[Read] Hot Desk Extract: Nina Culley - Tender Cuts

As part of The Wheeler Centre’s Hot Desk Fellowship, I developed the outline for my anthology Tender Cuts and completed two stories. Cordial and Gadgets follows a factory worker navigating the demands of a tech-toy company, with its productivity mantras, pounding techno and unusual pink cordial. It carries an anti-work sentiment similar to the show Severance, though the story is loosely based on real events. My other story, Sashimi Blues, centres on an artist at a bizarre food performance art event, struggling to find her place as she drifts from her own taste, ideals and voice.

 

^{Image by Shona Coyne @shonamariecoyne}

Excerpt from Cordial and Gadgets  

Pim’s chest thudded—an ugly, insistent little hammer—keeping time with the conveyor belt’s drag. The same syrupy voice floated from the overhead speakers, something about efficiency. The tone was soft, hypnotic, almost motherly in the way a robot might be motherly. She pushed her AirPods in deeper, letting her own productivity podcast swallow the factory voice, one lecture chewing on another until both turned to static.

The belt lurched; sweat surfaced then vanished. Her fingers, those obedient little animals, scurried across the gadget pieces—insert the tiny screw, twist, repeat. She didn’t even watch anymore. Her body remembered for her. Each part crawled down the line, and the further along it travelled, the more it became a little more whole.

No one had risen in hours. Not for water, not to pee. They just hunched like penitents. Pim glanced for Maria, but Maria wasn’t in her usual spot. In her place sat a dishevelled, frizzy-haired woman streaked with grey, wearing the factory’s familiar pink uniform. A newbie? She glanced over at the other’s, wide-eyed and chalky. She definitely didn’t want to be the first to leave, but she also didn’t want to leave because the thought of the outside—its air, its light—felt so completely wrong.

A thin wash of bubble-gum techno fizzled down from the speakers—now that was more like it. A clean, metallic thrum beneath a sheen of sugary synths. Her podcast host was now onto the discipline of joy. She turned the volume way down and took a sip of her cordial—warm, pink, thick. It coated her tongue like melted candy. She couldn’t recall when she last ate.

Pim let her head drift to one side, and her neck gave a dull, satisfying click. Was that a sliver of natural light edging in from somewhere? She blinked rapidly. No—just the fluorescents jittering in their metal frames.

She was suddenly cold, suddenly itchy, and for the first time in months—maybe years—she felt no pull toward the sun. Here, under the droning speakers and industrial hum, she could dissolve without anyone noticing. Here, no one cared that she hadn’t brushed her teeth or that she didn’t have a mortgage, a partner, a fish. Here, she wasn’t really a person—here she was just super productive.

 

Excerpt from Sashimi Blues

Three breaths in. Hold for four, then out for five. Three times and I’m back in my body. In theory. Slow, aquatic blue light pulses behind the glass of the gallery and bleeds down its walls. I tell myself I belong here. I insist on it. Imposter syndrome is for people in their twenties. I smooth it over with the same mental voice I use to pretend I like yoga or dogs. Easy breezy, even though the boisterous laughs come sharp and unrestrained. People from the industry. People who know each other. People in their cliques, all black clothes and lacquered.

And then, through the muted voices of the guests, from behind me:
“Are we going in or what?”

I’d almost forgotten my plus one—my partner of five years—standing behind me with his two long arms dangling through a checked button-up.

I tell him to shush and take another long breath before pushing the door open. It’s heavy—so heavy that once we enter, everything becomes ten times louder. Tables, chairs, silver jewellery glinting. It’s so warm–and too bright and too dim.

“Is it supposed to smell like this?” Dom again, already rolling up his sleeves.

“It’s the concept,” I say, though I’ve barely looked into Yuki Blue. I’d seen a post somewhere—a friend-of-an-artist-of-a-friend thing—and thought: networking. The truth is the smell is thick and metallic, unmistakably bloody, and I hate blood.

Pushing through the packed crowd, I spot Yuki hunched over a metal operating table. A portable speaker sits on the ground behind her, playing intermittent industrial sounds, lights jerking in time with the noises. I need to get closer, so I tug on Dom’s hand; it’s damp with sweat, and we work our way to the front row. I’m very rarely this pushy or eager but having Dom next to me makes me want to show off my world, let him see the edges of me he doesn’t understand.

On the low stage, two metal buckets sit beneath the table, filled with entrails—guts, coils, some creamy liquid.

“Do you think that’s real?”

Dom doesn’t answer, distracted by Yuki’s glinting blades—long sashimi knives and a tidy row of scalpels. Laid out before them are small bodies, slack and waiting: little blues, neons, and pearlescent shimmers. Aquarium fish. The kind you’d see drifting languidly in a nine-year-old’s tank. I can’t tell if this display is brilliant or just gross for the sake of being gross. Maybe I like it anyway—for being a bit provocative, a bit aesthetic.

Dom lets out a choking laugh as Yuki loops a surgical mask around her jaw. His negativity is predictable—and extremely annoying, actually. Surely, he should be backing me or at the very least feigning interest. But then again maybe he’s too serious, too self-conscious, to understand any of it. Bless him. As the room softens into darkness, I find some small, sick part of me revelling in his discomfort, even as my stomach uncoils into something thick and warm.