To be honest, the café was a good way to escape the hustle and bustle of the cashier shift. However, today was Halloween. And it was a Saturday. I struggled to remember how long the franks were to be grilled. One went, bleh, and spat out a burnt hotdog on the floor. I tried popping two bags of popcorn in the kettle, causing it to overflow. There was a notice on the cabinet about a shortage of turkey, so the ciabatta sandwiches were out. “I want to speak to your manager,” became white noise. These people wanted their damn turkey.
After a family of 4 took their seat, I took my hat off, folded my arms over the cold case counter, and put my head on my forearms. Just needed a minute to breathe and close my eyes. I was close to passing out. My mole was pounding from an ensuing migraine. Maybe I need water, I thought in the darkness.
“Hello, sir?” a polite and posh voice rang out. It was a woman. “Are you on break? Sorry to disturb you.”
I raised my head and it felt like my eyes we bubbling like an overheated soup. There was the woman, dressed like a sugar plum fairy. She had a daughter with her, looking like a mini-Disney Princess. I wasn’t into Disney as a kid, so I had no idea which one.
“Oh, I’m not on break,” I say, candidly. I felt at ease with their unassuming, magical presence. “Just needed to shut my eyes a bit.”
“I want chicky nuggies!” the little girl shouted. Totally broke her innocent appearance.
I looked at the eating kids, took a deep breath, and said, “Yeah, I’m out, sorry.”
“You…you don’t have nuggies?” the little girl wailed.
“Now Maddie, don’t cry,” the Good Witch of the North said to her infantile sister of the south. “The nice man doesn’t have anymore.”
I’m glad you think I’m a nice man, I thought.
Little Maddie was just not having it. She stamped over to the cutlery and tore into napkin holders like a bear. Her dress swayed back and forth as she tore. Then, the cups. They flew up into the air like fireworks launching from their tube. Bounced in the trashcan, on the floor, into the soda drain. Embodied chaos.
“Madison Jean!” the mother said. Her voice morphed from a silky mousse to toasted crostini.
She went to grab Maddie’s shoulder, but the girl thrashed away. At this point, my chin was in my folded knuckles. I was fully entertained. Maddie darted to the condiments, reaching up to the packages and grabbing handfuls of them. She squeezed them between her little fingers. Globs of mayo mixed with mustard, relish mixed with ketchup, and other abominable combinations. The sludge dripped onto the floor.
Maddie seemed to thrive off her rampage. A sinister giggle snuck out between yelling sweet nothings. She went over to the hotdogs, took a brief look, and snatched a guacdog right off the rollers. I was shocked she didn’t get burned. Maybe she was a demon out of Hell.
“Hey, don’t you—don’t,”the mom said. She was sweating or crying or both. She had an arm extended like she was casting her most powerful spell.
Maddie went, Humph, and I swear, hurled that nasty frank right into her mother’s eyes. You could hear the slap. What an arm. The mother yelped and the little catastrophe ran into Women’s Clothing and out of sight. I went, “Woah,” to myself and performed my utmost basic training.
I paged on the walkie, “LOD to the café, LOD to the café.”
The fairy godmother of a woman rubbed her eyes of greasy mascara ooze. “That little shit is just like her father. What a fucking mistake” Then, she was gone. The parents glared at me like it was my fault and corralled their kids. Them, too, were gone. Except for their trash. They left it there in this warzone formerly known as the Target T-69 café.
Kevin, who was dressed as Chewbacca from the neck down, came stomping over within a minute. He greeted me with an unfriendly grimace as he surveyed the carnage.
“P.J., what in the hell just happened?” he said to me.
“Some little girl had a tantrum over nuggets,” I said. He missed the HBO event. His loss.
“And why didn’t you stop her?”
“She was fast.”
He looked over the mess. “Gosh, there are assets destroyed, and this floor needs mopping,” he said. He pulled out a notebook from the satchel and started scribbling.
“What are you doing?”
“You got one shift to cover, and you let a child destroy it! This is a total write-up.”
I threw my hands up. “C’mon, what am I to do?”
