Marcus was contemplating murder. Or suicide. Or anything really to get out of this torment.

He knew that particular customer was gonna be trouble the moment she stepped into the fast food restaurant. She was a rather obese woman with excessive makeup and scarlet dyed hair, and she was speaking (or rather screaming) at her phone. She had cut in line before the other customers, who looked at her with rage but didn't actually say anything, she had ordered a bubble tea and finally she had sat at a large family table, taking it all for herself while still loudly complaining at the phone about something.

Marcus had hoped that she would drink her tea and go away, but of course the bitch had other plans.

As soon as she finished her drink, she hung up and marched towards the register with the fury and grace of an enraged hippo.

She stared at Marcus, who was behind the register, with pure fury in her eyes, and she placed her cup under his nose, showing that it was empty save for most of the tapioca balls.

"I finished my tea but I still have a lot of jelly balls!" she screeched.

"I can see that, ma'am." Marcus replied, struggling to keep a straight face, "So, what's the problem?"

"What's the problem!?!" she screamed as if she couldn't believe what Marcus just said. "What's the problem, he say! Can't you see that I can't eat those jellies through a straw without more tea, you idiot?"

Marcus temper was flaring at being insulted by that fat bitch. But he needed this job, so he tried to be professional and answer in a polite tone.

"Well, if you want, we can give you a spoon..."

"A spoon!" she interrupted him "And you want me to eat the bubbles of the bubble tea with a spoon!?! Are you out of your fucking mind!?!"

"Ma'am, please... I don't know what else to do for you." Marcus was using all of his patience to repress the urge to tell her off. "If you don't want to eat the tapioca balls, no one is forcing you."

"Oh, and why in the hell would I have payed for a bubble tea if I didn't want to eat the balls!?!" she replied in a sarcastic tone. "What I want is a refund! You made the tea wrong! And be thankful I don't sue you for the horrible way you just treated me!"

Rage was rising inside Marcus at a dangerous rate.

He could give the bitch a refund, and let the story end there. But ol' Heinz, the owner of the restaurant, was a bloody miser through and through. He had made various, ridiculous cheap rules, and among them the chief one was: if you make a mistake, you pay for it. Meaning that any refunds would be taken out of the pay of the one who made the unsatisfactory dish or beverage.

Not a really a fair or even legal policy, but the town was full of unemployed students who desperately needed a job, so Heinz could get away with pretty much anything.

However, it was not Marcus who had made the tea. That was Lisa, a young girl who was looking at them with a tired, almost scared stare. Lisa had to work one hour to earn what that bubble tea cost.

To take money from her because a landwhale was feeling bitchy just didn't feel right.

"Sorry, ma'am, but the tea was actually made correctly." Marcus replied, with only just a hint of sarcasm in his voice "You see, there is this thing called physics that say that if you have a liquid, like your tea, and you put an object with greater density, let's say like the tapioca balls, in that liquid, then the object is gonna drop to the bottom because of something called “gravity”."

"Are you being condescending with me, you little twat!?!" the fat woman cried in an incredulous voice, as if she couldn't believe that someone would dare disagreeing with her.

"No, ma'am, I was just explaining to you the reason why the tapioca balls dropped to the bottom, and that it's something outside of our control. Besides, you already drank all of your tea, so you're not eligible for refunds anymore."

"That's it! I'm suing you! I'm suing all ya'll! I want to speak with the manager!" the woman screamed like a wounded eagle.

"Ma'am, please, keep your cal..." Marcus tried to say, but then the woman threw the cup at him, hitting him on the nose.

The cup was made of hard plastic and the tapioca balls gave it some weight, so it did hurt more than Marcus would have expected.

He grabbed his face, some blood dripping from it, and from his fingers he saw the fat bitch screaming, grabbing everything she could find and throwing it in random directions.

Then she hit Lisa's head with a well aimed bottle of ketchup, knocking her out, and Marcus decided that he had enough of this bullshit.

