High

Parties Parties Parties is the premier party supply chain in the country, according to the promotional literature I was given as I left the interview. Six new stores in the past two years. 

On my first day, I was shown around the shop floor by Carole. She smiled a lot and I worried about my ability to match her enthusiasm for the job.

You’ll be coming in here a few times a day to replenish the cards and paper. Does that sound ok love?

I nodded and she gestured to follow her into the warehouse. A short man with thinning hair stood holding a clipboard. 

Fresh meat eh? I’m Oisin, warehouse operations manager extraordinaire.

He shook my hand. His skin was rough. Up close I could see he was not a handsome man. He wore thick glasses flanked by ruddy, pockmarked cheeks.

Oisin will look after you. 

When the shop was quiet I’d hide in the warehouse pretending to collect stock and chat to Oisin. 

How you finding it? He said.

Yeah, it’s alright.

It’s going to be big, this place. Global next year. And they won’t forget who was here at the start. No sir, they won’t forget.

Carole said you’ve been here since it opened?

Oh aye yeah. It’s the only way in when you’re my age. Glad you’re here actually, I’ll show you the compactor.

Oisin led me to a huge mechanical cage with hydraulic jaws. He threw in a handful of boxes and pressed a red button. The jaws constricted, crushing the boxes into a brown heap.

Don’t use it unless I’m here. Them’s the rules. 

A terminal near the outside door emitted a high-pitched beep.

Hold on, Oisin said, beckoning me over with a hand. He pressed a button and the aluminium doors rattled open.

That’ll be the helium order. Come on, give me a hand.

I helped Oisin load boxes onto a pallet. Once they were loaded he told me to head off. I’d already stayed fifteen minutes later than my shift.

On the bus I pictured myself in my room, door locked, piles of discarded helium canisters, inhaling each one in a haze. 

I was eight when I realised I could get high from swallowing helium. Me and my cousins were at aunt Sally’s 40th birthday party. She’d pulled out all the stops. Chilli in polystyrene bowls. Beer bottles floating in buckets of ice water. Proper balloons in the hallway.

We sat in a circle taking turns to suck on a balloon and do funny voices in an upstairs bedroom. 

When my turn came, I sealed my lips against the wet rubber and sucked. My head felt like a dying light bulb, glowing with a dull and pleasurable hum. I blacked out, waking with drool down my chin. My cousins laughed, thinking it was a put on.

Carole rang early the next morning. Oisin needed help in the warehouse.

You see, kids these days think it’s all about education, Oisin said, throwing empty boxes into the compactor. 

Look at me. Left school at 16. Never been to university. And I’m the manager of this warehouse. I’m in on the bottom floor and this business is going all the way up. How long have you been here now? Couple of months?

Something like that, I said. 

You’ve got to stick it out. Pay your dues. Before you know it, you’ll be one of them. He pointed towards the warehouse ceiling. Get what I mean? 

I nodded. He instructed me to move the cases of helium and arrange them on the shop floor. 

I could only manage one case of canisters at a time. I opened one. The canister was cold and heavy. Each one contained enough gas for thirty balloons. 

I squeezed the cap off and sucked on the cold nozzle, pulling clouds of rasping gas into my mouth. It sent ripples of energy flowing through me. I swallowed in desperate gulps, like I was drowning.

I lay on the ground staring at the fluorescent lights. The carpet was coarse under my fingers, like a cat’s tongue. The room swirled and melted around me. I closed my eyes and spun with it.

A scream from the warehouse woke me. I couldn’t be sure how much time had passed.

Inside the warehouse Oisin was hunched over the compactor. Wriggling and screaming and sobbing. His arm was trapped inside the mechanism, above the elbow. Blood was pissing down his arm and body, pooling at his feet.

Oisin, I said. My voice squeaked. I tried to speak again, but a shrill noise was all I could muster. 

My hand hovered about the release bottom. Oisin twitched and made low guttural noises. I went back to the shop floor and rang for an ambulance.

Hello, what’s your emergency? 

I need help, someone’s been hurt. I need an ambulance.

Sir? The voice on the end of the phone stifled a laugh.

I need an ambulance right now to Parties Parties Parties. The words came out in a shrill falsetto. Barely even words.

Do you know that prank calls to the emergency services are a crime?

It’s not a prank. Please. Please come.

If you continue to waste our time, you could be fined.

Please.

I heard whispering and the phone went dead. 

Oisin wasn’t moving. I pressed the release button and his body lurched onto the warehouse floor. His arm was a mass of jagged bone and pulped, porous fat. I sat with him until Carole arrived for her morning shift.

The next day the owner of Parties Parties Parties made a statement to the local news. He explained they were investing in automating the warehouse. New and existing stores would be fully mechanised, with no need for warehouse staff at all. At the end of the TV segment he prayed for Oisin’s friends and family, mispronouncing his name.