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Writer's pictureHearth & Coffin Staff

True Story

Updated: Oct 3

by J. M. Wise



No really—

I swear this one’s true. Okay?

I was at work, right,

done cleaning and went to the office

Boss standing there, supervisor too.

Code 100 gets called,

and that’s when someone’s dead

like in the facility and we have to

find them

and restart their heart or whatever

Boss leaves to go save a life

and I start talking to my supervisor, ‘cause,

Apparently

this happens all the time

Someone just goes to work

and then dies

now it’s our problem.

And we don’t get paid enough for this.

So at this one gym—

I think up north, you know

How freaky those northerners are—

And this guy

dies in the hot tub

and there was something

wrong with

maybe the circulation in the water

well anyways

Supervisor’s friend

found him the next day

And he was cooked through

(and I wonder if he was cooked so well his meat fell off the bones, cause you know, slow and low, right, huh?)

but the tub

kept pumping

so his body

yeah, his cooked body

was pumped into

the water supply

of that whole gym.

Yeah, I don’t

think he works there

anymore.

Guess the shock,

of finding a dead guy,

and then having to

clean him up,

up off the bottom of the tub,

was too much.

We don’t get paid enough for that.

I think

that’s also

how I want to die,

Cause warm water

and then

you give everyone

a protein shake

that they’ll never forget. 



 


J. M. Wise is a biology senior at Texas A&M University, where she is the news editor for The Battalion, the campus newspaper. Outside of her journalistic writing, she enjoys writing poetry and setting small pastries on fire. She can be found on X at @j_m_wise25.

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