I OWE YOU

�How in the f**k, I mean, you tell me, how in the holy F**K is it possible to be fired from a convenience store? How is that possible for anyone but a moron who secretly wants to be fired?�

A genuine question, asked a by a genuine man who only wanted a genuine answer. An answer free of bullshit and full of blank honesty.

�It�s possible,� the roommate said, now filling her favorite cup with water at the kitchen sink. �Happens every day, this kind of thing.�

Such a simple answer. The man who asked the question grimaced. The question wasn�t meant to have a simple answer�how could it? This didn�t stop the roommate from giving a simple answer, though. One that wasn�t filled with bullshit. One that rode the coattails of honesty with a complacency that was nearly indecent.

�There I was, eight months into doing my meaningless, low paying job, when a young man came to the counter and placed a flavored alcoholic drink on a picture that advertised safety when it came to selling poison to minors.

For God�s sake.

�Two-fifteen,� said the cashier. Green passed from hand to hand, a register yawned and showed its greedy innards to the world, and seemingly out of thin air, a brown bag was produced.

Into the bag went the flavored alkie drink.

�Thank you, have a nice day,� said the cashier.

The man who had bought the beer, for that was what it really amounted to, a beer, said nothing. A black baseball cap was slung low over his eyes and cast a dark shadow over his facial features. This man could�ve been the perfect burglar.

The man turned and made his way to the door, which had already begun to chime at his approach.

�Wait a second,� said the cashier. �Come back here for a second.�

Something in the cashier�s stomach, which wasn�t seeing nearly enough food these days, squirmed.

Something in his stomach was telling him to do something.

The first hour of his shift, the cashier had experienced all the trappings of a terrible day. The debit machine was down, which meant that the credit machine was also down. When you get right down to it, debit and credit are the same.

The moolah still floats out of your goddamn bank account in the end.

Along with the complete death of the credit/debit features, the gas was abruptly shut off. Repairs�repairs that would take hours to do. This pissed customers off. Payment in the era of plastic squares and pin numbers? Plastic squares and pin numbers, goddamnit. To ask for cash was like a admitting to a customer service nightmare, but that was what the cashier was forced to do for hours on end.

Now, couple that average frustration with telling impatient customers that there was no gas, and that there wouldn�t be any gas for hours to come.

The trappings of a terrible day at work.

�Your I.D, if you don�t mind,� said the cashier, his hand stretched out across the counter. The mysterious man in the dark baseball cap drew a wallet from within his back pocket and whipped out an identification card.

�Twenty-one,� said the cashier, his stomach settling again. Still, his stomach wanted to turn and squirm.

�Thank you, have a nice day,� he said again, this time turning his attention to the cigarette count. The woman he relieved every day always left the previous count for him, but he could barely ever make her handwriting into a sensible thing, so he counted the tobacco stash himself every night. Tonight, he�d decided to start early. Eight months behind a counter had taught him that doing s**t in advance would keep his blood pressure down in a pinch.

Customers sometimes gave him a break. Sometimes, minutes would pass without them coming into the store. Such minutes saw him making fresh coffee, or switching out the dogs on the steel grill that turned with a creak, or sweeping and mopping the floor.

Or attacking the rest rooms with a ski mask and a bottle of disease murdering acid if the day had been especially eventful.

As it often was.

What he most enjoyed doing in these minutes of silence, though, was watching the sunset from the horizon across highway 19. The sun would go dim for a few minutes from his perspective, and then it would abruptly go as brilliant as a floodlight. Down the sky it would trek, taking the day with it.

So simple a process. The beauty, however, was something that was almost unnatural.

Beauty didn�t ordinarily hurt the eyes, but this beauty always did that to him; it hurt his eyes.

Hundreds of days hadn�t numbed him to perfect sunset effects.

The nightfall was what was on his mind when his peripheral view showed him flashes of a different color. Colors, actually.

Red, white, and blue colors.

Moments later, walkies buzzing with far away activity, two cops walked into the store. One of them was a balding young man who looked extremely uncomfortable in his uniform. He had the look of a man who thought that if he had to take a s**t, he�d never get his trousers down in time.

