The moment was upon them instantaneously, like a burst dam. With a great thud and groan Floyd was heaved aside by the door which was pushed back to its very limit as it opened for what could be no less than a dozen teenagers wearing eyes maniacal and searching, who at once when in the shop began to ransack the shelves like Tartars on parade. They behaved like a liquid humanity, filling the aisles, corners, and nooks of the shop like as though within a mold, and scarcely had Sylvia punched in than was the shop thick in throes of abject chaos.
Aster felt that a secret layer of hell had made itself known to her and that the stirring panic in her brain she felt was the recoil of her having just been dropped into it. She stood before the register, motionless and numb, perceiving the pandemonium while not really being part of the room. The growing crowd was looking at her, scrutinizing her while her face locked into a stiff and awkward expression and her eyes grappled at a loss for where to settle.
“Where's the new Cherubs album?!” asked one voice.
“My mom said you guys had it!” claimed another.
A girl proceeded to the front of the crowd, smooshing her hand into the second girl's face as she knocked her aside. “I was here first, get me a copy!!”
The trembling, baggy-eyed mess before them had no response. The world— and her concept of time— had fallen into a slow, lethargic march that presented the crowd threatening to overwhelm the register within the same distended hourglass that a car crash offers its victims. Eyes lit her up wherever she looked. They watched with confused, angry, concerned looks as they realized that the girl would not help them and looked desperately like she needed help herself. The mortification could kill.
And it tried, as she died inside while her stuttering tongue failed to make sense and the pandemonium around them only grew in pitch and wanton recklessness while her measure of self promptly melted and contorted unsightly and grim, like wax in the sun. She fought for words and tried desperately to wrestle back the immense nausea welling up in her as the crowd's clamor soon lost all distinct voice, morphing into what sounded like one grotesque demand of her.
Only one note of hope could be heard through this hell.
“Excuse me!” cried Sylvia, diving through the crowd towards her ailing, violently trembling coworker. A valiant seriousness had overtaken her and she spared not a single second in pulling Aster away, whispering in her ear as she separated her from the horde. “Go help Mr. Floyd put away the records. I can handle it up here!” And with a push sent her in the direction of the warbling man who was desperately attempting to manage shelves that emptied faster than he could stock them. Aster looked back, dazed, as her legs carried her automatically to safety. The sight of a register swamped was all that was visible, Sylvia lost within the tide of screaming all around it.
“That fool!” barked Floyd as Aster approached him. He was hastily flipping through the alphabetized tabs, shoving records into their place with little care as the mob brushed past. Aster drew inward from their contact, recoiling at the sight of their frenzy which tore apart shelves and counters like they were meant for kindling and dispersed the records and magazines they had contained to the floor like a new, paper carpet.
I knew I was useless but holy shit, she thought, unable to arrest her trembling. This experience defied even her worst nightmares; this act of 'working a job'. She, like a soldier whose first experience with war is a pivotal battle, could only watch with stupefied awe at how it was so much worse than she had ever imagined. The idea that people had been required to do this all their life was horrific, and the fact that she would have to join them if she remained in this world filled her with a fear that rendered her almost comatose.
A panic attack thus overcame her, constricting her chest and assaulting her temples with an agonizing internal pressure that made her half-believe they would split right there. There was little chance of avoiding a reprimand after all was said and done, let alone having the gall to ask for a job. She fell to her knees beside the records as she wondered why she'd ever been cursed with her broken brain.
Floyd rose as she fell, brought to his feet by the realization that the surge of customers had not abated and was, in fact, only increasing. He turned in the direction of the register, shouting with all his might, “Sylvia!” Call in Cecil, right this minute!”
A little blonde head popped out of the crowd in response, saluting as she turned to the phone's rotary.
“Miss Aster,” he continued, adopting a courageous tone. She did not respond. “Remember me for my strengths, not my weaknesses,” he said, before at once setting off towards the register that had once again been buried under the amassing wave of life.
