‘I wish I was reading.’ His mind raced as he checked out the final customer. Boxes still piled into an aisle and in the back blocked his view to the store room. The dull buzzing glare of florescent lights overhead practically brought the young man to tears as he began closing the dollar store. He only held back his tears because if a manager checked the security cameras and noticed him crying he might get fired. He needed the money desperately or he wouldn’t even consider staying at this miserable job running him ragged.
Only two months ago Victor Vance Vogal graduated at his tiny rural school in his tiny rural town. As an avid reader and movie fan he spent most of his time watching and reading whatever the library had available to check out at the time. As he closed the store and finally locked the doors he glanced at the clock 9:04. Once he walked outside he started biting on the side of his mouth. “I’ll never get to go to the library before or after work on this schedule.” A couple of tears trickled down his face and he wiped them off on his coat.
He shook his head. “I had nearly perfect grades and got partial scholarships to six schools and I couldn’t even get loans to go for the cheapest one at 5,000 a year.” He looked up at the sky to the two moons and the stars. He’d never had money to do anything that cost a single cent. For birthdays he’d get clothing, for Christmas he’d be lucky to get new shoes. “Earth is so unfair. I did everything I was told to do in order to get ahead.” He began to walk home almost two miles away.
Victor sometimes talked to himself and tried to hash out his ideas for no reason other than a lack of friends. He spent his time in books and movies because those are the only relationships he could ever form. While Victor never blamed them firmly believing it was his life and therefore his fault, the blame for his life landed firmly on his parents. His father worked in the factory that left their town when Victor was two years old. He committed suicide only a year later working at the very same dollar store he now worked at. His note he left at home before hanging himself said ‘I just can’t take it anymore. I love you both and I’m sorry.’ He even had life insurance on himself but it didn’t even cover the funeral sending them deep into debt.
His mother apparently in his earliest life before he could remember her was a model woman for the town. Religious and devout, prim and proper Valencia Vogal was once the picture of a traditional wife and mother keeping the house, the child, and her marriage in order. After Victor’s father committed suicide, his mother spiraled out of control. He visualized what he had to come home to. It would be lucky if she didn’t have a needle up her arm. If Victor didn’t buy his own food he would literally starve since she’d steal his money for drugs. She had grown fat, slovenly, and smoked in the house. Victor knew she’d be dead soon the way she lived but she might just starve him on her way out.
“Tomorrow is another day…” Victor sobbed. “Tomorrow is another day.” He tried to comfort himself but tomorrow he would wake up and once more have to go to work. Last week he worked 84 hours receiving no overtime pay and only receiving minimum wage. He wanted to stop at the gas station but had been trying out not doing that to save another few dollars a day and just going to sleep instead, so he avoided it once more for the week. As he walked he could feel just the slightest twinge of hope. “If I can survive working like this for three or four years and nothing goes wrong…” A smile crossed his face however brief that hope kept him going. His smile quickly faded “Just 80 hours a week every week for about 176 more weeks.”
His body ached from having to move around all the heavy packages and his feet felt as though they would break with the blisters that had formed and ached with every step. He rounded the corner and began to wipe his face on his shirt. He walked up to a two floor run down home. The steps creaked beneath his feet. He looked to the empty driveway. She sold the car three weeks ago but he still felt strange about it missing. They had that run down clunker for almost ten years. He grabbed the screen door and opened it before unlocking the door. He placed his bag near the door to relieve the pain on his back before heading upstairs.
“Eh! Is that you Victor?” A woman’s voice shouted over the sound of reality television.
“Yes, I’m going to bed.” Victor lied as easy as he breathed.
“You make any money?” She refused to get up puffing smoke into the room.
Victor hated the smell of the smoke. “I spent it on food.”
“How you work 16 hours a day to eat?” She groaned from the living room as he started up the stairs.
“I take my lunch at the grill across from the store, and with taxes I don’t make much.” They had this discussion every night. He knew exactly why that shut down the discussion.
“FUCK taxes!” She shouted ending the discussion.
Victor wasn’t nearly as stupid as her. He knew she would immediately drop it. She hated getting her Medicaid and disability and hated the government so much that if he complained about it she’d never even consider continuing the conversation. He unlocked his room entered and closed the door, locking it behind him. He didn’t want his mom sneaking into his room to steal from him. He sighed and collapsed on his bed. He kicked off his shoes and glanced over at his night stand at the few books he actually owned. He desperately wanted to read to escape his miserable life but he couldn’t. Within a few moments he fell asleep with his clothes and the lights still on.
The next morning he opened his eyes. “I’m still alive. Damn.” He walked down to the bathroom and showered before changing for his job. He glanced at his books again. “Someday I will have time and energy to read again.” He trudged on his way to work trying to decide which would be worse work or death. He ultimately decided work was definitely not as bad as death but the worst possible thing would be getting hurt. If he got hurt that would truly ruin his life and make it unsalvageable.
That day was a cloudy day, not that Victor would see much of it as Thursday as he worked from the moment he arrived until they closed. His approach to the store had a random through pop into his head. ‘Why can’t I have a chair at the cash register?’ He shook his head getting ready to stop at the gas station and grabbed a drink and a snack for lunch. He waited in line for almost 15 minutes before the old fat guy at the cash register rang him up.
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“That’ll be 3.89.” The man belted out. Victor put his debit card in and waited for it to beep. ‘Denied: Insufficient funds’ He stared down at the screen, Victor’s blood pressure skyrocketed.
