Have you ever been so involved in doing something that you forget where you are, almost as if you’re half-dreaming and the only thing that matters is the here and now? Late at night, in a 24-hour grocery store, a shelf jockey was in that fluid, barely lucid state.

It was sometime in the A.M. and the rhythm he found himself in had been going for about an hour and a half. Cut open a box, put it on the shelf. Pull a half-empty box off the shelf. Cut open a box, put it farther back on the shelf, put the half-empty box back in front of it. Cut, place, push. Pull, cut, place. This dance was mindless and monotonous but one he had been doing for years. And it was looking like it wasn’t going to end anytime soon, at least until the intercom chimed.

*BEEP* “Code 5 Floor Crew, I repeat Code 5” *BEEP*

“Oh thank fuck.” The shelf stuffer muttered as he started heading to the break room.

Code 5 meant lunch break, and that meant going to the freezer section and getting a frozen meal in a box. He started walking, the freezers were on the other side of the store so it was only a bit of a walk. When he turned he saw someone else had a similar idea.

“Hey, Salad.”

“Hey yourself Birdman.”

Salad returned the greeting as he started looking for his preferred fare.

“You still doing that ProHealth stuff?” Birdman asked as he rummaged around in the frozen Mexican food, grabbing burritos by the handful.

“Yup, and I see you’re still eating crap,” Salad snarked as he pulled a chicken pesto pasta bowl from the freezer shelf.

“Hey man, I’m just enjoying life. Doesn’t matter how healthy you live you're gonna die anyway, so why not enjoy your time you know?”

“Sure, but you see, I want to at least live to the ripe old age of thirty and eating different varieties of frozen beans in a taco isn’t conducive to that goal. At least this stuff tastes good and probably won't kill me.”

“Oh yeah?” Birdman retorted, “name one time Mexican food has killed somebody.”

The two started walking toward the automated checkout machines. Salad raised a finger but was cut off.

“That Bell Taco thing doesn’t count because one, Bell Taco isn’t Mexican food and two, because the place burned down. It wasn’t the FOOD that killed them.”

The two started scanning their food and fishing for their wallets while they carried on their heated debate.

“Bullshit it doesn’t count, why do you think they were there? For the FOOD! If there hadn’t been any grub, there wouldn’t have been any casualties. Or what, do you regularly hang out at fast-food restaurants for the aesthetic experience? Can’t get that ambiance of cheap wallpaper and vague dissapointment just anywhere these days right, bud? Also, the fuck do you mean it ain’t Mexican? What else can it be?”

They both swiped their cards as they paid for their food.

“Duh, it’s Ameri-Mexican. Like, imitation instead of authentic. Think about it, there are a bunch of them, or are you going to tell me a pizza joint counts as an Italian restaurant?” Birdman accused as he glared with incredulity. The two clocked out for lunch and headed towards the break room.

“Screw you, this and that are wildly different things.” Salad fired back, not giving an inch.

Stomping into the employee-only sanctuary they started slamming their preferred meals into waiting microwaves as they continued their argument.

“Are you seriously going to tell me you would consider Bell Taco authentic Mexican food?”

The silence was deafening as other coworkers turned to watch the spectacle unfold as they ate. After a pregnant pause Salad built up enough steam to retort.

“Okay, maybe it isn’t AuThEnTiC”, his tongue sticking out as he drew the last word long, “But it’s still fucking Mexican.”

Now that people were around Salad started looking for support, his eyes eventually landing on someone who could give them a definite answer.

“Hey Carlos, Bell Taco counts as Mexican food right?”

The tanned man raised an eyebrow at the comment then against his better judgment, appeared to give the question some thought before answering.

“Bell Taco is Mexican-”

“YES!” Salad pumped his fist then pointed at Birdman in a victory pose, “FUCKEN TOLD!”

Carlos continued, “-in the same way, a rock can count as food. Technically you can put it in your mouth and swallow, but then you're missing the point. So NO, Bell Taco doesn’t count as Mexican food in my book.”

At this Salad wilted and Birdman crowed and started dancing some sort of terribly coordinated victory dance around the loser.

“Ha, told you Mexican food never killed anyone!”

There was visible confusion amongst the onlookers at the rather abrupt jump in subject matter.

“He’s talking about the Bell Taco on 88th.”

That got some noises of comprehension and a few unhappy grunts, the incident had been a few days ago and it was still fresh in everyone’s minds. Though apparently, one party had reached the end of their patience with Salad’s antics. A young woman wearing a crew chief apron clapped her hands.

