Mme. -----,

I’m writing to inquire about the position you have listed and to offer you my total servitute. I am 5’4”, 84 pounds, bald and ugly but easy to hide. I have no fat and should die soon. I have been employed for the past seven years as a human serviette in a chain restaurant under the supervision of various fat men and dames cruelles but mainly for the esteemed M. Tarfloe, whose work I’m sure you are well acquainted with. While this job and its parallel destruction of my body has been intensely fulfilling, as my life reaches its end I feel the need to expose myself to more varied and degrading kinds of employment while I’m still able. I hope that you might be able to facilitate this.

If you’re not aware, work as a human serviette is varied and comes with a large number of responsibilities. Most of my time is spent on the floor, nude, with my arms tied behind my back and my feet bound according to the oriental tradition. My main job is to travel the dining room floor, cleaning it with my mouth. I have to walk with my legs perpendicular to my hips, pushing my face against the ground so that my nose can lead me forward. If I ever rise from this position, whether from discomfort or lesser instinct, the patrons are encouraged to prod and burn me as they see fit, and to otherwise abuse me if I fail to please them with my labor. I am allowed to feed myself only with what I find on the floor, mostly trash and cigarettes and little puddles of spilled milk that are sometimes left around. It is also my responsibility to clean the kitchen and the toilets, which are broadly similar jobs outside of the textures of the floor. The kitchen is rough, badly-poured concrete, the discomfort of which is only increased by the room’s incredible dampness. The toilets, on the other hand, are my favorite for the way the tiles form leylines along which I can more easily guide myself to the stains. It’s practically leisure, so I feel bad.

Besides this, my other key responsibility is ensuring the amusement of my patrons and superiors. As I alluded to earlier, the tables in our dining room each a number of implements for my torture and abuse. The smaller tables have book of matches, awls, and copper wire, while our booths are outfitted with candlesticks, thumbtacks, curing salt and ground glass. Finally, our largest dining table has a cornucopia of all the plates and glasses that I’ve broken through my carelessness, as well as bricks, oil lamps, and caltrops. The plates are my favorite. I like to have my failure shoved in my face, as there is something undeniably and incredibly comforting about being punished with the fruits of my own idiot labor. When I’m smashed with a glass and bleed all over the floor, my only choice is to circle myself, futilely trying to clean a mess from which I am ultimately inseparable. I press my face into the floor and gather the glass into my cheek, waiting for a hobnailed boot to liberate the skin from my face, desperate.

I think what sets me apart from other serviettes is my unflinching dedication to my job. Work is the sole object of my affection, and thanks to the efforts of M. Tarfloe I’ve been able to create a kind of subsistence lifestyle focused entirely on work. I work upwards of twenty hours a day, seven days a week, never leaving the restaurant. I’ve been given an old waste bucket to sleep in underneath the back sink. My only “free” time comes when M. Tarfloe gets bored of me and decides to go home, but thankfully his incredible creativity and imagination mean that my body is never out of use for very long. I don’t like to be alone in the restaurant. I like to be useful. It feels good. I like to feel good. When I’m alone, I like to grind my face against the kitchen floor so I leave a long, twisted trail of blood and mess behind me. Then when the morning shift comes in, they have something to be mad at and beat me for. Last time, they sprayed my back with hot oil from the deep fryer and told me to clean it off with a patch of steel wool pads they made on the floor. I bridged up on my neck so I could push myself forward, but the cooks kept kicking me in the stomach, making me push myself higher and higher up until I was arching my body backward on my forehead and toes. After that, they decided to clean me with chemicals from the bathroom and make me work through the burns. The customers didn’t like the smell, so M. Tarfloe let them watch me drink what was left in the bottles. He says that’s probably why I’m dying, which is bad for business. That’s why I’m writing to you.

I need a job. I don’t care what it is. I only want to work, and to work for you. For you, I am willing to do anything you want, no matter the consequences on my person. My body is mostly used up at this point, but for you this just means that there are no limits to what you can do to me. I want to work until I am completely destroyed, until work is the only record of my ever existing. In exchange for this, I hope that I might be able to give you the same pleasure I have given to my patrons and masters over the last seven years. If not, I’m sure that you will be able to make your own fun, without limitations.

Please contact M. Tarfloe if you are in need of references to my character and quality of work. I beg your pardon for my insolence and the many errors in my letter and broader existence. In any case, I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours,
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