Acceleration

During the summer before his senior year of high school, the narrator, 17-year-old Duncan, laments his job at the Toronto Transit Commission’s Lost and Found, also known as the “morgue.” He describes his father as a dictator who makes him work there, his supervisor being a man named Jacob.

Duncan often hears the subway rumble overhead as his job takes place 50 feet underground. As he looks through the shelves, he finds a notebook with graphs and eyes drawn in the margins. The top of one page reads “DROWNING TIMES” (6). The y-axis lists times; the x-axis lists various liquids, some of which are caustic. A note about a litter of mice is at the bottom of the page.

Pages later, there is a newspaper clipping about two cats that were gutted, hanged with chains, and nailed to telephone poles. Another newspaper clipping warns readers of a wave of animal killings. Duncan drops the book, steps on it, and then kicks it as he returns to the front desk. He wants to do away with the book but remembers that “cockroaches” can be hard to kill.