Nineteenth Shift.

Cutter stared at me with distant eyes as I finished informing him of the events that had transpired not even twelve hours ago. I felt embarrassed yet somewhat triumphant at what had happened, though Cutter remained silent for much longer than he usually ever is, which means something considering the fact that he doesn’t shut up.

“So you fucked her.” He replies simply and I shrug. “I guess.” He stares at me a moment. “You guess? Like sticking your dick inside of her could be otherwise interpreted as recreational drug use?” I frown. “We fucked. Nothing much else to it besides the fact that she tried using a super-sized tampon as a dildo on my arse.” Cutter rubs his scraggly chin a moment. “You think it was pre-meditated?” I just look at him. “She decapitated a co-worker and specifically asked for me to be the replacement.”

Cutter nods a second, “And how exactly does Ear Ache fall into this situation?” He asks and I’m rubbing my head, already pretty annoyed with the interrogation. “She threw a slab of bacon and told him to fetch. Didn’t see him again for a few hours.” I cast a look over at my large platonic friend and see him still sucking on the remnants of the bacon like a sick wad of gum, a large smile tearing open that simple minded face of his.

“Did you make magic happen?” Cutter asks and I stare at him. “What do you mean?” I query and he growls. “Did you empty the sink? Add milk to the cereal? Wiggle free the Wii-mote?” I stare at him with a look of amazement and he slaps his head before grabbing my shoulders. “DID YOU EJACULATE WHILE STILL INSIDE THE VAGINAL TRACT!!!” He screams and I glare at him. “I got that when you started the shitty metaphors, I was just amazed at how none of them seemed even remotely comparable to the usual innuendo one uses when describing intercourse.”

My response is a wide eyed stare that easily caused the hairs on the back of my neck to tingle. “Is that a yes or no?” He simply responds and I shrug his hands from my shoulders, steadily trying to procrastinate. “That is indeed the question.” I reply and he growls yet again and I sigh. “Yes I did. Every time I tried to pull out she threatened to break my xbox. So I had no choice.”

Cutter’s eyes widened and he was once more shaking my shoulders in anger. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?!? YOU HAVE SOWN YOUR SEED!!! YOU HAVE JUST GIVEN GOD THE POWER TO FUCK YOU IN THE ARSE FOR ETERNITY!!! CONDEMNING YOU TO THE WILL OF THE VILEST CREATION IN ALL OF EXISTENCE!!! THE WOMAN.”

His screaming did little to make me worry; in fact, all it did was make me ask one simple question. “Why the ill view of women?” Cutter sighs and licks his lips. “My babysitter molested me.” He responds before raising a wire hanger held taut in his twisted fingers, causing me to frown. “Seriously?” I ask with an air of absolute disbelief and Cutter merely nods. “We need to stop it now before it grows a brain, otherwise who knows what horrors could be born upon the world…”

I push the hanger away, “How about we see where this situation leads first eh? I’m pretty sure it’s nearly impossible to get pregnant on the first try. Trust me.” Cutter seethes at my reply but lowers the hanger with a twisted sneer of disproval. “Babies are evil. Pure evil.” He warns and I just pat his shoulder. “I know mate, but abortion is a serious topic to try and touch in a comedic manner. We got to tread lightly otherwise risk another lawsuit like PETA did over that leprechaun.”

Cutter huffs a breath and crosses his arms. “How was I supposed to know those little green fuckers were considered an endangered species. I thought we’ve had equal rights since that shit with the Indians.” He mutters and I stifle a mocking laugh. “Umm yeah equal rights are about as extinct as leprechauns are now.”

Eighteenth Shift.

The store emanated with a silence unknown to most retail stores that fateful evening Ear Ache and I stocked the shelves in aisle seven, otherwise referred upon as ‘The place where the cereal is’ by most victims and incontinent employees who can’t count without suffering from dyslexia or some other stupid affliction.

As I piled one box after another of some distasteful cereal called Fuck-O’s with Ear Ache smashing empty boxes with his face behind me neither one of us even thought that the night was about to take the turn it was about to.

“Tourney! Over here!” Cutter calls from across the aisle, earning a perked ear and an exasperated sigh as I wandered over to him. “What is it?” I query and Cutter immediately stands up straight and flashes a quick salute. “Supervisor has ordered you and Ear Ache to move to intimates!” He shouts and smiles, leaving me with a raised eyebrow. “Now why would she ask that? I’ve never worked that aisle, and Ear Ache, well he hasn’t worked it since he started eating the tampons.”

