Under – Jim Celer – 4200 words (General)

A public assistance caseworker  tries, but cannot quite be, insensitive to how his job affects the people he's supposed to help.  His is a conflict between duty and consequences, between theory and result.  His refuge is the bathroom.

Under

I sat in the can reading “Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale”, a short story by Mark Twain, well after I had finished what you do there. What I was actually doing now was thinking, or not thinking exactly but being conscious that my mind was wandering. That’s what I was doing – that, and hiding from work, from the phone calls and frustration, and from the certain knowledge that Amber Romander was going to disappear.

The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services – that’s what surrounds the bathroom. The job is, nominally, to provide human services.

Download to read more