He jumped over the counter and reached the screaming woman. With a calculated movement, he grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back. She screamed in surprise, but before she could react he kicked her behind the knees, knocking her down.

The fat lady cried in an incredibly high-pitched voice, like whistle or a boiling kettle, but Marcus shut her up by twisting her arm painfully.

"Shut up, bitch!" he said, rage in his voice, and then lifted his head to see Damian, another employee of Ol'Heinz, staring at him in disbelief. "Call the police Damian! We're getting this fat bitch out of here!"

About one hour later, after the police had come, Ol' Heinz himself was coldly staring at Marcus in the eyes, in the staff room of the fast food.

"You're fired." he said.

"What!?! Are you kidding me!?!" Marcus protested "You can't do this! That fat bitch was the one that started it all! Because of a stupid bubble tea, no less!"

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"You could have just given her the refund she wanted." replied Heinz "In that case, we could have avoided this mess. The police coming up, the clients hurt by thrown objects... it's all horrible publicity for my place."

"Oh, so people can now enter your shitty restaurant and demand free food?" Marcus said, with heavy sarcasm in his voice. "I get it now why you want us employees to pay for it. Otherwise, you wouldn't make a dime with that fucking policy."

"I don't want to listen to another word of this." Heinz replied while turning his back on Marcus "You are fired. End of the story. Take your things and go."

Rage was mounting inside Marcus, at a rate far greater than before. He knew that Heinz was a bastard, but not to such a degree.

"You pay a misery to us, and you want us to cover for your bullshit with our own money!?!" Marcus screamed with frustration "And then you fire us when we defend ourselves from assault!?! You are a cunt Heinz. A huge, colossal cunt. I hope I'll see you burning in hell together with your shitty restaurant."

Heinz didn't turn and didn't bother to answer, leaving the room without any other word.

Marcus stared at the empty door frame for a bit, anger surging up inside of him. Then he opened his locker and collected his belongings, mostly just his clothes, considering the pro and cons of murdering your boss. Or rather, your former boss now.

Surely, there had to be some way to pass it up as legitimate self defense in tribunal. Or maybe he could plead insanity. Heaven knew Heinz was driving him insane...

"Uhm... Marcus?" a gentle, tired voice interrupted his thoughts.

Lisa was staring at him timidly from the door. She had a nasty bump on her head, but for the rest she looked fine. She was a tall but really thin girl, about 21 years old, with sandy long hair and an oval face. She was quite pretty, but in a subdued way. It was the kind of girl you could see a thousand times without ever noticing her, and her shy personality didn't help it.

Right now, even as she was talking to Marcus, she was staring at her feet. But she always did that when talking to people, so Marcus wasn’t bothered by it.

"Oh, sorry Lisa. I was lost in my thoughts." said Marcus, his voice a little calmer "Do you need something?"

"Well... I... I wanted to thank you for defending me. And also, I'm sorry you lost the job because of me."

"I didn't lose the job because of you!" he replied, adamant "I lost it because Heinz is a fucking idiot! And also, don't thank me for that. I just did what was right."

"Oh, well... I still want to thank you." Lisa blushed "I-if you need help, now that you've lost your job, feel free to count on me! I want to repay you somehow!"

"Don't worry! There is nothing to repay!" Marcus said in a confident tone "And I'm sure I'll manage somehow! It's not like I'm dead or something, is it? Actually, losing a shitty job like this one could actually be for the best!"

"W-well... if you're so sure..." Lisa stuttered, blushing even more as if she was incredibly embarrassed "B-but... c-could I a-at least give you m-my phone n-number? Y-you know, just in c-case..."

Marcus hesitated for a moment, confused by Lisa's embarrassment. But then he shrugged.

"Well, ok then... at least this could work both ways." he said, staring at the girl while taking out his cell phone "If Heinz or anyone else bothers you, feel free to call me, Lisa, and I'll come to punch them in the face!"

"Oh... thank you, Marcus!" she said "B-but know that you can c-count on me as well! D-don't hesitate to call me i-if you need help!!"

