Levi yawned as he rolled out of bed. His mouth tasted like a leather boot. Not a clean one.
Rolled was the correct term, really. He thudded to the ground, making a thumping sound he was sure his downstairs neighbors appreciated. Some had roosters or alarm clocks to wake them in the morning. They had Levi. Wasn't he a gentleman, providing such a service?
Staggering up to his feet as he struggled to find some arrangement of his stiff and unhappy body that didn't make him crave death or fall over, he managed to make his way to the kitchenette. His hands, crisscrossed with thin white scars that for some reason refused to fade, pressed against the cool tile as he started his coffee machine.
His apartment was not impressive.
A studio apartment, one large space and a small, attached bathroom, was his entire life. A second-hand bed frame with a new-ish mattress. A wooden table for four that he'd made with a friend from college who had overestimated their combined woodworking ability. It was almost level. Dusty curtains drawn over the room's dual windows, arrayed outwards so that he had a perfect view of the entirely identical apartment building concerningly nearby, which he was positive was a fire hazard.
He didn't have much in the way of furnishings. In the corner of the room, his bed lay entirely buried beneath a mountain of blankets that he'd acquired, one by one, through careful trips to the thrift shop down the road. It was closed now, but the blankets remained, a monument to the comfort that other people's used belongings could provide a struggling moron such as himself.
He had a cat. Theoretically. Somewhere. There was a food dish, and the food he put in it went missing at the end of the day when he got back from work. Water too. And he had to clean the litter box or the confined space would quickly begin to stink. But he couldn't remember the last time he'd actually seen the feline. He harrumphed. Ungrateful furball. Unless, of course, it had been supplanted by a raccoon, clever enough to take its place. He wouldn't know, but oh, the possibilities.
He poured himself a mug of the caffeinated beverage and paused, watching the fizzling drops of coffee hit the hotplate where the pot had once been. The dark liquid pooled in the ridges, bubbling and- He shuddered and placed the coffee pot back where it belonged.
Levi drank from the mug, rubbing his thumb over the chip in the handle as a matter of habit. Breakfast, breakfast...
"It's your time to shine, toaster," he mumbled to the appliance as he dropped a bagel into the thing. It clinked, perhaps with excitement, and then the bagel disappeared into the slots as he pushed down the lever.
Liberally applying peanut butter to one side and jelly to the other, Levi had constructed the perfect breakfast. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich on two delicious cinnamon-raisin bagels. They crunched as he bit into the sandwich, crumbs dropping down his chest as he made his way to the attached bathroom for a shower.
Some time later, as he left his apartment for the morning, he paused to move his boots back inside. He’d left them sitting on the doormat overnight to dry. Grey-brown leather, bearing the mark of countless hikes and wild nights, they were sturdily built things. The red clay of a creek bed clung to them now. He’d have to clean them when he got home.
His keys jingled as he spun them around his pointer finger, walking down the steps. Martha was outside, watering the flowers out front again. She was a diligent landlord, a Hispanic woman in her early sixties with the adamant and old-fashioned mindset that to do something properly it must be done in person. Levi was rather fond of the woman really. She had given him special approval for owning a cat in the apartment because he was, in her words, "such a nice boy." Levi had never been sure if she’d meant the cat or himself, but he supposed it didn’t matter. Her pink and white sundress matched the flowers she was watering and reflected the sunlight in a great glittering circle around her. The grass sparkled where the reflected light struck, as if instead of dewdrops someone had scattered diamonds into the lush green of the lawn.
"Good morning, Martha, how are you today?" he called as he made his way towards his car. The air was cool this morning. The summer was leaving Redding, and soon fall would be in Northern California with a bite on the breeze. But, for now, there were flowers to water.
The woman looked up and smiled a characteristically toothy grin at him.
"Levi, I heard your thump this morning!" she replied. The fact that it had a proper name, and that the landlord could hear it from outside, was both concerning and amusing.
Levi gave her his own lopsided smile in return. "It's a talent! I'm off to work for the day, but let me know if you see my cat again please."
