Teal deer: life sucks.<br/><br/>To expand on that, this is a lousy time to be young, single, college edumacated in a field that turned out to have piss poor employability<em>and</em>living in a less than growing sector of the economy. (Not that has ever been a good time to fall into that category!)  So the end result of clawing one's way to the bottom of the barrel is a thankless job as a Shipping and Receiving Clerk at yet another faceless, nameless, soul-less box-store franchise.  On the other hand, you're at least on your own and not in your dad's basement or something.  That's something, right?  And your beat up third hand pickup is paid for.  Which would help a lot more if it weren't a lot cheaper to just take the bus to work.<br/><br/>Among the joys of working for DahlumCorp (sarcasm intended) is the constant errors in scheduling that seem to leave every third weekend nights on a skeleton crew which just so happens to coincide with production spikes in the logistical chain.  Which means a lot more work for a lot fewer people, and which also means that some weekends are devoutly to be avoided if you can swing it.  Which, unfortunately, you can't.  Mouths to feed, bills to pay, and no social life outside of the job because you can't afford to go dating even if you had someone...anyway, that's the long and short of it.<br/><br/>The only positive is that this is one of the 'downtown' stores, right in the middle of a fairly urban area, so there are lots of late night places to grab a meal or a drink or a cup of coffee that hasn't been percolating since George Washington was President.  Unfortunately, this also means you see your share of street people on the job, and the loading dock can be one of those 'attractive nuisances' that means you get to deal with the rent-a-cops that your corporate masters keep around.<br/><br/>(Yeah, about these guys...maybe one in five is a good sport.  The others seem to assume a lot, like how if you're working in a retail environment you must be skimming off the top or stealing the merch.  Gotta love it.)<br/><br/>To top it off, it's pissing down rain out there tonight, and that's probably why you spotted her as you nursed your vente caramel macchiato and ham-and-cheese on whole wheat sandwich.  Specifically, she was a pretty black-haired girl in a weird sort of steampunk dress, strolling along under an umbrella as if she didn't have a care in the world.  That's not the weird part.  The weird part is that she turns just so as she's walking past.  For just a moment, your eyes meet...and hers widen in alarm.  The next you know, she starts running.<br/><br/>What the hell?<br/><br/>