AnimeCon Harem 15: 15 pt K (Patreon)

Early morning at the inner city Dollarydoos was an unwelcome reintroduction to the depressive high-stress, low wage job that had pushed Kelly towards pornography. Situated in the buffer strips that separated poverty neighborhood from the main drag of the city proper, the discount variety store was tacked onto the side of a large plaza of a Shop 2 Save grocery, right between a sketchy Payday Cash Advance and a liquor store.

She’d parked Brian’s car over on the far end of the lot, which felt weird to do, as typically in the mornings she would have walked the four blocks over from where Chelsea and Devan’s place was. This wasn’t the safest of neighborhoods for an exceptionally beautiful young woman to be alone and on foot, and having a vehicle today really helped take the edge off of that general nervous tension she always felt. Kelly made her way past the scattered garbage decorating a mostly empty parking lot, past the bars covering the windows of the cash advance place, and then rapped her knuckles on the glass of the Dollarydoos, waiting until one of the opening workers inside could come over and unlock the door for her.

“Oh wow, love the new look!” A gangly male coworker swung the door open, putting on an enormous smile for her and giving her two enthusiastic thumbs up.

“Thanks,” Kelly paused, making a point to flick her eyes towards his nametag. “Kevin.”

“You remembered my name this time!” Kevin exclaimed, somehow missing the obvious. “You can just call me Kev. Dream team on the floor today, Kev and Kell!”

“Do we have Janet today, or one of the other managers?” Kelly asked, stepping inside.

“Janet’s in back, doin’ count,” Kevin answered. “Hey wait—you’re not quittin’, are you? Please, pleeease tell me you’re not quitting!”

“I… honestly don’t know,” Kelly shrugged.

She strode forward between the aisles on shabby, worn carpets that were dotted here and there with gum nobody had been able to—or bothered to—remove before the gunk was tread into black spots on the floors. Fluorescent light fixtures overhead were hidden by clear plastic panels long since discolored into an off-yellow with age, and they made a subtle buzzing noise audible only when the place was empty like this. The shelves around her as always were packed with gaudy plastic merchandise that had the strange qualities of being both dirt cheap and overpriced. Even despite the fact that everything in the store was marked up at the same tag of one buck. Nothing in the entire store was even worth a single dollar, in Kelly’s opinion, she thought of it all as a strange collection of everything that nobody actually needed.

They still buy it, though, Kelly scowled at realizing another busy shift was ahead of her. For whatever ungodly reason… they still buy all this garbage.

The employees only door at the back led her to a wide cinderblock passageway made narrow because it was crammed floor to ceiling with cardboard. Boxes were piled up in stacks, boxes filled racks, unopened boxes were on pallets, open and half-emptied boxes of junk were on top everywhere, and flattened boxes were laid out across the walking space as carpet again, indicating there had been another spill. Kelly squeezed and sidled and maneuvered her way to the back office door and the ‘break room,’ which was two folding chairs and a microwave sitting atop a mini-fridge.

“Janet?” Kelly asked. “Can I talk with you?”

“Kelly,” a squat older woman whose brown hair was just beginning to curl with gray leaned out of the tiny office. “You dyed your hair! You’re on register today. What didja need, hon?”

“I lost my place to live,” Kelly fibbed. “I’m set up at a hotel for right now, but I can’t stay here in town for much longer. I have some friends who offered to take me in, but they’re like, an hour’s drive away from here. They said there’s a Dollarydoos over by them, was really hoping maybe I could transfer, rather than have to put in my two weeks?”

“Oh, you’re kidding,” Janet frowned at her. “Did something happen?”

“It… well, yeah,” Kelly decided to simply give her a shrug and a helpless look. “Just, yeah. A lot of things happened.”

“An hour away? It might be franchise, but it could have a different owner,” Janet shook her head. “Ours are all under Roger, he owns a bunch across the state, but not all of them. Do you have the address of that Dollarydoos?”

“I don’t,” Kelly admitted. “I don’t even have—I lost my phone, too. I have the name of the city?”

“Well, if you give me a second, I’ll look it up and see,” Janet blew out a heavy sigh. “I take it you won’t be working your shift today, then?”

“No, I definitely can,” Kelly assured her. “Today, and for the next few days. I can work out most of a two weeks notice, but only if I really have to. Just—I’m living at a hotel, right now. Can’t afford to do that for any longer than I absolutely have to. Really wanted to, uh, to see if I could transfer to a different store location, rather than just burn bridges with Dollarydoos. I do need the job.”