"I will keep an eye out for him," nodded Martha, giving him one last wave before going back to watering the tulips she had planted for the spring. It was early fall, spring was quite a ways away, but Martha said it always paid to be prepared.
Levi made his way to the parking lot where his car waited. Faded red paint, an outward dent on the door whose existence he'd explained to a dozen or more people, and the vague feeling of the entropy of the universe that followed the car around wherever it went like a haze. He popped open the door and, discarding an unread book about trail running to the perceptual void that was the back seat of the vehicle, took his place in the driver's seat.
From behind the wheel of a car, the entire world would stretch out before him. The possibilities were endless! He could drive to Mexico! Or New York! Or Vancouver!
Instead, he drove to work.
Bullseye market was a small chain of grocery stores. After several long legal battles with the (legally distinct) chain known as Target, they had gone from a brand that spanned much of Northern California to a regional mainstay. Nevertheless, Bullseye was home.
Filled with infinite shelves of scented candles, towels, toys, foodstuffs and more, the blast of cold AC at the entrance was like stepping into another world. Clad in black and white, every worker looked the same. Customers were placid things, like cattle, that roamed around between the shelves grazing on the endless selection of goods on offer.
Levi liked working for Bullseye. It was retail, sure, and that wasn’t great, but he rarely had to work with customers, and when he did he could escape himself, reinvent who he was into someone that would suit them. It was liberating in its confinement. The ability to fill a role, to just fill a role, and not have to be himself for a little while felt good. Felt nice.
Besides, he spent the majority of his time keeping a running inventory or stocking shelves. He had a keen mind for numbers (though he did despise them so), and keeping track of what the store needed or had an excess of was an easy way to pass the time.
“Good morning, Levi,” Julia chimed.
Julia was a whip of a woman. Young, with round cheeks and a slight frame, her blonde hair, tied in a neat bun, shone like spun gold in the fluorescent lights of Bullseye. Her singsong voice tittered through the air when she spoke, and her smile always seemed to crawl up her face whether she wanted it to or not. Her eyes were a dark blue, like a calm sea, and the contrast against her starched white uniform shirt was flattering.
“Good morning, Julia,” he returned, giving her a lopsided grin. They were in the hallway that led into the staff break room. The break room also happened to be home to the ancient tablet they used to clock in and out every day. Marissa, who worked in the deli, slid past them in the narrow hall.
“You look like a dead man walking,” Julia teased.
“That’s life.”
"Isn't that antithetical to life?" questioned Mark from the other side of the break-room table, scowling.
Mark was a quiet and eternally exhausted man, with dark brown hair that never seemed to sit quite right on his head. A single hair stood straight up atop his head today, and Levi would bet money he could have balanced a teacup on it. He was holding an orange-cranberry soda, the kind Levi had never seen anywhere on Earth except the vending machine outside. It was as if it materialized there just for Mark to drink, a secret deal between him and the universe.
He was probably being a bit paranoid.
Levi keyed in his ID number and clocked himself in. Julia stepped up to the tablet to do the same.
“I’m still convinced you may be an actual corpse,” she tossed to Mark as she tapped her ID in.
“So judgmental,” Mark said with mock dismay. “Clearly, I have fallen below your standards. My apologies, your highness.”
“You shall be beheaded on the ‘morrow,” Julia said with a flourish. “And your body fed to the vultures and the street children!”
“Please, my lady-”
“Your highness,” Julia corrected.
“Please, your highness, have Levi swing the axe. He’ll put me down clean.”
“It is better than you deserve,” Julia said, raising her chin as she turned to him. “But I am magnanimous in all things. I shall grant you this mercy.”
“All hail the queen!” Levi threw his arms up in the air, waggling them wildly, like the inflatable man outside of a car dealership.
“All hail,” said Toby from behind them, hoisting his energy drink into the air. Toby was the store’s manager. An all together nice man, though not particularly jolly. In his mid-forties with no wife and no children, many theorized on what he might get up to after hours. The current lead theory was that he was some sort of government agent, or perhaps the leader of a small cult. It was hard to say. In any case, his greying hair was combed back in the lazy half of a pompadour.
