The moment Hurricane Harvey’s epic rains receded, demolition of Houston’s flooded homes and businesses began. Eager to earn outsized wages of $15 per hour, transient laborers deconstructed homes twelve to fourteen hours a day. A month later, their empathy evaporated and their gravy train over, the hired hands returned to unstable minimum-wage jobs.

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Remediators is a short story about how people, out of greed or economic necessity, justify others’ suffering to prosper themselves.  After stripping a wealthy defense contractor’s home to bare bones and completing their jobs, the remaining members of a small crew are unexpectedly reunited—twice. Reminiscing about their departed co-workers’ everlasting bliss, and how their own blessedness removing golden toilets was only temporary, the gang all thought as one: may God’s wrath . . .