SEPTEMBER 2010
It was a beautiful day in High Hills Park, complete with twittering birds and a gentle breeze, and Daria and Jane were hating every second of it. Again.
The park manager, Sue Stenson, looked at her clipboard before the rest of them; black, middle-aged and gone to seed, her hair in a severe cut. "Alright, we've got a birthday party booked for today, so there's lots to do." She gestured with a pencil rather than look up. "Mitch, Dai, you're picking up the entertainment. Mark, you're setting up the bouncy castle. Let's see, I'm picking up the kids…" Finally, she looked up, as fed up to say it as they'd be to hear it: "Daria and Jane, you're setting up the chairs."
A great and terrible cry of ennui escaped from their lips. It sounded sort of like "UHHRRRRRR".
"Why do we always get stuck with the dull jobs?" asked Jane.
"I can't trust you two with anything actually important. You're always slacking off!"
Daria narrowed her eyes; she was fed up with this. "We can do a job without—"
"Good. Do it then."
She faltered for a bit, and then recovered with: "And if we do it, can someone else set up the chairs next time?"
Stenson sighed. "Fine."
That gave Daria and Jane a full minute of happiness and then they were actually at the chairs and started to set up the first chair.
"Yeah, this sucks," said Jane. "Normally I'd be all in favour of doing a Trent but we've trapped ourselves here, haven't we? Well, I say 'we', it was your idea—"
"But it was your idea to apply for jobs at the park, so everything that happens to us is your fault."
"Stop talking." Jane picked up another folding chair and unfolded it. "Didn't we use to have snappier banter than this?"
"I think we lost it around the time our futures crumbled into a bleak void."
"Now that, I remember you talking like." Chair the next. "So how's the book going?"
"I intended to do some writing today between jobs but that's out." Every time she intended to write at work this week, she'd stared blankly at her notepad and then gone back to kicking leaves and playing I Spy with Jane, but she didn't say that. "The art?"
"Got a commission, so our next Chinese takeout is on me!" 'Commission' meant 'pornographic Aeon Flux fanart'. "After that, back to gallery work."
Daria snapped out the latest chair. "Your last 'gallery' work was—"
"Hey, when was your last book submission?"
"Duly noted," she growled. Chair the next.
"Hey, Daria." Jane held up a chair and made 'pew pew pew!' noises.
"Jane, can we please just focus on getting this done?"
The other girl made a titanic "GUHHHH" sound. "When you say that, it makes me tired."
"It makes me tired and I said it. I sound like Stenson."
"She gets paid more than us. You should wish you were Stenson."
"If we get this done, we at least don't have to do chairs next time. Come on."
Thirty more chairs in bored silence later, they found they were twelve chairs short and this was quite literally the most gripping event that had ever happened to either of them in two months at High Hills.
"Mark's got the storage key, right?"
"Yeah, we'll ask him." Daria winced. "I couldn't think of a sarcastic line there. I have truly died."
"On the bright side, you're not Jodie or Stacy."
"Yes, on the bright side, we're not in hospital after nervous breakdowns. Truly, we live in a shining utopia."
"See, there's the sarcasm. You were saved by misanthropy."
"Is there nothing it can't do for the undeserved filth of humanity?"
"Now that's trying too hard."
The two of them dawdled further into the park, looking for the senior groundskeeper. Halfway there, Jane groaned.
"Oh no. I just thought: the kid, it's going to be Kevin's isn't it? Pretty sure it's the right age."
"So Kevin might show up. Well, that's news to make me slit my wrists, thanks for telling me that at my lowest ebb."
"His wife does have the money for—"
"You want my ghost to slit its wrists too?"
"I'm amazed Mack's alive. You think he'd have killed himself as soon as his company crashed and he thought about Kevin's gormless face."
"He saw it all through school, he is immune – no, he is addicted. When Kevin dies, so will Mack."
"I wish Kevin was setting up the chairs."
"I don't. Then Stenson might not need to hire us."
Silence descended like a smothering blanket. A blanket that had fallen.
"What's your new book about, anyway?"
"Stop talking."
-
Originally written 2014, with apologies to JG Quintel. From a very cheerful idea from Brian Taylor (the fic author not the psychopath) that of post-college "Jane's gonna be Mordecai from Regular Show, picking up trash somewhere"