You can count this piece as a short story if you like, but it is intended to be part of a novel (yes, novel, not novella or series) that I am writing. I just wanted to share this prologue with you all and see what you think. :)
Adventures at Sure Cure is an almost autobiographical account of the last few months of my life, in which I became employed at a local pharmacy as a store clerk and started working for the Man. The story is 99.9% exaggerated, with names and dates of events swapped arround to make things much more interesting and hilarious; only the main plot is inspired by actual events. This prologue is about what the store was like before I was hired there. Again, 99.9% exaggerated.
When I finish the whole thing, I plan to put it on Scribd. Now, without any further ado--!
Adventures at Sure Cure Pharmacy
Prologue: Clean-up in Aisle Five
(Some words are censored in this post; read on Google Docs for the uncensored version)
   When the manager opened the store that morning, he had the misfortune of stepping into a large, perfectly visible pile of turd that a neighborhood dog had berridden from itself on the store doorstep earlier on. The place would literally smell like **** for the rest of the day.
   When he entered his office he discovered that his personal stock of Managerial Juice was starting to run low, but then a liter of coffee fixed that. Once fully alert, he made a purchase on a special register, charged it to the store's funds, then threw the purchase out to the side of the road, like garbage. His wife would collect it on her way to work.
   Marge, the cashier, came in ten minutes early. The manager rewarded her with one of his special jokes: "I like it when they come early."
   Marge gave him a straight face and walked away, but even she had to laugh that one off in the break room. She then spent the next fourteen minutes texting.
   While she was walking through the aisles looking for things to steal, she noticed how utterly terrible the place looked. "Did anyone face last night?" she asked the manager. He gave a shrug, and with that they entered a full-fledged conversation about World War III and how the current assistant manager, in all her vile and satanic ways, would inevitably trigger it.
   A fat guy got stuck in the doorway hardly three seconds after Marge opened it. She woke herself up poking him for the next minute, until he finally conceded and turned sideways.    He bought a can of Slim Fast, but Marge teased him about it when she guessed out loud—and correctly—that before the door had taught him the fair lesson, he had surely been craving those 9 9 cents bags of Cheeto's and four of those one dollar Cokes that were on sale. Angered, the man tried to pay with his fake credit card, but the machine froze on him; Marge seized the opportunity to cancel his sale entirely. And so he Waddled: all the way back up to the second floor to return his can of Slim Fast. Marge poked him with the broom handle as he ascended the three harrowing flights of stairs. "Feel the burn... Burn the feeling..." She then got another text, and—short attention span.
   A lady with a white bear came in with a loaded pistol. Marge told her no bears allowed, and the lady left in a rage. Marge had just lost another sale.
   "You gotta make love to them through your words," said the manager when she informed him about it. "Also, stop reading the magazines while you're on shift. Don't roll your eyes at me!"
    "I wasn't rolling my eyes at you," said Marge. She turned to the overhead camera and rolled her eyes; "This is me rolling my eyes at you."
    The clerk came in an hour late. He explained to the manager that he was still having wet dreams about Isis Love. The manager wished him luck on his next venture, then slipped into his office and gave HR the old telecommute. HR was groggy as **** and didn't understand half of what he was saying, and as a result the clerk got a four percent bonus and benefits by the end of the call. The manager bit the phone in frustration, killing its microphone. Then he cried in his office while the clerk texted with Marge in the other room and generally killed productivity with his presence alone.
   The manager told him to do a box-up in aisle four. He nodded, took a crate and the gun, sat himself down in the aisle, and just stared blankly at a wall of combs for the next hour or so. Noise-reducing headphones hidden under a shaggy mane of hair aided him in this task. Customers were careful not to be sane and actually comment on it.
   "Clean-up in aisle five," came Marge's voice over the loudspeaker. She stared down the aisle, which was directly ahead of her, for a moment. "Security, please scan aisle five," she said again. Suddenly she adopted a bewildered expression, her eyes still on the aisle. "Attention all customers in the store and aisle five, the store will be closing in the next... in the next minute—please bring your final selections... I SEE YOU, THEIF! GET—SECURITY!"
   The sound of a phone hitting its dial in all the wrong ways resonated from the loudspeaker, finally giving the store some good, action-packed music. In the background shuffling footsteps and then a loud thump could be heard.
   "What's your issue, dude!? I only took a Twinkie!" came the high-pitched voice of a Caucasian bum.
   "Pay f'yo Twinkie, ****!" came Marge.
   There was a scuffle for the next two minutes, in which time the customers stood silently on line either staring at the scene unfolding in front of the entrance door with blank expressions, or staring at the ceiling thinking of cream puffs and apple pie. All except Mrs. Stanley, who shook her salt shaker avidly at an unsuspecting college undergrad and gave him a two-toothed smile. Though he could tell she had had lettuce for lunch, he sure wanted some of that salt on his apple pie.
   Once Marge's hair had been turned upside-down and an unlucky man had been sent running out the store in tears, the loudspeaker went off again: "Ahem, cancel." A loud, wet sucking noise emanated from the back of aisle four.
