The Fan (short story)

Working in a laundromat is hot business. Steamy. Jamie hated it with the broiling resentment of a teenager. But he loved the fan.

From where he stood folding hot sheets from the summer camp nearby Jamie had only two pleasures during his eight hours at the laundry. The radio, placed on the metal shelf over his station, tuned to the local alt-rock channel but played at a volume that sapped his favorite bands of all their elemental power, was his first salvation. Music made the time more tolerable. It took his mind off the heat, and the humidity, and the humming pulsing swish of all the machines lining the walls behind him. It helped him ignore the customers and kids filling his space with body heat and taking all his air. It let his thoughts wander while he waited for the fan.

The fan was huge, an industrial model, with a big round cage enclosing it's three black rubber blades, perched atop a pole and looking slowly side to side like a lifeguard at his post. Every few seconds it would pass it's bounty of cool air over his glistening face. Jamie would watch it as his hands did their work, folding, stacking, folding. Those blades are huge, he would think, I wonder if they would cut through a carrot. For some reason this idea, once it had idly floated through his zoned-out work-mind, wouldn't leave. I wonder if it would cut through a carrot. Those blades are huge, and slightly rounded at the edge, and rubber, but it's spinning so fast, he would think. So fast.

Wick wick wick wick went the fan, watching the room, scanning for prey. Wick wick wick.

The cage surrounding the fan, meant to protect the blades more than anything else, was ridiculously sparse. Not only could I fit a carrot in there, he thought, I could fit a whole bunch of carrots in there. At once. Wick wick thwack, carrot chunks. His mind wandered. His hands did the job. Fold. Stack. Fold.

The next day Jamie showed up to work with a carrot in his pocket. He didn't call attention to it. He was vaguely sure nobody would really care if he stuck a carrot in the fan, it wouldn't damage anything, but the owner of Busy Beaver Laundry was a humorless old man, and at the very least he'd get some weird looks and lose a little respect in the eyes of his employer. So he folded, and stacked, and watched the fan, wondering how those blades would react, wondering if the carrot would be ripped out of his hand, or sliced cleanly through, or broken off with a jagged edge. Such a powerful fan, fully three feet across, chopping through the air. Wick wick wick.

When no-one was watching he went around the corner, behind the counter, out of sight to the customer area, and he dipped into his pocket and pulled out the carrot. He was standing behind the fan, looking through the circular shape made by the spinning blades. He knew there were three of them, he had seen it, when the fan was off. He knew they were thick, thicker than any fan blades he had ever seen on a normal house fan or ceiling fan. These huge chunks of rubber had mass, a hefty weight to carry out their purpose. He could hear them cutting through the atmosphere around him, and hear the air rush in to fill that gap, wick wick wick wick, and he could feel the pull of the fan. It looked hungry. He had brought it a carrot.

The tip entered the cage, and for a moment he was slightly worried - there was enough space between the thin metal bars that he could have easily slipped his whole fist through. This fan is not my friend, Jamie thought briefly, but then the tip of the carrot encountered the whirling black fanblade as the fan turned once more to look to the left. Instantly the carrot was pulled out of his hand and obliterated in a shower of orange shards. Jamie was fascinated. The fan never hitched, never changed it's tone as the carrot spattered to the floor, but in Jamie a light had turned on. He felt warm all over. He felt like he was jerking off, like he had a really good one going, the kind that left his knees shaking. He looked around, suddenly ashamed, as his face flushed. Nobody was paying any attention to him. He grabbed a broom and began sweeping up.

The next day he brought two carrots, and he tried to space them out. Each time he captured a moment where no-one was watching and sent another carrot through the machine, he would sigh, and blush, and burn all over. The power of the fan was overwhelming. The day after it was two more. He tried different methods of insertion, savoring the slow disintegration as he pushed the carrot through centimeter by centimeter, relishing the instant segmentation when he threw the carrot into the blades all at once. The next day he tried celery, but for some reason it didn't give him the same reaction. He thought it might be the color.

That weekend he was in the bathroom, enjoying a few minutes out of the heat, and thinking about the fan like a boy with a crush might think about his secret love. He was idly masturbating when he noticed the mousetrap in the corner had a dead mouse inside it. His mind caught on the mouse like it was a hook. The fan. The mouse. He had to see it.