“Alright, fun’s over. Stop goofing off and eat your food, and could you PLEASE not bring up the firebombings again, you’re scaring the new hire.”

She gestured to her left where a teenager was trying very hard to not look flustered at the sudden attention. He was nearly succeeding, but the floor leader plowed on. “Birdman, I want you to show him how to throw the soap aisle after the break, just show him the basics of handling a box knife so he doesn’t cut himself and bleed all over my floor.”

Birdman threw a sloppy salute as he played one-handed-hot-potato with his recently heated burrito. “You got it, boss-lady.”

She had to smother a smile at his antics, but everyone saw it anyway. She turned to address Tweedle Dumb, “Salad, I want you to finish up the soda aisle and then give Nate a hand on cereal, it was a heavy load this time and we need more people to get it done on the target time.”

Nate, a reedy man with glasses, looked relieved at the news of reinforcements being on the way.

Salad grumbled an affirmative as he dug around in one of the communal plastic utensil boxes and grabbed one of the few remaining forks. He then unceremoniously tore open his pesto bowl and began to chow down.

“Okay, um, excuse me.” The new hire had his hand raised and was looking at the floor chief and the two latecomers. “Sorry, but I got to ask, Birdman and Salad? Really?” The crew chief smiled and she gestured at the one who was blowing on his burrito in a futile attempt to cool its contents.

“Well, Steve here was the third Steve we hired on. So we had Steve, and then Scuba Steve, and then he, she pointed, needed something else we could call him in case all three were on a shift together. He got the name Birdman when he flipped off one of his coworkers. It stuck.”

“Hey, hey,” Steve called out as he clarified, “don’t leave out that it was in ‘a joking manner.’ I don’t fire off the bird in anger. That’s how you get into fights you don’t need.” He shrugged as he dug into his burrito.

The new hire turned his gaze to the other oddly named individual. “And… Salad?”

The person in question swallowed his mouthful of pesto chicken before giving out a sigh. Though before he could explain Steve interjected, “it’s because he hates his name.”

“What's his name?” Curious he looked for Salad's nametag and found it dangling from the bottom of his shirt.

K. Banderspigel

Well, that answered nothing.

“I’m right here you know.” one K. Banderspigel made his displeasure known about being ignored.

“OH! Sorry, uh, what is your name?” the new guy had the decency to at least sound apologetic.

After groaning and half-heartedly bitching for a bit, Salad finally gave up the ghost.

“It’s Khale.” He muttered dejectedly, “with an H.”

There was a pregnant pause, “What, like the plant?”

“Yes, like the fucking plant,” Kale-with-an-H raged. “Why do you think I go by fucking Salad? Because it’s better than fucking Khale. And while we’re at it who are YOU supposed to be?”

“Salad, tone down the swearing,” the crew chief admonished the mouthy shelf stuffer as she fiddled with a pen and pad of paper. “And this is Robert, he’ll be joining us on the night shift for a while.”

Khale, for his part, started doing what looked like breathing exercises. Robert looked concerned right up until it was clear that the man was calming himself down. After a moment he finally responded.

“Got it. Sorry, Jess.”

For her part, the floor manager took the apology in stride.

“So long as you don’t swear in front of the customers or at your coworkers it’s fine. We agreed, don’t make trouble and I won’t have to get on your case. Also, I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.” She pointedly looked at the new member of the night crew.

Salad turned his remorseful gaze to Rob, “Sorry for swearing at you, man. I just get wound up is all. Didn’t mean to bite your head off. I just don’t particularly enjoy being named after a vegetable.”

Khale let out a sigh, “We good?”

It took a moment for Rob to respond. He hadn’t been expecting to meet someone quite so… Colorful when he got the job. That being said, he had been noticing that more than a few of the people here were rocking their own particular brand of odd. Still, it looked like the apology was authentic and he relaxed a bit.

“Yeah,” he replied, “we’re good.”

A handshake was had and all was well in the twilight kingdom of BoxCo.

“Cool, so what brings you to the dark side?”

It took a sec for Rob to realize what he meant.

“Oh, I’m between colleges and I thought I’d build up a nest egg before going back.”

The two joined the rest of the crew at the break room table as Khale nodded his head in approval.

“Right on, right on. What are you gunning for?”

Robert blushed at the topic, “I was thinking of trying to become a game designer, but that wasn’t quite working out, so I’m trying my hand at communications.”

Salad raised an eyebrow, “Communications, so like satellites or phones or something else like that?”

