Khale dropped down from the bed and checked the time. He had a few minutes until his alarm went off so he preemptively killed the alarm and grabbed his towel. A hot shower would hopefully help wash away whatever the fuck was wrong with his psyche today.

He made the short trip from his room to the bathroom and fired up the shower. As warm water poured over him he relaxed as he reflected on what had transpired and came to the obvious conclusion, that dream was really fucking weird. There had been no color whatsoever throughout the whole ordeal and, unlike most dreams, he could vividly remember all of it. Well, almost all of it. The times he was enveloped in soul-shattering terror were kind of a blur.

But, aside from that, he could recall most everything. The caverns, the wolfmen, the weirdly tasteless raw meat. He gagged at that memory, it wasn’t the taste or texture, but something about it felt positively wrong to him. Though that may have had more to do with his encounters with undercooked shellfish and his adventures in food poisoning than anything else.

Though, if he was being honest, the weirdest thing so far was how good he felt. He usually felt like used toilet paper after a nightmare, but he felt great, like he had gotten the best rest he ever had. However, this definitely did not line up with his recollection of events.

As he dried his hair he wondered if it was supposed to be one of those spiritual experiences where the universe reached out to instill a profound understanding of some universal truth. If it was, then the universe had obvioulsy got the wrong number or something because he didn’t have the faintest clue in how to interpret that hot mess.

After toweling off and returning to his room he dressed in preparation for the next workday and checked his clock. He had plenty of time to goof off until it was time to go to work. As he fired up his computer his stomach made it known that he had skipped dinner last night. However, with his last ‘meal’ fresh in his mind, he didn’t feel all that hungry. He pulled out some jerky he had stashed in his desk for a snack to sate his stomach, but the memory of his dream made eating it an endeavor in willpower. Though he was fine after the few first bites, those first few were pretty damn disquieting.

Actually, eating the jerky made him realize that in the dream he didn’t really register any taste or texture when he ate the mystery meat. So there, in the moment, it had been only mildly unpleasant. Honestly, it made his deferred disgust a little confusing, why was it making him nauseous now and not then?

He decided to put it out of his mind and fired up his computer. It was time for some relaxation.

First, he started making alt accounts for social media sites, though that was mostly just busy work. He didn’t need them for what he was going to do, but making a bunch at once was both time-consuming and boring. Just doing one or two every now and then let him build up a catalog of alt accounts for him to use.

That would be for another day though. He instead went to an anonymous Chilean woodworking forum and started posting. First, he made sure to make a post that had terrible grammar while asserting the most asinine and incorrect things. He made a point of keeping the assertions from being too outrageous, he had to be plausible. At least in the beginning. As people swarmed to correct him he slowly started to make dumber and dumber claims. The important thing was to use just enough truth to make the misinformation plausible. It was best to avoid citing evidence that didn’t exist or making bald-faced lies early on. Those were late-game tactics.

{Why is it so hard for you to understand? A mild hot sauce is a perfect prep for a prostate exam. Capsaicin makes you more sensitive to heat so when they stick their cold fingers where the sun don’t shine it won’t feel so cold. It's also has a lot of oils in it so it lubricates everything}

{Putting aside the fact that it’s the most retarded idea I’ve heard all day, you do realize you could just set your asshole on fire if you’re so inclined. No one does this, we all know you're making this shit up.}

{Then why do they make hot sauce bottles shaped like that, it’s perfect for an applicator, thin profile for easy insertion and only a few drops come out at a time. It’ll work great!}

{Then do it coward}

{Fine I will}

He uploaded a picture he had prepared beforehand and waited to post it. He needed the time stamp to line up and it gave a ‘reasonable time frame’ for the picture to happen naturally. It wasn’t, but he needed to create the illusion it was.

He finally posted the picture, it was a bottle of mild hot sauce with a note giving today’s date and the current time. With the caption:

{Y’all are fucking cowards, I’ll prove this here and now}.

The forum flooded with DO IT’s and DO NOT’s. Reaction pictures were popping up every couple of minutes. Some depicted concern, others daring him to do it, while others still begging him to stop. He basked in the chaos he had wrought. He wouldn’t be posting in this thread anymore, but he would check back in after work.

Speaking of work, he checked the time. He had about half an hour before he needed to leave, so he started shutting things down. If he got into something and had to leave in the middle, it would throw his whole night off.

He checked all his pockets, made sure he had his box cutters and nametag, double-checked to make sure he was actually wearing the store's uniform shirt. Didn’t want that mistake again. Then headed upstairs to get some actual breakfast then skedaddle.

Heading up the stairs and hanging a left he made his way to the kitchen and found his landlord in the middle of what was either a late lunch or an early dinner.

He gave John a wave and received one in turn.

