THE LIME FACTORY
by Ian

I used to work in a lime factory. The limes weren't made there of course, so the name is a bit misleading - they were grown in some place hotter and undoubtedly more pleasant than the factory.

Have you ever wondered how lime juce is made? Or how those little slices that adorn cocktail glasses come about? No? Well, neither had I untill I got a job on the factory floor. Just a few of those things we take for granted I guess. Oh, who am I fooling? we take many things for granted. We? There I go again, sharing out blame. I Take things for granted me.

Who am I? Why do you care where I worked, or what I think? Well, my name is not important. What is important is what I have to say.

I worked the night shift. The light in the building was the same day or night, and so, for me, it was never dark. Light when I was sleeping, light when I woke, light where I worked. Not quite the image people have of night workers is it? Its not a dark life at all. Back to the factory though. The lights in there were green. Probably not by choice of the owners - they were high up, and had been there years and the green effect was probably dirt unreachable by the human hand. It served to illuminate the black iron machinery with an odd tinge, that was at once sickly and beautiful. I know that sounds silly, and melodramatic, but when you do a repetitive job you begin to notice the strangest things.

The green lights hitting the green limes was positively eerie, and it was this that lit the place up, or rather, gave the illusion of light. The factory wasn't really that bright at all, so my life of lightness was only light in the sense that the factory was no brighter for the day workers. There were no windows.

It was a functional place. Industrial, orderly.

I swept the floors, I scrubbed the tanks, I scraped the dirt from inside the pipes with a long black rod. It was hardly the most enjoyable work I had ever experienced, but it paid my bills, and besides, I wasn't going to get any other work in this town.

The limes would come in on a conveyor belt, and this belt would split in two half way along, and some of the limes would go left, and some would go right. The left ones were grabbed one by one by a robotic arm, and sliced into 8 thin pieces. Pieces 1 and 8 were discarded by the machine, and the slices travelled on down the conveyor where they were flash frozen and put in boxes.

This was a sharp contrast from the procedure on the right conveyor. The belt delivered the limes to the workers on the second floor, who manually pealed them, and dropped them into a whirring vat, where they were pulped to mush, and finally to juice.

The clattering machinery on the ground floor produced a lot of steam, and it drifted upwards towards the workers on the second. There, it lingered, the heat of the black metal below insufficient to push it any higher. I never worked on the second floor, but I had been up there from time to time to run errands, and the sight was akin to being on a high hill on a foggy day. A carpet of steam just below the catwalk. It almost looked as if you could walk on it.

While on the ground floor, I would sometimes crane my neck upward and gaze at the rising steam. Light from the ceiling lamps filtered through, and the light from the lamps half way up the wall made the steam glow pale yellow. My eyes would relax - its hard to focus on something like steam or fog, and I would feel the tension in my neck ease for a little while. I knew it would come back as soon as I had to bend down again to unscrew a bolt from a broken metal plate, or scrape the rust off a pipe, but for those few seconds it relaxed and I felt good.

It felt good that is, until one time I felt I was being punched in the face 5 times over. I yelped, clutched my face and groaned in pain, screwing up my eyes and clenching my jaw. I head the clattering of footsteps on the staircase, and soon I felt a hand on my shoulder. A voice came "Oh my god! Im so sorry" its my first day and I, oh!oh! Are you all right? Im sorry!"

The pain didn't last long. I had had worse happen to me and walked away from it, so I took my hands down from my face and un-screwed my eyes, and looked at the person whos hand was on my shoulder and was begging forgiveness.

She was beautiful. But then, the ones you write about always are aren't they? Maybe she wasn't beautiful and I just thought she was, but at any rate, you wont be meeting her ever, so take my word for it - beautiful.

She had funny hair. The fringe was cut straight across, in that unflattering style that makes pretty girls look prettier, and makes not so pretty ones look downright ugly. She had strange curls looping from the back of her head, and trailing half way down her back. Her eyes wern't green. They were grey, but they picked up the green light so I thought they were green at first.

I couldn't speak for a few moments. I pretended that it was because of the basket of limes that had just fallen one story and smacked me in the face, but that wasn't it at all.

She asked again if I was allright. I said that I was, and looked at the limes around my feet. She saw me looking, and went red. "I I was carrying them from vat one to vat two, and I tripped, and they went over the edge"

I smiled, even though it hurt a bit, and knelt down to pick up the fruit. She had her basket with her, and she began collecting the stray ones too. Since they were only going into the vats to be pulped, they were still good.

She gave me a nervous smile, and muttered something about getting back to work. She disappeared up the staircase through the vapour and the was all I saw of her for two days.

On the third day I was sent to the second level with a battery to fit to a generator. I was walking past the peelers, and at the same time keeping an eye out for the girl. I tried not to be seen to be looking, cause I didn't like it when I felt I was being looked at while working, and wouldn't do the same to someone else.