“There’s no way.” He swiped his debit card again. Again it denied him. He should have almost a thousand dollars having lived like a hermit for two months eating only a small amount of food he was required to eat to simply not die about 10 dollars a day on food.
“Kid if you don’t have any money get a job then come back.” The guy took the snack and drink behind his counter.
‘It’s gone…’ He thought to himself. “I’m going to kill her.” He didn’t mean to say it out loud.
“We all have a crazy ex kid. Not my problem.” The man stopped paying attention to him.
“She took all my money…” He muttered to himself. He ran through what happened last night and he realized the aching on his back caused him to set down his bag near the door instead of in his room. His wallet was in there. She took it after he went to bed last night. She took all of his money. He sobbed as he began walking. “I’ve done everything I was ever told to do. I went to school, got good grades, stayed out of trouble and this is my reward. My mother is my reward.” He angrily cursed himself before muttering under his breath. “She’ll be dead by the time I get home. She’ll go buy a grand worth of drugs and at least then she will be dead. She’ll over dose and be dead when I get back.” He mused with a grim expression “I couldn’t even save her if I wanted to. I’d lose my job if I walked back the mile to our house because I’d be late.”
“This is maddening.” He declared to himself looking up to the sky as it started to rain. “Keep it coming, I’m clearly the most unlucky man to ever live.” He put his backpack over his head to keep the water off of his head at least only for a car to drive by and splash him from a puddle. He thought to himself he could use the restroom and spend his 15 minute break wiping off some of the water and then work under the heater unboxing in the store room for an hour or two leaving the cash register unmanned. ‘Honestly I don’t care if people steal from the store. The store can go to hell.’
He knew the store wasn’t paying him fairly and running it was an almost impossible task for two people. His manager, the only other employee worked weekends and occasionally one more day just to meet cooperate minimum oversight rules. She was a ruthless slave driver and would always berate him for the state of the store despite it being physically impossible for him to improve it. Sometimes she would inspect his pockets and bag randomly to make sure he hadn’t stolen anything. She didn’t trust him or care about him and yet there he would be, alone in the store.
He began crossing the street with a walk light for him to reach that little miserable store. He heard it slide. A truck barreling toward him trying to stop in the rain, Victor dove forward just in time as it missed him by an inch. His hands scraped on the sidewalk leaving him bloody with a burning sensation on his hands and knees. The truck crashed into the center of the intersection hitting a police car driving through the intersection. The thought crossed his mind ‘I’m so unlucky. Everything in my life just reeks of it.’ Nothing he could do would change his luck despite incredible effort.
As water streamed down his face he cried sadly in the rain looking up at the store with every conviction to quit but without the resolve to ruin his life further. He stood up determined to go in the store. He clocked in and went to the bathroom to use the terrible paper towels to clean his body off and dry himself. His knees and hands were bleeding so he folded over the paper towels and placed them on his knees. His hands he washed under the water until they stopped bleeding. He sighed and looked straight in the mirror. “It’s another day.”
He walked out still soaking wet with soaking wet socks and knew this would cause his blisters to fester. He started walking back to the store room only to see three people standing in line already to check out. He knew they would complain to his manager if he didn’t go to the front so to the front he went. He did his due diligence to be there and yet one of the women gets extremely angry with him as a drop of his blood ends up on a ball. He stands there in his wet socks wordlessly as she chews him out anyway. She shouts she will get his manager when she comes in. He simply endured the abuse and after checking them out he walked to the back and finally started to feel a little better as the heat from the old HVAC unit heating the room from the ceiling.
He began unboxing the various massive packages and pulled some other boxes around him removing them from their cases so that he could more easily take them out and he just quietly worked at a snail’s pace. He finally felt somewhat dry after the miserable experience of his day. Once his metal cart was full he took it out to the front and began stocking the shelves. He quickly dumped everything on the cart to the shelves and ran to the front with another angry customer waiting on him. He checked them out and once again got an earful of how they would go to his manager for not being on the register.
He walked to the back and pulled a couple cases up to him again and he stretched under the warmth of the HVAC unit above him and began unpacking. That is when he heard it, a creaking above “Roof must be leaking.” He shook his head and looked up. “I’ll just tell her I guess.” He kept unboxing before hearing more creaking. The HVAC unit popped loose. He turned his head in time to have one last thought ‘Just my luck.’
It happened so fast. He couldn’t process what happened. Victor looked around in to the distance in every direction and then up and down. A white void infinite an unyielding in all directions, he looked around again and again before looking at his hands. He could see through himself. “Is this heaven?” He tried walking but even though he felt movement he had no point of reference to confirm he was even moving.
“HELLO!” He shouted to the infinite white void. It did not echo back and nothing replied. “I guess I died.” Victor pondered for a moment and shrugged. “Actually this might be better than my job was.” He sat down then laid on the void realizing there wasn’t much difference since it didn’t feel like gravity applied here. He just began to relax for the first time since he started working. “Man this is so much better! I wonder if I can manifest reading material.” He tried to visualize a book in his hand and nothing came to him. “Ah drat. I wonder what I am supposed to do.”
He paused and contemplated. “What if this is it? There’s nothing and no one else here.” He sighed and hoped it wasn’t true. “I feel like an endless white oblivion isn’t what I deserved but I guess it fits how unlucky I am.”
“Indeed you are unlucky.” Before him a pure white angel with wings stretching far into the white void appeared behind him. “It is why I am here.” On his body a bright golden blade at his waist, and golden filigree throughout his body. “My apologies for keeping you waiting, my name is Reincarnation. To mortals The Angel of Reincarnation, pleased to meet you Victor Vance Vogal. I am here to discuss your future.”