Free Black Ice by Leah Giarratano Page B

flat more often than his own. Jill had peered into his mixing bowl before he poured the ingredients into some patty cases Ingrid had found for him at the back of a cupboard.
     
'Ah, what's in this?' Jill had asked, sniffing carefully.
     
Ingrid pushed her way between Jill and Jelly and leaned over the bowl with them. 'Fuck knows,' she said. 'You wouldn't eat any of that shit, anyway, Krystal. I just let him go for it. What'd'ya put in there, Jelly?'
     
Jelly showed them. Some of his special ingredients had come from the cupboard under the sink.
     
Twenty minutes later, with Jelly's batter grey-green and hissing in the drain, 'Krystal', Jelly and Ingrid had taken a hot batch of buttery cupcakes around to Mrs Dang's, and Jelly had been a loyal fan of Jill's ever since.
     
It was Ingrid who told Jill about the Kasem Nader connection. According to her, Jelly and his younger brother, Corey, had been sent to separate foster homes when their mother wouldn't quit whoring from her bedroom while the boys watched cartoons in the next room. Corey had grown up in Merrylands near the Nader brothers while Jelly had moved from home to home and ended up in the Fairfield area. Corey had been fatally stabbed in a brawl with some skinheads from Cronulla. Ingrid told Jill that Corey took a knife through the spleen when he jumped in to prevent Kasem being stomped to death.
     
Kasem had made a monthly trip out to Fairfield ever since.
     
And today, Jelly was due a visit.
     

17
Friday 5 April, 11 am
     
By eleven am Seren knew one thing for sure: she could not do this job for a second day. Not even to stay out of that hellhole in Silverwater. But with these thoughts, images of Marco swam through her tears and the pink-tinged water raining down continuously from the pipes overhead. Marco. Her son. Completely alone without her. What she'd sworn to him when holding his brand new body on her naked chest, she'd already betrayed: I'll never leave you. I will always protect you.
     
Seren swallowed the bile in her throat and reached out to grab a screaming chicken from the yellow crate at her side. Its warm body pressed into her palms and she felt its heart hammering wildly. Scrabbling with her gloved hand for one of its feet, she hung it upside down as she'd been shown at six o'clock this morning by her supervisor, and clasped each foot into the metal restraints; belly forwards, facing her. The terrified creature flapped its malformed wings, stunted by being raised in a box so small it had never been able to stretch; it swung its head wildly and its shining eyes met her own.
     
They begged.
     
I'm sorry, she told the bird, and snapped its neck with the piece of equipment designed by someone, somewhere, just for this job.
     
The dying bird's shit joined her vomit in the sink below the carcass. Seren pushed the button, and the conveyor belt took the body away.
     
Ten workers today. Fifty thousand chickens to be killed between them. I can't do this, she thought.
     
And then she remembered Marco being dragged from her by the DoCS worker, when the officer took her from the courtroom to the cells below.
     
She reached for another chicken.
     
Seren sat staring at the lunchroom table. Men and women around her laughed, bitched and ate sandwiches provided by their employers.
     
Seren didn't think she'd ever eat again.
     
'You'll get used to it, love.' The middle-aged man from the conveyor belt next to her offered her a Coke. 'Take it. It'll help settle your stomach.'
     
'How can I get out of that section?' she asked him.
     
He laughed. 'Not easy. You gotta be here a year at least to get into the packing section.'
     
'There has to be something else.' She turned her head to meet his eyes.
     
'There is. And it's worse. Believe me. I lasted a couple of weeks and begged 'em to put me back here,' he said. 'You're just lucky they put you on the line in the first place. You could have got sent straight to gutting.'
     
Yeah, that's me, Seren thought.