John was huge, and not in the horizontal sense but rather a vertical one. The seated man was as tall as Khale standing and built like a brick shithouse.

As he was making a sandwich Khale made conversation, checking if any chores needed to be done on his end and such.

He was informed that it would be great if he could bring in the trash cans when he left, but other than that there wasn’t much that needed doing. So he scarfed his sandwich, locked the door as he left, and brought in the trash bins.

He then began walking towards the store and found his thoughts drifting back to his dream. It was still vivid in his mind and it was still absolutely baffling. He put in his earbuds and put on some music as he tried to put it out of his mind. By the time he was in sight of the store, the dream was rapidly falling from the forefront of his thoughts.

The BoxCo building stood large and wide on the side of the highway. If you squinted and ignored the bright neon sign it kinda looked like a couple of giants had tossed their old couch on the side of the road. It just needed a giant ‘free’ sign and it would complete the picture.

He made his way inside and waved to the few cashiers and day staff he knew. Checking the clock he had about half an hour before his shift started, so he started wandering around the store, grabbing his frozen lunch and a box of cookies. One purchase later he was in the break room scribbling ‘for staff’ on top of the cookie's cardboard box, grabbed one for himself and left the rest on the table.

He went over to the shift board to check if his new hours had been posted. They had not. He grumbled about having to come in on a day off just to read the stupid shift sheet and resigned himself to going out and doing something that day and hitting the store on the way. It wasn’t like he needed to go grocery shopping, he just needed to grab anything he was low on after his shift and that took care of it most of the time.

Soon, more people started to file in as ten-thirty came closer to rolling around. He saw that all the Steves were in attendance, Jamie was in as well and the new guy Robert was here, too. Though the only reason he remembered his name was Robert was because nametags were a thing. Thank god, he was terrible at remembering names.

Once it was five minutes before go time, everybody started filing out of the break room into the offices to clock in. Rob had to read off his password from a piece of paper, but otherwise, everything went smoothly.

Once that was done everybody went to their usual spots and started pulling pallets from the back room and breaking them down, making nice stacks of boxes for certain aisles. Once those were done the crew started grabbing hand trucks and moving stacks of boxes to their appointed aisle. Robert was struggling and Salad knew exactly why, he hadn’t been any different when he started out.

To do the stacks and wheel the boxes required a decent degree of familiarity with the store's layout. So they had him start with the simple stuff, namely, wheeling the soap to the soap aisle. Since the aisle was small, anything stacked incorrectly or wheeled to the wrong spot wouldn’t be much of an issue.

Soon the pallets were being carried off and people were heading off to their assigned aisles. Salad was going to start in on the ethnic food, as usual, before he was approached by Bryan. He wanted Salad to show Robert the ropes and get him familiarized with the store layout by having him throw each of the aisles at least once. Meaning Khale would have a tag-along today.

Khale pointed out that if he was training the guy and fielding his questions it would probably mean a longer haul for him to get his aisles done. He didn’t particularly mind, he just needed to confirm Bryan knew that. The boss confirmed he was aware and said that was expected. So they both went their separate ways as Salad snagged the newbie and grabbed some shopping carts.

He explained how to use the box cutters in a way that wouldn’t damage merchandise and demonstrated how to break down the cardboard boxes that they had to pull from shelves or discard entirely for some products. He deposited the scrap cardboard in his cart and told Rob to start at one end, while he’d start at the other and that they’d meet in the middle.

Salad made decent time, occasionally pointing out where certain things went to his very slow coworker. Occasionally he had to give him a hand, when something was too full to add anything to, introducing him to the cursed concept of backstock. He also had him move some stacks that were just simply in the wrong aisle.

Once they had finished they started ‘facing’ the aisle, pulling products forward and making the entire wall of goods look uniform and full. This sometimes meant fudging things when certain items were desperately low, all that mattered was the presentation.

After that Salad led them into the back room where he showed the new guy how to operate the compactor. Just toss in your cardboard and then press the big red button. Once their carts were clear they moved onto the next aisle which was pasta.

This aisle played out the same as the last except Rob dropped a jar of pasta sauce. Salad showed him how to use the cleaning products and how to handle a spill. Soon enough, code five was called and he had to explain that meant lunchtime as the two made for the break room.

“Then why don’t they just say ‘Lunchtime’ or something? Seems a little weird to make a code for it.”

“You know, Rob,” Khale smiled as he reminisced. “I asked the exact same thing when I got here. Apparently, it’s a code so as not to advertise that all the clerks are now in the break room and no longer around to notice when customers are stealing shit.”

“Oh,” Robert thought it over for a moment as they went into the break room. “I guess that makes sense.”

Salad stopped in the middle of the doorway, swore, and turned around.

