Petr was the newbie at the One Hole potash factory.
From the very outset he didn't fit in.
A square peg in one round hole, Petr was unpopular with his workmates and a real pain in the ass for management.
His problem was the environment.
Petr was greener than most and certainly greener than anyone else at the factory.
The trouble was that One Hole generated tonnes of waste.
Sodium Chloride.
Masses of it.
Table salt.
There was so much salt that it had formed an enormous mountain beside the factory, a white hill that could be seen for miles on the flat European plain.
One Hole Hill.
The thing was at least 300 metres high and 400 metres in length.
It was poisoning everything around it like a tumour.
The River, the fields, the water table, the animal life.
Everything was saturated in salt and Petr saw it straight away.
He moaned to his colleagues on day one and complained to Grader, his gaffer and the big big boss from the off.
What were they going to do about it? It's a disaster already and if the hill slips it'll be an atrocity!
He threatened to go the the national press and that might spark a big enough scandal where everyone lost their jobs.
It was true that the salt hill was getting ever closer to the small town of Dess. It's crystal flanks were fanning out under the sheer weight of the mineral mountain. Like a toxic skirt it threatened the outer restraining walls.
But half of Dess worked at the factory. Potash was in their blood. The other half looked after them. Dess was a One Hill town.
Petr was the proverbial in the town's butt.
And yet the customary rituals for newcomers had to be adhered to, even for him.
In the supervisor's big office, in front of his huge saltwater aquarium, Grader insisted the new starter come to the local bar for a round of welcome beers that night.
Grader slapped Petr on the shoulder and agreed that yes, the salt hill was indeed an eyesore but, hey, what the hell could they do about it. It employed the whole of Dess.
Petr went along to the bar with his boss.
Nervous at first, the frothy saline beers kept coming and he got merrier and merrier.
Sufficiently inebriated, Grader, having drunk only lemonade, picked up the semi-comatose newbie and told him not to fret. He would take him home to bed.
He lied.
Under the cover of darkness Grader led a drunken Petr to the summit of One Hole Hill and having dug a shallow grave already, undressed him and threw the hapless rookie into the depression, where he rolled over and simply slept like a naked baby.
Grader retreated back to the pub and explained he'd tucked Petr in. He'd be as good as new in the morning and hopefully see some sense.
On the peak of the white mound Petr, sound asleep and unaware of where he was, began to sink lower into the soft powder.
He sank so low that salt began to cover his body like a sand dune.
Due to his weight and warmth, he slowly descended into the very heart of the mountain and was entirely encased in pearly salt like a curing meat.
He woke.
His mind reeled as he tried to work out where he was.
As he opened his mouth, bitter crystals filled his cavity and he gagged violently.
He parted his eyes and the same dreadful mineral worked it's way into his burning vision.
What on earth had happened?
And then it dawned on him.
The welcome drinks had really been a ruse to get him drunk and allow his so-called Supervisor to bury him alive in the salt stack.
Yes, that was it. The terrible reality. To keep him schtumm.
Retribution for gobbing off.
The whole town of Dess was in on it. Had to be. You can't just dump someone up here on the hill and get away with it.
Or can you?
As he fathomed it all out, the salt became increasingly difficult to deal with. It pressed down on his slight frame, but even worse were the painful burns as it navigated all his orifices: his moist pupils, his wet lips, his damp nostrils, his sticky ears, his penis pipe and worst of all, his arsehole.
The terrible crystals found their way in every which way and by turns each of Petr's bodily fissures took in masses of salt and the fluids in his body began to seep out.
His eyeballs were the first to wither and shrivel as the stuff brutally dessicated anything soft.
They shrank like raisins and Petr screamed as caustic pulver was free to cascade into his sinuses and his inner skull.
The agony was beyond excruciating and inevitably, as the pitiful rookie roared in pain, the endless screes of white fell into his mouth and slid down his throat, taking final refuge in his stomach and lungs, where they began their unstoppable duty of drying him out from the inside.
