Throne by Phil Tucker

looked out at her, his lined, seamed face suspicious, angry, doubtful.
    “What you doing coming here so late?”
    She didn’t have enough energy to argue, no voice to speak regardless.
    “Why should I let you in? So you can waste more time in here? You don’t want the job, we find someone else who work hard, harder than you.”
    Maya shoved the door open. Jose was a blowhard, a little man given enough power to feel important, but not important enough to matter. He was nominally the shift leader, but he got paid about as much as everybody else. His true payment was the right to boss people around, to issue empty threats and make everybody’s life worse than his own. But he was also a small man, small enough for Maya to surprise with a hard shove and knock aside.
    The door swung open, Jose stumbled back, and she entered into the dull chatter of sewing machines, the low voices in muted conversation, the narrow echoes and sordid smells that were the ‘factory’. It was little more than a cheap apartment, some four rooms crammed with tiny desks at which women and older children worked, sewing belts that would then be sold to expensive stores with brand names. Some of them worked six hours like her, others three times that much, sewing and stitching until they collapsed from fatigue, trying desperately to make enough money to change their situation, knowing that they never would.
    Jose was spluttering, demanding explanations, excuses, apologies, but she had none to give him. She was too tired, too worn out, and she knew that nothing she could say would have pleased him anyway. Anyways, she couldn’t talk to him no matter what she might have to say, so instead, she lowered her head, allowed his words to land on her shoulders like licks from a lash, and walked stolidly toward her station and sat down.
    Maya had worked these past months for hours on end in this tiny room. It violated all kinds of codes, with seven women packed into a room barely large enough to qualify as a pantry, desks rammed against each other, the backs of their chairs clacking and banging whenever a woman moved or turned to say something. Overhead, harsh, stiff light shimmered down from their fluorescent cages, flattening out the beige, scuffed tones of the walls, the dirt colored hues of the mongrel carpet. There was no music, no energy to the voices, no spirit to the work. Just deadened fingers busily managing the crafting of belts and other accessories.
    Jose had followed her to her station, and now stood over her, hands planted on his hips, ranting on about respect and professional obligations and how he would be reporting her to his superior and that she couldn’t just walk in when she liked. Maya knew that as soon as he had made a big enough show for the others he would walk away, and, as such, ignored him, instead setting about the arranging of her workspace, pulling her box of materials out from under the desk, turning on the sewing machine, adjusting her light, straightening her back for one last stretch before diving in.
    Six hours to go, five really, given her late start. Maya could normally produce about one belt every ten minutes, five an hour, with breaks, and about thirty or so for the whole of the shift. She would get paid for each item produced, so it was imperative that she produce as many as she could, letting quality slide for quantity. It was always at the beginning of each shift that she wished for a source of music, something to listen to, something to play into her ears as she began to work. To make her fingers more nimble, to distract her mind, to lull her thoughts and imagination into a routine series of movements that produced precious little money, but enough to placate the people who ruled her life.
    Jose moved away, sniffing, pausing to glance back at her once and then was gone. Something was settling over her, not resignation, but a determination to simply work. Where some might turn to drink to escape her problems, Maya