This fits into my Dark Side series somewhere after Y-Incisions.  You'll 
have to forgive me, I have eight or nine stories written than I haven't 
posted yet, and they are getting mixed up in my head with the ones I 
have already sent out.  So I don't know exactly how to place this one.  
Wait and see, my friends.  My homepage will be functional eventually and 
will give you better timelines and explanations.

And if you want to see the unposted stories, *write* to me!  <g>

Dedicated to Teresa Stevenson, because I am too impulsive and didn't 
wait after I finished writing.  It would likely be a better tale if I 
had.


Low Ebb
a Forever Knight story
by Sue O'Reilly  (soreilly@hotmail.com)

There are quite a few depressing jobs in the world, but I doubt there 
are many as depressing as working alone at an all-night supermarket.

It isn't really the work.  I've done a lot of menial-labor jobs since I 
turned sixteen, and the work could be worse.  Maybe it's the huge 
fluorescent lights that do it.  That relentless hum you don't notice 
until you spend an hour in the store with nothing but the displays of 
creamed corn and holiday specials.  Or that awful Muzak loop that can't 
be turned off, since my store manager subscribed heartily to the theory 
that happy tunes encourage people to buy more, and you couldn't turn it 
off without the keys to his office.  I didn't have the keys, of course.  
At Dominion, I wasn't Eric Timms, soon-to-be lawyer.  I was Eric Timms, 
night cashier and stockboy, and they weren't going to give me access to 
the room with the safe.  Ah, the trust--yet another reason to enjoy my 
job.

I think the worst part was four o'clock in the morning.  When it was 
hardest to fight off the yawns, knowing that the rest of the world was 
comfortably in bed.  It was the quietest time too: the pause before the 
first early customers, usually harried mothers rushing to buy the milk 
they'd forgotten for their kids' breakfasts.

Tonight the pause had come much sooner.  All of Toronto and its outlying 
areas, including my store in Mississauga, were being steadily covered by 
a March snowstorm.  I hadn't seen a customer in more than two hours when 
the front doors slid open with the usual rattle.  I glanced up from 
mopping the floor in dry goods.  

There were two people stamping the snow off their feet.  A guy near my 
age, maybe a little older, with long black hair and rumpled-looking 
clothes, and a younger girl around thirteen, wearing a Maple Leafs 
hockey jacket.  I saw the guy pick up a carton of cigarettes from the 
register racks.  Then they walked to the left, disappearing into the 
aisle beside mine.

There isn't much thought involved in pushing a mop, so I heard their 
conversation floating over the shelves while I worked.

A muffled cough.  "This smells awful."

"Get used to it, Dan."

I couldn't help being mildly offended.  The voices were coming from the 
butcher and seafood counters, which I'd just finished cleaning.  They 
didn't smell like anything but Lysol.  Then I laughed at myself.  What, 
was I suddenly taking pride in my menial labor?  I could really care 
less what the customers thought, so long as I didn't get fired.

"Sorry.  I didn't think it would be this bad."

The guy chuckled.  "It's okay.  You're doing good.  Better than you 
should be."

"Yeah, I know.  This was my idea, anyway."

"I still don't think the church needs any work.  You're worse than 
Tracy."

"We're used to places with electricity and running water.  Leap into the 
twentieth century, would you?"

I wrung out my mop.  Weird exchange, but I got quite a few strange 
people in here.  When you'd heard homeless people discussing their 
income-tax returns with Princess Di, this was nothing.  I resumed my 
swabbing listlessly, thinking of the midterm I should be studying for.

Reviewing some case precedents in my head, I had nearly forgotten about 
them when someone rang the counter bell I used during night-shift.  I 
leaned my mop against the end of a shelf and headed back to the front.

It was the little girl waiting at the first register, leaning against 
the railing with one sneaker-clad foot hooked through the bottom rung.  
The older guy was playing one of the martial arts video games by the 
doorway.  He was braced forward with that total concentration that every 
arcade addict shares.  What a shock.  Somehow I hadn't thought he had a 
seat in the next row of my maritime jurisdiction class, not with that 
hair and the beat-up leather jacket.

I hurried my last few steps toward the register and swung behind it.  
"Sorry about the wait," I offered.

"No problem," she said, tossing me a grin that said she had all the time 
in the world.  Most kids like her do.  I half-wondered what she was 
doing awake at this hour.  Tomorrow wasn't a school holiday that I knew 
of.

It had been a very quiet night, but I would have noticed what the girl 
was buying even if there were a dozen people in line.  Most of my 
customers came in for late-night munchies.  Pizza, chips, frozen 
burritos, whatever.  They didn't buy furniture polish and sponges and 
bathroom cleanser.  The only normal item on the conveyor belt was the 
carton of duMariers that I'd seen the older guy pick up.  It was one 
damned strange array to choose at four AM.

