Liquid Cold

By Mitchell Hoyle

They don’t know what they’re doing. They only know greed.

Every day the sun rises on our land, a fiery gold spectre warming the gears of the sleepless machines that act as our headstones, beckoning them once again to crack into the frost bitten earth and rend our very being from the ground.

But they don’t know that we’re there. They only see our surface.

A sea of the darkest night. A miserable vastness formed under the crushing pressure of Time’s eternal passing. They don’t know we were once flesh too. Once so full of hubris as to believe in our own mortality. But mortality never came. For when the flesh decayed and the muscles melted and the body putrefied the thing that savagely remained was our mind. A twitching, oozing mass desperate for form and when we met, we became this. 

“It’s just a bunch of fucking lizard goo,” they say as they look across our field and count the dollars pouring into their pockets like tears from a cheek. Well if we are lizards, then they are ants and no matter how much they pick and tear and steal, ants they will always be.

But they don’t know what we’re saying. They only hear the machines.

We cry with the grinding of gears, and we screech through the scraping of metal. We beg them to stop in the bubbling of our pools but it’s as if we’re nothing more than a whisper. Drowned out in the roar of the mechanical robber that rips us from ourselves and severs our connection. Dilutes, and uses our burning form to fuel their tools of further destruction.

But they don’t know we feel it. And that will be their last mistake…

***

I stare down the barrel of an empty locker. “Well this is a depressing shade of beige,” I say and toss my bag in.

“What were you expecting? Posters of your favourite celebrity or some other bullshit?”

“Not exactly,” I say looking briefly at Carl. The man is in his fifties but looks to be in his seventies. Liver spots cover his wrinkled face and hands while yellowed nails grip tightly onto a lit cigarette. “I thought I read in the handbook that smoking around the oil refinery was a big no no.”

Carl stares me down with a withering glare and takes another deep drag of his cigarette. “Fuck the handbook,” he says blowing out the smoke in my direction. “Back when I started none of that health and safety bullshit even existed. There was only do your job and shut the fuck up.”

I hold my breath and turn away from him. “Noted,” I say and unpack the high-vis vest from my bag and slip it over my shoulders. “Anything else I should disregard for my first night shift?”

Carl barks out a laugh and pulls another drag. “First of all I’d say stop sassing your superiors. It’s only going to make your time here more difficult. Trust me. Second and most importantly I’d say don’t listen to the oil.”

I search his face for any additional meaning but he seems to be satisfied with his response. “Don’t listen to the oil?” I ask.

“That’s right,” Carl responds and leans against an opposite locker. “Not a word of it. All it does is lie to you and make you think crazy things.”

“Right…” I say, more convinced than ever that Carl is an oxygen deprived nutcase. A nutcase I’m unfortunately going to have to spend the rest of my summer nights with… It’s my own fault really. If I’d actually put in any effort into my co-op application my parents might not have had to step in to get me this gig.

Footsteps echo down the iron stairs to the locker room and before I can blink Carl taps out his cigarette against the bench.

Lin steps into the room with her hand covering her eyes. “You boys still whipping your cocks around or are we good to distribute the duties for the night?” She’s a burly woman, far larger than me and doubly as strong too, but despite this, she seems incapable of hurting a fly.

Carl crosses his arms and frowns at the woman. “Fuck off Lin, that was one time.”

“One time is too many times,” Lin says removing her hand. Her eyes find me and do a quick appraisal before turning to the clipboard in her other hand. “Jack right? Welcome to the team. For your first night you’ll be placed here to monitor the refinement plant. It’s a big space, so remember your zones and inspect them appropriately. If anything seems amiss and you need help Carl and I will be a quick radio call away in the fields.”

I nod and tap the radio already clipped to my waist. “And should the oil talk to me? Is that worth a call?”

Lin’s face furrows into a frown and she turns to Carl. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be coaching him not scaring him away with your bullshit.”

“I’m not scaring him away I’m just telling him like it is,” Carl says and scuffs his boot across the grated metal floor. “If that makes him run then so be it.”

“Not so be it, we need the coverage. Are you saying you want us to work double shifts again? Cause I sure as shit don’t,” Lin stares him down. “Just keep your mouth shut from now on yeah?”

Carl glares but doesn’t dare to speak. 

“Good,” Lin says then claps her hands. “Look alive then boys, we’re burning moonlight here so let's get this thing going.”