“Why are we feeding him to the street children?” Levi asked.
“They are terribly hungry,” Julia said. “But I'll be damned before they eat any of my caviar.”
“Mark, why are you in here? You’re not on break,” Toby mused.
Mark managed to pale. He scurried out of the break room as quickly as he could.
“Not as good as a public execution,” Julia complained, giggling.
“I don’t know,” Levi mused, making his way back down the hall. “That was pretty funny.”
Bullseye’s interior was a large, rectangular space, with industrial roof trusses and a floorplan almost entirely composed of neat rows of shelves. The refrigerated goods were on the west side of the store, sporting goods on the east, checkout in the north, and the restrooms and storage in the south. The floor tiles were cream colored, and the walls were white and black. Signs hung from the ceiling, notifying customers of what goods lay down any given aisle. The lighting was a touch harsh, but not so bright that it hurt the eyes, and the dull buzz of the lights could barely be heard over the looping soundtrack of music that had been a hit twenty years ago.
Levi walked to the back of the building, where the air smelled of cardboard and dust, to grab an inventory clipboard. Julia had gone to the front, where she would spend her morning working at the checkout counter. Mark was likely in Customer Service. It was the least busy area of the store, only seeing two or three customers a day, and the lack of foot traffic was what had attracted Mark to the counter in the first place. His terrible customer service skills, however, rendered it a rather dysfunctional union.
He started with the cereal aisle, where colorful cartoon mascots beckoned kids forward. “Come,” they seemed to say, “buy our bright, burgeoning cereal, pay no attention to the nutritional makeup on the sides!” An athletic tiger grinned at him, assuring Levi that he was part of a balanced breakfast as he stood next to a mountain of sugary corn flakes that held about as much nutritional value as sawdust. A handful of customers wandered through as he wrote down counts on his board, just flickering half-formed images of human beings in the periphery of his vision.
Levi allowed himself to lounge in the comfortably beige blanket of mediocrity. No pressure. No thoughts required. Just count the boxes and move to the next.
Simplicity.
Bliss.
By the time Levi again refocused on the world as it was, he was feeling rested. He had inventoried the cereal aisle, the canned goods aisle, and the pasta and pasta sauce aisle. Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” was playing tinnily through the speakers mounted on the ceiling, and every now and then the speakers would crackle just a touch as someone made an announcement over the store’s PA.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
He moved on to stocking. Aiden from the produce section swung by to say hi, and they had a quick conversation about the merits of two local barber shops. Once Aiden had been convinced by Levi’s overwhelming wit and charm that Sir Grooms-A-Lot was inferior to QuickCut in both in style and speed, Aiden moved on, back to produce from whence he’d come.
Levi had a free run of the store, so long as he stayed on Toby’s good books. When he finished sliding the last box of canned corn to the back of the shelf, he decided he was ready to have lunch.
Julia passed Levi half of a salami and swiss sandwich on potato bread as he sat down at the table. The break room table was wobbly, and it shifted as he rested his elbows on it. Levi snatched the sandwich and shoved the entire thing into his mouth, chewing messily. Mark guffawed and Julia gave a tittering, playful giggle. Bonnie, who usually worked at the checkout counter and also happened to be at lunch, stared at him like he was a madman. That was, all things considered, very fair.
“You’re going to give yourself the hiccups,” Bonnie warned, scowling.
“The price I pay for comedic effect,” Levi said. He reached over and stole a pack of peanut butter crackers from Mark’s lunch. Mark, by now, knew better than to protest. No one wanted a repeat of the “I’ll wither away” monologue, least of all Mark. They had been quoting that dramatic speech all across the Bullseye for weeks afterwards, and Levi had contemplated having it turned into a major motion picture (he never did settle on a director).
Then he hiccupped.
