Epilogue Pt.1

“Can I have this?” asked a man standing in front of the store counter. He was holding a bag of half eaten potato chips he’d been picking at in the corner and was giving me this really sluggish stare. “They’re almost gone anyways.”

“You can have it if you pay me twenty five cents. Oh, and another twenty five cents for the ones you already ate.”

“Uh…” the guy tiredly looked at the half empty bag, then back at me. He was the spacy type who figured he could make me feel bad for him for being so dimwitted and broke. “I can’t pay that. Can I just have the rest?”

I stuck out my hand, expectantly waiting for money to be placed into it. “For two quarters, yes.”

“I thought you said it was only twenty five cents at first. That’s what the bag says.”

“That was before you started munching on them like a gutter rat,” I barked. “So hand over the coin, or I'll make you work for it.”

I made a sharp whistle with my fingers, summoning Ben from a corner where he was working on installing new shelves.

He came over and carried an imposing presence, like one of those bouncer types. The menacing air around him caused the chip man to shiver.

“We gonna’ have a problem here?” Ben asked.

“I think this guy was saying he wanted to work with you on those renovations. He loved those chips so much that he felt like fifty cents wasn’t enough for them.”

Suddenly, the situation became a lot more real for the spacy guy. Magically, he pulled out a quarter from his pocket, proving that he was lying about not being able to pay.

“Can I at least pay this and leave the rest of the bag?”

I was half tempted to take his offer, but his slimy Keeto dust fingers were unsanitary and made me sick. The disgusting thought that he was digging through that bag with those things made me never want to look at it again.

“You’re short,” I pinched my fingers. “Fifty cents for the bag or you work the rest off.”

“Awww…” he reached into his pocket again and pulled out another quarter, but it looked just as gross as his fingers. “Here. This is all I have.”

“Sure it is,” I took the money with gloves and put it into the register. “Now head home to your mothers basement. If you ever take something from me again without paying, you’ll be swabbing the floors a week for every chip you put in that gullet of yours.”

“Yes ma’am…” he sulked away with his coveted bag of junk food. I heard a really loud crunch just before he walked out the door.

“I hope he didn’t leave a mess…” I shook my head. “ At least he bought something, finally.”

He usually came in and just looked around. I always figured he was doing something suspicious, but I guess today was the day he finally acted on that. If I hadn’t called him over when I noticed he was eating those, he'd probably have polished them off and left.

“Thanks, big guy,” I said to Ben.

“No prob. Let me know if anyone else causes any problems.”

The last person in line stepped up. Unlike most of my customers who think they could get away with every con in the book, he politely came up to me ready to buy three cans of food and holding the money to pay for it. I happily accepted his cash, even handing him back some extra change.

“Wait, you gave me back too much…” he started picking out the extra coins to return to me.

“Consider it a ‘thank you’ for not pretending I’m an idiot,” I winked to him. “Now get out and enjoy the food.”

“Yes ma’am!” he nodded, making his way to the door. “Thank you!”

I was never one to follow the rules, so maybe I invited fate to give me some of the silliest people for customers. But when nice guys like that showed up and actually treated my business with respect, it only made sense to reward it. Besides, I was about to make a lot more money than usual, considering my shop was about to grow twice as big.

“Finally, we end the day on a high note.”

“How did we do?” Yuri asked, stepping out from the back room with a box of wires and stuff he was installing into the wall.

I picked up a memo book and started listing off the sales. “We sold fifteen thorium cores, ten two cans of meat, five cans of vegetables… Apparently three children's painting sets…”

Those painting sets made me a bit nostalgic. I had the privilege of scavenging my old preschool near Milwaukee a few months ago. The last time I was there as a pipsqueak everything felt so big and tall. Going back made me feel like a giant, especially when I tried to sit in one of those tiny chairs.

I even jokingly played teacher at the front of the room. Thank God nobody was watching, because I probably looked like a dork.

Anyways, kids loved those little art supplies sets. I even gave one to Olga and I almost always saw her swabbing a paintbrush on her off time. Starting them young was the way to go. Art was a great stress relief.

Speaking of Olga… People were still lined up to take pictures with her even though we were closing for the day.

I pointed my pen in her direction. She was swarmed by children and their grandmother's who were taking selfies with old cameras they bought from me at some point.

“Oni vse pakhnut chernoslivom i dynyami,” Olga grimaced, leaning away from one of the old ladies trying to kiss her cheek. “Dyadya, Vanni, pomogi! Ona pytayetsya menya s"yest'!” She was squealing for us to come over and help her.

“Hey!” I shouted to the old lady. “Don’t kiss the princess! Touching costs extra, old bag!”

The old lady proceeded to blow raspberries my way like some five year old, then stormed off with her grandchild, spouting some nonsense about how she could do whatever she wanted at her age.

