Jean searched, but the mop was nowhere to be found. It was not in the cleaning room, nor anywhere in the warehouse. They had taken it away, leaving a bucket and a sponge.

"Bitches!"

She could guess who they were, but if they expected her to clean up that mess with just that, they were fucked in the head. It was common for that kind of shit to happen when the manager sent her something, but Dawson would know firsthand who had wasted her time. Of course, she would have to confirm it first.

Convinced that she couldn't escape from Dawson's reprimand, she decided to add Ian's phone to her contacts, but it was still off. When she turned it on, and began to save the phone, she received 8 missed call notifications and several messages. All from her mother.

"Really? I'm not in the mood right now!"

After saving the number, Jean wondered if Ian had been playing her up until now. Maybe he had scared Dawson just to show off.

Doubt was eating her up. It had been years since anyone had stood up for her. Maybe he was a good person and that was just his way of apologizing. If that was really his name and phone number.

“Come on, Jean!”

With her heart pounding like crazy, she hesitantly pressed the call button. Shakily, she put the phone to her ear and waited for the tones. She would know for sure now.

When a voice that sounded exactly like Ian's answered, she almost dropped the phone.

"Fuck! Be patient, man! I already told you, I've had setbacks... I'm on my way to pay!"

Jean froze, not knowing what to say. On the other hand, Ian realized his mistake. He wasn't talking to his accomplice, Alek.

"Excuse me, but... Who the hell are you...?" Tired of waiting for an answer. "Look! Now's not a good time to be indecisive. I'm in a hurry! Who gave you this number?"

"S-sorry...!" She pulled the phone away from her ear, ready to hang up, but her trembling finger seemed reluctant to press the button. She took a deep breath and returned to the charge. "How much would it cost me to give Dawson a good scare?"

"Who is Dawson? You expect me to guess?"

Jean swallowed hard. "The jerk you just scared the shit out of."

Each new heartbeat urged her to keep the conversation going. Why was she doing that? She didn't want to hurt anyone. Maybe scaring the shit out of him would make him a better person. Although if he had a fucking heart attack, she wouldn't care too much either.

He sighed heavily. "My bad! I wasn't clear enough. I don't do that kind of practical jokes. I don't leave witnesses. Do you understand now?"

Fearing that he would hang up. "I don't want this to be just a joke. I want that motherfucker to fear for his life!"

Ian clicked his tongue, but didn't hang up. He couldn't be that bad if he killed people and didn't want to be rude to her. For some unknown reason, that made sense to Jean.

"Look! I understand that he's a jerk, but like I said, if it's not to take care of him..."

"No! Wait! How can I do it myself without being recognized?"

She no longer knew if she wanted to take revenge on Dawson or just keep talking to Ian.

Ian smiled. "Come over here and I'll tell you, green eyes!"

Jean took it as a compliment. No boy had ever complimented her before. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like it was about to burst.

She didn't know what bullshit excuse she was going to give Dawson, but she was going to ask for a few days off and learn a lot from Ian. She knew it was fucking crazy, and that one of them might say no, but she was sick of doing what was always expected of her.

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She even thought about taking Ian to her little sister's wedding. "I can already imagine her having a heart attack! Nah...! Better not! She might try to fuck him!"

Suddenly, something made her put her feet on the floor. A floor that, along with the shelves and walls, began to vibrate at an increasing rate. Jean thought it was an earthquake, but she had never experienced one, so she couldn't be sure. It didn't look like the ones in the movies or on the news. It was like the world was one big old washing machine.

“Ian…! Ian?!”

Although she had plenty of battery, the phone suddenly went dead. She had no idea where she had heard it, but she remembered that the best thing to do in these cases was to leave the building. She looked at the loading docks; they were close. She took a few steps in their direction and immediately thought of Ian.

“Does he know where the nearest emergency exits are?” She doubted it.

Without a second thought, she turned in Ian's direction. She ran with all her strength. She had never done that before, not even on school runs.

The warehouse door already loomed in the background. However, as she was about to leave the last of the warehouse shelves behind her, she began to feel lighter and faster than usual. At that moment, the light coming through the skylights on the roof became blinding.

Her heart almost stopped; that couldn't be an earthquake. She cringed and dropped to the ground, praying it wasn't what it seemed. An explosion that would end everything.

Too many apocalyptic movies and video games created an endless number of deaths in her mind. Some painful, some abrupt. What would it be? An enormous meteorite? A nuclear missile? A Russian or Chinese invasion?

The vibrations began to knock small boxes off the shelves to the floor. At the same time, a loud buzzing sound settled in her ears. That's when she realized she was floating a few inches off the ground. She wanted to scream, but no sound was heard coming from her trembling mouth.

Jean tried to stand up, but the mere touch of the ground made her float even higher. Gravity didn't seem to be working for her. She swam through the air, trying to grab the frame of the huge door that connected the warehouse to the supermarket. But instead of getting closer, she felt herself moving away.

When she realized that the boxes in the warehouse were lying on the floor and only her floating, she thought of aliens. When she imagined herself being dissected on a strange stretcher in an alien spaceship, she curled up into a ball and started screaming again. This time, the sound came out.

Still not giving up, she tried to hold on to something again. Now the shelves were closer than before. However, despite her desperate efforts, she ended up face up and even further away from everything.

The blinding light intensified. This time, she had to cover her eyes due to the awkward position.

For a moment, Jean thought about her lonely life. She thought of her damn little sister and her adorable older sister. She thought of her mother and her strange habit of feeding the resentment that separated them. She couldn't remember when it started, but it was Cocksucker's fault.

“God! How I despise you!”

She also thought of her father. She missed him so much. Maybe he was watching her from heaven right now. Maybe it was time to see him again.

A whirlpool of despair washed over her. She wept, thinking of how little sense all the disputes, resentments and banalities had now. Time would never turn back. She would never recover what she had lost, nor repair the damage she had caused.

Jean began to cry uncontrollably, letting her emotions get the better of her. But she was not alone. Despite the vibrations and the deafening buzz, screams of despair filled her ears like a cacophony. The entire supermarket and parking lot must have been suffering the same fate.

As she floated more than two meters above the ground, a transparent membrane descended from the sky and passed through her completely. An intense heat followed, but it did not burn her. It felt as if the sun had exploded in a slow-motion supernova, except for the deathly heat.

Finally, darkness and silence enveloped everything, but not immediately. She still had time to see her body disintegrate into glowing particles of a blinding yellow color.

"What the fuck? What's next? Heaven? Hell? Shit! I didn't pay much attention to Mom's God. I hope he didn't take it personally."

While waiting for the divine punishment to come, Jean thought of all the bad things she had done in her life. Well, there weren't that many.

"I hope my thoughts don't count!"

After an agonizing uncertainty, the particles of her body concentrated in a single place. As if they were the atoms of Big Ban returning to the Origin. Something spherical and luminous that now seemed to be her.

The tiny sphere began to accelerate at a dizzying speed, sucked into an endless tunnel of light. Inexplicably, Jean still felt her body slowly shutting down. It wasn't painful. It was like falling asleep in an operating room. Overwhelming and inevitable.