The afternoon sunlight had painted everything orange and gold. The wind ruffled Levi’s hair as he stepped through the motorized doors at Bullseye’s front entrance. Stepping out was always a bit of a bittersweet experience. He was comfortable at Bullseye in a way he wasn’t anywhere else, a place where he could fade away into the gentle grey-beige of work and turn his ever-churning mind off. But all things ended eventually, from the stars in the sky blowing themselves to pieces under the weight of their own gravitational pull, to the slowest shift at Bullseye.
He made a left and walked around to the back side of the building, finding it a touch chilly in the shade. There, flickering with its same unsteady heartbeat, was the vending machine. Julia and Mark were already there, drinks in hand. Mark had an orange-cranberry soda and Julia held an iced tea with a brand name that Levi didn’t recognize.
This was a nightly ritual, sacred. They followed its tenets religiously. The cracked glass casing of the vending machine had seen many changes, and the thing predated the Bullseye by at least two decades, though where they had found it to plant it here was virtually unknowable.
His footsteps echoed off the brick side of the building. To his right, up an embankment, cars flashed by on I-5, blue and black and white. The sunlight glinted off of their windows as they passed, sending sparking flashes against the ruddy brown of the brick. The freeway blew a gentle breeze down over the clover and weeds that sprouted on the slope, and they shuddered in the wind.
Mark threw him a canned coffee from the vending machine and Levi cracked the pop-tab with one hand. He took a long drink from it, letting the vaguely burnt taste wash over his tastebuds.
“Another day, another dollar,” Julia intoned.
“It seems that way,” Mark agreed. “Finally, I can go home and be a layabout.”
“You don’t do much when you’re here either,” Levi noted. “I mean, you dealt with, what, two customers all day?”
“It’s about comfort, Levi. You wouldn’t understand. My couch has this spot on it where, if I lay on it just right, I feel like I’m fuckin’ floating. Cloud nine made of faded leather, it’s a beautiful thing.”
“It’s a couch! They’re supposed to be comfortable.”
“Ah, but my couch is the most comfortable. And that’s what matters.”
“You two would bicker all day if I let you,” Julia mused.
“You’d just talk about your dog,” Levi shot back.
Julia had this little ragged terrier she’d adopted the prior November. A strange little creature, plagued by all sorts of health and behavioral issues ranging from hot spots to literal bed-wetting (which wasn’t something Levi had known dogs could do).
“I don’t see how you can form any emotional attachment to that little rat-dog,” Mark complained. “Something that small and you may as well have a cat. At least the cat wouldn’t yap constantly.”
“Pets tend to act like their owners.” Levi took another sip from his coffee. “So, if all of her animals are destined to act like her, they’re bound to be yappy.”
“Mark’s just jealous because he’s lonely,” Julia shrugged.
“... yeah,” Mark sighed.
“Speaking of Bubbles-”
Levi snorted. Julia had been wrestling with the right name for that little abomination since she’d brought it home from the shelter. Levi was having trouble processing the idea that Bubbles was what she had settled on. “What kind of name is that?!”
“It’s really bad,” Mark chuckled, covering his mouth.
“You be quiet!” Julia ordered. They both snapped to attention, though Levi was struggling to fight the smile off of his face. “Speaking of Bubbles,” she began again, “I’m going to go get him a comfort vest after I leave. The vet said it’ll help with the anxiety.”
“Is he still-?”
“Yes, he’s still doing the thing with his bed. Don’t ask. I cannot tell you how many paper towels it took to soak up all the pee yesterday.”
“I really don’t see the appeal of this creature,” Mark grumbled.
“When I adopted him, he became my responsibility. I need to take care of him, and I need to do it properly.”
“A cat wouldn’t need a special vest,” Levi noted.
“You don’t know that,” she complained. “Anyways, I have to get going. I’ve got some errands to run and the pet store I’m going to closes at eight.” She threw the empty husk of her sparkling water into the trash. The breeze coming off the freeway made her hair dance forward, framing her face for a moment. “Goodnight boys.”
“See you tomorrow, Julia,” Levi grinned.
“Don’t have too much fun at the pet store,” Mark provided.
