ARBEIT | LEBEN
HER NEWEST FAIRY TALE
Natalie Stypa
Once upon a time there was a girl she was poor and had no parents and had to work in an ice cream factory. Surrounded by ice everyday for hours and hours frozen in time and space her heart grew colder each day. There were strange forms everywhere, crystals and ice lollies that were shaped like faces with staring eyes and big mouths ever grinning, toothless and lipless, and when something went wrong and the arms of the machine didn’t grip it right it slipped and fell down and melted and by melting the face twisted, the already large mouths grew gigantic, strawberry flavoured holes, vanilla cheeks smeared with chocolate tears. She felt like snow white only there was no coffin and no prince and fuck it princes didn’t exist anyway only coffins and evil stepmothers, she didn’t even have a stepmother, she had no one, only her own demons keeping her company and a heart that grew colder each day.
At night she was haunted by dreams in which she was locked in the very cold cold-room and when she woke up drenched in sweat heart hammering hard against her rib cage as if it too wanted to escape she didn’t know where she was but there was no one beside her, no one to put their arms around her and whisper You are with me, because she wasn’t. None of the workers was allowed to eat any ice cream but everyone did. They all had spoons hidden in the pockets of their white dungarees, next to the gloves and knives, ready to scoop up big mouthfuls when nobody was watching. The assembly line that produced huge tubs filled with five or six litres was a popular workplace, there were always tubs not perfect enough to be sold, bulging lids or broken. Those tubs were supposed to be chucked into a large metal skip but the ice cream was still delicious, straight from the tank, it had not yet passed through the cold tunnel where it would be frozen to its very core, it was fresh and lusciously creamy. Some of the flavours were ordinary and boring like Raspberry or Caramel. Others were more unusual and exquisite like Cassis and Champagne, Vanilla Fig with Burnt Sugar, and Peach Brandy with Chilli Chocolate. A long list with all the flavours was stuck to one of the machines and week after week, they produced them all, flavour after flavour. But one, only one remained stubbornly missing: Pomegranate. She remembered how she had read the name for the first time, whispering it aloud. The mere sound had made her insides quiver. She wanted nothing more than to try this very flavour. Pomegranate. She didn’t believe in fairy tales or Gods or any other kind of salvation, but somehow she knew that if only she could slide a heaping spoonful of Pomegranate ice cream into her mouth, then all her troubles would disappear. Months passed. Sometimes she came this close to asking the line manager if they were ever going to make Pomegranate ice cream. She didn’t. She was too scared. But the flame of hope was burning within her, trickling a sensation of warmth back into every cell. One day, when she was hauling a large metal skip filled with empty cardboard boxes to the central waste collection point, she passed a pallet on which transparent buckets were piled up high. The buckets were filled with the face-ice, melted and distorted, silent screams behind the see through plastic. Images of clowns and other gruesome figures flashed through her mind. She turned away, dragging the heavy skip as fast as she could. On her way back, she made a little detour to sneak a peek at the machine she liked best, the last one for the ice cream lollies to go through. Harsh rhythmic sounds filled the air, she could hear them despite her ear plugs. Liquid nitrogen was used to freeze the ice cream. The nitrogen was smoking, wavering inside the machine like mist on a field in the early morning when the sun has not risen yet. The ice cream lollies were dipped into the mist and out of it they rose like a forest of strange shapes. This was her favourite part. It made her feel calm and serene. She didn’t know why, but it did and that was all that mattered. She took a few deep breaths. She knew she mustn’t linger, she had to get back to her position, back to putting wavers into the device that dropped the wavers onto the ice cream sandwiches. At the adjacent production line, they had been making ice lollies with a raspberry coating. Now the production line was being cleaned and raspberry sauce was streaming out of its tray. There was a huge puddle of liquid on the ground, shiny and scarlet, looking like blood. |