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When they called it the Purge I thought, hey yeah, that sounds cool. I mean, it does, doesn’t it? I wasn’t thinking about that horror movie franchise of the time and all the political garbage that showed.  No, I was thinking when you purge something you get rid of something bad and you feel better, right? So I signed up.

After all, jobs were hard to come by back then and nowadays it’s even worse.  You’d think with all the culling of the herd it’d get better, but no such luck.  Automation, they said. AI, they said. Make your life easier they said. Well, never listen to what they say.

Just doing my bit, I told my ma. She wasn’t that impressed. Thought she’d wasted all that money on my education, but education these days doesn’t equip you for anything but debt. And I had debts to pay off, and besides, I cottoned on real quick.  Get with the program, help with the purge or be purged, right?

Free stuff they said. Universal health care they said. Don’t worry about the cost.  First we’ll have the Purge and get rid of anyone who can’t pull their weight. Pro-active death panels. Made sense, and I was fit and ready to jump right in. I’ve always been ahead of the curve.

Now the only curve I’m ahead of is the one in this blasted road. And my job is weighing me down, in more ways than one. Another death, another statistic for the record books, just all in a day’s work.

There’s no end to it, and bit by bit you lose it all – all your friends, your family. They took my ma and purged her a few weeks back and by then I didn’t feel a thing. I haven’t felt a thing for ages really except the aching of my back, the tiredness of my legs, my shoulder whinging all the time from the load I carry.

Still, I purge. It’s that or be purged. While the so-called saviours of our world with all their free stuff live high on the hog, grabbing all the world in their greedy hands as they thin out our herd.

I can’t complain though. I’ve got a job. These days it means something. And if that something is lugging dead bodies to exhumation plants, at least it’s an honest day’s work.

Right?

(c) Helen M Valentina 2020