Julia smiled at them, then walked out into the parking lot to her car, weaving between the mix of shoppers pushing carts and motorists cruising through the parking lot at speeds that were possibly criminal and certainly irresponsible. Levi and Mark accepted her absence philosophically.
They stood in silence for a few moments, watching the cars drive by in the parking lot.
“Any plans this week?” Levi asked, breaking the dragging quiet.
“Nope. You?”
Levi grinned. Mark scowled.
“You’ve got a date with Rosa.”
“I do!” Levi beamed.
“You poor little creature, you are completely in love with her.”
“Guilty as charged!” Levi roared, pride in his voice. “She’s beautiful, smart, funny... smells nice.”
“Smells nice?” Mark snorted.
“She does!” Levi crossed his arm, trying to keep the hint of a defensive whine out of his voice. “She wears rosewater perfume. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“You and Julia need new ways to disparage me, this one’s starting to get old.” Mark threw his empty soda can into the garbage and the can connected with the discarded sweet tea with a clink.
“You aren’t exactly super social,” Levi shrugged. “Don’t know as much about you as I’d like, and Julia tends to follow my lead.”
“Like I want you weirdos to know more about you than you have to,” Mark chuckled.
“I’m hurt.” Levi pressed his hand flamboyantly to his chest. “Hurt and, frankly, scandalized. What have we done to deserve such distaste.”
“You guys are bizarre apparitions. I’m almost certain that neither of you are real.” Mark shrugged, waving his hand through the air. “Ghosts. Specters. Haunting me because you’re bored. And besides- Hey!”
“If I was a ghost, I wouldn’t have been able to pinch you.”
“If you were less of a nightmare, you wouldn’t have thought to pinch me.”
Levi beamed. “I’m possessed of some low cunning.”
“Certainly possessed of something...” Mark grumbled.
“Charm.” Levi nodded like a sage. “Charm, wit, and a beautiful jawline.”
Mark’s suppressed laughter hissed through his teeth.
“You guys are still out here?” This was a new voice, but familiar.
“Hey Bonnie,” Levi called, waiving back at her.
“You guys are just bumming around by the vending machine. Again.”
“Definitely,” Mark nodded.
“Nothing better to do with your time?”
Levi and Mark exchanged a glance. They both shrugged. “Not so far,” said Levi.
Bonnie laughed. Mark and Levi laughed with her. It was a nice feeling.
When Levi got home, he threw a frozen dinner in the microwave. He sat and ate at his wobbly handmade table, scrolling mindlessly on his phone as he shoveled bland nutrients into his mouth. The air was filled with the scent of too much sodium, of his own natural oils and the damp heat off the microwave.
He smiled at something on the screen that he forgot about moments later. He threw away the plastic container, washed the fork, and wiped down the inside of the microwave.
Levi sat at the foot of his bed and took a deep breath. He let it out.
He stood and walked to his dresser.
Levi pulled on a set of athletic shorts with two layers, one skin-tight and thin, the second breathable but opaque. He pulled on a long-sleeved shirt made of synthetic fiber that clung tight to his lean muscles, all in black. He threw his phone into his gym bag, then headed back out the door.
The inside of the gym had a particular smell to it.
Sure, there was sweat there. That was expected. A bit of blood if you stood in the right spot, that was sort of normal too, given what they practiced. But the mats, the thick, heavy pads they used to keep from doing too much damage when they threw one another, smelled funny. Layered into those blue and red mats, generations of students had bled into the floor of the place, so the whole school stunk of past lives.
Coach Danyl was from Belarus. If you called him Russian, he was likely to break your nose. His family had survived the perils of Soviet dominion by a hair and, when the wall fell in ‘91, he’d been a rough young man with years of violence behind him and a soft spot for dogs. Now, he taught Sambo.
Levi had been doing Sambo since he was eight. He was good at it. He enjoyed it. It was a brutal sport, the offspring of the Red Army’s need for an effective close combat system. The bastard lovechild of wrestling, judo, and jiu jitsu, it was a nasty martial art sharpened by decades of use in real, life-or-death combat.
