Hariette
I reach for the gearshift; the thick red handle feels so good in my grip. Hard, hot, the slight tremble of the machine as it waits for me to move. Squeezing the ribbed rubber cover has me sucking in a breath. There's something really hot about having a big, powerful machine under your ass.
“Do you like that? Like it when I grab you like that?” I say to the bulldozer.
I don’t expect an answer, and my hearing protection makes any verbal response completely illegible, but I swear the seat beneath me vibrates with excitement.
“Yeah, I bet you do, my dirty boy. Let’s get this plot leveled, baby. ”
The foreman waves me forward, giving me permission to start working. I take my foot off the brake and start moving earth.
I’ve always been partial to sitting in a big machine like this. It was an easy decision to get my heavy equipment operator license. Working on construction sites as a woman isn’t always easy. This one has been particularly annoying.
My ex, Chris, took the same job I did.
He’s been doing that a lot recently. He didn’t take the breakup well.
Even though he couldn’t seem to care what I did when we were together.
The relationship was great until he moved in together.
Then every night he came home, played video games for hours, drank 2-6 beers, and fell asleep in his gaming chair.
When I packed my bags and moved out, I wasn’t even sure he’d notice. Except that the dishes wouldn’t get magically cleaned up every evening.
I can’t even remember the last time we had sex.
I spent a lot of long, frustrated nights fighting for his attention before I finally left.
Long.
Lonely.
Frustrating.
Nights.
I’m so fucking horny all the time. I’m not sure how I don’t cum every time I climb into this rumbling seat.
At least I have my work to sustain me. With my trusty machine rumbling and grumbling our way through the workday. The power makes me feel like I could accomplish anything. It’s a change from the rest of my life that feels mildly out of control.
I hit the gas to flatten a pile of dirt. But we don’t move.
“Come on, baby. Don’t betray me like every other man in my life.”
The foreman waves a flag at me. I can’t hear his words, but I can make out his lips. “Harry! Get a move on it!”
I hit the gas again, but instead of moving forward, the dozer turns off completely.
“The hell, Harry?” foreman Mark yells.
“Something’s up. He won’t budge,” I call, climbing down from my driver’s seat.
Mark is already storming in my direction. “This is just great. We’re already behind schedule and you fuck up the dozer?”
“I didn’t fuck anything up.” I pat my buddy on the side of his cab. “The engine just stopped—“
I stop talking as Mark comes to a halt a few feet away. Following his line of sight, I see what made him pause. A pair of boots protrude from the back of the pile of gravel. And there in the dirt is a napping man.
“What the fuck, Chris!” Mark kicks at his boot.
Chris rises slowly, groggily. “Sorry, boss. Late night. I was just catching a little shut-eye.”
“Harry could have fucking killed you!” Mark is shouting again, his ire finally moved from me to someone else.
Shit. I really could have killed him. Not that it would have been my fault. As much as I hate my ex, I don’t want to actually shove half a ton of dirt onto his unconscious body.
Behind me, the bulldozer’s engine begins to idle again. I swivel my head around, watching my baby purr.
“Get back to it, Harry.” It’s a wonder Mark still has a voice with all his yelling.
I stare at my bulldozer for breath. It’s a beautiful machine. “What happened there, baby?” I ask, putting a hand on the treads. “Awful good luck though, we could’ve really hurt someone.”
The engine seems to rev without anyone’s foot anywhere near the pedal.
I climb back into the driver’s seat. I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with that non-answer. At least until machines learn to talk.
The rest of the day is long, sweaty, and gloriously uneventful. The sun is just starting to set as I park the bulldozer back in his spot.
“Thanks again,” I tell it.
I head to a small trailer parked in the back of the lot. Even though I’m the only woman on this team, someone actually bothered to rent two changing rooms for the site so I have somewhere to put on clean clothes and I can drive home without getting the inside of my truck disgusting.
But as I leave, there’s a figure outlined in the opaque glass of the door. Someone is waiting outside.
Shit. I know that silhouette.
It’s fucking Chris.
He starts to turn toward the window. I duck down.
I must not be fast enough, because there’s shuffling outside and then a loud knocking on the trailer door.
“Harry?” Chris calls. “Harry, are you in there? I need to talk to you.”
Fuck no.
I remain crouched. Maybe if I’m quiet for a moment, he’ll assume I already went home.
There’s more knocking, and my phone buzzes.
Shit. Did he hear that?
Chris
Looking for you.
Me:
Sorry, already home for the day.
