I

            The pantry boards had already been bleached and set to rest for the night on the left sink’s faucet behind the nozzle pipe when Danny put a sloppy bucket of knives into the sink at the right.

            “Here you go, bro,” he said, going back to the cold line to finish wrapping the steel containers with plastic for overnight storage.

            Jux nodded his thanks and wiped his bleach-soaked hands on his filthy wet apron. The right sink was spotted with bits of foodstuff refuse, the middle sink filled with borderline-rancid dishwater, and the left sink gray with sanitizer. The stainless steel table to his right was nearly vacant of unwashed dishes, but there were some utensils in the drop tub and several splotches of cheese or something on the surface that would have to be wiped. He might still get out just after midnight as long as the chef wasn’t too slow getting the hot side of the line wrapped up and there weren’t any assholes trying to eat shit this late on a Friday.

            Jux began with the knives, which he noticed were not all that was in the bucket. In his still brief experience in a professional kitchen, he had yet managed to accustom himself to dealing with knives regularly in a fast-paced environment. With a spatula or tongs, say, it was fine to be flippant and just hose them down and swab them into the two full sinks and hang them. With containers and plates, except for the sharp metal containers, it was pretty much the same. But the knives had to be treated with care. First of all, he never put a knife in a full sink. That kind of uncaring stupidity was reserved for one of the young and reckless dishwashers that sometimes worked on extra-busy shifts alongside Jux. When once Jux had plunged his hand into the soupy dishwater for something to fish out and clean and his hand had bumped into the dull edge of a long knife, he decided he’d not only never wash knives like that but that he’d also threaten the life of anyone who ever put a knife into murky water he’d possibly have to plunge his hand into.

            Jux began cleaning the knives. The bucket was itself full of water Danny had dumped out of one of the warming pans, but their handles were all neatly lining the sides at the top. He cautiously removed one, assuming that below the water line there might be a paring knife or something, point up and ready to strike.

            Jux dipped the knife into the dishwater and used a floppy green pad to scrub off any residue. He then dipped the knife into the sanitizer water and placed it sharp-edge down in the drying rack. He repeated this process with three or four large blades, one of which being a serrated bread knife, and lost track of his thoughts. He was thinking about lizard tails coming out of people’s mouths. Not real lizard tails, of course, but the people would think they had lizards inside of them and that they had lizard tails in their mouths as proof. Were their tongues lizard tails? What powerful wizard could have accomplished such a feat of strangeness? Was it even a true mystery, or was it a false one?

            Jux was bringing the scrubbing pad across a blade for a final pass when the pad slipped off and the knife loosened in his grip just enough to force him to respond by righting it and inadvertently sending the blade into contact with his right forefinger. He knew he’d made a boo-boo and reflexively dropped everything and checked his digits, which were all still intact. There was no immediate blood, but he knew he’d made real contact—though not bone contact. He shook his head and observed his finger for a moment as a tiny spiderweb of blood expanded in the print-grooves. He pinched the wound and walked over to the first aid kit, hung from a pair of nails in the flimsy plastic wall. The nails weren’t right for the kit, so it hung on one and kind of rested on the other. He took it down and opened it up on the prep counter near the handwashing sink.

            “You cut yourself again?” Chef Jessup asked from across the kitchen.

            “Yup,” Jux said. “It’s not that bad. Just a…” He trailed off for no reason other than he wished to downplay the accident. He put a paper towel and pressure on the slice to try and stop the bleeding, which worked after some effort and time. After a few minutes he fixed a small bandage on the cut and wrapped his finger tightly with brown paper towels. He then donned a plastic food-service glove over it and went back to work.

