Green Stuff

He looked at the plate of food in front of him and froze. The memory
of that dreadful place filled his mind. The other guests looked at him
wondering what was wrong, waiting for him to say something, do
something.

Instead, he just stared at his plate, his mind was somewhere else
entirely.

*

The door slammed shut.

The boy turned.

'You sods,' he shouted.

The light went out and he could hear laughing outside.

'Bastards,' the boy whispered to himself.

He felt around. Next to him was a pile of boxes. He'd seen them just
before the light went out. In front of him was a pile of sacks. He knew
that because he'd unloaded the van and brought them in here. Behind him
was the metal wall. He could feel it getting colder. The extractor fan
whirred in the distance pumping the warm air out.

'Bastards,' he repeated.

He couldn't believe he'd fallen for it again. Only this time he'd been
made to climb over the sacks to get something in the corner. Then the
door had slammed and he had been plunged into darkness. Big joke!

He'd been in shut in before, and he knew that the door had an emergency
handle that made it possible to open it from the inside. This time
though, he was stuck in the corner surrounded by a pile of boxes and
sacks. He had a reasonable memory of the layout of the room as he'd
packed most of the items in here after unloading them earlier.

He put his foot on the bottom box and stepped up to see if it would
take his weight. He felt it begin to give way under his feet. As it did
so, the stack of boxes began to wobble precariously and the boy feared
for a moment that they were going to topple over onto him. That was no
good then. He wouldn't be able to climb out over the boxes. They would
just collapse under his weight.

He knew that the sacks would be able to support him, but he also knew
that they were not stacked very well and the pile was quite likely to
collapse while he was crawling over it. He cursed himself for not doing
his job properly earlier while he was unloading them from the van, but
then he hadn't expected that it was going to become part of an assault
course.

He began to climb. The sacks wobbled as he made his way over them and
he held his breath, hoping that they weren't going to topple over,
tossing him onto the floor, or onto other boxes and sacks that were
stacked in the room.

The cold was beginning to get to him now. The pile of sacks was quite
high and he was quite close to the ceiling. His t-shirt had ridden up
his back during the climb and he could feel the cold of the metal
ceiling as he crawled over the top. Condensation was beginning to build
up on the cold metal too and every so often it would drip on his bare
skin causing him to shiver. There would then be a moment of uncertainty
as the pile of sacks threatened to collapse under him.

There was a crash as one of the sacks on the edge of the pile slipped
and fell. The boy winced as he heard the splintering of wood as the
heavy sack hit a box. He wondered what was in the box, and whether the
contents had survived.

He began to shiver with the cold, and carried on, feeling his way in
the dark, across the sacks. He could feel the edge now.

He dangled his foot over the edge trying to find something solid to put
it on, something that would take his weight. He knew that the door
wasn't far away, he just had to try and make it without falling on
something or having something fall on him.

He rested his foot on what he assumed to be a wooden crate. He could
feel the springiness of the batons against the sole of his boot. He
lowered himself off of the sacks and onto the crate, praying that it
wouldn't give way.

There was a loud crack and the boy felt himself falling. He could feel
the broken wood of the crate that he had been standing on scratch at
his leg as he fell. He flung out his arms, grabbing in the darkness for
anything that would stop himself from falling any further. His hands
hit something which gave way immediately.

He hit the ground with a bump. Something hard hit him on the head, and
then he felt another. He tried to move but found his leg was trapped
between two of the crates he had been standing on. He felt another blow
on his head. He had to move he thought, he had to get out before the
whole pile collapsed on him. He pushed at the crates and managed to
prise his leg free.

The fall had left him disoriented. He strained his eyes trying to make
out any shapes in the dark that would give him a clue to which way the
door was. It was pitch black though, and he could see nothing. He put a
hand onto the cold floor to push himself up and felt something squelch
beneath his fingers. It made the floor slippery and the boy struggled
to shake the sticky slime from his hand before managing to push himself
upright.

Despite the cold, he was now sweating and panting, more from
frustration and anger at those that had shut him in here than from any
fear that he wouldn't get out.

He knew that the extractor fan was near the door and he began to head
towards the sound it was making.

He remembered too late that at least one of the boxes had emptied its
contents on the floor and he put his foot down hard on something that
squelched beneath it. His foot slipped from under him and he fell into
something hard. He heard a loud crack and water began to gush over him.
No, it wasn't water. This liquid had a slimy consistency and it smelt
bad. Wow, he thought, did it smell bad. He thrashed around in the dark
and his hands felt more slime. His hands were covered in the stuff, and
the smell was overpowering. He could feel more of it brushing his hair,
his face, all with that terrible smell.

The loud crack must have been heard through the door as a small chink
of light suddenly illuminated the scene. The door was then thrown open
as someone came in to help the boy to his feet. In the final moments
before he passed out, the boy looked at his final assailant. He saw the
mouldy, slime covered green stalks and the cloudy putrid water that
they had been rotting in. It was the smell, that foul stench that he
would always remember though.

*

He picked up a large green leafed piece of garnish that was sitting on
top of his food and put it on the side of his plate. He looked up into
the worried faces of the other diners.

'Parsley,' he said. 'I can't stand parsley.'