“Yeah, way I figure it, the internet has gotten huge, and it isn’t going to go away anytime soon. So I figure someone who keeps the networks going and stable is going to be in demand as time goes on.”

This got some nods from around the table and soon conversations started back up as coworkers got back to shooting the shit after all the excitement was over.

“So,” Rob started as he turned to Birdman and Salad, “I’ve told you what I’m here for, so if you don’t mind me asking, what brought you the two of you to the party?”

Birdman jumped at the question.

“Oh that’s easy. I’m saving up to get my welding certification and the equipment I’m going to need. Welder’s are always in demand and getting some solid equipment in the early days could get me a good jump start.” Robert nodded and turned to look at Salad.

He just shook his head and looked at the ceiling. “I dunno, I mean I want to make some major money, but hey, who doesn't.” He gave a small laugh before continuing, “I always wanted to be a firefighter, even took a prep course, but then they had us go into this simulated burning building.” He just shook his head. “I knew it was in the job description but, for some reason, I didn’t think running into a fire would be that big of a deal you know?”

He rested his head in his hands. “Couldn’t have been more wrong. I nearly shat myself when my turn came up. I just couldn’t do it, man. So, I bummed around college for a while. Took karate for a semester, and did some general studies stuff.”

He was fully slumped onto the table now. “Nothin’ stuck. I tried my hand a lot of things and the only thing that was actually kinda nice were the pottery and carpentry classes. Made a pretty nice oak chessboard and a decent vase. That was the most I had to show for two years in college, so after that colossal waste of money I’m considering just doing what he’s doing.”

He stuck a thumb out at Steve, “welding isn’t a bad plan. I’m also considering being an electrician or a plumber, but I’m going to hang back on those on account I don’t want to deal with other peoples literal shit and being an electrician sounds like a great way to get fried. Though I heard pipe fitter isn’t a bad way to go.” Salad frowned as he thought about his future prospects. None of them were particularly appealing, though welding did sound like it might be kinda fun.

Birdman cheered on the idea of ‘Welding Buddies’ while Robert looked contemplative.

“It sounds to me like you enjoy working with your hands, have you ever thought about doing construction work?”

Salad rolled his head around as he thought it over. “That’s back-breaking work though. You also got to go out in the rain and snow, right? I mean, building a house sounds cool and all, but making stuff is more of a hobby than what I want to do day in and day out, you know?”

Robert leaned in, clearly enjoying the process of trying to suss out Khale’s professional passion.

“If you’re not looking to do physical work, why not go for something in a more mental direction? Clerical work is everywhere and most of it is entry-level. Data entry is pretty common, just put numbers from pages into a computer.”

Salad shrugged noncommittally, but he looked a little interested. The three kept talking, moving the conversation from jobs to interests. Rob was rather surprised to learn that a few of the guys and gals from the store came together and did some good old tabletop role-playing. Nerd culture was explored and while Birdman was deep into comics and other classic standbys, Salad was just dipping his toes into nerdom with the RPG stuff. Which apparently only happened because he thought it would be fun to paint the miniatures.

Soon enough break time was over and everyone had to clock back in and return to their work.

Salad worked his way through soda and met up with Nate. He was still only a third of the way through the aisle, but he wasn’t alone. Bryan, the general manager was there busting open boxes. He and Nate gave the minimal appropriate greeting to the arriving cavalry and went back to work.

Bryan was one of the reasons Khale liked working here. Heck, his coworkers were the only reason this job was tolerable at all. Because, for all his bluster, at the end of the day Bryan would pitch in if any of the crew was actually struggling. The difference in the kind of boss that worked down in the trenches with the scrubs and the one who made demands from on high was like night and day.

After that, it was like any other night. He filled the ethnic food aisle, then sauce, then juice before moving onto the frozen food aisles he’d raided only a few hours prior.

Soon the store was restocked and ready for the hordes of customers that would come when the hour was less insane. Not that it stopped customers from showing up before then. The store WAS open twenty-four hours a day seven days a week except for select holidays. This meant a wide cast of colorful characters could pop up from time to time. From your normal night owls to afterparty survivors and blitzed-out stoners looking for munchies, to the more interesting crowd you got when your store was on a major highway.

The most harmless of the bunch were the homeless and the hookers that routinely stopped by. They were basically like any other customer and generally would go about their business as normal. Occasionally, you got a streetwalker who would try to trade ‘favors’ for their groceries instead of cash, though that was a very, very, rare occurrence.

