The next morning would have been a strange sight if anyone had happened to be watching me sleep. Not that people often watch me sleep, but hypothetically. One moment, I was sprawled in bed, limbs tangled in my sheets, mouth hanging open as I snored. The next moment, my body was flinging itself off the mattress before my mind could process I was awake. I stumbled forward, flailing my arms as I tripped on the laundry I had left on the floor.

Slam!

And that’s how I ended up head-butting the wall before I’d even fully opened my eyes.

“OW! What the hell?” I grabbed my face, feeling a warmth seeping from my throbbing nose. I was breathing like I’d just sprinted a 100m race. My heart was trying to beat its way through my ribcage. I knew the feeling, but I’d never felt it first thing in the morning. It was adrenaline. And not just a little jolt like after a startling noise. No, this was the adrenaline one felt when faced with actual danger. Full fight or flight.

I’d felt this way once before when I was twelve. My cousin and I had trekked out into the woods behind my grandparent’s house on a grand adventure. I’d claimed a stick as the legendary sword of King Arthur, X-Calendar. My cousin told me that the name was wrong but, pfft, what did he know? We had just conquered the castle of a rival lord (a small hill), when we’d heard something rustling in the bush. I’d told my cousin that it was a dragon come to take revenge, but I would slay it. It wasn’t a dragon, but it was a black bear, lumbering around. The moment when I’d stared up at the ursine foe, holding nothing but a flimsy stick that was vaguely sword-shaped, I’d felt true fear for the first time. Luckily, the bear was more curious than hungry or territorial. When my cousin and I had screamed and ran away, leaving the lingering scent of soiled pants, it had rushed off at the sound.

I was feeling bear-induced pants-peeing adrenaline right now and I had no idea why.

Eyes watering, I slumped down on the edge of my bed. I pulled my hand away from my nose to see it stained red.

“What is happening?” I looked around my room for any signs of danger. It was just as sloppy and messy as I’d left it the night before. There was nothing outside when I peeked through the window either. No assassin rabbits. I looked specifically for those.

As I tended to my leaking nose with a handful of tissues, I tried to puzzle out what could have given me such a shock. “I was just sleeping. I feel well-rested. Maybe I was dreaming…”

I remembered something. Not much, just part of something. A door. A strange bronze door. It was old and… was it floating? No, that wasn’t right. It was out of place? Odd. I couldn’t remember anymore. The few details I had slipped through my fingers like a silk scarf. It was gone.

“Hmph. Weird.” My body was settling down. There was no immediate danger, I checked my whole suite. I felt fine.

The only evidence of the waking shock was my bloody nose.

I shook it off. I had to get ready. Today, I was going to the Red Pineapple. Hopefully, I would get a job and then I could buy more than KD and hot dogs for dinner. Breakfast was more Frosted Flakes with milk that was only slightly sour. Once my nose stopped bleeding, I hopped in the shower. I put on my best clothes; clean jeans that weren’t ripped, a plain blue T-shirt and a nice-ish black sweater. My hair fought with me and my comb for five minutes before I gave up trying to get it to lay flat.

With a deep breath, I looked in the mirror. “Ok, today, you’re gonna get a job, Arthur.” My swollen nose was pretty obvious, but other than that, I had cleaned up alright.

Grabbing my phone, wallet and keys, I headed out the door toward my new future.

----------------------------------------

The restaurant was tucked away on a back street next to a Circle K and some Asian massage place. The sign out front was a big neon pineapple that was supposed to be red, but the LEDs had malfunctioned and it was blue. Didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me.

The front of the building had two large windows on either side of a regular house door, like one of those white ones with the weird half-circle, orange slice-looking windows in it. I peeked through the window. Two round tables and a few chairs made up a small dining area. There were menus and basic condiments on the tables. On the wall behind them with one of those swinging saloon doors like in the old west. Beyond I could see deep fryers and a big walk-in freezer. I caught a glimpse of someone with red hair cooking away.

It looked clean enough and I had half been expecting lobster patrons, so I walked in. A little brass bell above the door rang as it opened. It scared me so badly I jumped into the nearest chair, tripping over it and falling onto the table. As I nursed my sore thigh, I could hear somebody rattling around in the back and some muffled voices. Then footsteps.

