Our addictions

"Our addictions," he began, "are what stop us from being real people."

The rest of the group sat quietly in the circularly arranged folding chairs, listening to the counsellor speak.

"They are like," and he scanned the air for a point of comparison, "a rock tethered to our ankle, holding us dead in our tracks. What we must learn to do is cut that rope."

There were nods of recognition as he emphasized those last three words. One man in the circle looked up and cleared his throat. His chair screeched slightly as he rose to his feet. His dark eyes drooped. The group leaned their heads toward him to hear him speak.

"Actually, addiction isn't like that at all. An addiction," he said, moving his eyes around the circle, "is a like a masterpiece. A work of art that you can't stop staring at. They're beautiful. That's the problem: there isn't any rope to cut, and you'll never find it."

* * *

Harvey's body heaved the pallet truck across the factory floor. The sound of his boots against the cold concrete echoed through the dark and empty warehouse. With a robotic sense of grace, he manoeuvred the pallet truck under a skid of freshly-boxed toys, pumped the machine up with a grunt, and began the tedious walk back to the shipping area.

In a quiet lonely job such as Harvey's it was easy to succumb to the monotony. But Harvey did not mind. Over the months, his actions evolved into basic instinct, almost robotic you could say. And as his mind floated away from the demands of moving boxes of new toys from point A to point B, the world inside the toy factory became easily divisible, organizable and comprehensible.

It took exactly two pumps of the truck to lift each pallet to an acceptable height to move across the floor without dragging. It was approximately 415 steps from rear wall of storage to the delivery door. Harvey passed exactly 16 steel pillars, two fenced gates, and 32 hanging light fixtures on each trip.

Each skid was roughly 1200 lbs, except for the deliveries that went out on Fridays which were nearly 1800 lbs. The weight was tolerable, but on Fridays, like tonight, the heavy skids always drew his attention to the lip.

It always startled him whenever he encountered the lip. Almost exactly halfway between storage and the delivery garage there was a slight protrusion in the otherwise perfectly flat warehouse floor. At the meeting point of two cold concrete slabs, there was a slight bump, a discontinuity, which would halt Harvey as he dragged his pump truck. Light loads would glide over easily with a slight tug. But the heavy loads of Fridays would come to a complete stop. And invariably, he would have to grunt and pull the stopped pump truck over the lip and continue to deliver his goods.

Tonight was another Friday and Harvey had been moving skids for three hours. His mind was often absent when he dragged the pump truck through the factory and he knew the route by heart. His mind had clicked off 200 steps when he noticed a slight bump as he dragged his cart. He stopped.

Letting go of the handle Harvey walked back to investigate the bump. It was of course, the tell tale lip. This time however, it did not stop the pallet mover in its tracks. It caused only a slight murmur in Harvey's path.

Harvey got down on his hands and knees to investigate. The light was dim in the factory late at night except for halogen lamps far up overhead. As he moved toward the crack, a gleam of factory light followed him to the cleavage on the floor. He slowly slid his hand against the cold floor. He pressed his fingers to the crack and felt the ridge that had stopped him dead so many Friday nights before. It was hard and rocky, like the blade of a stone knife. And for the first time, Harvey noticed precisely how beautiful it looked under the dim factory lights.