"Hey, I should be the one to say that!" Marcus smiled "Don't let that old bastard Heinz mistreat you, ok?"

The two exchanged their telephone numbers, and then Lisa left him, resuming her shift. He quickly changed his clothes, not wanting to spend another minute in that damned place, and then he marched right out of the back door, an mix of anger and annoyance in his face.

Once he was on the street, the fresh breeze of the evening cooled him down, and anger slowly gave way to exhaustion and worries.

"Maaaaaan! What a drag!" he said, looking at the sky above him.

The sun had long set behind the buildings of the city, but its light still had to fade, tinging the horizon red and purple. The first stars were showing in the opposite direction.

The air was full of noises and smells. The street was crowded both by people and cars, mostly getting home from a day of hard work.

It almost felt like there were no individuals, as if they were all part of some kind of swarm, where the problems and worries of a single person could disappear.

But it wasn't that easy, and even if it was, Marcus would never accept to surrender his own individuality.

“Always be true to yourself, son.” These had been the last words of Marcus' father, and he tried his best to live by this motto. He couldn't stand people who pretended to be something else. He could forgive a lot of things, but hypocrisy was not among them.

Especially not in himself.

But this attitude, so far, had only brought him trouble. He had lost many jobs because of his inability to look the other way and keep his mouth shut. The fiasco with Heinz was only the latest in a long streak of failures.

He had to take a pause from his studies, because he couldn't afford his tuition. To make thing worse, with the loss of this job he probably couldn't even pay the rent for this month.

And he didn't want to ask his mother for money, as she was dirt poor herself. She would have given them to him, at the cost of not eating herself, but Marcus would have never let his mother do that.

His father had died 10 years before, and since that day Marcus had sworn that he'd find a way to take care of his mother.

He had always excelled at school, although he often got into fights, and he successfully enrolled in a good college. But then he lost his first job, and after that less and less people were willing to hire him.

He had struggled for months before getting the dubious pleasure of working under Heinz's tyrannical wing, and now he'd have to do it again.

He sighed. At least, as he had said to Lisa, it wasn't like he was dead. With time and effort, he would find a way to make things right.

As he kept walking and thinking, night had finally come. The streets were getting darker, and he met less and less people.

The neighbourhood where Marcus lived was something of a place of ill repute, but at least rents were suitably low. And Marcus didn't feel like he had much to fear in any case. First of all, being dirt poor meant he had nothing of value to steal.

Second, he was intimidating enough to convince most would-be muggers to steer clear from him. He was very tall, close to 1.9 meters, and with very broad shoulders. He had short copper brown hair, and a short beard, little more than a stubble really, of the same color. His face was quite rough and sharp, but not without something of a virile, attractive quality. His expression was almost always serious with droopy eyes, some kind of threatening brooding that had become a habit since long ago.

All in all, he usually had a seedy look, accentuated by his cheap, old clothes, and right now he had the appearance of a thug looking for a brawl, and in that exact moment, he'd have actually welcomed one. At least it would have given him an excuse to vent his frustration by punching someone in the face.

It was at that moment that he heard the scream.

It was a woman's scream. It came from a dark alley from his side.

Normally, Marcus would have called the police, or would have just shouted to interrupt whatever was happening in there. But right now he was too angry and frustrated to be rational and so he just stepped into the alley.

In the dark, he could see a woman being grabbed by a man with a baseball cap. He ran towards them and grabbed the man, throwing him away from the woman.

BANG!

The deafening sound of a gunshot erupted in the alley.

Marcus fell to the ground, feeling an excruciating pain in his chest. He had trouble breathing, and through the tears that now filled his eyes, he could see that the man with a baseball cap had a gun in his hand.

The woman kept screaming, and the man with the gun simply ran away.

Not like this! Thought Marcus I still have so many things to do! I want to live! I don't want... to...

He was feeling more and more cold, and incredibly tired. He struggled to stay awake, but it was futile.

After a few seconds, his eyes closed and darkness enveloped him.