All Alone

In the dark of the morning before the sun first rises, a man was sprawled out over a twin size mattress, staring up at the ceiling. The fan up above spun about as it always had, casting shadows caused by computer lights on the other side of the room. Dark and blue and quiet, oh so quiet...

The man was alone.

He rolled onto his side, checking his phone. 5:58 AM. As of late he had been waking up a few minutes before his work alarm, something he thought would bother him more than it did. But those few minutes before he had to get up, before he had to start his day proper, where he could just lay in bed, stare at the ceiling, and listen to the train outside roll past his block? Those were his minutes, and no one could take them away from him.

This man is Jabez Dalton, though he tended to go by JZ since he found the religious name his mother gave him to be a bit too... Stuffy. Despite this feeling, he had been reconsidering his nickname as of late. He was getting older. “JZ” just didn’t feel right. Did every adult go through this once they reached a certain age? He wasn’t sure. He’d ask his parents, but...

He couldn’t.

Finally, the alarm blared and let out its shrill cry, snapping him back to reality. Now it was 6:00 AM. It was no longer his time. His time now belonged to the system, the machine. Well... He didn’t call it that out loud, but deep down he thought about it. He thought about it a lot. He worked from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, but it wasn’t accurate to say only eight hours was devoted to work. There was getting up, getting ready, making sure he ate breakfast, the hour long commute he had to take just to get to work, then the hour commute back home when he was done. An eight hour day was closer to ten or eleven hours, and that didn’t account for overtime.

Sometimes someone didn’t come in and he was asked to cover half their shift. It wasn’t hard, and the extra pay was nice when a new game or figurine caught his attention, but... How much of his day was really his? Ten or fifteen hours for work, eight hours of rest, time spent cooking and washing up for personal maintenance... It all added up to very little time he could say was truly his. He could skip a meal if he wasn’t hungry, or even order out, but both of those things had their own consequences. No matter how he shuffled things around, he was going to lose out on something, whether that was fun time, a full belly, or a clean apartment. That was why he loved those few minutes before his alarm went off. In those few minutes, it felt like he could truly rest and just stop thinking about the world for a little while.

After JZ got out of bed, everything was scripted. Brush his teeth, take a shower, wash his face, brush his long black hair, braid it, check what was edible and not expired in his fridge and cupboard, make a quick meal, sit down at his table, and eat... In silence. That period of his morning tended to blur together, like he was just going through the motions. Another turn of the cog. This was how it was supposed to be, right? It’s what he was told, yet somehow it was nothing like how he expected it to be. But his life wasn’t totally drab.

“Hey JZ,” his coworker Dave greeted him in the employee lounge. “Wow, what happened to your nose?”

“Just a back alley scuffle. You know how it is.”

“Again? Geez, that neighborhood of yours is rough. Did you at least win?”

JZ went over the details. When he got off the train after work yesterday, he noticed two men in an alleyway. It was a mugger holding a guy in a white shirt and tie against the wall at knifepoint.

“Tell me your pin now. I don’t have all day!”

“F-fine! I’ll do it, just don’t hurt me!!”

It wasn’t unusual in JZ’s neighborhood by any means. Times were hard, people got desperate, aggressive. It’s not as if JZ didn’t understand. But... He just couldn’t turn his back on that kind of thing. Never could.

JZ took no chances and struck the mugger in the back of the head with a brick. When the mugger fell to the ground, the other man panicked and ran for help. Afterwards, JZ pocketed the knife, and he thought that would be the end of it. Instead, the mugger got up while JZ wasn’t looking and hit him back, and then it became a complete mess.

“On the bright side, only one of us got carted off,” said JZ.

“Yeesh. You really need to stop sticking your nose in stuff like that,” said Dave.

“What would you have done?”

“Walked away. The guy could have canceled his card after the mugger ran off. No need to get violent over that kind of thing. Besides, it’s none of my business anyway.”

“Right... And if you were in that other guy’s shoes, you wouldn’t want help?”

“All right people, enough chit chat,” the manager said, stepping through the lobby. “Our doors are opening soon. Less talk, more walk. Now get out there!”

