Sadie the Sadist: X-tremely Black Humor/Horror Read Online Free PDF

with justice—especially for little guys, the silent slaves who do your dirty work, like Courtesy Clerks, Hotel Maids, Dishwashers, Janitors.
    Don’t get me wrong, Sadie the Sadist and I have our differences—she’s a righty. I’m a lefty. Slight variations in programming, otherwise we’re identical. Except she’s a maniac. By that I mean, she’s a lot more outspoken than me, fearless. I admire her courage, but sometimes I wish she’d shut her mouth. Other times I flip the switch to autopilot, let her drive.
    Like right now, she’s bagging groceries.
    Bagging’s a bit slower since the accident.
    The scar on my left thumb makes it difficult to open plastic bags, but the feeling in my hands is back—slight tingling in the tips of my fingers. Maybe I just don’t notice the pain I used to feel, because I’m taking Dilaudid, synthetic morphine.
    Have you ever noticed how much you use your thumbs? The cut made a lot of simple tasks challenging: drinking a cup of coffee, typing, texting, using the remote, masturbating.
    Did you know lefties have higher IQs than righties?
    Sadie the Sadist would argue that point. She says two hands are better than one and since your brain has two sides you might as well use both. She’s teaching me to be ambidextrous. Video games help a lot. Saint’s Row: The Third is the best—guns, grenades, rockets, swords, even chainsaws. I got a lot of practice using my right hand while I was recuperating. I hope being right handed won’t make me stupid.
    “Plastic work for you?”
    The guy nods. Most people do.
    Most people don’t mind plastic bags, but some people are bag snobs. Even when I tell them our plastic bags are biodegradable (made from corn-based material), they insist I use paper, as if killing trees makes them superior, or they bring their own bags—trying to save the planet. I hate to tell them, but this planet is going to hell, regardless of paper or plastic. Pretty soon we’ll all be robots.
    I take pride in what I do: bag veggies separate from meat, lay bread gently on the eggs, keep cold things together. But, sometimes, if you piss me off, I poke a finger through the plastic wrap guarding your chicken and allow chicken blood to seep onto your peaches.
    “Have a great day.”
    A woman rolls a cart, filled with groceries and a shrieking toddler, into Check Stand 9 where I’m bagging. The toddler waves a glitter wand at me, lets out a high-pitched wail. Oblivious to the screaming demon in her shopping cart, the banshee’s mother unloads a head of lettuce, hamburger buns, popsicles, chips—a mishmash of items that I’ll have to bag separately.
    Wendy, the cashier, who’s been talking to her pal at Check Stand 10, snaps to attention.
    “Do you have your savings card?” she asks the customer, then flashes her winning smile.
    “I’ve got it somewhere.”
    The banshee lets out another shriek.
    “Be a good girl, Arboles,” the mother says distractedly, searching for her card.
    Her tepid warning has no effect on the little witch.
    Who names their kid Arboles, anyway—a nothing town out in the middle of nowhere, population 280.
    The mother fishes through her purse while Wendy sighs, juts out her hip. Wendy won’t ring anything up until the savings card is scanned, because it starts a timer. As soon as that card number is entered she’ll start pushing stuff along the belt so quickly I’ll have to hustle to keep up. At the end of each week the times are calculated and the speediest checker wins prizes like frozen pizza, store brand ice cream, a five-dollar gift certificate. Wendy always wins.
    The woman emerges from her purse, card in hand, and that’s my cue.
    “Plastic okay?”
    I stand between two racks of bags, willing her to say yes. Plastic is much easier to load than those fabric bags the tree huggers lug into the store, but nothing irritates me more than paper. Paper bags slide off my racks and, if I manage to load them, I’m too short to see into them.