Everyday, she wore chains.

Today as I watched her ringing up candy bars, bags of chips and magazines, I noticed that no one else seemed to notice her harness.  She was a petite woman with an attractive face, sort of a cross between Liv Tyler and Leonardo Decaprio.  It was hard to believe that she could wear those chain suspenders with the heavy leather belt attached and still be mobile.  But she did, and she moved with ease.  She must have seen me watching her because she looked up and smiled as she tossed a copy of BA & SD into a brown paper bag and handed it to the guy in front of me.

I tossed my Chic-O-Stick on the counter and looked the other way.

It was the normal thing to do before we started our long workday at the factory, buy Chic-O-Sticks or chocolate, and a magazine to read on break.  We all lead mundane lives and read mundane magazines and I in particular had joined this mundane Hell about five weeks prior.  I caught on pretty quick to their habits and they embraced my mundane personality with open handcuffs. 

Yes, I said handcuffs.

It really did not seem like an odd job when I joined the company, but when I told my mother that I now was an employee at Billy Joe’s Custom Cuff Corp she spoke aloud.

“What are you doing Lilly??”  Her hard New York accent came through when she got excited.  “You’ll end up on one of those shows about those people who end up in those cults.  Those leather cults, and they’ll find your body tied up in a cave somewhere.”

“What??”  I had a New York accent as well, but tried my best to hide it since I moved to Ohio.  “Ma,” I whined, “it’s a job.  You should be happy that I found a job.”

“I just don’t want my daughter wearing leather and studs, next thing I know you’ll come home in a corset and black fishnet stockings.”

“Ma, you’re being ridiculous.  Billy Joe’s makes handcuffs and that’s it."  I lied. "If a customer’s handcuffs break, they send them to us and we fix them.  You don’t see the workers at Victoria’s Secret or Fredrick’s of Hollywood walking around the DC in that garbage they push.  I can see it now,  Johnny the fork lift driver wearing spiked heels and a boa.  You kill me ma!”

“What’s a name like Billy Joe's Custom Cuff Corp, anyway?  It even sounds like a cult!”

“What’s a name like Victoria’s Secret?  It sounds like a club for women who were men, or an escort service!”

“They are a respectable company, Lilly,"  she sounded like lingerie spokesperson. "Billy Joe’s and whatever is not respectable.”

“Ma, I’m a 27 year old college drop out still living with my mother.  Who’s respectable??”

When I start insulting myself my mom shuts up.  She can’t argue with the truth.  Since I got laid off from the nuclear plant seven months ago she had been bugging me to find a job.  Now that I found one, she still wasn’t happy.  There was just no pleasing her.

I picked up my Chic-O-Stick and slide past the guy with the magazine.  He had stopped dead in his tracks to view the discounted leather items in Billy Joe's Bondage Boutique.
 

Next Issue:  Lilly Cass meets her trio.