JZ never got his answer from Dave. Instead, he got the same old earful from customers throughout the day. JZ worked in a supermarket and - for the most part - was stationed in produce. He was responsible for restocking, checking for old or damaged fruit and veggies on the floor, and a lot of his day could be summarized with “walking and lifting.” But when another department needed help and produce was doing fine, he’d get dragged off somewhere else. Whether it was bagging food, cleaning up a smashed pickle jar, or carting off cardboard boxes, there was a lot of back and forth, and no matter what he was doing, no matter how busy he was, there was always someone who needed help or had a complaint. He had never snapped at a customer before. Most of the time they were harmless and just couldn’t find the cheese spread that happened to be on the top shelf. But that day was different.

“What do you mean my coupons are no good? I’ve been coming to this store for TEN YEARS and not once have I ever had a problem with these coupons before! Are you going to do something about this or not?!”

A lady was chewing out a new coworker named Sherry over in self-checkout. Despite it being over coupons, the customer was starting to scream at the newbie, and when she fumbled, that only made the customer angrier, leading to the newbie fumbling even more. It looked like the poor girl was on the verge of tears.

“Enough,” said JZ, stepping in.

“What did you say?!” the angry customer turned.

“We’ll get you your discount, all right? I’ll input it myself.”

JZ had seen the type before, lashing out at people because she could get away with it. He could tell the lady was calculating an excuse to keep yelling, but when nothing came up, she just said, “Fine.”

Even after the issue was resolved, JZ later got talked to by the manager over a customer complaint.

“Thanks for helping me out,” said Sherry back in the employee lounge.

“Hm? Oh, no trouble at all,” said JZ.

“I really hate it here... Why are people so mean all the time?”

“Eh, it’s just how it is... You get used to it after a while. Even if I hadn’t stepped in, the manager would have eventually caved to whatever demands she had.”

“But is having someone that nasty come through here that important to them?”

“It’s a loyal customer. Well, she says she is anyway... What’s there to be done about it?”

“It’s just not right... We’re people too, you know.”

“I know,” JZ put his jacket on. “Take care of yourself. See you tomorrow.”

JZ wanted to say a hell of a lot more to Sherry, but he just didn’t have time. He had a train to catch, so out the door he went.

On the commute back home, though, things took a strange turn. As JZ got off the train, he noticed someone across the street. It was the cop he had talked to yesterday after fighting the mugger, but he was just in street clothes. Eventually, two men in sleezy suits came by and they walked off.

Wait... Who were those guys? JZ wondered. Curiosity peaked, he decided to tail them. In time, it led to the back entrance of a warehouse where the cop sat down on the couch with the two suits to his left and right, and another guy with a cigar on a seat opposite the couch. It didn’t take long for JZ to piece together what was going on. The cop was given an envelope filled with cash, and everyone seemed quite happy with the exchange. Everyone except JZ. Doing his best to not make a sound, he recorded what he could see through the window with his smart phone.

“That should smooth things over,” the man with the cigar said. “We’ll get things up and running here next week. Once we’re done, we were going to throw a little party to celebrate. Don’t worry, though. We’ll be fine on our own, so you and your boys won’t need to worry about us over here.”

“Of course... I’ll keep them busy. There’s always someone that looks suspicious elsewhere.”

The man with the cigar laughed. “You guys sure know how to keep busy, eh? Well don’t work too hard, all right?”

“Hey,” said one of the suits next to the cop. “Who’s that?!”

“Shit!” JZ said under his breath, almost tripping as he jumped off the crate and shoved his phone in his pocket. He tried to make a run for it, but there were more people around the warehouse than he thought. Pretty soon JZ was cornered. After getting dragged into the warehouse with a few extra bruises, JZ found himself tied to a chair.

“Look who it is. You sure know how to find trouble, huh, kid?” said the cop.

“You know this idiot?” asked the man with the cigar.

“Just some guy who keeps chasing purse thieves and pickpockets the next block over.”

“Oh, I see how it is.” The man with the cigar leaned down, blowing smoke in JZ’s face. “A little hero on the streets, huh? Bet you feel real smart right now. Well, tell you what, kid. It’s my birthday today and I’m feeling real generous, so I won’t kill you. Instead,” he passed the cop a pistol with a suppressor on the end of its barrel. “He’ll do it. You were... Breaking and entering, right?”

“Yeah. I saw the whole thing,” said one of the suits. “That’s illegal, and you know what happens to criminals around here?”

“... What?” muttered JZ. The cop leveled the pistol right between JZ’s eyes.

“Due justice.”