Chapter Text
I’m challenging myself to write at least a paragraph of this story every single day. Even if I do nothing else, that’s a paragraph more I had than the day before. I don’t expect to try to publish this story, but I would like to make strides towards eventually publishing a story, so here’s a place as good as any to start. This doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t even have to be good, but it does have to exist. I’m starting this fifteen days into 2026 on a day I selfishly took off from work because I am sick, injured, and spiteful with the owners of my current work time. I spent a couple hours searching for local jobs, and after some reconciliatory form of acceptance, I’ve realized that there’s no place that isn’t going to exploit me. Even when I was volunteering so much last year, I was exploited. I don’t have a high opinion of humans. I think that’s going to be reflected in this piece. I do hold some empathy and sympathy for some humans, and to them, I dedicate this bullshit to. Sorry humans suck, guys. Onwards and whichever way-wards. (Me six months ago)
My name is Dezzy. Desdemona, Dez, Dee, etc., etc. My mom named me after some video game character from an RPG she never actually even played, and promptly followed suit with that pattern of shallow, ill-begotten behaviors for the rest of my childhood. As such, from the ages of about seven to nineteen, I had a hell of a go at it, it being life in this case, and after the absolute cringe-fest that has been the majority of my time on this planet thus far, I find myself in my late twenties pondering at what point should I start blaming my failures on myself versus her antics. I wonder if this is a thought every child has at some stumbling block on the path of life? Is it really that deep?
Maybe not, I decide as I gaze down dejectedly at my burnt, over-seasoned eggs that have melded to the deteriorating teflon of my worn-out skillet. With a disgusted sigh, I drop my plastic spatula, turn off the electric burner, and walk over behind my couch at the edge of my living room to grab my phone off the cheap, pleather cushion. I’ve been trying to spend less time on my phone, and I heard somewhere that keeping it off your person makes it a little harder for you to compulsively reach it, like no shit? I pull up my brother’s number from the texting app.
Me: I burnt my eggs just now because Mom made me go pay for the gas at age nine.
Sht4Brains: Wtf?
Sht4Brains: My new phone came yesterday in the mail. I made ur contact name Worst Lesbian.
Me: Lol
Sht4Brains: lol
Me: I can’t be the worst, Ellen DeGeneres still breathes
Me: for now
Sht4Brains: I’m at work, shut
Me: Kthx, loveyousomuch, baiiiiiiii
Sht4Brains: Shut
Me: Rude
Sht4Brains: slut tt
I drop the phone down onto the cushion only for it to bounce and hit the floor.
“Okay, so it’s going to be one of those Thursdays, duly noted.”
I scratch the back of my scalp with a groan, and turn away from the offending furniture back towards the connected kitchen. This place is slightly better than a studio apartment. Be nice if the rental company would stop jacking rent up every year. It’d also be nice if I didn’t have gross neighbors who are the reason I have gnats coming up my drains nine months out of the year. Scratch that, this place is hell.
I’ve been working part time at a private school for about a year now. Keeping with the pattern of my predecessors back to ye olde moldy times when my family were actual mercenaries, I, too, suck at keeping jobs long-term...or rather I’ve stopped trying. The good lord blessed me with some not-good chronic pain, and to top it off, I don’t have so much feeling in my extremities anymore due to some nerve damage. That being said, I can’t blame my long and storied history of job trauma on just that. Repress, repress, repress. At any rate, yeah, I currently work with elementary school agers, and they’re pretty fun! The adults are decidedly less fun. As an example, there’s a guy in his 30s who’s hate for himself is only eclipsed by his hate for women and children. His social life is literally just bossing college kids around through his Pokemon Go group. Anytime he does something mildly illegal at work, somehow it’s his mom’s fault for whichever childhood story he wants to trauma dump on you in hopes he makes you forget he’s an asshole. In a word: Yikes. As a plus, I can easily bait him by calling Pikachu ‘that yellow rat digimon’.
It’s not that I hate my job….buuuuut I kinda hate my job. I’m resentful that my bachelor degree won’t afford me any work around here because of my physical condition and slight limitations. I heard somewhere that one in four people will end up with some kind of disability at some point in their lives, but that’s such an abstract concept until it punches you in the nose out of nowhere. The best way I can describe it is that you’re running an obstacle course with your friends, and then suddenly you’re given a handicap, but you’re expected to play the same way as before. Depending on the handicap, you might still do pretty good for yourself for a while, or even make it completely through as well as before! Imagine though the handicap challenge you’re given is that you have to take a two minute rest every other two minutes. Hop on one foot. Go through the course blindfolded. Forced to recite the alphabet backwards as you walk the balance beam portion. Have someone blow a whistle in your ear sporadically while you’re trying to balance an egg on a spoon while you walk. You might get frustrated or down on yourself about the situation, but even if you carry an air of grace and understanding for the new status quo, that’s not to say everyone else will. Some won’t realize you’re racing with a handicap. Others won’t care or even avoid you for being different. Others will think you’re exaggerating or faking how challenging it is to get through the course. Even some others will try to exploit you, knowing they have a better chance at being able to since you might be less likely to fight back and have less people to back you up. My job has a mix of all those types. Quite frankly, I’ve never a had a job or a career that didn’t have expressly just those types, and even before I was notably different, it still made for a Bad Time.
Today is the day I quit this job, I just don’t know it yet. It goes like this:
I eat my shitty burnt eggs. I realize I fell asleep last night without doing laundry. Oh no. I’m out of underwear except for one sporty, little thong. I hate wearing things like that to work, but okay. I put on a pair of capris and a big t-shirt. I put my earbuds in, go out, and catch the bus. I get off the bus and walk the short distance to my job. I split my pants crossing the road.
