11th Day - Rosemary

Reading time: 1 min

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

If I were a villain, my alarm would be my backstory. It sounds like a cry for help, so horrifying that sometimes I don’t know whether it comes from the nightstand or from within my brain.

That’s the life of a chef, I’ve been told, but I’m not a chef. In fact, I’m not even a cook.

I’ve been working in an Italian restaurant since I moved to London; hired not for my skills but for my accent. The owner, a British chap who doesn’t even bother spelling “Bolognese” correctly, in just a couple of months has managed to ruin pretty much everything in my life. Ninety minutes commute—each way—frame my seventeen hours shifts, in the absence of disruptions, which make the tube my bedroom and gives me five hours to rest, shower and call my mum back in Italy. I’m dead to my friends, I’m losing my hair and everything I loved is becoming more and more unbearable.

The cracking noise of eggshell—so warm, so peaceful—now makes me shiver and the stink of grease in that disgusting kitchen sticks on my clothes like a fungal infection.

Even the scent of rosemary is now spoiled forever. It was the smell of Sunday in my grandma’s house. It used to remind me of her magical hands handling the chicken, sometimes dispensing a small piece of oiled bread or a crunchy chunk of skin.

It used to be my favourite smell in the world, now reduced to a reminder of my Dantesque punishment: working for a monster who prepares tomato sauce with rosemary.

It should be oregano. It should be oregano!

That’s what my alarm screams every morning from within my rotting brain.

It should be oregano.