I Will Rise by Michael Louis Calvillo Read Free Book Online Page A

doesn’t jump out at you. Chances are Jose won’t notice. Mr. Shithead might, but as busy as he is, he might not get the chance. Fuck it. I grab a gigantic serrated knife, cut the top off the Ajax tube and dump its contents into the mixture. With a wooden mixing spoon I go to work. Once satisfied, I grab a second tube of Ajax and do the same. Surprisingly, the vat of mix looks passable.
    Grabbing the remaining two tubes of Ajax I hit the refrigerated walk-in and pull out the prawn trays. Jose managed to finish prepping four hundred. I’m impressed considering it generally takes both of us most of the shift to finish. Opening one of the tubes I sprinkle a little onto a stuffed prawn. A fine layer of condensation turns the Ajax a brilliant blue.
    Fuck!
    Remember when I said that stupid people make better saboteurs?
    I said it takes a stupid person to go where a rational, logical person wouldn’t. If you’re stupid you don’t give a fuck about consequences because you don’t consider the consequences. But, after all is said and done, potential consequences aside, stupid people are still stupid. They may be able to concoct wonderful, destructive scenarios, but again, they are still stupid. Stupid people don’t think things through. They can’t. They don’t have the cognitive capacity. Stupid people may realize that Ajax looks different than flour and they may even take the necessary precautions to disguise and mix and blend, but what a stupid person might forget is that Ajax turns bright blue when it comes in contact with water.
    When we bread the prawns, they are slick and damp. There is no way the flour mixture will work. The moment Jose attempts to coat a prawn with the mixture it will turn cleanser blue.
    I was almost feeling good. I was finally acting out. I was obeying the fire inside and ready to make a change. Salvation, remember? And everything was going so well. Blending the flour mixture, I felt a sense of pride. I felt important. I felt, for the first time in my life, that I was making a difference. Me, affecting. Me, changing the course of someone’s life. So what if I am poisoning them. I’m not trying to kill anyone. I’m just trying to bring them down to earth. I’m trying to give them a little taste of pain, a little dose of reality. Life is hard and these people need to understand that. They need to realize things like this happen. Just because you’re rich or well-adjusted or in control of your left and your right hand doesn’t make you invincible. Chances are you need a little Ajax to the stomach. You need a little agony.
    And I need a little success. I need to achieve. I need to be rewarded. I need something other than agony. A little is good, it builds character, but when you got it like I do you need a little alleviation. Sneaking about cool and quiet as a ninja, I thought I had found my calling. Formulating this plan, nearly carrying it to fruition, I thought that maybe this was my destiny, maybe I’ve been going about life all wrong, maybe I should give up on my limited career potential, my impossible success rating and defy the American Dream, ignore ideals, make my own happiness. Maybe sabotage, subversion and destruction are my bankable job skills. Maybe I fantasize about bringing the world down—a world of markers, a life remembered, not lived, because it is my true calling to do so. Maybe I am the chosen one. Thirty-three years old and wishing the world dead for my sins. Christ in reverse.
    Maybe.
    Maybe nothing, because I can’t even fuck things up properly.
    Staring at the Ajax-speckled prawn, impossibly blue, set apart from his brothers by a cloak of acrid toxins, idiot tears well up and my hand starts to buzz. I am the prawn and the prawn is I. How silly and clichéd. As if there wasn’t enough shit wrong with my brain, now it’s making weak metaphors. Always this need for metaphor. The whole world hooked on metaphor. Why can’t we all just be straight with one another? Why