Cutter just shrugs before patting my head. “Well it’s not my call, I’m just the bloody messenger, the Supervisor just decided you were the best replacement since the chick already working that aisle decapitated the other employee she was working with.” I’m feeling the steady frown on my face swiftly increase in volume. “Well isn’t that great…” I mutter and Cutter laughs.

“I’m sure you’ll have fun! Now if you excuse me, I get to go tell the fuck in aisle ten that he’s fired!” Cutter whips out a pistol from his pants and cocks it with a wicked grin. “This is my favourite part of every shift.” He chuckles before taking off.

“Well I guess we better get our arses to intimates.” I growl in annoyance as I turn to Ear Ache who had already started eating the Fruit Loops, box and all. At my words he stops chewing on the box that hung half opened in his mouth, uttering a shrill scream and he was then lumbering after me as I started towards aisle fourteen without a word.

Upon passing aisle ten and getting a good glimpse of Cutter sodomizing the corpse of an employee whose brains had been sprayed all over the canned food I couldn’t help but rub my neck anxiously at the thought of what awaited me. A few more aisles down and my fears are only solidified as I come upon the Janitors that kept Every Mart in it’s… err… pristine state.

Goblyn, Troll, Oger, Golemn and Redcap; the tight-knit group of janitors who do the jobs that every other employee would rather slit their own wrists than take part in. The worst part about them though would have to be the grotesque enjoyment they contrive in mopping up the bile and liquids left behind from diseased victims or from one of the many accidental mishaps that occur within the store on a daily basis.

Best that they stay close to one another because it’s highly doubtful that anyone would actually call on them unless it was to report a cleanup in aisle four. A sad truth but otherwise just another example of just how cookie cutter the workplace is to a high school.

Back on track, I stopped for a moment to let the group stumble passed, Golemn, the largest, pushing the enormous mop bucket whilst Troll and Goblyn hung from its sides lashing out at anything that got close. Oger thundered by with a slim body bag slumped over his shoulder and Redcap sneered at me as he walked by, accentuating my odds of survival by tracing his finger over his irritated throat.

Ear Ache puffed out his chest behind me and Redcap’s eyes widened and he quickly whipped around and strode after his fellow janitors, barking insults at the smaller two to stop tearing at passing victims lest they wanted to follow after them and clean up the trail of blood their oozing wounds would leave behind.

I rounded my shoulders and steadied my breath before continuing on my way into the intimate’s aisle, my eyes looking passed all the missed blood spatter and lump of vein to lock onto the smirking lips of the one employee I never wanted to be paired up with.

The new chick.

Seventeenth Shift.

Basking in the last smoke break for my shift, I’m finding myself stealing glances at the new girl as she enjoyed a cigarette of her own over by an overturned cart that people had taken for an improvised seating area.

Suddenly feeling a pair of eyes boring into me I turn around to see a wiry cretin suffering from uncontrollable muscle spasms staring at me with wide bulging eyes, his teeth set in an enraged frown as a heated wheezing comes pouring out from his stuffed nose.

“Oh hey Twitch, how’s life been?” I ask pleasantly with absolutely no intention of paying attention should the freak decide to actually answer. Which surprisingly enough, he seemed a tad bit too peeved to even get anything short of a seething growl to spill from his curled lips.

I’m adopting an irritated furrow of the brow as his eyes continue to bore into me. “Please, do you happen to want something?” I reply with a hint of hostility degrading my tone, images of sugarplum fairies and repeatedly stabbing the man in the eye with my pocket knife drifting by the forefront of my mind like a midsummer night’s dream.

Lastly I see the man’s mouth begin to twist open in a response, my ears straining to hear the words he was about to say, though I would have done better to cover them, as Twitch surprisingly possessed a pair of rather healthy lungs.

“TWENTY FEET CLEARANCE FROM THE PREMISES YOU SMOKING DICKFUCK!” His words rang out louder than a gunshot and more violent than the second world war. My hair was swept back and I had to brace myself in order not to fall back as his words and spittle slapped across my face like that of my mother’s pimp.

Everyone sitting and talking by the overturned cart were immediately taking off in every direction in a desperate struggle to give themselves enough room between them and the entrance to Every Mart so not to become the next target of Twitch’s nonchalant anger.