The swinging door pushed open and out came a tall, beautiful, blonde girl wearing black leggings and a red shirt with a pineapple on it.

Now, I, being a young man who had only been on one very disastrous date in his life, was very attracted.

The hot girl looked at me with a wrinkled nose and raised eyebrow, that look that said, Who is this idiot?

I tried to get off the table, but my foot caught on the chair and I tumbled to the floor. Because of course I did.

The girl leaned down and said. “What are you doing?”

While on the ground, trying not to whimper in front of this hot girl, I said, “Oh you know, just hanging out.” She gave me that look again and I remembered that I wasn’t hanging on anything and had ruined the joke. I quickly stood and dusted myself off. I pulled out the flier that Walter had given me.

Seeing the flier, the girl raised her eyebrows and looked me over. “Already? Well ok. Follow me.” She led me into the back of the restaurant.

It was pretty standard, with the big ovens and fryers, stoves, fridges and utensils everywhere and food everywhere else. What caught my attention the most were the big red door in the back corner with a black symbol on it and the fish tank on the counter with an orange octopus in it.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I froze, immediately flashing back to the lobster car. I hoped I wasn’t developing a fear of seafood. What if the next time someone offered me some fried shrimp I screamed and ran away? That would be mortifying.

“Um…octopus,” I said.

The girl scoffed. “Yeah, never mind her. What’s your name?”

I looked into her eyes, blue as sky and said, “Harthur Ardwick. Wait, I mean Arthur Hardwick. Yeah, that one. The second one.”

The girl looked like she was dying inside as she brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Well, Arthur, how’d you get this?”

“Uh, I’m guessing the mail isn’t the right answer.”

The girl glared at me.

“Right… Some guy gave it to me. Walter.”

Her eyes narrowed, but more in a Walter? Is he sure it was Walter? kind of way than a This guy is lying way. “What did you see?” She asked after staring at me for a while.

I thought about lying, but something about her eyes, the way she stared into me, made me think that was a terrible idea. Plus the red door and the octopus were really giving me weird vibes.

“A lob..lobster car…and Catholic biker assassins.”

The girl cocked her head, brow furrowed. “I’m sorry?”

I tried to remember what the barber had called them. “Wait, uh, he called them something…the Saints, the Bitter Saints.”

Her eyes widened. She stood up straight, closed her eyes and blew out a long breath.

“Is that bad?”

She opened her eyes and looked at me with the disgust of a high-school clique finding out someone had just been swirlied. “Let me put it this way. You have three choices now, that’s it. You could go back to your no-doubt boring, dull life and wait for them to catch you looking before they kill you in the most horrific and painful way imaginable, or you can… stay here. Join the Red Pineapple and we might be able to teach you enough to survive.”

That was so much to process, but my mind stuck on one thing. “Wait, that’s only two options. What’s the third?”

The girl looked over to the kitchen where there was a magnetic rack of cutlery. “You see those knives? You could take the biggest one and-”

“Whoa! Got it, got it. Don’t like that option!” My heart was beating so fast. I’d never had a panic attack before, but I had a suspicion that I might be about to.

The girl folded up the flier and put it in her back pocket. “Well, let’s hope you don’t regret not choosing that option.”

I must have looked terrified because her face softened. “Sorry. I know this is a lot to take in, seeing the Other Life for the first time. I don’t mean to scare you, it’s just that, well, we’re called the Unlucky Ones for a reason.”

“That’s what Walter called me,” I stammered. “Does he work here?”

The girl made a face. “No. He’s just… around.”

“Oh.”

We dropped into silence for a minute, which got awkward pretty quickly.

I looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps to see a thin, graceful-looking girl who seemed to be of Japanese descent. She wore ripped jeans and a red T-shirt with a black outline of a pineapple on it. Her dark silky hair was tied up in a bun beneath a hair net. Around her belt hung a dangerous-looking assortment of kitchen knives and other bladed implements. Of course, the most eye-catching feature was the large bushy orange fox tail wagging behind her.

“Don’t stare,” the blonde girl hissed as the newcomer waved.

“Hi! Who are you?” the girl with the tail said cheerily.