The way Kevin looked at me legit scared me. It was like all the pudge in his face stretched back and he bore his teeth like the sasquatch he was embodying.
“Target Employee handbook, 2010 edition. Section 2, subsection 3c: Handling Lost Children. Does that, I don’t know, ring any sort of bell?”
I looked at the guacdog on the floor It was partially stepped on by the mother’s pink sneakers. I wished it was Kevin.
“Madison Jean! You get back here!” a voice echoed somewhere far away.
“Ok, I gotta end this little charade. Clean this up,” Kevin said.
He lumbered down the aisle. Really owning his character. I wanted to laugh at the furry man bobbing up and down. I also wanted to turn the oven up to the max and shove my head inside. I paged Claude to come on through if he wasn’t busy. Thank God he wasn’t.
He arrived in two minutes, with a mop and a slip hazard sign. Who would’ve thought the hero of the day was a burnout Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle with a dirty mop?
“Damn, man. Did you do this?” he said, joking.
I sighed, hunching over to grasp the dirty guacdog with my napkin-rolled hand. “No, some brat kid did this. And Kevin, the bastard, wrote me up.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because I didn’t, ‘restrain the Guest’s child,’ or whatever. I swear he is a cop,” I said, flicking the spoiled food into the trash.
Claude chuckled, but his attention was elsewhere. He was staring at Kevin walking through the registers with the girl high up on his shoulders. She was no longer crying and screaming but giggling and raising her hands high. The mother was following them, acting like she found her knight in hairy armor. Some of the cashiers clapped. It was like he was parading through town after a war.
Claude squeezed the mop in the cart and started swiping over the condiments. “He strikes me as someone who brags about doing the bare minimum.”
“Is it cause he’s too fat to arrest people?” I said. Taking a stab at Kevin made me feel warm and tingly, despite scooping up napkin bits and crushed cups.
“No,” Claude said. “He lacks a backbone. Talks down to punks like us all the time. Do you think he could handle a career criminal with a gun? No way.”
Punks like us, I thought. “I suppose you’re right.”
“He wants attention. The one who saves a baby from a hot car. The good guy with the gun. But then, time moves on. Uniforms come on and off. Graves are dug and buried. Even here, at Target.”
I pulled the trash bag out and tied it. “You’re quite a philosophical guy. You should go to college or something.”
Claude squeezed the mop again. “Not my thing. I learn from the streets, from the dojo, from people I see in the stores.” He jabbed me with the handle. “Maybe even from fellow workers.”
I blushed. “Oh, come on. I don’t teach anyone shit. I don’t even know what the hell I want to do with my life.”
Claude rinsed his hands without soap. “Anyway, I’ll see you after the shift, man. Party time!”
“Yes, sir.”
He took away the mop bucket and trash, left the sign. I patted his back. The lump of cotton for a shell made it feel like a motel pillow. I resumed watching the people not coming to my newly safeguarded café. A gust of wind blew open one of the front doors. Some dead leaves rolled into the cart corral. An associate from Guest Services had a hard time shutting the door. I could feel the last wisp of the gust on my face. I breathed it in. I felt alive for a little while longer.
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Josh Dale is a native Pennsylvanian. He’s the author of The Light to Never Be Snuffed (Alien Buddha Press, 2022) and Duality Lies Beneath (Thirty West, 2016) His prose has appeared in Breadcrumbs, Autofocus, Drunk Monkeys, Maudlin House, Rejection Letters, and a winner in the 2021 Loud Coffee Press Micro-Fiction Contest. Cats and coffee are encouraged.
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image: Amateur photographer and author Andrea Damic (Sydney, Australia) has words published or forthcoming in 50-Word Stories, Paragraph Planet, The Dribble Drabble Review, 50 Give or Take (Vine Leaves Press) Anthology, Spillwords, The Centifictionist, The Piker Press and elsewhere with her art featuring or forthcoming in Rejection Letters, Door Is A Jar, Fusion Art’s Exhibitions, Welter at the University of Baltimore and elsewhere. You can find her on TW @DamicAndrea or linktr.ee/damicandrea.
Rejection Letters 