Day 2,099

I remember when I used to work in my uncle's recycling plant which was officially just an environmentally beneficial hobby that he definitely didn't make any money from, especially not cash-in-hand from people who never told us their real names.

I started as a volunteer for the standard 2 weeks of work experience that my school demanded we do every year. At first it was pretty normal, just watching my uncle moving big piles of miscellaneous bags through a couple of different sorting machines and helping him move the final bags into the back of a lorry owned by a friend of his.

Everything changed when we were about halfway through shredding several huge bags of cans and the sound of metal-grinding-on-metal turned wet and... pulpy. Everything that came out was suddenly red and stank to high heavens like iron and puke.

My uncle told me to go take my lunch even though it was barely ten in the morning. I made out like I was eager to rush away but I kept close enough to hear him calling someone and yelling at them that they promised to not do this again. That he wasn't their butcher and that this one had better been dead first.

He told them to send in their cleaners, hung up and spun around so abruptly I didn't have time to duck back down. From then on he made me an official employee, said that the guy's blood was on both our hands and paid me well enough to not squeal when it happened again and again and again.

I've lost count of how many shady men have left us wriggling black bags and told us their clean-up crew would be there in an hour. My uncle hated it as much as I did but for very different reasons - I hated that we were killing people and couldn't say anything without incriminating ourselves... he hated it for the smell.