The more exotic species of late-night grocery shoppers came in the form of drug dealers and drug addicts. One was wildly more common than the other, there were nights somebody would come into the store strung out on something much more potent than pot.

It was rather hard to miss. Though there wasn’t much they could do about it when that happened.

Still, such was life.

Eventually, the shift was over and everyone started clocking out.

As they were clearing out their lockers Birdman struck up a conversation with Khale and Carlos.

“Hey, we still on for Saturday?”

Carlos nodded, though he paused for a moment and clarified with, “Morning or night?”

The bit that most people didn’t realize about working the night shift is, that since you came into work one day and left work on a different one, scheduling became something of a nightmare. When you slept was more of a personal choice when your hours were detached from the day/night cycle. This meant that Saturday morning and Saturday evening were practically two different days for some people.

“Saturday night.” Khale filled him in. “Scoob said to be there at ten-thirty this week.”

Carlos just shook his head, “I can’t wait until the day we have set schedules instead of this by the week bullshit.”

“Hey, it could be worse.” Salad interjected.

“Oh yeah?” Carlos challenged. “Like how?”

Salad stated his answer with a dreadful calm, similar to that of a mortician looking over a twenty-car pile-up.

“Swing shift.”

The other two reacted to the word physically, with Carlos cringing as though someone had just flashed their high beams in his eyes, while Birdman crossed himself like he was trying to ward off a demon. Nobody liked getting swing shafted. Nobody. Sure you had to sign up for it, but still.

“Dude, don’t even joke about that,” Birdman whined, he’d been on swing shift for a while after day shift had a few people quit. He did not enjoy the experience.

Carlos nodded in agreement and pulled out his phone, checking the date and time.

“So, it's Friday morning, sleep when I get home, then we work another shift during the night, finish Saturday morning, then sleep, then the game, so…” He tried to work the logistics in his tired brain. “It’s basically in two days.”

“Sounds about right. See you then.” Khale said as he shrugged off his staff shirt and stuffed it into a small duffle bag.

The other two said their goodbyes as he started walking home. He lived close enough that he felt it still was better to get the exercise and save on gas money. Though that was only about half the time, that meant he spent only half of what he would have otherwise. He used that money where it really mattered, namely, knee pads. He had spent around one hundred and fifty dollars on some very nice roofing knee pads and it was the best purchase of his life. Kneeling on a concrete floor was no joke.

As he arrived at his house he started circling around back. Technically, it wasn’t his house and he just rented a room. Still, same difference really. He quietly entered through the back door so he wouldn’t wake up his landlord and made his way to his room.

It was small, but not too cramped. He had a bookshelf stacked on top of his dresser filled with books he had read, and a good number of books he wanted to read, but for whatever reason, couldn’t find the time. Sitting on his desk was his most prized possession, a computer that he loved like it was his own child. It sat there, patiently awaiting his return. He spun up the machine and checked his emails. As much as he would enjoy some gaming or shitposting right about now, the fact of the matter was the more sleep he got, the better.

More sleep meant a bigger buffer for when he had to go to work, which meant he could get in some gaming before working. So, he stripped to his skivvies, turned off his computer, and crawled into his bed.

Thank God it was Friday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Khale awoke with a start, it was like a cocktail of adrenaline and caffeine had just been injected into his veins. He tried to find his bearings, but he couldn’t see anything. Something bumped into him as he flailed wildly about. Where was his bed? What was happening? Was he being jumped?

He was pushed to the ground as something climbed over him and scampered away, all around him were warm fuzzy things moving every which way and he could hear scratching and yipping. He tried to push his way to the top again before something latched onto him. He yowled as he squirmed and writhed. But it was like he had been grabbed by a titan. Not only did the giant hands cover most of his torso, they were keeping him tightly gripped. He could feel wicked claws pressing into his skin as he was carried somewhere. He tried to see where he was going but finally realized something.

He couldn’t see.

He was completely blind. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t open his eyes.

He was panicking now. Khale tried desperately to free himself; he kicked, scratched, and bit. The problem was that his arms were pinned so he couldn’t reach anything. His kicks hit nothing but air and his head was at an awkward angle so he couldn't sink his teeth into whatever was carrying him. He kept hitting his nose on the thing and he was getting some weird sensations he didn’t recognize.

At this point, Khale was nothing but a ball of mindless terror and panic. So, when another pair of hands grabbed him by the head, he was totally justified in his unmanly scream of terror. The worst part was he could feel something worming along where his eyes should be.

