Becoming Another (PT I)

“Pick it up.”

“No.”

“I said pick it up.”

It took three more minutes of arguing before they got it folded it into the trunk. Stellisa and her father climbed back into the old Ford and he grunted as the keys clicked over and the engine roared to life. They didn’t speak a word until they were long down the highway.

“You said it wouldn’t be this way. You promised me I wouldn’t have to do this again.”

“You do as you’re told, that’s the only promise you’ve ever had.”

There was a long silence again as row after row of dark pine flashed past the car window. The Ford ambled loudly around one bend and then another as the road coiled over itself like a snake as it twisted its way down the mountain toward the town of Aberley.

A once-booming mining town, Aberley had been called the gem of the Northeast Ring. It had boasted a population of nearly three thousand and citizens from all around the tri-state area had come to shop and mingle on its high street, whose sidewalks held stores like Woolworth’s and J.P. Taylor’s. Tea rooms and art shops had dominated Main Street, with a handful of other boutique endeavors curated by busy-body wives whose husbands managed the mines. Little manicured gardens stood quietly in front of pristine houses and the faces of smiling happy families were pasted everywhere.

The mine’s had dried up, though, in the early sixties after a series of fires that had taken out more than a hundred of the crew. That had been that for the booming city-town of Aberley. Businesses began shuttering their doors and moving east, following the other big chain and department stores. The mourning families of the lost miners followed too, packing up their station wagons and their trucks and heading back to any other place they could call home. Families began to disappear more and more from the streets of Aberley, and no new faces took their place. The population shriveled down until a face was a rare thing to see at all in Aberley.

It was a dying town and everyone knew it, so everyone stayed away. Everyone except Stellisa and her father, who had moved to the ghost town just a few weeks after the third fire.

They made their way down out of the mountains. The old Ford purred onto Main Street. Empty ruins of the great shops hat had been hulked on either side of the street as a dusty grey sky loomed overhead, heavy with swirling clouds. It made the ruins of Aberley look absolutely sinister. They passed the school and the courthouse, both which stood silent and empty in the gathering gloom. It was a Saturday, and there was nothing open, no one to be seen.

“It’s going to storm,” Stellisa said, more to herself than anyone else. She let her head fall against the glass of the window and pressed her shoulder into the door. They rolled past the police station and Stellisa let her eyes follow it before the car turned off Main Street and onto Bluebird Avenue, where she and her father made their home.

“It’s been storming for days,” he grunted. “That doesn’t change the plan. Are you clear?”

“I’m clear,” Stellisa said, not bothering to pick her head up off the glass of the window. It felt nice and cold against her skin, even more so when the first few patters of rain began to fall. The Ford slowed and rocked into the driveway of a long low ranch style with a faded brown door. It was as nondescript as a house could get, built out of crumbling beige brick and tucked into a wild tangle of a yard that hadn’t been looked after in many, many years.

It looked just like all the other houses in Aberley. Run down, unloved. It revolted Stellisa, but there was a quiet comfort in its derelict silence too. Her father rolled the car to a stop and turned the keys over once more, silencing the deadly purr of the engine.

“I’ll go inside first, you follow. We’ll come back out when the storm’s high or the sun is down, whichever comes first.”

“Shouldn’t we do this somewhere else?”

“No,” Stellisa’s father snapped. “Now do as I ask!”

His tone was severe and it cracked around Stellisa and made her wince. She unbuckled her seatbelt and pulled herself up in her seat. She’d need to keep her mouth shut.

“Fine,” she said quietly. “I understand.”

“Good,” her father retorted. “Give me three minutes and then follow.”

The storm never quite broke, so they waited until nightfall to bring it in. The windows of the other houses around them were silent and dark as they heaved it up the stairs and into the front door. Her father dropped his end with a loud thud and shut the door quickly behind them.

“Get it into the basement.”

Stellisa looked at her father in shock.

“By myself?”

“By yourself.”

When they were done, Stellisa threw her tools into the sink and stripped her gloves off on top of them. She was scrubbing her hands violently when her father approached.

“I’m done,” she hissed, not looking up from her hands as they folded and unfolded frantically beneath the steaming cascade of water. “No more. Not another one.”

Her father stood close behind Stellisa and put his hand on her shoulder. She could feel his breath on her neck.

“You’ll do as you’re told.”

“Hey, we had an order over here! What the hell is taking so long?”