II

            Next night, Jux was trying with little success to get the crostinis to stand up like they were supposed to in the dollop of herbed cheese spread he’d plopped down. The method was to spoon a pad of the herb and goat cheese mix onto some open spot of the plate and present it with three of the lightly-toasted bread slices jabbed into it and fanned out like a peacock tail. The current batch of the mixture, however, had apparently been whipped with too much heavy cream and as a result its consistency wouldn’t support the weight of the thinly-sliced and slightly-oiled crostinis. The batches were usually nice and thick, but this one had been thrown together by Almo after the lunch rush and it was pasty and shapeless despite the likelihood that it tasted better, as Almo always claimed. But no, taste was not the key. As the head chef had said in so many words, one can make a person eat shit as long as it looks nice. So the crostinis had to be arranged the right way. As a result, the operation was a frustrating disaster for Jux, who wanted his cheese plates to come out nice and pretty so that he would no longer be stuck bleaching cutting boards and scrubbing hardened caramel out of slice-edged metal containers and fishing floppy slop out of the drains with his bare hands. Sometimes, when the tray keeping the animal and vegetable matter out of the drain was particularly full when he removed it to be emptied, he’d offer it as “hobo soup” to anyone with a sense of humor in the kitchen. That was one of the only benefits of working the dishpit—that and having pretty much the least responsibility of anyone on the staff.

            Jux gave up trying to get the crostinis to stand and leaned them against the slices of baguette on the plate, making sure that they didn’t fall onto one of the international artisan cheeses on the plate that were supposed to be showcased. For the crostinis, apparently, nothing fucking mattered.

            He finished up the cleaning that night as usual and when Danny brought the bucket of knives over, again filled with murky water, he shivered. The knives were all, again, point down into the water, and the black handles leaning against the stainless steel rim with the same docility as the crostinis. There were quite a few knives in the bucket, more than usual, and Jux rolled his eyes, thinking that someone was unnecessarily dirtying knives and that just meant more work for him. When he started cleaning taking them out, one by one, to clean them, he found that the long, slim blade of the boning knife was sticking out inconspicuously among the other handles.

            Jux furrowed his brow. “Little fucker,” he muttered, plucking the blade carefully and washing it and setting it on the rack.

            As he processed the rest of the blades, he found himself again consumed by the strange thought of reptilian appendages and impossible reptile-human hybrids. It seemed impossible for some people to be somehow both human and reptilian, so he concluded that they were simply reptiles with the ability to appear as if they were human, not like shapeshifters but by way of some extraterrestrial illusion magic, possibly involving interdimensional manipulation. What was strange was that nobody really seemed to talk about it. But wasn’t it just like the movie They Live? Wasn’t he just fantasizing the whole thing? What evidence, really, could he actually furnish to prove that a significant portion of the world’s population was, in fact, comprised of transdimensional alien lizard beings with hyperintelligence and malicious intent?

            During some of the most intense contemplation, he again mishandled one of the knives and tore a gash into the base of his pinky finger, drawing a splatter of blood and causing him to drop the knife with a clatter against the dish station counter.

            “Fuck,” he muttered, squeezing the flesh back together. He managed to get the first-aid kit back down and open without getting blood anywhere else, and soon he’d cleaned the cut, applied a bandage, and enough paper towel around it that it looked like a sausage. Then he slipped on a service glove and went back to the dishpit to drain and sanitize the sinks before resuming his task.

III

            After a couple of days off, during which time his fingers had the opportunity to heal a bit, Jux returned for the Friday night shift and slogged through the pushes until, around eleven, the orders stopped coming in and the kitchen crew starting breaking things down. It was Abuse on the cold side of the line that night and Abuse that brought over the bucket of knives when it was time. Jux nodded appreciatively, seeing that the bucket wasn’t unnecessarily full of slop water. He counted the knives—there were five—and then went back to loading up the dishwasher with pre-rinsed plates.

            When he did finally get around to washing the knives, there were six in the bucket, an increase that he guessed was the result of someone simply adding one to the bucket in the meantime without him having noticed. With some slight reluctance he set to cleaning them, slowly, methodically, one by one, consciously avoiding thinking about lizard stuff, and, in the process, he was suddenly struck by the sense that he’d been thinking about people with lizard tongues, and lizard aliens from other dimensions, and wasn’t that strange, and then he was thinking about yes, that is fucking strange, thinking about shit like that.

            And of course he cut himself a little bit during this slip of consciousness. It was nothing but a little prick on his thumb, where a tiny bead of blood lingered.

            “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” he muttered.

            When it was all cleaned and wrapped up and the sink drained and sanitized, Jux bounced his eyebrows at Abuse. Abuse returned with a quick nod and a couple of minutes later they were out back, smoking cigarettes in the darkness between the dumpster and the big slatted metal door that nobody could seem to explain.

            “So what’s your streak, then?” Abuse asked.

            “Streak?”

            Abuse took a drag. “Shifts in a row that you cut yourself.”