I forced myself to look at her face instead of her tail. “I’m Arthur.” I wondered if I had stumbled into a furry den.

The girl beamed at me. “Hello, Arthur. I’m Lucky, I’m the cook here.” She extended her hand.

Her handshake was fast and wild. She looked to the blonde girl. “So?”

The blonde sighed and showed her Walter’s crumpled flier. “Mm hmm.”

Lucky clapped her hands and squealed. “Yay!” She grabbed my shoulders. “You’ll do great! I’m sure you’ll last longer than the last one!”

I’d never heard such an ominous statement said with such an infectious cheerfulness.

“Uhhhh….” My brain kinda short-circuited at that point, overloaded with the weirdness and horrifying implications of my new life. And also, this was the closest I’d ever been to two cute girls without them throwing things at me. Finally, I managed to croak out, “What do you mean longer than the last one?”

Lucky made a face. “Oops, um, don’t worry about that.” She let go of me, her tail standing straight up. “Oh, would you look at that, something is… burning. I’d better go get it.” She scampered away with a nervous giggle. There definitely wasn’t any smoke in the air.

I stood in shock for a minute.

The blonde girl cleared her throat. “Well, if you wanna live, then, how do you feel about delivering pizzas?”

“Huh?”

“This is the safe place here. If you wanna survive the Other Life, you’ll need our help. And we don’t do it for free. You’ll have to work for it.”

“I am looking for a job,” I said. “Wait, how much do you pay?”

The girl shrugged. “Real money isn’t the big thing. The job helps keep us hidden. So, yeah, you’ll make some cash for normal life things. But the real payment is being taught how to survive the Other Life.”

I thought about my empty bank account and my looming bills. Then I thought about the bikers and the way that Walter had been terrified of them. If this was the only way to steer clear of them, well at least I was killing two birds with one stone. “I’ll do it.”

The girl dipped her head. “Ok. Let me get the stuff.” She headed off toward a side door, an office most likely. I watched the octopus worm around in the tank until she returned with an old-fashioned quill with a bronze nib. She handed it to me.

“Uh, what do I sign?”

“Just say that you accept the cost and responsibilities of working for the Red Pineapple and you’ll do your best to see its tenets upheld.”

It was a real sketchy contract and I should probably have been read to more as a child to develop my critical thinking skills, but I’ve never been one to make what others would call wise decisions.

“I just say that?”

“Mm hmm.”

I repeated the words. As soon as I did, the quill began flailing about in the air, with my arm attached to it. Bronze ink began sketching itself in the air, drawing out a contract with those exact words, along with other information I hadn’t yet seen. There was much screaming.

When it stopped, I flung the quill as far as I could. “What the hell?”

With a scoff, the girl retrieved the quill and walked over to the fish tank. “Well? Good enough?”

I watched in horrified amazement as the orange octopus slurped its way out of the tank, wrapped its rubbery tentacle around the quill and signed the floating contract. The name Carol appeared on the line below my name before the contract dissolved into sparks and vanished.

The girl smirked. “There. Carol has accepted your contract. You now work for the Red Pineapple.”

I was already so overloaded with randomness, that I just shrugged. “The boss is an octopus. Sure, why not.”

The girl smiled fully. “Now that you’ve been hired, I can introduce myself. I’m Skylar.”

“Skylar. Cool.”

Another smile. “Alright. One last question. How’s your driving?”

My mind flashed back to last year when I had accidentally driven my cousin’s car into the side of a barn. “Oh, yeah, it’s great. Totally passable, not a problem. Uh, but I don’t have a car.”

Skylar began leading me toward the back door, which was one of those grey, bumpy garage doors. “We’ve got that covered. Just head in there and say you’re a newbie. She opened the door. “Good luck.” Then, she disappeared behind the red door.

I was both excited and nervous. And confused. I had a job. Of course, I also had a target on my head apparently.

From the kitchen, Lucky gave me two big thumbs up and a wink. She was also holding a bloody meat cleaver so it kind of sent a mixed message.

I had a job. That should have been a cause for celebration. But I had no idea what to expect and the way Skylar talked about, well, everything was raising some serious red flags. But, I’d signed a contract. I needed to at least give it a try.

With a deep breath, I headed out back. “Here we go.”