Gutting fish for the common good

There had been a revolution that I supported. After the revolution, which I think was Communist, people were assigned jobs. I got assigned to gut fish in a cannery. It was so gross! The smell was terrible. I woke up every day and gutted fish, making huge reeking piles of guts and heads and skin on this balcony-like structure we stood on above a wharf. At the end of the day, I had to push all those piles of yucky stuff, which had been in the sun all day, into big barrels. That was the job I dreaded most. It stank so bad that I would almost throw up every time I did it. Then I’d go home and try to sleep, but my hair and hands still stunk of fish and when I finally went to sleep I knew I’d gut fish in my dreams, so I didn’t want to sleep but I was just physically exhausted and had to…

Then I’d get up and do it again.

I only had to do two weeks on the gutting line, then I’d be re-assigned to a job inside the cannery, working machines. I wasn’t sure if I could stand it, if I could hold out till then; and I didn’t want to complain because I *knew* it was for the common good, I had supported the revolution and shouldn’t back out when faced with a little hardship. But it was so terrible to gut fish all day; I couldn’t sleep or eat and I wondered if I might actually die from the smell, like the prisoners in the fish-cellar where the monk wrote the book called _Vox Pisces_. And I knew I’d have to wake up the next morning and do it again…..