Hopping from one foot to the next, Levi let the humid air fill his lungs. He watched his opponent. John or Jake or Jimmy or... something like that. He was new, but he’d done Sambo before at another school, so he was decent on his feet. At the moment, it didn’t much matter. His eyes were focused, watching everything and nothing at the same time. Jerry had at least a hundred pounds on Levi; Levi had always been exceptionally lean. When Jim closed the distance with a half stride, the weight difference didn’t matter much.
Levi’s lead hand shot forward and Jack slipped outside to avoid it just as Levi’s opposite hand secured its grip on the man’s shirt. Levi rolled towards his lead hand to avoid Jim’s counter-swing, then swung his rear leg around behind Jason’s lead leg. He kicked his leg back and shoved hard with the hand on his opponent’s shirt at once, slamming Jermiah into the mat with a loud thump and a sharp exhale. Levi fell upon him, giving him three padded-handed blows to the face before Coach Danyl called the match.
Levi took a few steps away, heart pounding happily in his chest as Jonas climbed to his feet, looking dazed. The rest of the class was lined up against the back wall of the studio. They were playing “king of the hill,” wherein one student holds the mat, and all other students challenge him over and over again until he lost.
Levi’s blood howled in his head to find out how long he would last.
A while later, when his blood had stopped thrumming quite so loud and Coach Danyl had called class to a close, he sat on a bench to one side. The green paint on the bench was peeling, but the wood itself had been polished smooth by all the students that had sat on it over the years. He dabbed a wet towel at a spot of blood on his eyebrow where Lewis had split the skin with a particularly gnarly throw.
Carter, another student, sat heavily on the bench next to him, panting. Tall, dark-skinned, and with a shaved head, Carter was one of the better fighters in the gym. He spat his mouthpiece into his hand and squeezed water into his mouth from an archaic green and orange Gatorade brand bottle. “Fuck,” he grunted. “Would it kill you to go easy on the leg-kicks?”
Technically, kickboxing wasn’t Sambo, but they did a bit of everything.
“You need to learn how to see them coming,” Levi grinned. “Besides, you had shin-guards on, so did I. It couldn’t have hurt that bad.”
“You were going for the inside of my thighs!” Carter’s laughter was breathless.
Levi shrugged. “You know how to check a kick. You could always give me a straight kick to the hip too, that would stop me.”
Carter sniffed, then took another long drink of water. “You’re too damned fast for that. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, you’re some kind of mutant.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice compared to you. Use your reach, you’re taller than I am.”
“Every time I try to teep you, you slide to the side,” Carter protested. A teep was a front kick, thrown out in a straight line, meant more to assert control over the range of the fight than it was to deal damage by itself.
“That’s because you throw it by itself,” Levi provided. “Throw a jab, then your teep. If all I’m worried about is getting out of the way of your foot, of course it’s not going to hit me.”
“Levi is right,” Coach Daryl said as he approached. The big man had a scowl on his face at all times, but he had kind eyes. He just took... getting used to. “You have reach. You keep letting Levi close the distance, and once he gets in close, your advantage is gone. Keep him far away.”
“Easier said than done, Coach,” Carter sighed, defeated.
“Levi,” Coach said, turning his attention to Levi. “You are terrible at boxing.”
Levi sighed. “Yeah, I know Coach.”
“Do not yeah me. You need to work on it. Come on, stand. We have time.”
Levi let a grin climb onto his face. Sparring with Coach Danyl was always a good time, even though he usually got his ass kicked. He stood and threw his mouthpiece back in, even though it tasted foamy and gummy now. Time to have some fun.
HIs phone rang.
Levi scowled and looked down at the screen, already knowing whose name would be there, waiting for him. Derrick. Levi sighed and pulled his mouthpiece out, not bothering to answer the call.
“I have to go Coach, I’m sorry,” he said.
Coach Danyl shrugged, waving his hand. “No worries. I will get you next time.”
Levi smiled at that. Yeah, he would. Probably leave Levi with a few unfortunate bruises and a fat lip in the process. “I’ll see you next time, Coach.”