I was left standing in the wake of Twitch’s outburst, my eyes set upon the freak as his body unconsciously kept twisting this way and that, though he still managed to keep those eyes set upon mine, and we held that gaze for a long moment, neither willing to give the other the satisfaction of backing down.

Except I suffered from a rather severe case of being a complete and utter asshole towards anything with a heartbeat and so as we held that standoffish glare, I flick my lit cigarette into his eye, hearing the sick sizzle as the enflamed tip made contact with his retina.

Now he was lying on the ground, contorted in pain as he screamed with his hands held over his eye. A satisfied smirk slit across my face and I turn away and see the new girl watching me with a playful smile scrawled across that too adorable face of hers, causing my heart to prance about in my chest screaming like an excited three year old who just realized snorting koolaid was fun.

Not wanting to stop, I continued by making a dramatic exit, that of which was as provocative as it was moistening towards the opposite sex, and so I swept the hair from my face and turned on my heel towards the door, beginning a few striding steps before Twitch grabs my pant leg, slipping my trousers from my waist and pulling them down to my ankles.

And I stood there stupefied as the many eyes in the parking lot now had a front row seat look at my heart speckled boxers. I held that solid posture like a deer caught in the headlights until Twitch started biting into my calves. I scream and kick at the cannibalistic fuck  as I struggled to keep balance in which I failed miserably although I succeeded with flying colors in tripping over my pants, falling flat on my back, cracking my skull on the pavement and knocking myself unconscious.

Sixteenth Shift.

“So it has been as of late that the Deli has been producing a very inadvertent amount of rotten flesh and fish tongues. It has upset the victims to such a degree that management has decided to fire the current staff residing in the meat department and so we are now looking for employees to take their place.”

The words that crawled out from between the supervisor’s lips sent frightened murmurs through the meating room. As was the common knowledge that anyone who gets sent to the meat department never returns due to the fact that they are mutated into hideous fleshy meat sacks.

Mind you there were only three who ever returned, henceforth breaking that fact and taking ‘no one’ down to a less threatening ‘mostly no one’ which for some reason has left some of the older employees a tad peeved. Partly because Ear-Ache, Cutter and I kind of slaughtered the heart of the meat department, henceforth making it our faults that the quality has failed so recently and pushed management to damn more people to a fate worse than death. But mostly because they keep forgetting to make the proper changes to the story.

“So for the next few weeks I will be evaluating you all to see which of you will be getting promoted to Deli. So get out there, don’t fuck up, and give me reasons why I shouldn’t send you to your doom.” She smiles before turning and skipping out the room, leaving the rest of us in shock and disbelief, but mostly shock, because most of us were used to fate fucking us over like this. I mean seriously, we work at Every Mart, you don’t get more damned than this.

“Well you’re all fucked.” The new girl laughs, earning a few frightened looks from many a people. “And what’s keeping you from being just as fucked as the rest of us?” I query with a sour twist of the lips. “It’s obvious, I got boobs, I’m hot, and I’m willing to sodomize myself for corporate gain.” She replies with a smirk that I’m pretty sure made half the middle aged men in the room cream themselves. The rest being reminded of their impudence.

“And what makes you think I’m not the same?” Cutter growls and I simply pat his shoulder. “She has boobs, last time I checked you sold your nipples for a Klondike bar.” Cutter adopts a strange smile at that and basks in the realm of memories for a moment. “No one asks me what I’d do for one anymore heh.” He chuckles and I’m left staring down the new girl.

“I’m sure that when all’s said and done the supervisor’s decision will be made upon our efficiency and ability to adapt to whatever trials and tribulations that transpire during our shifts.” The new girl just smirks at my words and I sigh. “What am I saying she’ll probably do a raffle like last time.”

Ear Ache spontaneously screams next to me, “I know Ear Ache, but I’m pretty sure she’ll leave your name out like last time as well.” Ear Ache continues to swallow his tongue at that response and I just rub my head in exasperation before following the slowly dispersing crowd of employees as we all started heading out to start the night.

“Well as long as no one finds out we are the ones who caused the situation in the first place we should be fine.” Cutter assures me and I feel my eye twitch. “And I think that process would be much easier if you stop gloating about it.” I growl and Cutter casts me a look of outrage. “But who doesn’t like hearing about how I killed a leprechaun? It’s like midget tossing between the two towers!”

I slowly turn my head towards him, a scowl pasted upon chapped lips. Cutter remains silent a moment as he returned my stare. “Too soon?” He asks and I just sigh. “Eh not really.” I reply.