Permanently Deleted

  • Nakoichi [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago
    CW: Death/suicide/violence against women

    When I was in my twenties I worked at a 7-11 for several years, now the experience of being promoted to assistant manager was its own radicalizing experience, watching all the corporate training videos full of casual racism. But that is not what this story is about, this story is about my friend [redacted]. We worked together for a few months and bonded over growing up poor as shit, hating cops etc. I even went to her boyfriend's house with her to help him harvest his weed plants. She didn't smoke herself, because she had recently graduated from a rehab program. One morning I get a phone call from a former coworker/friend who's aunt had come in to shop and found the store was empty, but the bathroom was locked. I lived across the street at the time so he asked me to go check on her, we both worried she had relapsed and maybe passed out in the bathroom.

    So I go over there and there is now a cop who asks me if I can open the door, saying since there is no sign of foul play he can't kick in the bathroom door without a warrant and asks me to open it. I check the handle and sure enough it is locked. I knock a few times and call her name, but don't get any answer. So I give the door a firm shove with my should, it's a shitty thin plyboard door with a latch that is fairly easy to force open. I immediately knew something was really wrong because I felt a weight on the other side of the door and it shut itself on me as I jerked back in surprise.

    At this point a thick pool of blood flowed out from under the door and I immediately lost my shit and retreated from the back room, figuring now officer fuck face can actually do something and my mind just collapsing on me.

    I would soon learn that an ex-boyfriend who she met in rehab and who didn't graduate the program had come in and forced her into the bathroom and shot her and himself in a murder/suicide. Now here comes the exact moment when I decided I would dedicate my life to destroying capitalism: This happened at about 11:30 AM. The crime scene cleaning company was in and out in a few hours after their bodies were taken away and the store was open again by 8PM that night. My boss told me "you don't have to come in tomorrow if you need some time away". No offer of any counseling, no empathy for the poor girl that had been murdered in his store just hours before. That guy died of heart failure a few years back and I hope it was the most painful possible way someone can die of that. I hope it was fucking slow.

    And on top of all that the cleanup crew didn't even do a very good job, months later I went to fix the soap dispenser on the wall and it still had dried blood behind it.

    Bathrooms, particularly public ones all smell like that place on that day to me now.

    • kristina [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago
      spoiler

      ugh. i feel for you. i never had to deal with finding a friend like that before, but ive been active in the local trans community long enough that ive had many people die on us and its always heart wrenching to see such kind people die to shit like this. its always worse cause usually when one suicide or bad thing happens there is a big spat of them that ripple through and you gotta be very vigilant. i dont wanna be too detailed because ive already had enough things on here to identify me, but fuck cops and fuck how they handle anti-trans violence. i regularly think about how many intelligent, kind, thoughtful people die or are traumatized so early in life and how that effects social progress. death to america.

      • Nakoichi [they/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

        I think of this quote by Stephen Jay Gould often.

    • UlyssesT
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      15 days ago

      deleted by creator

      • Nakoichi [they/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah another more recent thing was when I was at work and a local unhoused guy was buying some food, and began to have a major seizure. I accompanied him out to the bus stop outside the store and sat with him watching his convulsions get stronger, until I was sitting on the sidewalk after he started to slip off the bench and just did what I could to make sure he didn't smack his head on the pavement.

        I asked if he wanted me to call him an ambulance and he managed to get out the words "can't afford". So I sat, and I waited, and I made sure it had passed and that he was safe for the moment before I had to go back inside.

        • UlyssesT
          hexagon
          ·
          edit-2
          15 days ago

          deleted by creator

        • spectre [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I asked if he wanted me to call him an ambulance and he managed to get out the words "can't afford".

          In the future, you generally only need to pay for the ambulance if they take you somewhere. It is usually gonna be helpful to have a paramedic assist you even if getting to the hospital is going to be an issue.