Bookbinding

My first day at the bookbinding factory and I had to be there by 7:00. I was up and ready by 6:30. I wanted to be prepared so I split an eighth of mushrooms with my friend who got me the job. Good idea, right? He tore the covers off of books at the beginning of the line. My job was to take the coverless books and cut the pages to the same length. I was beginning to peak during training. The guy who was training me's voice began to echo in my ear and refracted softly off of my brain. The ceiling in the factory was high, so very high and had a skeleton of beams and infrastructure that zig-zagged under aluminum air ducts. The welding that was going on in the other side of the factory gave off a bluish hue that sparkled and played in reflections off of the......What? The man training me could see that I wasn't paying attention.
"Pay attention, because this is the dangerous part." He said.
My duties were to take books with the cover torn off from a cart, place them on a machine, press a button, which would clamp the book into place, pull a lever and BANG! A huge gullotine-like blade slammed down into the book and cut the pages accordingly.
"So you push this button with your left hand," He pushed the button and down came the clamp, pressing the book into position.
"Then you grab this lever with your right hand" In his right hand, he grasped and pulled on a horizontal bar with a rubber grip on it. I was very much feeling those mushrooms by now and looked over and saw that my friend was too-his pupils were the size of quarters and looked as if he was taking particular enjoyment in ripping the covers off of books.
"Now when you grab this bar, you see, the safety comes down"
The safety looked like a row of elongated test tubes, that fell down on top of the book, directly in front of where the blade comes out.
"If they don't fall flat, the blade wont come out" He began to pull the lever back some.
BANG! The blade came down and cut the book nicely. The safety had a sickly yellow color and glistened with lubricant from the blade. I imagined that it was the first row of teeth on a mechanical monster that consumed paper and small children's arms. It was a deep sea fish with a light that dangles in front of it's face, luring fish close to the light. Once close enough, the predatory fish's needle-pointed incisors extend and ensnare the foolish fish. The animal before me waited until you gripped it's handle, with it's soft, soothing rubber grip and then trapped you with it's jaundiced "safety" and sliced you into pieces with it's trap door meat cleaver tooth, hidden deep inside it's expressionless face.
Yeah, the mushrooms were in full effect.
"So if you, look over here, if you had your hand under here, the safety would not land flat and.." Was he really putting his hand there?
BANG! The blade came out without the safety's permission. His three middle fingers were the monster's latest victims, chopping them off just above the length of his pinky. He let out a shrill cry that reverberated throughout the factory, bouncing back into my brain. I looked down at the machine where there was a ramp that led to a cart. The cart was filled with the paper trimmings from the books that were cut, a little Mexican guy came by four times a day to empty it. The finger-parts rolled down the chute and into the cart, leaving a bloody trickle behind them. He continued to shout, and turned white as a sheet. People ran over and wrapped his spurting hand in a roll of industrial grade brown paper towels from the men's room. Another man gathered the fingertips from the cart. Off to the hospital he went. I finished my day sweeping the floor, the mushrooms wore off on the ride home.