“Alright, alright!” she could hear him warble as he shoved aside a path. Desperate eyes scoured him and his ears were filled with filled with delirious calls for the Cherubs, threats to call their parents, and insinuations that this was the 'stupidest record store on Earth.'
“There is no Cherubs record!” he bellowed, stopping, to Aster's amazement, the mob in its tracks for a split-second. “I do not know where you have heard this from, but it is false! We have nothing by them, nor do any recordings of them exist!” However, this announcement, rather than ending the assault, only inflamed it, as Floyd was met by a flurry of cries, jeers, and insults like firecrackers let loose indoors. A record struck his head and he collapsed, while, to Aster's horror, a swelling crowd subsumed him and soon threatened to take her aisle with it.
She drew her knees inward, trusting a fetal position to shelter her from this storm. “I want to go home. I want to go fucking home!” I get it okay? she thought as the record sleeves before her grew liquid and illegible in her teary-eyes. I know I'm not good at anything. I know I'm not deserving of anything turning out alright, so please, just get me the fuck out of here; I can't take it anymore, I can't—
“Excuse me, that's store property,” called out a voice suddenly.
Aster froze. Beside her were records separated into piles and before each a notecard which gave a sub-genre— this is what Aster had been at work on before the store opened, hoping that her initiative and demonstrable knowledge of music would convince Floyd to let her keep the job. But now it merely stood as a red flag, tall in the wind, drawing the attention of this complete stranger to her, a stranger who no doubt was the aforementioned third employee, likely to confront her. She felt her heart leap into her throat.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
She inched her body towards the voice, like one would turn their naked gaze toward the sun, in millimeter increments. Her voice, dry and broken, attempted in scattered monosyllables to squeak out an explanation, before the voice again spoke.
“Besides, there's no real point in sub-dividing pop,” he said chastisingly, looking down at the notecards. She finally looked up and saw a stern-faced man of seemingly similar age to herself, with messy brown hair. He looked as though one amongst the debris of a shipwreck; his attention was continually directed in almost every direction by an outburst or loud noise.
Aster, frowning at his insinuation, felt something other than fear for the first time that day.
“Why not?” she answered almost irritably.
He looked taken aback.
“It's pop— popular music,” he replied matter-of-factly. “That's all it is.”
Aster frown grew into a glare.
“Does jazz not have sub-genres just because it was once the dominant genre?” she insisted, rising to her knees.
“What?” he replied, seemingly astonished that he was having this interaction at all.
But Aster's dignity, fueled by her incredible anxiety, was indignant.
“Is bebop the same as free jazz?” she continued, growing louder. “Fusion the same as acid jazz?”
“Acid jazz? Look, I don't know what you're talking but please leave this to the employees. You can direct your questions to—”
“Cecil!” cried Sylvia suddenly, peering over the crowd like a bouncing sun. “You leave her alone!”
He turned to find a look of absolute fury staring back at him.
“Sylvia, what is going on?” he cried once he had made it to the register. “Why is that customer going through our inventory?”
“That's not a customer, you jerk! That's Aster!”
“Who?”
“Aster— our newest coworker! And Mr. Floyd told her to sort those records, so you better get your butt back over there and apologize!” she said, trying to fit ten records at once into a paper bag.
Cecil's confusion redoubled.
“Sylvia, what are you talking about? What new coworker? What is going on?!”
“Aster is working here today to pay off a ticket Mr. Floyd bought her to the Cherubs show yesterday!”
“He what? Why would he do that?”
“Because,” she whispered, drawing Cecil close. “She's a runaway. She doesn't have money and wanted to see the show!”
This explanation did not help Cecil, who looked even more bewildered.
“Since when did Floyd start caring about charity?” he remarked, looking back at the trembling girl whose position was now completely encircled by lines of shoppers in each neighboring aisle. “It really doesn't look like she wants to be here, Sylvia.”
“Can you blame her?!” she replied as a record flew past her head. “I'm serious, Cecil, you be nice to her, you hear?! She's very sensitive!”
His eyes continued to scrutinize Aster.
“What's even going on, anyways?” he asked, turning to Sylvia. “Did you put the whole store on sale again?”
