Job Fair by Jessica Knauss
Two friends walked down a city street. “Wait a minute,” said Leona, stopping in front of a mail slot in the wall of the post office building that was carved to look like a lion’s head. “I need a new job.” She turned to face the lion squarely, planting her three-and-a-half-inch heels on the sidewalk.
“What are you doing?” asked Patty in alarm.
“I told you, I need a new job,” said Leona distractedly. “Someone’s gotta pay for all that charmeuse we just bought!”
With Patty looking on in puzzlement, Leona looked into the lion’s empty eyes, concentrating. She raised her hand to its mouth and inserted her fingers. Almost as quickly, she withdrew them, to show Patty the slip of paper wedged between her index and middle fingers.
“See there?” she said, reading the printing on the slip. “Oh, this is great! I can start tomorrow, and it’s close to my house!”
Patty snatched the paper and read it over. “Congratulations!” it said across the top, and continued with the details of a mid-management position, just a little better than Leona’s last job.
“How did you do this?” Patty’s voice was a much higher pitch than she’d expected.
“Well, you saw,” replied Leona, taking the paper back.
“Who else knows about this?”
“Everyone,” whispered Leona, her brow creasing. “Didn’t you?”
“Did I know about the magic hole in the wall where you get a great job?” shouted Patty.
This explained a lot. Patty had been scrimping for a couple of months, and Leona had been mystified to hear her talk about her unending job search. “How have you been looking for a job?”
“I send my resume in to posted openings. If I’m lucky I get a call back, I go for an interview…”
Leona’s jaw dropped. Composing herself, she said, “If you don’t mind my saying so, that sounds extremely inefficient.”
“Do you have a suggestion?”
Leona began backing away, never tripping on those high heels. “I’ve got to get home and figure out what I’m wearing tomorrow. I’ll see you.” She turned and sprinted away.
Without real hope, Patty faced the lions’ head. She was thinking of everything – the long, dragging months since her last job, the cheap food she’d been buying, the low setting of her thermostat, the plans she’d had to cancel – and nothing, all at the same time. Her breathing was ragged, her eyes dripping. She placed her fingers as she’d seen Leona do.
She felt a whirlwind of little papers, bumping, scraping, cutting, but could not catch anything between any of her fingers. When she thought her pinkie had hooked something, she received the deepest gouge of all.
She withdrew her hand to find a bloodied pulp covering bone.
“Better luck next time,” said the man waiting his turn behind her.
Jessica Knauss is currently a fiction editor at Fireship Press in Tucson, Arizona. Her publishing credits include Bewildering Stories, Do Not Look at the Sun, Full of Crow Quarterly Fiction, This Mutant Life, Metazen, Short, Fast, and Deadly, Cave Scribbles, and Apparatus Magazine. You can find her novella Tree/House, about a woman’s awakening through sleeping in trees, at Amazon. Get updates on her writing at her blog: jessicaknauss.blogspot.com.