I saw her! She was right at the end of the row where I had to fit the battery! I began to quiver a little. She looked up, and smiled. The smile lasted only for a second - until she noticed my black eye and bruised cheek. She gasped.

"oh! I can't believe I was so clumsy" she stammered. I was beginning to like her stammer already. I told her not to worry, and that I was lucky that she hadn't dropped a spanner on me, but this seemed to be the wrong thing, and she blushed almost as red as she had the day before.

I smiled, a smile as friendly as I could manage, and once again told her that it was fine, and that these things happen, and that a black eye was not a permanent thing.

I ducked down beside her and took the grille off the generator. It was all oily and my hands were covered, and she saw and gave me a tissue from her pocket. It was pink, and had a rabbit on it, and I felt bad about smearing oil all over it - it would never come out, and so it was ruined - but she insisted that I use it, so I did, if only to make her feel a little better about the day before and also, because she was a pretty girl and only someone who was crazy would say no to someone as enchanting.

The trough full of limes were at chest level , and the peelers sat on high stools to reach them. The taller among them were able to rest their legs on the floor, but the others had to rest their feet on a little ridge at the bottom of the stools.

She wasn't short, but she wasn't tall either, so she rested her feet on the ridge. I couldn't help but glance at her legs as I was working. She was wearing little shoes, black, and little ankle socks then it was just her creamy legs, until a pretty short skirt half way up her thighs. This was the standard uniform on level 2, but I had never taken much notice before. I kept wishing she would maybe swing a little to the right on her chair so that I could see up her skirt, see what she was wearing -if anything.

She didn't though.

I finished work, slower than it would have usually taken me, but not too slow, because I didn't want to attract the attention of the manager below.

I said goodbye to her and walked back past the lime peelers and down the staircase. I saw that the catwalk was a grille type affair, with mid sized holes, and I wished that there was no steam blocking the view from below. If I was able to see up to the second level, I'd see her walking about in her short skirt on the catwalk, with those mid sized holes.

The next few days were dull. Work, work and more work. The flash freezing machine was on the blink, and I had to fix it along with two other men who I see every day but never talk to. They keep to themselves, I keep to myself. It's just the way in the lime factory.

I cut my hand on a sharp piece of metal and had to go home early, which annoyed the floor manager. He wasn't very nice at all.

For the first time since starting work there, I found myself looking forward to going in. I might see her and better still, maybe even get to talk to her. I didn't even know her name yet. I felt a little dirty for fantacising about a girl whose name I didn't even know. It seemed shallow or something.

From then on I contrived to be available to do any work that needed to be done on the floor above. The next couple of times I was up there, she was nowhere to be seen - I still didn't know what days she worked, and I couldn't ask the others if they knew, what would they think?

So I just waited it out, and then about two weeks later, I met her again. I was walking up the stairs, and she was walking down, and our eyes met. I said hello, and she greeted me back. I smiled, and she looked far less nervous than she had looked on our previous meetings. We talked for a few seconds, about trivial things, and then went about our business. The staircase was narrow, so we brushed off each other on the way past.

I finished the work above pretty quickly, but hung around for a little longer than was necessary to see if she would come back up the stairs, and as soon as I heard footfalls, I grabbed my tools and started back down.

Sure enough, I met her again, and we smiled and said hello, and passed on by. It wasn't much, but it was enough.

I couldn't believe my luck when the that morning when my shift was over, I bumped into her on the way out of the factory. She was finished at the same time I was, and so we walked out of the building together. The conversation was a little strained, after all we didn't know each other at all, but I finally learned her name. It was a name that suited her down to the ground.

I also found out bits and pieces about what days she worked, and she enquired after my eye, asking if it was still sore. I told her it was fine, and that I was a fast healer, all the time hoping that she would be walking in the same direction as me when we got to the front door.

There were only two directions you could go when you exit the factory, so I figured that there was a 50 - 50 chance that she would be going my way. Then I realised that statistics didn't really work out that neatly and that she was more than likely going the other way, if for no reason other than stupid fate and sure enough.

We said goodbye, and said the meaningless things people say about seeing you later, and hoping to talk soon, though, they weren't meaningless for me.

We set off in opposite directions and I turned around periodically to look at her shape disappearing into the morning mist.

I went home and showered the smell of lime and grease off my body, still thinking of her, and wondering if she was showering too.

I also wondered about fate - if things like having baskets of fruit dropped on ones head from a height happened for a reason.

I masturbated in the shower while thinking of base and faux-highbrow things.. how pathetic I felt afterwards.

I fell asleep in a bad mood, telling myself that she was probably already spoken for, and that I didn't stand a chance anyway and that I was dirty for thinking such things about a girl I hardly knew.

To Be Continued...

[fairytales]