The woman glared at Stellisa over the counter while a chocolate-stained toddler thudded the top of the service bell with one fat, sticky fist beside her. Shopping bags hung from the woman’s shoulders and a large gold chain with a gaudy pink heart clung to her bulbous neck. The woman wreaked of cheap perfume and her child of shit, and Stellisa could smell them even over the putrid smell of frying grease that permeated everything inside of the Chicken Shack.

“I said, what’s taking so long,” the woman barked again.

Stellisa gathered up the rest of the woman’s order and placed it in the bag, throwing in an extra handful of Chicken Sauce as well as napkins and wet naps for the kid.

“I’m really sorry about your wait,” Stellisa told her again, pushing the bag across the counter and casting a quick glance to the growing line behind the woman. “We hope that you’ll still come back and see us.”

The woman snarled.

“No I will not, and I want to see a manager too.”

When her shift was over, Stellisa made her way to the manager’s office, her Chicken Shack hat folded under her arm. The office was small and dingy, tucked behind the dry stock closet and the rinse tubs, with only one grimy fluorescent light to illuminate the space. Stellisa knocked on the door, and gave Tom a weak smile as his face appeared behind it.

“Have a seat, Ell.”

Tom stepped aside and motioned to the only chair in the space. It was shoved into the u-bend of an impossibly cluttered desk that took up most of the space. When Stellisa had settled herself, Tom took a seat on the least cluttered edge and crossed his arms while he looked down on her.

“I’m sure you know we have to talk about today,”

Stellisa rolled her eyes.

“Look,” she spat frantically, “That woman and that kid were a nightmare. I gave them extra sauce, I apologized over and over. We didn’t do anything wrong there. Grilled chicken takes time.”

Tom held out his hands to silence her and made a shushing noise.

“Ell, I know. I know. The woman still complained, though, and that’s the third one this month.”

“She lodged a formal complaint?”

Tom nodded.

“She did.”

“She took the time, with that brat, to sit down and write a complaint about me?”

“She did,” Tom said, almost sadly. “And then her food was so cold, we had to replace the whole thing and give the kid an ice cream cone to keep him from screaming while they waited.”

Stellisa couldn’t believe it.

She hated working at the Chicken Shack, it was the most demeaning thing she had ever done in her life, and customers like the woman with the gold chain made it even worse. Stellisa looked up at Tom and she didn’t conceal her desperation.

“Tom, listen…”

“Ell, I’m sorry,” Tom said, standing up and shaking his head sadly. “That’s the third customer to complain this month. You know the book is pretty strict about this kind of thing.”

Stellisa’s stomach flipped.

“Wait, Tom. What? Are you firing me?”

She rose from her seat, her hat clutched in her hand and her blood boiling. She had been here for almost three years now. He couldn’t possibly be serious.

“You’re going to fire me because some woman with a bad attitude thought her food took longer than it should?”

“I’m really sorry, Ell,” Tom said, refusing to meet her eyes. “Corporate is really coming down hard on these kinds of things now and I can’t be seen to be playing favorites.”

“Playing favorites?”

Stellisa couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had taken the worst hours and the longest shifts for years to prove herself, but it had gotten her nowhere. She shook her head stubbornly.

“No, I refuse to believe that you can fire me for erroneous complaints,” Stellisa insisted. “What’s going on here, Tom? Tell me the truth.”

Tom crossed his arms and shook his head. He breathed loudly and Stellisa saw the hairs of his mustache wriggle. The man shifted anxiously and still refused to meet her eye.

“Look, there is more to it, Ell, but it’s complicated, okay. We’re going to pay you a small severance package. It’s not much, but just take it and exit out of this gracefully, okay?”

Stellisa took a step toward him defiantly. Her eyes bored up into the discomfort splayed across his face.

“Tell me,” she said, more kindly this time. “Just tell me the truth and I’ll go.”

The manager inched back until his back was against the door. A shadow flickered in his eyes, a bit like fear, and disappeared.

“There’s something off with you, okay? You’re just not a good fit. You don’t work here. You need to leave.”

His words shocked her and Stellisa stumbled backward. For a moment or two, she could not breathe. The world swayed as the corners of her vision blackened in and out. She reached for something, anything that could catch her, but she found nothing. Throwing Tom one last glance, she reached for the door and fled.

© 2022 E.B. Johnson

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