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“Hey, uh,” She started, in her usual drone, “Boss?”
The owner looked over. His resting Owns Your Job face was as unimpressed with her existence as always. Any smile he’d had was reserved for guests and guests only, making any sort of conversation feel ridiculous by concept alone (not even his son seemed to elicit any sort of joy from him. Brutal).
“I…” She slowly closed her teeth together, grinding tensely before spitting out the grit of her concern: “I saw a thing?”
He blinked.
“The other day.” Her monotone was built in, the natural tuning of her vocal chords and currently they were underselling the nerves the very memory of the thing pinched.
“…A thing.” He repeated, unchanged, somehow even less impressed.
“Yyyyyeaaaahhh.” Her gum clung loosely to her back, bottom teeth. “Around that Warrior’s Hero show?”
“The Hero and The Warrior.” Her boss corrected.
“Yeah, that.” She nodded. “It was - super weird, I was just at the counter–”
“Okay, so I dunno if you remember my order from yesterday - I was here yesterday. With my friends. Dunno if you’ve seen them around?”
The Monkie Kid looked at her with a searching stare, patiently waiting for an answer she did not have and would not pretend to have. She wasn’t paid to make nice or answer questions outside of ‘cash or card’ and 'what size’; and people tended to have answers ready for her anyway.
She popped her gum.
“ ’S'okay, ’s'cool, you don’t gotta know, why would anyone other than me gotta know, right? I mean - it’s not like they’re missing or anything.”
A little more desperation, a little more annoyance for her. As though she were some gatekeeper for who came in and out of the front entrance of each stage. It wasn’t her job to count heads - it wasn’t her business.
She popped her gum again.
The Monkie Kid stiffened, his anxious air seeming to shirk back into a shyer shell. “…Okay, so uh…” He looked up to the menu, away from her, a sense of shame emanating from him. “I think I started wiiiith…”
As he rambled, she prepared. It did begin to sound familiar to her as she gathered his snacks and prepped his drinks.
Could she remember the order? It was the Monkie Kid ordering, after all, and ordering a very specific amount of food and for a very specific show. Not many people showed up on Hero’s Warrior - or Warriors’ Hero or whatever it was called. Considering both the awkward timing of the production and the fact that no one could figure out what it was about, it wasn’t a large draw.
Except for the Monkie Kid, apparently, who was seeing it multiple times in a row. Maybe that meant it was about Monkey King?
She wrapped up his order and her own thoughts on the topic at the same time - it wasn’t her business, and frankly, she didn’t much care for subversion stories. Let Monkey King be a hero and keep things simple.
The Monkie Kid was less than enthused by her lack of knowledge on his missing friends he apparently didn’t call the police about, and simply paid. With an under-enthused thanks and a heft to the mountain of candy, corn, and boba, he headed into the theatre.
His payment was a mess. Again.
The first time was bad enough, rubber bands and lint and what looked like an old used gummy. Which was terrible because her job involved handling peoples food and handling peoples money and money was the most disgusting thing you can ever be handed and shouldn’t be handled before you handle someone elses' food.
Now? Now there was more than one used gummy, a chewed-on paperclip and what looked like a dropped boba left in there for God only knew how long.
She wasn’t even a germaphobe and the Monkie Kid’s money, in particular, grossed her out. Grossed her out to the point of calling for him– “Hey!” – in order to yell at him, only to find him gone.
But it had worked.
Something stopped.
What stopped was the shadow cast by one of the decorative pillars, long and expanding, with a head emerging from it. A head covered in the shadow itself, a head that turned her way and looked it at her.
Whatever it was looked at her.
It looked at her with eyes that were definitely eyes and it recognized her, and it did so with a familiarity that she did not have for it in return–
“Oh, that.” The owner cut her off, waving a hand. “Don’t worry about that.”
She reeled back at the words, as though the gesture struck her.
“Don’t worry about that?”
“I see your ears are working,” He drawled, adjusting his clothes. “It’s not part of your job, so it’s not your concern, isn’t that it?”
“I-I mean,” She stammered, shrinking under being read so easily. “Y-yeah, but–”
“Then why worry about it? You probably won’t be seeing it again.”
Her jaw went slack, jittering in her weak attempts to reply. He ignored her shock, walking past her with his hands behind his back. She followed his stride with her eyes, incredulously, and saw him stop in front of the office door.
“After all,”
His voice changed. Something about it changed. Something about him changed, as his head turned her way–
A head with golden eyes, and a wicked, smug smile.
“Why would something want to be caught twice?”
She watched the shadow beneath him widen. In her sense of self-preservation, she recoiled from it, as though it would get underneath her too. Her back hit the desk as she cried out, her breath catching at the sight and the shock of something happening this close to her, not just on the news or downtown. Like not so long ago when she’d had a spider latch onto her, possessed and itching to climb and crawl and–
She watched her grinning boss as his head changed - dark hair becoming fur, fur becoming darkness itself - as he fell through the shadow, swallowed whole.
The blackness on the floor ebbs back, shrinking in on itself until it vanished, as though it never existed at all.
Her arms locked straight as she gripped the desk. Her legs shook, her weight reliant on her arms and the sturdiness of mahogany. Her breathing wouldn’t even out. Her vision swam.
“I so fucking quit.”