Free Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting Page B

stomach—I’ve inserted a tube whereby everything I swallow will also be accessible to your minions, your thousands of minions that are now you entirely and do your bidding. I have always loved you, and when you came to my office, I knew this was my chance to make you mine.”
    And then I smelled something irresistible and began to crawl towards it, into the new pink-grey cave that must be the doctor. If what he said was true, I was somewhat grateful to get inside of him—if I was now just thousands of swarming ants I certainly did not wish to be seen.
    Once we had transferred, I was pleased to realize that I could see through the doctor’s eyes as well as those of my ants. It is calming to look through the eyes of another person. It stills your own thoughts almost to a halt.
    “Do you love me?”
    The doctor likes to ask this; he does so almost every hour. Although I cannot speak, he always smiles afterwards and says that he loves me too.
    Throughout the day I have all types of sensations. Some are good, others worry me, but my fears can’t grow so big that they reach outside of his body. Nothing can move beyond this body, so in a way I feel like I am the world, and he is the world, the same way that lovers feel. “How strange,” I often think, though I try not to let him hear me thinking it, “to have so much in common with an unattractive man.”
    And then there is the evening, when sunlight pours into the window like nectar. He sits down to the dinner table in front of a large mirror—I think so that I can see him, though maybe he has figured out a way to see me. Then he carefully opens the bag of sugar with a knife. When I hear this sound, each of my ants jump and he smiles, his legs and arms contract whether he likes it or not. And though they are his own, I feel as if I guide his fingertips, that the tiniest of my workers go down into the marrow of his thumb and help to grip the teaspoon.
    I love watching him eat. Teaspoon after teaspoon disappears into his mouth; his saliva coats the spoon’s surface with stuck granules that change its color from silver to a crusty white. I cannot decide if he did me a favor or if I’m a victim. When I try to think, all I can feel is the sugary fluid, and a rage that comes when after our feedings I find myself hungry.

K NIFE T HROWER
    “The ghost is friendly,” says Grandmother. She pushes me inside, throws in a loaf of bread, and locks the vent.
    There is a strange ghost in the air-conditioning duct and it’s my job to find and tame it. I did not volunteer. It is more of an assigned position.
    “Hello?” I call softly. Hopefully, the ghost is Mother. Grandmother killed her a few years ago and has feared her haunting return ever since.
    Both Mother and Grandmother were knife-throwers by trade. Grandmother trained Mother from an early age, as Mother trained me, as Grandmother continues to train me now that Mother is gone.
    “Just you wait,” Grandmother warned the day we lugged Mother’s burlap-wrapped body out to the woods. I kept hitting up against rocks in the dark and collecting large bruises. “She’ll come back and give me my what-for. I won’t know a moment of peace until I die.”
    I dug and dug until the sun began to appear, when Grandmother’s head finally peered over the hole’s rim. Her normally tight bun was loose and wild; wisps of hair floated around her face like thin smoke. “Come up,” she said, lowering down a rope for me to grab so I wouldn’t get her hands dirty. Once I filled the hole back in, Grandma’s composure returned.
    It was not how I had pictured my mother’s funeral.
    Afterwards Grandma handed me a large, glowing cigar and patted my thigh. She has a scar on her thigh from when Mother dared her to put a lit cigar there for a whole minute. I worried it was my time to receive a matching scar, but she said nothing more, so I sat by her and tried to puff until I got sick and vomited.
    “Hello?” The ghost does not answer my