Picking Up Shifts at the Skeet & Skat by Mark Berryhill

Tiff sounded drunk when she called me. Said she had been up for three days, and that everyone had quit except for her. Her store was a wreck.  I found her curled up behind the register, snoring. She had pissed herself, but not recently. Her mascara ran down her face. She looked adorable. I nudged her with my foot and then stepped over her to clock myself in. Somewhere in the back a CO2 canister hissed like an angry steam engine.

                A scruffy guy sat on the counter adjacent to the register, right next to the sink. By the looks of him he suffered from some sort of congenital shit, maybe chromosome damage, but I wasn’t an expert. One of his eyes drooped and the iris was blown and misshapen. Every store had someone like him, some pitiful and friendless person whose only social outlet happened to be the corner Skeet and Skat. Mine had an HIV positive tranny who offered me hydros for free every night I worked. This guy didn’t look like he had any good drugs on him, but it’s good to have a friendly face around when you’re working alone.

                “I’m Doug, but I’m okay if you call me Bronie. Everyone does.” He spoke with a pronounced slur.

                “Hi, Doug. This is my only day off.”

                “That sucks.”

                “Doug, you know where they keep the cups?”

                “Yeah?”

                “Can you restock the cups and lids and maybe wipe down the counters while I change the bag-in-the-boxes? Maybe make sure nothing happens to Tiff?”

                “Um…”

                “You can have the pizzas when I throw them out, how about that?”

                “Okay.” He hopped to his feet, turned around to fetch a glossy red brick wrapped in a piece of notebook paper from the sink, and then handed it to me. There had been writing on the paper, but it was too soggy to read. I held the note up with two fingers.

                “It got wet when I poured my drink out.” Doug avoided eye contact. “Your root beer is all water.”

                “Great.”

                “Um, it said that there was a bottle of good scotch in the back.”

                “Fuck yes. She remembered.”

                “But there’s zombies back there. Can I have some scotch.”

                “No. Shit. What kind of zombies? The fast infected kind, or the slow walking dead kind?”

                “Oh, I dunno, satanic?”

                “I don’t even know what that means.”

                Doug shrugged.

                Taking my brick, I tripped over a milk crate and tumbled through a swinging door into a pile of empty candy boxes. How could Tiffany let this place go? Before they promoted her to this shithole and I took over as assistant manager she was the model employee. If the district manager saw this place in this condition he’d put me in charge here. I wasn’t about to let that happen.

                The zombies in the back shambled to their feet and uttered blasphemies. They looked old as fuck—cracked flesh and tattered clothes. One of them wore the same shirt I had on and a nametag that said “Sue”. I shouldn’t have to put up with this bullshit.  I got to my feet and brandished the brick with all the gusto I could manage, which wasn’t much. They hissed and backed off, wedging themselves into the space between the freezers and the wall.

                As I slipped by them, stepping over empty cans and bottles, and careful to stay out of arm’s reach, one of them whispered, “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”

                “Dude, I know,” I said.

                At the far end of the room sat the rack for the bag-in-the-box syrups that went to the soda machines. The rhythmic hissing of the CO2 canister hurt my ears. The previous employees had dressed it up in real animal fur and painted menacing eyes on it. It growled and sputtered like a frightened cat as I got close to it. Not my problem. All I had to do to shut it up was swap out some of those boxes for fresh ones. But, of course, they all needed to be swapped out. Tiff had left something for me on the stack of fresh boxes. I wouldn’t call it good scotch, but fuck, I could use it. This liquor would be the only thing keeping me from walking out, and she knew it. I set the brick down and took a long hard swig and laughed—because, hey, “buttfuck”. Next time I am not answering my phone.

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When he isn't gardening, Mark Berryhill spends his days exploring complex social issues through fart jokes. 

Copyright 2013 Mark Berryhill