- 49 -

Potato Bug

Kayla McVeigh

“I’d hit him again,” I say. The thought continues, but I swallow it. I can 
see Doc searching for more words to write over my own. Something to soften his 
report. 

“Let’s do an exercise,” he says. 

He tells me to imagine myself  fifty years from now. 

“I am still in the warehouse,” I tell him.

 The left side of  his face pulls tight, and his top teeth lightly meet with his 
lower lip. 

“Alright, tell me about it.”

I work in one of  the squared-off stations in the packing plant. The man-
ager reassigned me to belt eleven. It is a low-priority position for a low-priority 
worker. I turn each box, so the right corner is pointed in a diagonal. This assures 
the label will be scanned and processed correctly. I do this for twelve hours. 

“The manager is a real prick,” I say. 

“What would the warehouse look like in fifty years?” 

“Boxes and dirt, I don’t know?” 

I’d leave if  I didn’t have to be here. I start scratching my chin, itching at 
the stubble. I try to picture belt eleven all overgrown with thickets and thorn-cov-
ered vines. 

“Maybe there would be some plants and stuff.” 

“What else?”

“I don’t know, maybe a potato bug or something,” I say. 

“Ok. Would your anger still be there?”

I’m crouched down on my knees, watching the little guy trail about. The 
gradual movement of  his antennae shows me his true nature, gentle and unboth-
ered. I smile as he investigates the cracks in the deteriorating concrete. 

The potato bug at my feet is then flattened by an Oxford-style shoe. My 
eyes climb up the pleated khaki covering the right leg of  this man. It’s Mike. His 
jaw is sliding up and down like a puppet’s trapdoor mouth. Everything is muted, 
but I know he is saying, 

“Off task again. I’m writing you up again!”

- Best of  Fiction -



- 50 -

I curl my hand into a fist. In my ears, there is a faint ringing as I look at 
a bit of  dried blood on my knuckles. Just a few spots that didn’t wash off from 
earlier. I look back up at the doc. 

“Is the anger still there?” 

“Yeah,” I say. 

Doc then tells me to picture my body. At first, I can only see Mike. He’s 
standing on my back, climbing his way to the top while I’m laboring away, box 
after box. 

Doc says it again. He tells me to picture it. What will my body look like in 
fifty years? 

It’s disgusting. Deep purple, except for white on my lips and a greyish 
film clouding over my eyes. It is slumped over, oozing on the boxes of  belt eleven, 
making the cardboard mushy. The smell of  rotting flesh is overpowering.  

“Is the anger still there?” 

This time, Mike is taking a weedwhacker to the blue-eyed grass and 
ragweed tangled over me. My decaying gut is sinking to the floor, but beneath 
it, there isn’t any visible concrete anymore. There are only clumps of  moss and 
white mushrooms that rise to my swollen ankles. 

“Ok, let’s try adding another fifty years.” 

This time I am all bone. My teeth are crumbling away. My femur is splin-
tering apart into small slivers that are peeling down toward the earth. The walls 
of  the facility are gone. A few of  the steel support beams are poking up from the 
field of  grasses and wildflowers. Belt eleven is buried, and only my lower jaw and 
largest bones are exposed. I can’t see Mike anymore, but I know he’s close. Even 
when I am nothing, he is circling. 

To hell with anger management.

My forehead is burning up, and my chest aches from using up all the air 
in this boxed-in office. 

 “Is the anger still there?” 

 “Yes. To the bone.”