Chris:
Can we talk? Please.
About us?
Fuck. How am I going to get out of this one? I just want to go home and take a bubble bath with my favorite waterproof vibrator.
Me:
We’ve talked enough.
Chris:
I need to see you.
I’m coming over.
Shit. No. Not that. He knows where my new apartment is.
Me:
Don’t.
Just let me change.
I’ll meet you somewhere for a drink.
O’Sheas. Thirty minutes
There’s silence outside. I wait a little longer to see if he really left. But there’s more shuffling, he sits, and the faint hint of sweet smoke drifts under the door. Shit. Now I have to wait another fifteen minutes for him to finish his joint.
He’s muttering to himself; sounds like he’s rehearsing what he’s going to say to me.
“It’ll be different this time, Harry. It was an addiction. A video game addiction. Not one that you ever helped with. Maybe I could have kicked it sooner with more support.”
There’s a lot more like that. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.
The same type of bullshit I’m sure he’d be saying to my face if I actually met him to talk.
Eventually, finally, there are more voices on the other side of the door. And then I hear him move away.
I wait another couple minutes, before climbing to my feet. I stretch to pop my back and tentatively check out the window. The coast looks clear. I grab the rest of my stuff and open the door to the warm spring evening.
Except for my familiar machines, the job site is completely empty. Not a single human being in sight. I take a deep breath. This is the way I wish it always was. Quiet. With the warm wash of the setting sun over the land.
Just me and some silent machines.
I allow myself a few more deep breaths of peace before I head for the exit. A thick chain hangs around the front gates, with a heavy padlock on the outside. Push, shove, and rattle as I might, it doesn’t budge. They are locked fast. And I am trapped.
“The mother-fuckers actually locked me in here!” I yell.
I know it’s pointless to complain; it’s not like anyone did it on purpose. I was pretending I’d left. I lied to my ex.
I rattle the gates again: nothing. They barely move, not enough of a gap for someone to squeeze through. And the fence is the 12ft, mesh kind. Difficult to climb.
“There’s gotta be some other way out of here,” I say to no one.
“I can help you, Harriette,” a voice behind me groans.
I whirl around, freaked. Ready for an attacker. Or stupid Chris to still be here.
There’s no one there. The lot is empty.
Except. Is that where I left the bulldozer parked?
It seems closer.
The shovel lifts slowly. But that’s impossible.
The cab is empty. I can see that no one’s sitting in the driver’s seat.
“Would you like some assistance?” the voice grumbles again. And this time, I could swear it came from the bulldozer.
I take a few steps around the machine, examining it carefully. There’s no one there; there’s nowhere anyone could be hiding for a prank.
The tread rolls slowly forward, ever so gently hooks the teeth of the shovel under the fence, and lifts until a human could easily duck underneath.
“What the hell is happening?” I finally find my words.
Glancing between the front of the dozer and the clearly empty cab.
When nothing else happens for a couple of moments, I pull myself up into the driver’s seat to examine it.
The ignition doesn’t have keys in it. Those are locked away safely in the foreman’s trailer.
But the familiar vibrations still rumble in the seat beneath my ass.
“I am Dugtritus.” The voice comes from the dashboard this time.
“Alright, Doug. So what? You are a talking bulldozer?”
“No,” the voice says, and maybe I’m just a lonely idiot, but the voice is kind of sounds hot.
“Right, what’s the trick here?”
“I am a Gear Shifter, a life-form from the planet Helios.”
“So you are an alien? Living in the body of a bulldozer?” I ask with a laugh.
“Yes.” The seat under me vibrates with the words. The blade lowers, putting the fence back on the ground. The controls don’t budge an inch.
“This is impossible,” I announce without thinking.
“If you exit, I can show you.”
“Fine.” I shake my head, not believing it for a second. One of the guys is pulling a prank on me. But I lower myself to the ground, step back, cross my arms over my chest, and wait. “Go ahead, prove it to me.”
The bulldozer stands up.
It’s impossible.
But it’s also impossible to deny what I’m seeing.
The treads extend to the sides like arms, and the scoop splits in half to become feet.
I fall backward, flat on my ass, as the bulldozer continues to unfold into a fifteen foot tall humanoid machine. He casts a long, dark shadow over me.
He leans down. Part of the tread unraveling until it forms a hand with five neat fingers on the end that reach for me.
The body has changed as well, the grill morphing into a chest plate and the cab floating up until it becomes a head, with the leather seat forming something that almost looks like a human face.