“Well thank goodness for that at least,” Janet held a hand over her heart in a gesture of relief. “You know how awful the turn over is, here! Thought we were gonna be shorthanded this mornin’, and I do not need that kind of Monday, today.”

“Yeah,” Kelly tried to look apologetic. “Didn’t want to screw you guys over, just—things came up, and the only people I can stay with are an hour away. I’m really sorry.”

She didn’t actually feel sorry, but in truth right now she didn’t feel much of anything at all besides burnt out and exhausted. Kelly found herself willing to go through the motions here if only to satisfy Stephanie’s good intentions, and also because in honesty the Dollarydoo’s staff here had treated her pretty well despite it being a shit job to actually work. On the other hand, for Kelly’s other part-time job, her McBurger job—she’d sooner put a brick through their windows than help them out or talk to any of her managers there again.

*     *     *

Kelly spent the rest of the day standing at the register, descending into the mind-numbing familiar drudgery of minimum wage work. The store filled with the usual suspects of Dollarydoo’s customers at open, and it remained busy enough throughout the day that Kelly rarely had to leave the front counter. She took the endless stream of junk as it was piled on her sales counter, one-by-one passed their barcodes through the scanner, and then placed them in a plastic bag. The register’s terminal displayed a final price, she would accept cash or wait as customers puzzled out which buttons to press on the card reader, and she would either make change for them or simply hand them a receipt.

Toys and candy. Picture frames and candles. Batteries and superglue. Mugs, glasses, and plates. Each of the items were regarded by Kelly’s blank expression without judgment or thought, because she had seen them all pass by before, and by now they meant nothing to her. She took the flavored popcorn and the snack-sized bags of off-brand chips and the warm twelve-ounce generic soda, she fed them through the scanner, and put them in a bag. Kelly tapped through the display on her terminal until it processed another debit card, and then she tore a receipt from the machine and handed it over.

Kelly didn’t smile, she didn’t make small talk, and when inevitably some random guy would ask her personal questions—how old was she? Did she live around here? Wasn’t she WAY too good-looking to be working at a place like this? She would give them her small, well-practiced wince, as if they’d delivered a bad joke, and immediately ignore what they said and move on.

Because she was strictly business while on the clock. Unlike at her McBurger job, the managers here didn’t push her to put on a ‘service smile,’ or greet each customer, or be too friendly. This was a high volume store, and Janet seemed to appreciate that Kelly wasn’t here to socialize, or be nice and make friends, or flirt with guys or tolerate them hitting on her. She was here to ring up customers, and make sure her drawer never had less money in it than the computer said it should. That was it. Kelly just wanted to do her job, and get paid.

So, for hours she rung up and bagged items, she stopped twice to fill birthday balloons with helium from the tank for a customer, and whenever anyone had questions about where a specific thing might be located or where in an aisle they might find something, Kelly directed their questions to Calvin, who was unpacking boxes, restocking shelves, and keeping the store tidy.

Or was it Kyle? Kevin? Kelly struggled to remember the other employee’s name. Think it was Calvin.

*     *     *

When Kelly went back to the office computer to click herself clocked out for her thirty-minute break, she found herself out of sorts and at a loss as to what to do with herself. Out of sheer habit she wanted a cigarette, because that was always her first priority at this time, but to her surprise she didn’t need one. Which was good, because—she didn’t have any anymore, but all the same because of that she took a few dazed moments searching for a purse she hadn’t brought in, and then patting pockets to check for a lighter that wasn’t there, either.

Instead she wandered out of the back room and then carefully strode through the store as if she had a purpose, taking quick steps so that the scattered few customers wouldn’t waylay her asking for assistance with something. Company policy said that smoke breaks could only be behind the store and out of sight, but this was in the run down area of town and nobody cared, so Kelly pushed open the glass door and then paused for a moment where she usually smoked along the pockmarked concrete sidewalk outside that was littered with cigarette butts.

I have Brian’s car here, Kelly remembered, shaking herself out of her work funk. Fuck, I’m so fucking tired.

She’d managed to put herself on auto-pilot when it came to actually doing her job, but without the mechanical focus and direction of something to do she felt like finding somewhere to sit and just nodding off. Remaining standing felt exhausting, her eyelids felt heavy, and she was mentally drained. Two or so hours of sleep and a ton of stress weren’t giving her the greatest afternoon today.

After crossing the entire sunbaked parking lot filled with cars, Kelly unlocked Brian’s car and then opened the driver-side door, slumping partway against the chassis as she let the uncomfortably hot air that had been trapped inside the car escape. She couldn’t help but scowl, as she hadn’t remembered it being this hot over the weekend. Maybe it wasn’t even that hot today—Kelly right now just was tired and had no patience and wanted—

Want to fall asleep. In a nice cool room. Right between my honeys, Kelly sighed, rubbing her forehead. Brian big spoon. Arm around me. Steph little spoon, my arms around her. Is that so much to fucking ask for?! Don’t even know what spoon Emily is, we’ll have to figure that out when I get off.