“You can only do that because you’ve got one foot in the grave, grandma!” I growled. “And here I thought we’d have a normal end of the day,” I shrugged. “Good work today, everyone! You’ve earned dinner.”

“Vanni, mozhesh' prigotovit' mne yeshche zharenogo syra i tomatnogo supa?” Olga asked me if she could have fried cheese and tomato soup. What she was really asking for was if she could have cheese curds and Chef Boi-Mar-C spaghetti.

We’d been trying to teach her English, since she needed to know it for school, considering nobody there spoke Russian… But I’d been practicing the Motherland tongue myself a little to try and communicate with her better.

“Da. Ya tebya zazharyu i sdelayu iz tebya pomidor,” I said, smiling proudly. She worked hard today, so she earned her request.

My smile faded as I saw a look of horror overcome her face. She ran into the backroom and hid in one of the empty boxes.

“Eh, fine,” I grunted. “No cheese curds for you, brat.”

Yuri was laughing at me and slapping the counter top. “I don’t think I’d want to be fried and turned into a tomato either… Just saying…”

What the hell did I even say to her? Learning a second language sucked.

“Heh, how weak of her,” I chuckled. “Ben, before I make dinner, we got some unfinished business to take care of.”

He perked up, lowering his power tools. “Oh, you're finally going to take care of that?”

“Yeah,” I said, grabbing my rifle and slinging it over my back. “It’s time to take Rick’s throne.”

***

When we got back from our trip to Lake Geneva, Ben and Sadie didn’t visit Rick right away, giving him the illusion that they were still out on their trip. It gave me plenty of time to not only gather up some extra funds, but also pull the two of them to my side completely. By the time Rick noticed his stock was dwindling from his missing employees not bringing back anything, it was too late for him to do anything about it.

According to some people who passed by his shop not long ago, he was in full crisis mode trying to get in touch with Ben, who left him high and dry. In this business, if you didn’t have a steady stream of new stuff, you’d be done for quickly. And given how often he had his doors open for customers, he was boned. It was partially why I only opened up my shop every few days, since I could only get so much at any given time.

His only means of escaping my vengeance was to hire new people. But on such short notice, he’d never find someone who’d be able to meet the demand he had.

Now was the time to strike while the iron was hot and sink my greedy little fangs into that rat of a man's livelihood.

From the outside, his shop looked as normal as ever… but the inside was in total shambles. The once organized shelves on the wall were barren, picked clean of all the good stuff.

I noticed a few shelves of items remained, but the prices were jacked way the hell up. Probably his pitiful attempt to get as much cash as he could before making a run for it.

“W-welcome, customer…” Once he saw it was me, his nervous smile and fake curtesy turned into a fearful frown. “Oh, it’s you…”

I threw some bubble gum in my mouth.

“Hey, Ricky-boy,” I stepped up to the counter. “How’s business? You must have had a pretty big sale recently.”

“I’m just a little low on stock at the moment, that’s all,” he worldly tried to make up an excuse to look strong.

“You’ve never been this low,” I chuckled. “What happened to Ben and Sadie? Are they still out there getting you crap to sell?”

“Grr…” he growled like a dog. “You know exactly what happened to them, you witch of a punk! Don’t think I don’t know Ben's working for you now!”

“How about that…” I blew a bubble. “Look, you're getting old and shrinking by the day… a guy like you should retire. Tell you what, I’ll take this dump off your hands, if you want. I’ve got the cash for it too.” I was a weekish later than I intended, but who would have thought life would get so chaotic?

“No!” he shouted, pulling out a pistol on me. “I’ll never give this place up! It’s all I have.”

Oh, but that made it all the better for me. I didn’t show the least bit of fear as that gun barrel aimed right at my head. Hell, if he shot it with those shaky hands, he’d probably miss anyway.

“Pretty sad that your only possession is an empty shop like this,” I gestured around the room. “You won’t be able to afford rent pretty soon. But hey, I came with some cash. Give this place to me, and you can go off and buy yourself a new life. How does that sound?”

“Never!” he shouted. "It's mine!"

As he pulled the trigger, a bullet coming from the outside struck the gun and knocked it out of his hands. The shot fired from his weapon missed me by a mile.

To ensure the weasel stayed unarmed in the panic, I kicked the gun away from him and then sent my spiky boot right into his crotch, knocking him backwards

“Assault!” he shouted, as if anyone could even hear him. “Somebody help me!”

Before he knew it, I started taping that little man up with duct tape, like a spider spinning a web around its prey. He had the countering power of a fish out of water.

“You shot first, Ricky-boy!” I snapped my finger when I was sure he couldn’t move. “This was self defence.”

I looked out the window, seeing Ben giving me a thumbs up from the other side of the street. I was happy to have put so much faith in him shooting that gun out of Rick's hands. I figured that rat would have pulled something like that on me out of desperation.