“We forgot to clock out for lunch.” He bemoaned and started marching towards the office with his tag-along quickly following.

Once they were off the clock they returned to the employee lounge and started prepping their meals. Salad stuffed his frozen meal in one of the microwaves while Robert pulled out a packed lunch.

At the questioning look he got from Khale he simply said that it was cheaper than buying stuff from the store.

He was right, of course, but Salad wasn’t going to give up on the convenience of just having food here waiting for him. Cooking was super easy when all you had to do was stick it in the microwave.

Steve and Scuba Steve sat down and started talking sports, specifically fantasy football. To which Salad made his opinion known that it wasn’t actually a sport. This led to a heated argument about what constituted sports and that if video games could be counted as a sport then their pastime fell well within the boundaries.

Oddly enough, it was Robert that objected, stating that in almost all E-Sport scenes physical ability, prowess and technique were important factors. People trained their reaction times and professional teams even kept track of clicks per minute. Some Korean teams were somewhere in the ballpark of two hundred clicks last he checked.

Khale, not used to having someone back him up, pressed the two for what physical prowess they needed for their ‘sport’.

“It’s not a physical sport, it’s a mental one.” Objected original flavor Steve. “It’s like chess, you need prowess and technique and a whole lot of knowledge. To go at the game with any level of seriousness you have to know a ton about statistics and statistical analysis.”

Shaking his head Salad plundered some of the cookies that remained from where he had left them at the start of the shift.

“You know what, fine.” He conceded between mouthfuls “If chess counts I suppose your football Ouija board counts too. Though, I’m gonna be honest, it doesn’t sound like a good time to me.”

“Like you got any room to talk,” Steve fired back, “your idea of a good time is posting memes on the internet.”

“I will have you know, SIR!” Khale shouted in over-exaggerated mock rage. “That I don’t just simply post MEMES.”

He rose from his seat and gesticulated wildly as he spoke.

“Children post memes. Housewives post memes. Your grandmother posts memes.”

His performance reached its climax as he planted his foot on his chair and imperiously placed a hand on his chest as loudly declared.

“I good sir, SHITPOST, and it is an ART!”

And with that, he sat back down and started eating like nothing had happened. The three surrounding him were cracking up at his antics as Steve commented that Salad always had a way of making lunch break dinner and a show.

He shrugged and pointed out he was just that hyperactive kid that was in every class and he was still waiting for the part of his life where he mellowed out. So far, that period of time had been a no-show.

“That makes way too much sense,” Scoob replied. “Anyway, game time is ten thirty pm,” he snuck a quick look at the clock, “today at my place.”

Salad waved his hand dismissively, “Yeah, Carlos told me yesterday. He also said that he'd order some pizza, as it seems he’s of the opinion of, and I quote, ‘Chinese is not the go-to food for a gaming sesh’ end quote. And before you ask, yes, he told me to tell you.”

He noticed Robert was leaning into the conversation with blatant curiosity. “What’s up?”

Rob jumped a bit as he realized he may have intruded into a private conversation. “Ah! Sorry, if you don’t mind me asking, is that the game that a bunch of people from the store play?”

Steve nodded and gave Rob an appraising look, “You want in? We’re always looking for new players. How familiar with D&D are you?”

For his part, Rob lit up like a Christmas tree, “I’d love to play! I’ve played a bit of 5th edition and it was a blast!”

Scuba started nodding in approval while Steve gave his pitch, “We’re currently rolling with a 3.5 campaign. Some stuff is going to be different, but if you’re willing to learn it won’t be too big of a change. Besides, Salad here,” he waved a hand in the general direction of the man, “is starting from scratch so you won’t be the noobiest noob.”

Salad performed a diplomatic move of questionable efficacy and flipped Steve off, who just laughed. Rob just looked at Salad with surprise.

“I kinda assumed you were already playing.”

Shaking his head Salad corrected his assumption.

“Birdman convinced me to tag along and sit in on a couple of games. It was fun enough and eventually, they convinced me to hop in when they started their next campaign.”

Original Steve laughed, “Yeah that was a hard-fought battle.” He turned to Rob, “You in?”

“I’d be happy to play,” Robert stuck out his hand and both the Steves shook it.

It was at this point Birdman plopped down on the chair next to the other Steves.

“Hey, Steve.” The first two spoke in unison.

“Hey, Steve, hi Steve.” Birdman echoed as the three chuckled for a bit. “Just got done with the cart run. What’s up?”

“Rob joined tomorrow’s game,” Scuba answered. “That will top us out at six players. Got to admit, I’m really looking forward to starting a campaign with a full group for once.”

“Right on, right on.” Was the only thing the third Steven had to say.