            “Oh,” Jux said. “Uh, three.”

            “Meh,” Abuse said. “That’s amateur shit. We had a guy washing dishes here a few years back who cut himself every time he worked, and he was here for six months. Sometimes twice in a shift.”

            “Jesus,” Jux said, shaking slightly.

            “Probably would have kept doing it too,” Abuse said, “if he hadn’t gakked himself.”

            Jux tapped ash from his cigarette. “I thought he gakked himself every day.”

            “I mean gakked gakked,” Abuse said. “Fucking killed himself. With a knife. He did it at home, though. Apparently it was the old slit your wrists in a tub full of warm water bit.”

            “That’s terrible,” Jux said.

            “Happens all the time,” Abuse said. “We have to be stronger, of course.”

            “Clearly,” Jux said. “You know, it’s weird because I think there’s like this connection between what I’m thinking at the time and me accidentally cutting myself when I’m cleaning the knives. Like a correlation.”

            “Fuck math,” Abuse said.

            “Yes,” Jux agreed, “but I don’t mean it mathematically. I just mean it to, like, distinguish what I’m saying from a claim of causation.”

            “What the fuck are you talking about?”

            “These last three shifts,” Jux said, “I cut myself right when I was, you know, in the zone thinking about lizard people and shit.”

            Abuse eyed him. “Lizardoes?” he asked cautiously. “You still fucking around with that knowledge?”

            “What?” Jux asked.

            “Some things are dangerous to toy with,” Abuse said. “Specifically, I’m talking about Tarot, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Lizardoes.”

            “Well, what I’m specifically talking about is that I’m not suggesting that I think there is a casual relationship between me thinking about transdimensional lizard alien-people and—”

            “Lizardoes,” Abuse corrected.

            “See,” Jux said, “I don’t know where that comes from.”

            “Everyone calls it that,” Abuse said.

            “They do not,” Jux countered. “Some people say they’re the, what, Merovingians or something, but—”

            “Lizardoes,” Abuse insisted. “That Merovingian stuff is bullshit.”

            “This is just derailing what I’m trying to say,” Jux complained.

            “Say it, then,” Abuse challenged.

            “I don’t think that thinking about lizard aliens and, you know, people with lizard tongues is the cause of me accidentally cutting myself,” Jux said, “but every time I cut myself in this last week, that’s what I was thinking about when I did. So there’s a correlation.”

            “What are you going to do about it?” Abuse asked.

            Jux shrugged and flicked his cigarette across the dock toward the ten can of ashes in the corner. The butt hit the side of the can and the cherry exploded across the concrete. “I don’t know,” he said. “Tonight, I tried to keep myself from thinking about the lizard stuff, but that only made me think about it. It’s weird, too, because I don’t usually think about lizard aliens.”

            Abuse cocked an eyebrow at him.

            “Much,” Jux clarified. “I don’t think about them much. Or often. But for some reason, every time that bucket of knives gets delivered to the dishpit, it’s all lizard tongues and ancient aliens.”

            Abuse sighed. “The zone is a dangerous place,” he said. “Especially at the dishpit. It’s dangerous on the line, sure. You got the burners to watch out for, spicy pepper guts that you have to make sure not to touch your eyes after handling, greasy mats that are supposed to keep you from slipping but can turn the place into the ice capades if you’re not careful, hot sloshing oil, steam table fumes that make your head spin. Knives, of course. We use ‘em. All the time. But all that’s obvious to us on the line because it’s right there all the time with you, even if you get into the zone, so you can’t really get all the way to full deconsciousness. At the dishpit, I always resisted the temptation to act like what I was doing wasn’t dangerous because it is fucking dangerous, just not so obviously dangerous.” He tossed his cigarette at the can and it hit the wall and rolled a few feet toward the dumpsters.

            Jux was nodding. “I think I get it,” he said.

            “I didn’t say anything wise,” Abuse said. “Don’t fool yourself.”

            “I don’t know,” Jux continued. “What is wisdom if not knowledge gained by reflecting on experience?”

            Abuse shrugged. “No clue.”

            “It’s not a joke,” Jux said.

            “Oh,” Abuse said. He was obviously disappointed because he directed a distasteful sneer Jux’s way.

            “So what do you think about when you’re in the zone?” Jux asked.