The other cop had a football player�s build. Big, square shoulders, a neck the width of a bull�s, and a face like a cement block. Blue eyes stared into the cashier�s brown eyes with their swift approach.

�Hello, officers,� said the cashier, whose heart had curiously begun to pound at his ribs with the force of a tiny pickaxe. �How can I help you?�

Neither of the cops said a word. The big one was whispering into his walkie with his right hand on the butt of his gun. The other cop was having a long, strange look at the energy booster display in the middle of the counter.

�There a problem?� asked the cashier, who was now trying his best to hide his nervousness.

�Yep,� said the big cop, his mouth twisted into a clever sneer. He lowered his eyes and stabbed at the cashier�s name tag with them. �There is a problem, Gerard, �fraid so. You just sold alcohol to an underage person.�

�What?� was the only thing that the cashier could manage in his shock and confusion.

And rage; a rage that was suddenly brought to a full boil.

�That young man you just sold to was an undercover cop. Nineteen years old. You just sold alcohol to a minor.�

�But I asked for his I.D.,� said the cashier.

�That was after you sold the alcohol to him,� said the big cop. His teeth were huge and white. They glistened with spit. �It doesn�t matter what you did after that, you still broke the law.�

The cashier was an abrupt wreck. How had this happened? A terrible day it had begun as, but a reasonably decent day it had become, with time. How did s**t like this sneak into the workings of a decent day? How was that fair? How was that anything but bullshit?

�Your I.D.,� requested the big cop.

An identification card, with the markings of another state at the top and bottom, was produced. This card was handed over to the cop who looked like he had a stick covered in thorns shoved up his bad place. Fumbling with his walkie, the second cop walked the cashier�s identification card outside.

�Where are you from?� asked the first cop. The aggressive tone in his voice was now absolutely unmistakable. Even though the card had told him from whence the cashier hailed quite plainly, he'd asked anyway. �Why are you here? Where do you live? Do you have a phone number that you can be reached at? How long have you worked here? How long do you plan to stay?�

A barrage of questions aimed at a man who was watching his life crumble before his eyes. Months ago, there had been a close call very much like this, but the cashier had come out of it with no trouble. This time, the full-on burn was going to be applied.

He was being burned by the long arm of the law.

A yellow piece of paper appeared on the counter. The big cop was scribbling down the untidy makings of a summons in front of the cashier. In front of paying, regular customers.

The summons was done in an instant, as if the big cop had been holding back his best and most accusatory penmanship all day. The second cop walked back into the store. He gave the now former cashier back his I.D. card.

�If you don�t show up in court, there will be a warrant issued for your arrest,� said the big cop, who was sporting a crude and venomous smile now.

�I understand,� said the man who wasn�t a cashier anymore. Now he was just a man in a weird foreign state with no family or friends or a lease of his own.

Now he was just a man with a five hundred dollar fine and a sudden misdemeanor on his formerly clean record. Now he was just a man who would likely have to perform some meaningless spell of community service.

All because of a simple mistake and a deceptive �law keeping� sect of a******s in fancy suits.

As if a fancy suit ever did anything to make a gun, a tool of murder and power trips, anything more honorable than what it really was.

�Now smile,� said the big cop, his grin positively beaming, now. �Hold that beer up and smile, cuz you just got got. You just got caught selling alcohol to a minor.�

There was a flash, not unlike that of the setting sun through the plate glass on clear evenings.

This flash hurt the former cashier in a different way.

This flash snatched his

Reviews

[Norah]

This I a really good story. I really liked the wording you used. I was confused around the first part but I understood it after a little while!

[Hedra Helix]

thank God his roomate is cool. thank God he's blessed. I betcha new doors will open for him. He sounded like he hated that job anyway but was just gonna stay cus...you know... just to.

[Mr. Deft Diction]

I gotta say, bruh....I really like ya style, man. I don't know if you're going to add on to this or not; but either way, you've got a nice piece of writing right here. I like how you set up your characters and get to business.

You've got the chops, yo. Keep scribing!