Melanie didn’t mind working in a yogurt factory. In fact, she couldn’t imagine life without the dairy provider. Every morning Melanie would stomp on the gas and gaze through the windshield, anticipating the moment when the factory would emerge in plain sight. Melanie loved watching the sun cast radiant orange and pinks hues over the morning sky, illuminating the parking lot stroll. It was all part of the routine: ‘good mornings’, coffee breaks, and yogurt packaging. Melanie couldn’t have asked for anything more in life. That was until her boyfriend, Richard, asked for her hand in marriage. She was a sucker for romance.
“Melanie,” he said, “If the Steelers win this game I assure you things will never be the same.” Richard intended to ask Melanie for her hand in marriage after a Steelers victory over the Packers. The Steelers lost 25 – 31, but Richard couldn’t afford to wait around for another Steeler’s Super Bowl, so he proposed regardless.
Melanie’s boss tried his hardest to convince her to stay.
“You’re a goddamn artist, ain’t nobody here that can package a strawberry-banana yogurt like you,” he would say.
Melanie blushed, shook his hand, and chuckled gracefully. However, things were changing, and the smile on her face quickly dissolved. The aura, fading.
Melanie slammed an over-sized, red button, gazing down the assembly line of assorted yogurts. The conveyer belt fetched her a pack of Tropical Citrus.
Initially she was excited when Richard informed her of the move to West Virginia, but now, Melanie began to experience anxiety. How could she leave behind such a wonderful place, she would ask herself. She would miss her hometown, her friends, her family, but most of all she would miss the yogurt factory. It was a sanctuary.
Melanie placed her fingers around the outside of a plastic yogurt container, aligning the power sealer with the excess plastic around the packaging. This time she slammed a superior red button hidden behind a glass safety barrier. The sealer began to move toward the plastic, but Melanie noticed something was wrong- the engagement ring. She had forgotten to remove the engagement ring, and the cheap diamond lodged deep within the plastic packaging. There was nothing Melanie could do to stop the machine. A swift incision, an eruption of blood, and Melanie gazed in horror as the conveyor belt carried Tropic Citrus yogurt and a severed finger with an engagement ring to the packaging department, where the finger would be delivered to a grocery store in Wheeling, West Virginia.
THE BADBOOB 