            Abuse inhaled deeply. “Weeell,” he said like someone who’d just finished a steak dinner, “that depends. If we got some tunes going, you know, appropriate tunes, then I’m probably just humming along or silently mouthing the lyrics, you know, maybe do a little dance here and there just to shake things up. Keep it interesting.”

            “Yeah, I’ve witnessed some of that,” Jux said. “What about when there isn’t, uh, appropriate music?”

            Abuse stared at him. “I make up nonsense.”

            “Nonsense,” Jux said.

            Abuse shrugged. “You know what I’m talking about,” he said. “Boochie nibs, bochie digs. Max isn’t coming. Bubbalub sfaety. That kind of shit.”

            “So,” Jux said, nodding and glancing strangely at the dumpsters in the dark, cool diffused light of the parking lot’s street lamps, “like absurd poetry?”

            “Please don’t call it that,” Abuse said.

            “Okay,” Jux said, “but it’s just thinking about the kind of nonsense words and expressions that we always just come up with?”

            “Pretty much,” Abuse said.

            Jux smiled. “That’s brilliant.”

            “You’re welcome,” Abuse told him.

            “I still think it’s a kind of poetry,” Jux insisted.

            “It,” Abuse said, holding out a hand of caution, “is not poetry.”

IV

            Another night later that week, Jux was elbow-deep in the murky throes of the dishpit, thinking about nonsense words and expressions, maybe muttering as he did so.

           Water, slopwater. Slap-scheister, clinkily bitches, the hidden knife

            Never there

           Soap and Scud rumble the thickly globs

           Plucked and seen and cast into the sturdily-lined rubbish bin, with the cracked ramekins and cooling burned oil and rinds of lemons and all other things, including the unpalatable mounds that he pulled from the catch, splashing a bit up over the edge of the sink and falling to merge like a drip with the puddles between the circular rivulets of the bar mat.

            Ramekins, Poivre Noir, Sommelier, this is what we call them.

            Crusty cheese, tortured geese, snooty biatch

                        This is what we call them.

Soupspoon splooge: that thing at the end of the soupspoon to be cleaned,

                                    Like, “Take your whole bite!”

            Knife. Kinitieive. Kuh-knicked. Knight. Really? Kun-nicked. Nicked that one time. Nicht. Night? Kuh-knicked. Right. Knife and knight: ridiculous.

            The music suddenly cranked up and it was all because of Abuse. Because of him, there was some real loud gorepunk that shocked Jux into looking at his hands half into the murkwater and gripping one of the 8-inch chef’s knives. In the other hand, also sloshing with the muck, he was squeezing a besmirched wad of green scouring pad.

            Abuse came to him from the right. “We all get it,” he said, somewhere between a scolding parent and a wild follower, eyebrows up, “but now your zone nonsense is distracting.”

            Jux looked away from Abuse and back down at the indescribable filth. “Understood,” he muttered. Then he sighed and made askance eye contact with Abuse, who was winking at him with a point of the finger and stepping to the hot side across the slippery rubber mats lining the floor between the line and the ranges. Danny and Jessup were laughing from beyond the island by the ice machine.

            “I shall long remember this slight!” hollered Jux, one hand struck straight and a finger pointing at that while he was hunched over the dish station.

            “Stop babbling like a fucktard and we’ll forgive you,” Danny pleaded. “I promise.”

            “He’s just in the zone,” Abuse explained, turning down the music.

            Danny emulated a pump fake and jumpshot. “Dragić for the three.”

            Abuse was frowning. “Is that a sports thing?”

            “Yeah,” Chef Jessup said, “you probably shouldn’t be jumping around in here. Slippery things and sharp things and all that.”

            Danny shook his head at them. “I dance if I want to dance.”

            “Fair enough,” Abuse said, holding up his hands.

            “Just be careful by the fryer,” Jessup suggested.

            “Bitch ain’t even turned on,” Danny said. He looked over at Jux at the dishpit. “Kind of like Jux’s lady, if you know what I’m saying.”

            Jux was so enthralled by his cleaning of the long cheese knife that he didn’t respond, though he was silently mouthing something that was probably unrelated nonsense.

            “Leave him alone,” Jessup hollered. “If he figured out a way to wash stuff without cutting himself in the process, that’s good on him. Probably better for us all.”

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