   In the office, the manager was trying to find his lunch. Though it sat directly in front of him, his eyes just couldn't perceive its its exact location; one stared at his nose while the other... stared at his other... nose... side. Everytime he reached out for his food, he kept moving his hand too far left or too far right--and this had been going on for a while. Finally, he was saved by a call from checkout. He put on his glasses and headed out the door with all ocular talents in check.
   As he stepped out, a customer came up to him and asked: "Excuse me, where is the baby food?"
   "Upstairs, aisle twenty-one," he replied curtly.
   "...Oh, there's an upstairs?" the lady asked, looking to the heavens in shock.
   Having heard this inquiry almost every day for the past thirteen years and experiencing virtually every emotion in the human inventory while responding to it, he answered droningly: "Yes; you can take the elevator down aisle eleven or the stairs in front of aisle ten."
   "Oh, okay!" said the lady, and trudged down the aisle towards the elevator. The event then vanished so thoroughly from the manager's memory that if he was asked but two seconds later what he had just been doing, he would not be able to recall it for his life.
   Twelve o'clock came with three thieves walking into the store for its final raid of the day. The clerk, then mysteriously wandering aisle two, gave them a "We just got robbed like four times this morning; give us a break" sort of look, but they smirked and proceeded to pillage aisle five. As one of them was scanning the price of a certain Herbal Essences product, Marge spotted him over her customer's shoulder, slammed down her scanner and the can of Fancy Feast cat food she was about to ring up, stormed out from behind the register past several confounded and impatient customers—all with about as much clamor as an fat, inept cockroach—then slunk up behind the clueless thief and tackled him from behind. Herbal Essence flew into the air in a blood bath, and drenched both of them in slick white fluid as they hit the floor.
   Marge got fired. Apparently, attacking customers was unacceptable behavior. Yes, even considering the fact that the customer happened to be stealing. The man was compensated with a new Herbal Essence product, though it was assumed that ever since that day, he never wanted to see one again. At the same time he was arrested three—maybe four minutes after leaving the store.
   Jeeves, the district manager, came in later that day and had a talk with store personnel about taking one's profession too—excuse the pun—personally. No one really cared, but there was pizza.
   The evening crew came in feeling like **** which, coupled with the lingering stench of **** around the store, eventually turned them into asses.
   Sharad had just had a revelation about how crappy her life and her job was, and had wanted to share it with Marge. However, by that time, Marge was already applying for the police academy. Sharad's mood became even more apprehensive when she was told to go ring on Marge's old register, and when she discovered that her only other lifeline, Raychel, had called out sick, she began throwing customers' change in their faces and saying "Have a nice day; please shop again" with as much ulterior motive as she could muster.
   Jeeves gulped down the manager's (now quite cold) taco while observing Sharad on the camera. "Now... That giwrl... That gverl's got pashinn," he said while trying to gulp down some greasy meat—and spraying the monitor with some of it in the process.
   The manager nodded his head without really thinking, staring at his taco vengefully; his previously cross-eyed gaze was now locked onto the poor thing as it struggled to break free of eight stubby fingers, some of its meat leaping overboard into a fatter and yet still stubbier pool of human carnage. He swore to avenge that taco someday. Or at least buy another one.
   "Ah! What duh phuck?" Jeeves wiped his mouth as he tried to discern something on the monitor between two small pieces of minced meat. The manager turned quickly to see what it was, but then, almost immediately afterward, Jeeves added: "This isn't corn!"
   "Attention all remaining customers, the store will be closing in the next three hours and fourteen minutes; please bring your final selections to be cashed out for the night, and for your shopping convenience we will be reopening yet again sometime tomorrow morning. Please exit the store in a timely manner, thank you."
   Enister White* stood in aisle ten, unable to decide between Coca-Cola and Sprite. Similarly, the clerk couldn't decide between her or his job. He eventually tried hitting on her, but she in turn hit him where the red snake lay amidst the bush. Aha, Coke!
   The rainbow on the second floor was bombarded by kids again, so once again, it was skipped during facing. Later that night, when the manager was walking it, he found a playboy magazine under the shelf with the board games and Etch-a-Sketch. Naturally, he then spent the next three minutes drawing a pair of sexy legs. It came out sort of 8-bit, so he turned it into a mountain and tossed the device into the pile of other kid-approved items in the center of the aisle.
   "There's a dark knight asking for a Snapple outside," Sharad informed the manager.
   "When's the sale over?" he asked.
   "Like, eight months from now."
   "Then leave him outside. You guys finished?"
   Sharad assured him that all tasks had been done, so he ordered everyone to get dressed and meet him at the front door. The dark knight gave up and left, throwing up his hands in a fury—and thus cursing a few unfortunate humans for the rest of eternity. Once everyone had gathered by the front door—their crew then numbered a mere three associates and the one manager—they all clocked out and headed home to get ready to do it all over again.
* Before anyone asks, yes, that was a cameo appearance by another character of mine: Enister White, the protagonist of Arbalest. :P And as long as I have everyone's permission (I will PM you and ask), there will be other cameos made by other TWL characters in this story. Innit exciting?!
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