fiction :: night shift

Shelly liked to sit there, reading. She sat through the night shift just fine eating chips or hot dogs and barely keeping an eye on the customers wandering into the store. They were usually tired, bleary men from the neighborhood. Older men with streaked gray hair and baseball jackets.

They were gruff but kind and asked her, Oh, are you sure you're OK here? So late at night? Alone?

And she'd smile indulgently and say, Yessir!

How old are you?

Nineteen, sir!

It's a crime, putting such a pretty young girl like you out here alone!

Smile. It's me the criminals should be afraid of, sir!

As the night came and came, then there would be fewer and fewer people in to mark the time. The flourescent lights made her sight go bad; she'd reread through every issue of 'Teen magazine five times. Or finger through the romance novels, but they were too boring for her. Too dense. The smell of the store which would be nauseating almost after she just walked in faded and she adjusted, and it was if it weren't there. Nothing was there.

A whole hour would pass, and then she'd glance up, blinking, and realize it was gone forever.

If there were criminals out, if there was danger out, it was outside her four glass doors. She felt stupidly safe inside, because it was light inside, and bad things happen in the shadows, not in the light.