'They Make Manipulation a Virtue' by Ciara Olsthoorn

Darragh inhaled deeply, sucking the cigarette fumes into his lungs and exhaled in the general direction of the car’s open window, tipping the ashes outside over the door. He scratched his head, pushing back the tangled hair that hung over his eyes like a mop, staring at the sheet he'd printed out off some vegan blog. The article was about these smoothies that had recently gone on sale in his locality. For all the world they looked like blended grass, or a mud pie his son Ross had made years ago, but no; according to Vegan_Sam123 they were “food for the soul”, organic, preservative free and supported his persona of being a “life enthusiast”. “If he can make money out of selling mud then so can I,” Darragh thought.

This was the kind of crap he needed to remember. He tugged at the greying stubble on his chin, a hipster beard in its infancy, it was all part of the act. After all, if he was going to pull this off, he needed to be convincing. One glance at the clock in his car and he cursed under his breath. He crammed the paper into the glove compartment, flicked the cigarette butt on the road and searched his jean pockets for chewing gum, for fear these hippies would smell the smoke off him.

Darragh marched across the road in sandals, jeans and a jumper which looked as if it had been pulled out of another century. The bottles full of lumpy green sludge clinked in the cardboard box as he shuffled awkwardly across the street, avoiding traffic. “If only Ross could see me now”, Darragh laughed to himself, as he half wriggled and pushed the Health Hut’s door open with his back. His thoughts flitted back to the rarer than rare take away he had enjoyed the night before with Ross, the first he'd been able to afford in months. He made a silent prayer, if this worked he'd buy Ross Chinese everyday of his life if he wanted.

Inside, the management team of the Health Hut sat drinking some concoction that smelled of mint and socks, seated around a jumble sale table. There was nothing that Darragh hated more than these pretentious, health obsessed hipsters, silently (or not so silently) judging the world around them for eating “chemicals”. As someone who had dropped out of a chemistry course in college, Darragh felt he had the authority to tell them you.are.wrong. This blanket statement of “chemicals” being bad for you was one that made his blood boil. These vegan hipsters had a weakness, underneath all the fancy terms they spouted, they really didn't have a clue what on earth they were on about.

Darragh plonked down the bottles of sludge with his roughly, cheaply, home made labels. “Just giving them that rustic look” he thought. “My good friends!” He announced to the bearded, pierced, tattooed and unwashed managers, “drink!”. He handed out the bottles of Aldi apple juice blended with celery and the forty-nine-cent-deal bargain basket veg he picked up that week. “That pure apple flavour, is from one of the five native apple trees to this area, that I have growing at home. Nurtured with only the rain and then sun, this is nature’s gift to me, and I've bottled it!” The managers chewed on the lumps and looked contemplatively at one another, slightly nodding and making vague noises of agreement. “These mass producers, y’know, they make manipulation a virtue,” that got a few snorts of derision, “but me, you guys, I've got a family, we like going for walks on Sundays, my wife loves cooking and I just grow the vegetables. My point is, I'm just your average Joe with a passion for organic, free range, pesticide free and wholesome fruits and veg. I know my kids love this juice and I've got about ten more recipes I can show.” Hopefully they wouldn't notice the recipes coincided with Aldi’s rotation of cheap produce. Some noxious gas came wafting out of the Health Hut’s kitchen, Darragh almost gagged. A quick cough and he ploughed on. “I'm just in love with this product, and I probably don't have the business brain for it but I wanted to come in and share this with you because I know you put the same value in clean, safe food as I do.” Darragh smiled at them and pushed the dirty hair back off his face again.

A young man sat up and examined the bottle of lumpy lies. His nose ring seemed to catch the light at awkward angles and flash bright gold. “If I was his father I'd have ripped that out with a pliers by now,” he thought, nose rings were for bulls, not people, in his eyes. The young man addressed Darragh with an Irish accent brutally twisted into American. “Man I really like it, y’know it's so obvious you got this love and passion for what you do,” Darragh nodded sincerely, radiating the deep love he felt for his Aldi apple juice. “You've got this aura about you dude, like I feel we could definitely help you out and start stocking this, I mean it's so fresh and real. Those big corporations man, I mean, they're poison and it's just so wrong,” Darragh swallowed the laughter rising up his throat. Could this actually be happening? “Of course we’ll have to crunch some numbers, do a bit of official stuff but that's really just a formality,” the young man continued. Darragh stuck out his hand, “I'd rather be crunching on apples than numbers but you can count on me sir!”

“Please man, call me Fiachra,” he grasped his hand firmly, “okay so, I'll get some contact details from you but I feel like you'll fit in perfectly with our ethos here,”. Darragh fumbled in his pockets for a pen, “yes, yes, I'll just-”

“Here put it into the phone man,” Fiachra whipped an iPhone six plus out of his back pocket. “Of course” Darragh thought darkly, “I could hardly have expected to him to consistently hate all large corporations,” he smiled, still half giddy from the utter stupidity of this man, he gently sighed and kept the performance together. “I'll be in touch, keep it real man!” Fiachra smiled and slouched back behind the counter to his managerial duties.

Darragh’s toes felt the cold breeze through his sandals outside the shop. A strange, and liberating feeling. He had done it. The elephant on his shoulders had finally shifted its weight, he felt so light he could just take off. Ross would be able to go to college, no more letters printed with red, no more skipped class trips for Ross, or clothes from the lost and found. Finally a break. He skipped back to the car, a celebratory cigarette was in order, and maybe a take away too.