He knew this would be a little messier, a little harder to explain, if he was caught. The mouse was wrapped in toilet paper in his shorts pocket. All he wanted was to be alone with the fan, with every fiber in his body - he hadn't finished masturbating, he was so caught up in the idea of the mouse meeting those blades, and as he folded, stacked, folded he kept the sheets and towels between himself and anyone who might see the bulge in his crotch. He was throbbing a little, all over, like his body had become an abscessed tooth - he ached to see what would happen, longed to insert the mouse into the back of the fan. He wondered if there would be blood.

No one was looking.

He slipped around the corner, behind the fan, out of site to anyone unless another coworker came behind the desk. He pulled out the mouse, fumbling with it as his hands shook, and peeled off the layers of toilet paper he had carefully wrapped around it. It hadn't been dead long - it was still soft. Trembling, he took it by the base of the tail, and began inching it's nose through the fan.

"Jamie!" his co-worker Susan shouted, and he could hear the shock in her voice, but he pushed the nose into the blade and let the rest follow, pulled into the spinning power, and as the mouse disappeared in a haze of fur and whiskers and blood and skin he felt himself shoot warmth into his shorts, once, twice, three times. He was shaking all over. "Jamie what the christ are you doing!" Susan said, and the bewilderment was already giving away to disgust and anger. "What the fuck was that? Is that blood? What the fuck are you doing over there?" He could hear her coming up behind him as he shuddered. The mess on the floor was resplendent, an amazing pattern of mouse parts that he was quite certain no-one had ever seen before. He grabbed the counter to his right to keep his knees from buckling as Susan dropped her hand onto his left shoulder.

"Jamie, what the fuck?" She demanded, turning him to face her, but he wasn't listening. He barely noticed as she called over the owner and pointed to the mess. His mind was reeling. The explosion of sensation when the mouse disintegrated had washed all over him and now he was floating, drifting in a warm sea. He stared dumbly as the boss began yelling, and walked calmly out when they pointed him to the door. His head was ringing. He was smiling. His muscles jittered all the way to the pet store.

That night he walked back to the laundromat in the dark, his backpack full of the pet mice he had bought. The store clerk told him they were 'feeders', bred especially to be eaten by a snake. This seemed perfect to him. He could feel them crawling all over each other against his back as he circled around behind the strip mall that held Busy Beaver Laundry and climbed the stairs next to the dumpster. The door was locked, but he knew it could be opened with a credit card, he had seen the door latch from the inside a dozen times. Inside, he dropped the bag to the floor and spent a moment watching the bulges shift and move beneath the fabric of his bag. The fan stood at face height, unmoving, three big, black blades curving outwards from the large central eye. It was hungry. He could tell. He plugged it in.

The first mouse went in kicking and biting, folded back on his hand, trying desperately to crawl away from the wick wick wick of impending messy death, so he had to push it into the blades spine first. It was knocked out of his hand and across the room, leaving a thin spray of red behind, fine droplets in a trail. He had lost his grip. The second mouse went in headfirst while he kept his hand wrapped snuggly around it's body and legs. It scrabbled for a second before the blade took off it's brain. The rest of the body went in without a struggle. The third he dangled by the tail and let it swing into the fan. It lost a foot first and began squeaking and writhing frantically, but only for a second, before it was pulled into the swirling, shimmery circle. He was left holding the tail. Absently, he put the bloody tip into his mouth and began sucking on it as he reached for the fourth little white mouse.

This one seemed shocked, frozen with fear. Maybe the smell of it's comrades' insides had sent it into the same paralysis caused by the hoot of an owl. He wasn't expecting it to fight as he brought it up to the cage, and so when it turned to jump from his open hand he overreacted, shoving it too far, and he felt the blade whack his finger. It hurt dully, like whacking it against a table might, but not nearly as much as he would have expected. He wrapped his other hand around his sore finger. It wasn't there. His finger was sitting in bits, on the floor in front of him.

Jamie raised his right hand, now missing it's pointer, and let the blood drip into the airflow, watched it alter it's downward course and spray in a fine mist through the blades of the fan. It was beautiful, and already he didn't hurt anymore. He was starting to shake again. He could feel himself getting hard in his summer shorts. He unfolded his middle finger. Quivering with anticipation, he let the tip slip into the fan. No pain at all this tame, just the feel of impact running down his arm. As the shockwave reached his center he ejaculated again. Exquisite. He jammed the rest of the middle finger into the wick wick wick as he came again and again, shuddering. Absolutely exquisite. The unfolded a third finger, and then a fourth. He did the other hand. He saved the thumbs for last. He watched the blood pool out beneath him and spatter in Pollack patterns on the floor before the fan. He was in love. He was flying. He was free.

Pressing his palms to the pole, he leaned his face towards the fan and stuck out his tongue.