Was his hell? Were these demons? Had they eaten his eyes? Were they going to fill his empty eye sockets with worms that would eat his brain?

These and other perfectly rational thoughts raced through his head as the soft wet something dragged itself over his eye socket again and again.

Then his eye began to crack open. Khale wasn’t really in the headspace to appreciate what was happening. Slowly but surely, his eyelid was cleared of some kind of gunk and he could finally see out of the one good eye. Though calling it sight was an overstatement, he could see fuzzy grey blobs moving around and that was about the extent of it.

Whatever happened to get his eye open was happening to his other, and the very befuddled Khale slowed his squirming in his confusion. This led to the other eye being cleared much faster.

He found himself blinking up at two giant greyish blobs that, with every blink, came more into focus. Suddenly he realized that those two blobs were some fuck-huge wolfmen that were currently staring down at him. One seemed to be examining him and the other was focused on keeping a firm grip on him. The other turned his head with a firm grip on his nose and mouth. How that worked, Khale had no idea. Then it pulled on his ear in ways that made no sense to him, then it did it with his other one.

The one giving him an impromptu examination barked something to the one holding him, though barked wasn’t exactly the word to properly explain what it sounded like. It was like when dogs ‘talked’, a lot of complicated woofs and awoos and grunts of varying pitches.

The big one holding him carried him off down what was now clearly some kind of massive cavern. Since Khale wasn’t squirming anymore the grip his handler had on him had relaxed somewhat, but it was still holding him firm. Soon they entered another cavern with stone fencing walling off certain sections. As they entered, another one of the big wolfmen was waiting with a basket of something. It smelled weird.

What was also pretty weird was that Khale could smell the basket from the entrance of the room. He was starting to have some suspicions that he really didn’t like. Before he could fully contemplate the implications they were already at the basket keeper. His handler chatted with the new wolfman and the basket keeper reached into the large reed woven barrel and pulled out a chopped up string of meat dangling by some sinew.

The sight made Khale both concerned and more disturbingly, become acutely aware he was very hungry. The new wolfman bopped him on the nose with the stuff and before he could process what happened Khale had scarfed down the meat like he had been fasting for a month.

It hadn’t even been a conscious choice, his body just made an executive decision and ate it.

The situation was becoming rapidly more bizarre as another morsel bopped him on the nose and he was able to hold back a little bit, but still chowed down all the same. He ate a little bit slower, but not by much. He wasn’t even chewing, he was just swallowing it as fast as he could get it in his mouth.

The most disturbing thing was that, as much as he didn’t want to eat, a part of him insisted that he did. It wasn’t a matter of taste, it didn’t even taste bad, in fact, it felt good to have something in his stomach. After his keepers had decided he had been properly fed, his handler brought him to one of the penned-in areas. What he saw concerned him for its implications, otherwise, if he was being honest, the sight was ridiculously adorable. There were what appeared to be wolfman pups all around the enclosure. Some were roughhousing while others were sniffing around the pen, though most of the pups were asleep.

His handler finally changed the position of his hands and set him down by the scruff of his neck and that was when Khale's fears were confirmed. As he stretched out his arms to catch himself he saw not his human hands and arms, but rather fuzzy appendages that were highly reminiscent of the ones he had been carried in not a moment ago.

He looked around at the other pups, fully coming to terms with the situation.

“Awuf”

Well, fuck.

Now that he was in relative safety and no longer being actively held captive, he could get a better handle on what the actual fuck was going on. Unfortunately, his body had other ideas.

Between all the excitement, the struggling, and the food. He was dead tired and his newly opened eyelids were already starting to droop. A part of him knew that he was all kinds of screwed and that he should be searching for answers right the fuck now. But the rest of him was too exhausted to care. He plodded over to where, what he guessed were his siblings, had piled themselves up to sleep. It looked warm and kinda nice so he joined the pile and let the warmth bring him back to dreamland.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His rest was immediately brought to an end as wakefulness was suddenly thrust upon him, again, and Khale swung his arms about at his coverings. He lept up and whirled his arms into a very out-of-practice Karate stance. He spun around, taking in his surroundings. He was standing on his bed. He had human hands and arms again. Everything was exactly as he had left it. He started grabbing at himself, checking to make sure everything was where it should be. No dog face, no big ears, no large teeth better to eat you with. More pawing revealed no tail, regular legs with normal knees, and his regular hairy feet instead of the furry kind.

After his heart finally retreated back into his chest from his throat, he shouted as he felt a massive wave of relief.

“Oh thank fuck, it was just a dream.”