“You're the only one who's ever done that!” Sylvia retorted, flushing. “No, they think we're selling a Cherubs album!”
“What do you mean?” he asked, frowning. “What record? The Cherubs are unsigned.”
“Heck if I know!” she replied, before adding with a whispered hiss. “I think it was Marion!”
He glowered. “Of course it was. You see, I told you. I knew that Marion thing was a bad idea. I knew—”
“Are you going to clock in and help?!”
“I already did,” he replied, hanging his coat up.
“Then where are you going?!” she asked as he left the register.
“To talk to that girl. She's not much help if she's just shaking against the boxes, is she?”
“You be nice to her, you hear me Cecil?!” she demanded, shaking her fist as he went off without a word.
—
“Hey,” Cecil began, drawing Aster's horrified gaze up an inch from the floor to his pant-leg as he approached. “Sorry about earlier—”Aster jolted, jumping back with such power that it startled Cecil himself. Her swollen baggy-eyes wore clearly the stains of tears which blemished her soft cheeks with sad, dirty streaks.
“Hey, are you alright?” he asked with alarm. “Look, if Floyd is keeping you here against your will you can tell me.”
Aster did not respond, which caused Cecil to draw nearer in the concern that this may be true, but only aggravated her shaking, deepened the hysteria in the terrified girl's eyes which were now watering over with the prelude to a fit of uncontrollable sobs. Floyd was not holding her against her will, but she could not find the strength to tell him that, nor could she begin to try and ask him for this job nor inquire about the room upstairs which she so desperately needed, and it was this inability to do so which killed her, rent her guts as if a knife had pierced her abdomen. Somebody social would've figured this out.
“I'm serious,” he continued. “If you need help I can get you out of here—”
It was at this point that Aster— whose usual response in the face of overwhelming social stimuli was a doubling down of abhorrent recoil and a subsequent display of self-hatred through tears or retching— just simply broke. The sheer weight of the situation proved to be too colossal, and Atlas who held her brows shrugged, her brain rendered non-compliant. She suddenly collapsed to her knees, her hands wrapped over her head as she stared blankly at the wooden floor, all stimuli she could perceive warping in on itself as Sylvia ran over to her.
“Cecil, you doofus! What did I say?!” she yelled, helping Aster up. Cecil could only watch silently as Sylvia lifted Aster to her feet, utterly stupefied as the store continued to burn around them.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Go on, go take the register!” she commanded, shooing him away as she helped Aster to her feet. “Hey,” she whispered, catching Aster's eyes. “It's gonna be okay, okay?” she said, looking down at her with a tender expression befit an angel sculpted of smooth marble. With Aster leaned against her shoulder the two began off towards the storeroom, weaving through the roving crowds while the cries of Floyd sounded off in the distance like mortar fire.
“Aster,” Sylvia said firmly as she sat the girl down within the room and closed the door. “I have to go back out there, but you'll be safe in here, okay?” she promised, adding with a flex of her tiny bicep, “Just believe in me and Mr. Floyd, okay?! This'll be no sweat!”
Aster trembled before her smile, so much like that first ray of light which appears in the wake of a disastrous storm. The shock which had been hitherto numbing her battered nerves waned with the return of a moderate silence, and a deep shudder made its through her body, dislodging the tears which had welling up inside her nervous little eyes like primordial geyser.
She let forth a guttural, terrified cry, shaking in her chair as Sylvia knelt before her and held her tight. Convulsive sobs wracked her body, choking her with hiccups that sounded like an abortive deathrattle; grief excised from her by Sylvia's pats on her back like a baby is burped.
“Just give us a little while,” she asked of Aster as she made her way to leave. “I'll be back in no time, okay?”
The door shut, leaving Aster to herself for the first time since that very early morning. She could scarcely feel her heart it was so numb from it's incessant thrashing.
It was so fucking stupid of me to think everything might turn out alright, she lamented, weeping into her hands.
As the terror inside the shop raged on, Aster cried profusely and deeply. She had never been more certain, she realized with the utmost horror— that there was no place in existence for her.