!” Benson tried to force his pleading sob into a yell. He started walking with his gun pointed towards the street. He could feel Randy’s eyes on the back of his skull. He heard Randy’s footsteps behind him, stalking him like a monster in some bad horror flick. 

“Benson!”

He would have been better off just sending Randy the snuff film he’d thought about making. What the kid was about to witness would be so much worse. 

The thought stopped Benson in his tracks. He thought back to the fantasies he indulged on Monday, an entire lifetime ago. He had imagined cooking for Randy, sitting him down to watch Silence of The Lambs . This is what he had wanted to give Randy, wasn’t it? Dinner and a show? Sure, Randy hadn’t eaten a bite at the diner, but he could have. And no, the scenes Benson had directed Randy through that day weren’t committed to videotape, but he was certain Randy would replay them in his head over and over, spending a lifetime trying to dissect the point. 

It was as perfect a moment as any for Benson to tell Randy how much he hated him. 

As Benson turned around to face him, he tried to quickly formulate the perfect words to say. But before he could figure them out, Randy slammed into him. In Benson’s shock, he allowed himself to be manhandled into the passenger seat of his own car, focused entirely on not dropping the gun. Randy threw himself into the driver’s seat and sped away from the diner, bottoming out as he drove over the curb. 

When they finally made it onto the highway, sirens growing faint behind them, Benson tried again. Now, he had more reason than ever to hate Randy. But on this Saturday night that was slowly creeping into Sunday morning, the words sitting on his tongue felt impossibly heavy. He studied the side of Randy’s face. He seemed annoyed at Benson, maybe even concerned. He also looked angry, an emotion that suited his features well. Mostly, though, he just looked beautiful. 

“Goddammit, Randy,” he muttered, the gun sitting forgotten in his lap.

Randy briefly took his eyes off the road to return Benson’s scrutiny. Then, he sighed and rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah, Benson, I know.”