“Emily, hey, what spoon are you?” Kelly murmured to herself, letting out a tired laugh. “Jesus Christ.”

Blowing out a breath of vexation, Kelly swiped away sweat that was forming on her brow and finally ducked into the car to grab Christine’s phone. In more idle times, she would have been curious enough to go through it and casually snoop around, but Kelly was operating on almost no proper sleep, frazzled, cranky, and had simply forgotten to grab it when she went in for her shift. As she unlocked it now, she found messages waiting for her.

Actress: Your friend here’s ready whenever you can take him.

Actress: He’ll be okay for us to move him around for the next 8 hours, but after that he’ll need to be laid down some place and generally not moved.

Actress: Sorry, didn’t realize you were working somewhere. GPS data for the phone shows me the plaza, if you want I can meet you there with him. Let me know when you’re off.

Fuck, fuck. Fuck, Kelly checked the timestamps on the messages and only relaxed when she saw the first two were only forty minutes old. The last one in the queue had arrived just six minutes before she’d gone on break, and Kelly hurried now to reply.

Chloe-Ravioli: Sorry yeah

Chloe-Ravioli: Off at two

Kelly stared down at the phone, using her fingers to take a strand of red that had fallen down into her view and tuck it behind one ear. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. After another few moments, the screen dimmed from inactivity, and Kelly slumped down into the driver’s seat, putting one arm over the scorching hot steering wheel and then awkwardly resting her cheek on her arm.

She wanted to ask about Brian, but would find out when he arrived with Emily’s mother. It was tempting for a moment to try to contact Stephanie, but no one had thought to put that number into Christine’s phone, here. For a second she was tempted to go through the contacts and look for an entry for Rebecca, so she could find out what was going on with her and their resident nightwalker, but at the same time… that also just seemed like too much to deal with right now.

“I’m so fucking tired,” Kelly groaned out loud.

*     *     *

Kelly’s day rolled mercilessly on, and after break she was back on register. Things slowed down a bit, and when Melvin—or whatever his name was—clocked out, Kelly actually had to also go around and patrol the aisles to keep an eye on things when she wasn’t needed at the front. No broken glass or ceramic from the dollar housewares today, which was a blessing, but as usual the toy section on the far side was a mess from whatever brats had been rummaging through everything.

She was either not getting her second wind or about to fall asleep, and she wound up trudging through the last hours of her shift listless and completely without energy. Kelly had worked on little sleep before, but she was now remembering how little rest she’d gotten over the entire past weekend—each night they’d been up fooling around pretty damn late, every morning they were up and about rushing around to do things, it had seemed. When she’d been there with Stephanie and Brian there’d been a little extra spring in her step that kept her on her feet throughout AnimeCon—she was now acutely aware that this was no longer the case.

Now, she just wanted to lay down and never get back up.

“You’re in luck,” Janet muttered as she flipped through the fives from Kelly’s till and then scribbled down the count, glancing up at the computer to compare the numbers. “That other store? The 464 Pine Grove Square location? Well, it’s one of Roger’s, and I was able to get on the phone with the manager there. You’re okay to transfer, and I can have you just stay on the schedule here with us for this week—we have you Wednesday, Thursday, Friday still for mornings, and then you’ll pop over to that location with your file and everything and start orientation there next week. How’s that sound?”

“That’s—thank you,” Kelly said, honestly surprised. “Thank you.”

“Now, she did warn me,” Janet paused as she started in on the ones. “They’re not as busy as we are, over there. You can’t expect the same hours we give you here. She said only one day a week, for the first while. Is that okay?”

“That’s okay,” Kelly nodded. “It’s—well, it’s a start. Thank you.”

“Alright, your drawer looks all good to go, I’ll clock you out,” Janet said. “See you on Wednesday, alright?”

“Yeah,” Kelly said.

She wandered back out of the store in a daze, and even took a couple steps in the wrong direction before remembering again that she’d arrived in Brian’s car and wasn’t just trekking back to Chelsea’s place this time. When she crossed the lot and found Brian’s car again, the sight jolted her awake—because this time someone was waiting for her.

/// Had a good birthday, thank you for the Reeses, everyone. One more K section, and then we hop over to an R section. Will fix chapter links and guide page... later. As a great man once said in 2007--"Not now chief, I'm in the fuckin' zone."