“You’re starting a new campaign?” Rob inquired as he munched on a carrot. “Is it a published adventure or a homebrew?”

“Homebrew, and we kinda had to start a new campaign since things kinda go out of hand.” Scuba rubbed the back of his neck, “it was awesome but beyond unbalanced so I decided to reign things in a bit.”

“What happened?”

This was the time when Birdman felt obligated to fill in the gaps, judging by his comment of:

“By the end, our characters were level one hundred.”

Robert was visibly confused by the statement.

“I thought you could only get to level twenty in D&D. Or is that a 3.5 thing?” He asked, looking from Steve to Steve to Steve.

Scuba just sighed, “No, it isn’t.”

Seeing Rob flounder at that nonexplanation, original Steve took pity on him.

“Yeah, you normally don’t get that high a level. At the end of the campaign, the entire cast were all basically living gods. If you're wondering about how that worked mechanically it was a combination of epic levels and multiclassing. Most of the players with martial classes like fighter and ranger simply started leveling up in a new martial class. While most of the casters went into epic levels so they could get stupid high casting stats.”

“Also so they could get access to the spells you wouldn’t usually get to play around with.”Birdman chimed in again. “Since they’re typically only accessible to literal gods.”

Scuba waved him off, “you would have gotten access to those anyway, even if you had muliticlassed.”

Rob just stared for a moment before agreeing that indeed sounded like it had gotten out of hand and asked if he should bring a sheet ready for play. Scuba shook his head.

“We were going to do a session zero so everybody could get set up anyway, and with two new players it’s practically a requirement now, I’ll have blank sheets. All you two need to do is show up with dice if you have them.“

“Sweet.” And with that, the meeting of the Steves was adjourned as the first two went to clock in and head back to the floor. Robert was about to do the same before Khale stopped him.

“You got a jacket?” he asked as he slipped on his own zip-up windbreaker.

“Yeah, do I need it?” Rob went over to the coat rack and grabbed a gray sweatshirt and pulled it over his head.

“Well, we’re going to be throwing juice next. Believe me when I say you’ll probably want it.”

Want it he did, as moving freight in a giant refrigerator was a bit nippy. Especially when all you were wearing was jeans and a t-shirt. Even with his sweatshirt, Robert had to step out several times just to keep his hands from getting numb. Salad kept telling him the trick was to move the freight as fast as he could and work up a sweat to keep him warm. Unfortunately, Rob wasn’t fast enough to keep himself warm, He had to keep stopping to figure out the ultimate destination whatever he was holding.

“Could be worse,” Salad pointed out. “You could be sorting stuff in the freezer. Now THAT shit is cold.”

“Yeah, I don’t even want to know. This is rough enough for me, thanks.”

“That’s what she said.”

That got a snicker as they finished up and made for warmer climes.

Eventually, most of the store was thrown and faced and all that was left was the frozen section. Bryan and Jamie were wheeling out pallets of frozen food and soon the entire crew was working to break them down and wheel them to their respective aisles.

A few hours later they were finished. Frozen pizzas lined shelves, and hot pockets waited in neat rows for the day they would be called upon to scald the mouths of the unwary.

Khale and the rest marched into the office with all the enthusiasm of a shambling zombie horde. Soon they were all clocked out and making for the exits.

It was days like this that he wished he had brought his car. Salad sat in one of the scooter carts lined up in front of the door and gave his feet a rest. He had been on his feet for eight hours and his dogs were barking.

Deciding to take advantage of the situation, he went back inside. The bakery was just putting out the freshly made bagels, the ones that were covered in melted cheese that was at that perfect crispy consistency. He grabbed one while it was still hot, bought it, and started on his long walk home in the morning sun.

One upside to getting off work at this insane hour, the sunrises were always gorgeous.

Soon he was back home. It was still too early in the day for John to be up so Khale entered through the back door, as usual.

Spinning up his computer he checked on the message board he had left hanging. The topic thread had timed out and was now archived, but he could still see the replies that came in after he had left for work.

{No word for over an hour bois. I think he’s dead}

{He went where no man had gone before. Lads, Press F to pay respects}

{F}

{F}

{HeDead.jpg}

There was an undeniable sense of satisfaction at adding to the storied halls of this Millasian underwater basket weaving forum. Sure he’d fabricated a story, but most of them were. It was the art of selling someone a story that they’d never reasonably believe otherwise.

After all, even the dumbest bastards you’d meet wouldn’t shove a bottle of hot sauce up their ass.

But a big enough idiot on the internet might and it was there, in that realm of minute plausibility, where the magic happened.

With the cockles of his heart warmed and his mission to waste other people’s time an absolute success, he turned off his computer and went to bed. Despite the weird start, it had been a pretty damn good day.

He snuggled into his covers and drifted off to sleep.