Slowly, Petr dessicated.
His organs creased and crumpled into leathern parcels. His skin pocked and puckered, turning into a parchment bag holding his bleached bones and plaster veins.
But it was only his brain that retained some humanity.
The very worst of it.
Hate.
Cured, parched and salted hate.
In the withered shrump of his mad mind's eye, his hatred coalesced around one single name.
Grader.
The man who had buried him on One Hole and taken away his future and his life.
He would pay.
Oh how he would pay.
The once Petr rose from his crystal grave.
His form was encrusted like a galleon's hull and the final stages of his wet decay oozed from his orifices, the deepest morsels of his innards turning to brine.
He staggered down the snowy slopes, crows eyeing him from up high as they sensed the presence of death and dereliction in the dusk.
The salted mummy trudged towards the Potash factory, a slug trail of tiny jewels in his wake.
It was dark outside as he entered the plant and traipsed up the steps to Grader's large office, where the light was still on.
He often worked late, creaming off profits from the company accounts and fattening his own growing bank balance.
Salting the profits away like a crab.
The greedy gaffer was far too busy cooking the books to notice a figure stood in the shadows.
As Grader wrote another cheque to himself a crystalline hand took it from him.
He turned to see a monstrous form, part man, part mineral, glistening in the office light, as if it had been salvaged from an ancient wreck.
The figure put the cheque in its mouth and ate it.
It smiled and spoke in a voice like crushing glass.
Hello Grader! Remember me?
The supervisor shook with fear.
Wha, wha, who? Who are you?
It's me, Petr. The man you buried alive on the hill.
Wha, how? How are you still alive?
The salt Petr realized his boss was reaching for his revolver in a drawer.
Brandishing it and trembling, Grader pointed it at the creature of crystals before him.
Don't take another step you hideous bastard or I'll shoot!
Petr stepped forward and Grader emptied his gun in a flurry of shots.
The bullets entered the figure and dropped out of the other side enveloped in a white mineral crust, falling to the floor with a crunch.
Hard cheese Grader!
Petr laughed with a lipless mouth and grasped the helpless boss tightly.
Grader screamed.
Dragging him onto the table next to the huge office seawater aquarium, Petr smiled in his shrieking gaffer's face.
Time to meet your maker Grader!
The encrusted form hurled his victim into the tank and crawled in after him.
They both sank to the bottom of the vast pool, where it's top residents now took a keen interest in these visitors.
Piranha.
Grader stared in horror at the schoal of ravenous fish heading straight for him.
He thrashed the water in a vain attempt to escape, but another hungry sharpened mouth took the first bite.
The gaffer screamed, his throat immediately taking in water with several piranha.
Gagging, he stared in disbelief at the salted man eating his hand, chewing off his fingers one by one.
Inside his gut the voracious fish got to work and began to devour him inside out.
As organs fell to their insatiable appetite, Petr continued to gorge on the outer body. He latched onto Grader's mouth like a giant white leech and sucked off his lips, cheeks, nose and gradually his entire facial skin.
The gaffer's muscled skull gawped at his ex-employee, but just for just a split second before two piranha mined there way along his optic nerve and slurping up his juicy eyeballs, popped out of his sockets like fleeing inmates.
The feeding frenzy continued until there was nothing left of Grader, except his pale gnawed skeleton lying on the gravel floor of the tank.
Satisfied and disliking the taste of the now dissolving salted Petr, the engorged fish again rested in their deep hollow once more.
In the morning the Gaffer's secretary walked into the office with his coffee.
She shuffled some papers and saw the new additions to the aquarium.
Wow! How impressive! They must have cost the old thief a fortune!
There on the tank's stony bottom were two totally realistic human skeletons, intertwined with one another.
Twitchy little crabs and shrimps hopped across their picked-clean skulls in the curiously crimson brine and a piranha sat in Grader's socket tugging a stubborn nerve.