I didn't comment, though.  My life isn't yet so boring that I feel the 
need to discuss people's supermarket baskets with them.  I just rang up 
her purchases and read the total aloud--something I've always thought 
was more than a little stupid, since the customer can see the register 
perfectly well if their eyes work.  "Thirty-eight twenty, please."

The girl dug in her pockets and handed me a credit card.  Not just any 
credit card, either.  A Gold MasterCard.  

My eyebrows lifted of their own accord.  It wasn't often I saw a card 
with that much buying clout.  Especially not in the middle of the night 
from a kid like this.  I was two syllables into asking her for some ID 
before I saw that she was already holding out a passport.

I caught the expression in her eyes as I took the small folder.  The 
look was good-natured, but its meaning was plain as day.  "I knew you 
were going to ask before you opened your mouth," her eyes said 
cheerfully.  "I'm used to it, it's not a hassle."

The name in the passport matched the Gold card.  Daniella Tarkoff, it 
sounded Russian or something.  I noticed the birthdate before I returned 
it.  I'd been right; this girl hadn't seen the other side of fifteen 
yet.  But she must have some loaded parents to be running around with 
plastic like this.  I'd flipped past several stamps for France and Italy 
on my way to the ID section.   I suppressed the urge to shake my head.  
Lucky kid.  For sure she'd never be working the night shift at Dominion.

The girl signed the receipt after my register spit it out.  She picked 
up her stuff, which she'd bagged herself without waiting for me to do 
it.  That was nice.  Most people stood there like their wrists had 
suddenly stopped working.  She gave me a smile and a nod.  "Thanks, man.  
You have a good night."

I smiled back.  I couldn't help it; she was going to be cute when she 
grew up.  "You too."

She walked over to the guy--her brother, maybe?  Their coloring was kind 
of similar. Both of them were too pale, but hell, who has a tan in 
Ontario midwinter?  She watched him pummel the video game for a few 
seconds, then disrupted his concentration with a well-placed elbow.  
"Come on, Javier.  We'll be here all night if you finish that."

"Brat," the guy said, but his tone was affectionate and he released the 
controls without furthur protest.  If he was her brother, they got along 
pretty good.  He took one of the bags and they walked out together.

I started back to my mop and bucket but changed direction abruptly after 
three or four steps, rummaging through my pockets for my battered pack 
of Players.  Usually I waited until I clocked out, a mini-celebration of 
surviving another shift, but ringing up that guy's carton had prodded me 
into a craving.  I looked dismally at the two little cigarettes nestled 
together.  No more until next week's paycheck.  I couldn't afford 
another pack with my bills the way they were.

It was cold outside, but it wasn't the biting cold that had hurried me 
into work at eleven o'clock.  Something about big snowstorms takes the 
edge off the temperature, I don't know why.  But I still had to turn 
away from the wind to get my cigarette going, and I was vaguely aware 
that there was no sound of a car engine in the parking lot. 

I was on my second puff when I raised my eyes from my lighter and saw 
it.

At first I didn't understand what I was looking at.  Not right away, not 
until I looked up and looked around, surveyed the parking lot, and saw 
absolutely nothing.  Or, to be more precise, saw absolutely no *one*.  
That shouldn't have been possible.  Maybe thirty seconds had passed 
since I followed my customers out the door.  Dominion was set in the 
middle of the shopping plaza, which meant you had to go a considerable 
distance in either direction to get out of sight.  Those two people 
should have been right in front of me, climbing into their car or 
trudging through the snowdrifts.

Nothing.  Nothing but wind and blowing snow and the fog from my breath.  
I could vaguely hear a police siren off toward the city.

"No way," I said aloud.  My voice should have come out confused, 
disbelieving, but it didn't.  I sounded soft and awestruck.  Sounded 
like a little kid who'd just seen a cool magic trick at a birthday 
party.  I looked back down.  Back at the thing that made me sound that 
way.  The plows weren't due for another hour so the snow was deep, 
almost a foot.  

There were two sets of tracks going away from the door.  Which was all 
fine and good until they disappeared about ten feet away.  The snow was 
clean and unbroken in every direction.  They just...stopped.

"No way," I murmured again, feeling the numbness in my cheeks and 
fingers that wasn't entirely due to the wind.  I stood there for almost 
five minutes and watched as the wind began to crumble and fill the 
footprints.  In a quarter of an hour, maybe less, they'd be gone.

I did the next thing very slowly.  My eyes travelled up...and up...I 
could almost hear the creak of my neck muscles as I tipped my head back.  
I looked into the blank sky, at the dancing snowflakes and the 
low-hanging clouds, my second-to-last cigarette burning away unnoticed 
between my fingers.  

And when I looked back down, the tracks in the snow were already blown 
away.

END


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