I have light nerve damage.
I have earbuds in.
I don’t feel or hear the fabric tear five inches to expose my dummy thicc asscheek.
I’ve already gone to battle with my horrid coworker this week because he’s harassing a very young preschool teacher that’s very, very much not into him, and very much into her husband and small child. He’s got a history of doing this, but he has a longer history with the owner of the school, and so he gets away with everything while she turns her head the other way as women repeatedly quit over the years. Said owner is sitting by the door, clocks me coming in and continues on with her conversation, and I, having been on the verge of quitting for weeks, am in no hurry to exchange pleasantries with shit-tier humans any more than I have to. I head for my assigned classroom and mercifully it’s not one I have to share with Asshat McGee. Small victories.
The children are on the younger side today, mostly kindergarten and first grade with a couple of second graders in there. They’re adorable hellions, little monsters who would sell their own siblings’ souls if they found it funny enough. Another coworker in the room is one of the calmer ones with a penchant for illegal drag racing outside of work; I think overall she’s pretty cool. We’re swamped by numbers, so I spend a couple hours running around nonstop to help the kids with homework, snacktime, and such. Finally, I get a chance to sit down on my stupid, plastic classroom chair. It’s cold? Like just on one side. I shift a bit, trying to figure out what’s happening and realize all at once.
I stand up and my palm flies to my ass.
Yep.
That’s skin.
FUCK.
“Sarah, I need you to get over here. Emergency.”
“I SEE MISS DEE’S BUTT!!!!!”
I immediately drop fully back onto the chair and stretch my shirt even harder over my ass. Oh my God, why is my life like this? Why does shit like this keep happening??
Sarah comes over, and I’m sweating because there’s no sneaking out of the room to hide in the bathroom or office now. The children know, and when they know there’s blood in the water, they will strike. I’m stuck on this chair for the rest of my fucking life if I can’t outlast them. Also recess is in half an hour.
“Sarah, I need you to go to the office, pull Kim away from everyone else, and let her know I’m not decent.”
I mouth to her that I’m wearing a thong, and her eyes get huge and she nods hard and rushes out. I sit there, digesting everything. When did it tear?? Maybe it had just happened? What do I do?? I have two hours of work left, and I already left early this week for a neuro doc appointment. Even if I left now, my bus doesn’t come for another fifty minutes. How do I hide my ass outside!?? This is so bad. Why on the one day I choose to wear a thong???? Fuuuuuuuuuck!
Five minutes later, Sarah comes back holding a long sleeve shirt with the school’s shitty branding on it. She looks like she’s about to cry.
“Kim told me to tell you to tie this around your waist and work the rest of the shift.”
I can feel my face do something funny. I feel stunned. My head is doing that rare humming thing that starts when I’m about to get psychotically angry, but….nothing is happening. I look behind me at the large windows. It’s windy outside. I look back at her and carefully stand while tugging my shirt as best as I can while she helps me tie it around my waist. I collapse back into the chair, the buzzing hum filling my whole body now while I try to understand what’s happening.
“Sarah, I can’t stay, the rip is like five inches-”
“She knows. She said you walked in like that.”
There it is.
“What?”
I just felt a click of a door closing in my mind. I’m not staying here. I’m not coming back.
“Kim said...you came in like that.”
I look straight into the classroom camera that Kim watches and listens through from the office, and give it the most serious ‘are you absolutely kidding me right now, you actual monster’ look I can muster in my stunnedness.
Months ago when Pokemon No cornered me in the classroom bathroom I was cleaning to forcifully tell me the sex life between a former coworker and parent (as I was scrubbing the inside of a toilet and repeatedly telling him to stop talking), I went to Kim afterwards with a note that detailed what he did since he would make sure he was always the last person to leave so no one could talk without him hearing. She never brought it up, and then I found out he had a pattern of doing things to girls. With everything else, I just figured she was a coward, or maybe she handled it descreetly off the clock since she had a personal relationship with Shitfuck. Nah.
She’s just a piece of shit who cares about nothing but money.
Literal garbage human.
I look up at Sara and smile.
“Sarah, I’m not coming back.”
I grab her by the shoulders and give them a loose shake as my eyes fill with baffled desperation, I can feel it.
“Sarah, in what world is it normal, safe, and okay to see an adult with their cheek busted out and not say something to them. We-We work with kids, Sarah. What is WRONG with that woman??”
She shakes her head and gives a laugh, looking as lost as I feel.
“Honestly good for you. I’m trying to get out of here too.”
“Wow. Just...wow. This place genuinely isn’t safe. I get what what’s-her-name was saying now in that text she sent to Kim when she quit.”
Four months ago, one of the head teachers abruptly quit. Kim had made a show of parading her text around and making fun of her for just saying ‘I quit. I don’t feel safe here.’ Without context, it did seem silly at the time.
What a cunt.
Said cunt had her office closed and was talking rapidly on the phone with a panicked tone when I passed to walk out of the building. I didn’t make a big show of saying goodbye to the kids, people come and people go.
The wind was challenging to deal with, but I did my best, and mercifully the bus wasn’t late. Getting home to get a look at the issue, it was really bad. Two inches from the center, and at least five inches, full vertical split. I made a quick video log about the whole situation and decided for an early bedtime to sleep off the nerves. I wish I could say days like these are few and far between, but that’d be a lie.
May tomorrow be better, or at least have less cheek.