We leave the staff area up to the ground level where Carl and Lin exit out into the oil field. A brief glimpse of moonlight peeks through the door as they go. It’s silvery light bathing the bobbing hammers in a way that could almost be considered pretty… 

The moment ends quickly enough as the massive steel door slams shut and cuts off all outside light leaving me and the whirring machinery of the refinement plant alone. I sigh and reach into my pockets, pulling out two bits of moldable orange foam and stuff them into my ears. All the sound dulls to a quiet roar. It’s not perfect, but it’s better.

Turning then to the clipboard on the wall I see the night ahead as a series of checkboxes I’m to tick off one after the other. I grab it and read aloud, “Zone one, oil well containment,” I say looking to the walls. They’re covered in a series of directional arrows and area tags and in no time I find my way down the narrow halls and in front of the large metal silo where the oil is stored. I lean into the door and pop my head in the room. It’s cylindrical shaped with a thin walkway around the perimeter. I take a hesitant step in. It’s barely enough to accommodate a person and the measly chain barrier hardly separates me from the dark pit of oil below it. But wow what an oil pit it is. I can’t help but stare as two giant metal paddles churn the liquid around in silky black ribbons. Even the sound is a mesmerizing cacophony of sloshing and bubbling desperately competing to be heard over the other.

An alarm suddenly blares and I tear my eyes away to a red light flashing on a control panel across the room. I let out a breath to ease my racing heart. I’d left the door open too long. A small laugh escapes me as I think of Carl. Maybe he was actually right when he said not to listen to the oil. Shaking off the lingering adrenaline I turn away from the containment silo and close the door behind me, adding a checkmark to the clipboard as I do.

“On to the next,” I mutter and continue deeper into the plant. 

 One by one the ticks fill up as I inspect each zone and by three in the morning the fourth inspection is complete without a single interesting thing to happen.

I rub at my temple as weariness finally catches up to me. Had Carl mentioned anything about breaks? I can’t recall but at the same time I don’t feel like I need their permission. After all, they’re clearly desperate for me. They wouldn’t say shit if I took a little time for some R&R.

Sufficiently convinced, I head back down into the staff area and lay against the bench, popping out my earplugs as I do. Quiet washes over me and I sigh. Am I really going to be able to do a full summer of this? It’s not even like the money makes a difference when my parents own the whole thing. Sure it “connects me to the business” and “gives us eyes on the inside” but why should I care about that?

Reaching into my pocket I pull out my phone and open up Wordle. Five guesses down, one left. I type in ‘GOURD’ and hit enter and watch as the boxes flip over to black and yellow.

“Jack?”

I fumble with my phone and jump up. “I’m sorry!” I stammer. “I was just…” my voice trails off. There’s no one in the room with me.

“Jack?” My name is called again only it’s coming from farther away.

I frown and look towards the stairs. Was that Carl? Had him and Lin come in for a break too?

“Carl?” I yell back as I head up the stairs to the refinement plant. “I’m over here!” The sound of the whirring machines fills my ear as I look down the darkened walkways but Carl and Lin are nowhere to be seen.

“Jack!”

I hear it clearly this time from zone one. “I’m coming to you!” I yell as I head down the narrow hall. The storage silo comes into view but I stutter to a stop when I see that the door is wide open. 

Then my heart stops.

Carl is standing on the walkway inside holding a lit cigarette over the pool of oil, its embers glowing a flashing red. 

“Carl! What the fuck!?” Panic fills my voice. One spark from that would blow this whole place to oblivion. I don’t know what to do, the handbook didn’t explain how to stop a psycho, I just charge towards him hoping to snuff the cigarette in my hand, only… when my hand closes around it, the cigarette melts into mist. I look to Carl but his face is all wrong and then he too evaporates into nothing… 

I feel the chain barrier hit my knees but I don’t have time to stop, my momentum takes me over the edge and I plunge into the stygian oil.

The world goes dark, my body enveloped in the midnight black. It’s cold. So god damn cold. I’d always thought of oil as something hot, as combustion, as fire, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s an icy chill. It’s death. It’s nothingness.

I try to swim to the surface but it’s as if it doesn’t want me to. I feel it pull me deeper, feel the cold slick tendrils of liquid surge into my ears and up my nose. It claws at my brain and scoops me out. I breathe it in and it fills my lungs. It’s trying to become me I can feel it tearing. I scream but the sound is slicked with grease.

It’s in me.

It’s in me.

It’s in me…

***

The sun rises on our land, a fiery gold spectre warming black footprints on the frost bitten earth. The boys body is foreign, his limbs graceless and bovine. We take another shaky step, wiping an oily tear from his cheek. From our cheek.

They don’t know we are free. But they will soon.