https://anchor.fm/citizensamurai

https://open.spotify.com/show/3WCa7r8Tl2bhhOX2O3Xy9z

An excerpt of this chapter appears here with the audiobook link - the full chapter can be read on my account here at Royal Road.

Audio recording of Chapter One - VINCENT

That was the summer we did our laundry in the tub.

Kyle handed over my final check when I was terminated but I wouldn't get my tips until I laundered and returned my uniform. Never in my history of terminations had I been leveraged to revisit the scene of such humiliation but I couldn't wait for Kyle, corporate or whomever to dock me for the missing gear and cut me a check.

We did blowout business over graduation weekend and I wanted all that cash, the limp ones and fives colored up to crunchy tens and twenties fanned out in one paw like a game show host when Margaret came home from work and I would announce that I'd been fired.

Fired by fucking Kyle. That born-again son of a bitch nailed me good.

I ran the tub up short of elbow deep. Knelt on the tile and worked bar soap into the salsa stains on my server's apron. Rubbed handfuls of stiff fabric together and plunged, scrubbed and wrung. Filmy shreds of diced tomato and greenish seeds formed a layer that rocked gently in the bottom of the bathtub like marine life in a tide pool.

I enjoyed a faint trace of something pretty close to job satisfaction when I realized I was Kyle's first confirmed termination. I'd finally kicked some of the bitch out of that young man during my tenure at PapaTaco.

A month ago he couldn't find the spine to confront Jenny when he saw her stash a three-gallon jug of PapaQueso in the trunk of her car on a smoke break. Now I had to alert them, let Jenny and the rest of my comrades know that Kyle was done firing warning shots. Kyle 2.0 was a combat-ready model and he would shoot to kill.