The Graveyard Shift: A Horror Comedy (24/7 Demon Mart Book 1)

by D. M. Guay

  “Give in to the magic that is Ronnie James Dio, DeeDee,” Kevin announced. “He's the one true master of rock. You kids don't know shit about real music. Listen and learn. Rock on forever, Ronnie.”

  Kevin was air guitaring with four of his six legs at this point.

  “I want you to know I have tried so so hard to convince him to play something—anything—else,” DeeDee said to me. “But Kevin was a metalhead before...Well, before. He picks Dio every single time, and he's got seniority so I can't stop him. Plus, you know, he's a roach. I try to give him some wins because that's gotta suck.”

  “Take the new guy to the green room,” Kevin said over the intercom. “I don't think he's got the emotional fortitude to meet the cleaning crew just yet.”

  Emotional fortitude? My fists balled so hard I thought my knuckles would split open. I'll...show...you...fortitude. Said the guy about to punch the shit out of a talking roach. Oh, God. Is this how it happens? Is this how people go bat-shit crazy? Was I on the slippery slope to the nuthouse? Yes. Yes, I was. I could feel my heels sliding off the ledge, to a soundtrack of heavy metal guitar solo.

  “You heard the roach,” DeeDee said under her breath. “Come on.”

  She led me into the storeroom/hallway and this time, we didn't turn toward the employee lounge or Faust's luxury man cave. There was a green door in front of us as soon as we stepped in, right there between the tubs of tampons and the pallets of Top Ramen. I didn't remember seeing it before, but I wasn't Mr. Observant.

  “Go on in. Take a shower. Wash everything, but especially your...uh...face.” She grimaced and reached out to touch my throbbing head, but pulled back before she actually made contact. Yeah. It was bad. I didn't have to look to know it. I could feel my skin tightening, stretching as the tissue under it puffed. Remember that part where Demon Caroline used my face to shatter a glass cooler door? I'm assuming that left a mark. “Look. Just let the water run over your face,” DeeDee said. “You'll know when to stop because it won't hurt anymore, okay? Don't question, just do it. Promise?”

  She sounded tender and genuinely concerned for me. “I know this is a lot to take in, but you're doing great. It's not always like this. Most nights it's fine. Calm. It's just been unusually crazy around here lately. If you stick with it, it'll get easier. I promise,” she said. “Anyway, everything you need is in there. I'll get you some clean clothes.”

  DeeDee gently pushed me through the door. Literally through the door. It didn't open, but I didn't hit wood. I just kind of stepped through it like fog. Ugh. This place was too weird, but I had no choice but to roll with it at this point. On the upside, the room I stepped into was the poshest bathroom I had ever seen. It looked like something that should be in the penthouse of the fanciest hotel on planet earth. A stack of fluffy perfectly rolled white hotel towels sat on the counter. The room was twice the size of my living room, all white marble, glossy and sparkling, with a floor-to-ceiling mirror behind the sinks.

  That's when I saw the disgusting lime-green monster, face swollen and covered in black blood, standing in there with me. Jesus. Not again! I jumped and put my fists up, ready to punch. So did the monster. That's when I realized it was my own reflection in the mirror. The monster was me. Holy crap, I looked terrible. Not that I was a romance novel cover model on a good day, but wow. Demon Caroline really did a number on me. My clothes were saturated with barf, to the point where they looked dyed green. My face was all gashed up, crusted in blood, and one eye was nearly swollen shut, puffy and raw.

  Yep. Quitting. I'm outta here. Decision made. I'd rather be hounded by collections agencies than nearly die via horrific supernatural creature every night. How had DeeDee lasted so long? Shit. How was I gonna break the news to Mom? You know what? I'd just have to tell her the truth. Well, no. Not the truth. I'd have to leave out the monsters. Anyway, screw the plan. I'm out. After the shower. They owed me some clean. And some serious dry cleaning. And a medal of honor or whatever the demon-slaying equivalent would be.

  When I stepped in, the shower was already running, the perfect temperature, steaming up the mirror. DeeDee was right. Boy did that water feel good. I know it sounds crazy, because water's water, but it was sooo steamy, hot but not too hot, and gentle, like standing in the warmest, softest summer rain. Perfect. There weren't any knobs or anything in the shower, but I didn't care. Sometimes the water smelled citrusy. Sometimes flowery, like that relaxation bubble bath my Mom used, like, constantly, probably because my life choices stressed her out.

  I stood there, letting the water cascade over me for a long time. Once, I looked down and there were soapy suds on me, even though there weren't any mini shampoos or so much as a bar of soap in the shower. But I didn't mind. The Jello slime pooled around my feet and washed down the drain. And not only did my body feel good, but my mood was like cotton ball clouds, absolutely floating, content and fuzzy like a zenned out Tibetan Monk. I had no idea how long I'd been in the shower. I just knew the longer I stood in the water, the better I felt.

  The shower shut off automatically, oddly at about the same time I decided I was finished. When I stepped out, there was a stack of clean clothes neatly folded on the vanity. Huh. Upon further inspection, I realized they were my clothes. From home. My red “Education is Important, but Beer is Importanter” T-shirt with the honey mustard stain was paired with clean socks, one with a cartoon banana print, and one orange, but balled together fresh out of the dryer. The salmon-pink dad shorts my Mom had bought me on clearance at Kohl's were there, too. Crap. I hated those. I only wore them when I had absolutely nothing else. The clothes were totally, no doubt about it, mine. From home. I tried hard not to think about how they ended up here.

  There was a note in curly handwriting next to the stack of clean clothes. “Lloyd. Your wardrobe screams 'idiot frat guy.' Please buy some clothes that won't melt out my eyeballs when I look at you. Love, DeeDee.”

  Hey. I liked my clothes. Except for the shorts. But in my elevated, super-relaxed lavender body wash mood, I was focused solely on the fact that she remembered my name and the “Love, DeeDee” portion of the note. I wondered, for a hot second, if she'd go on a date with me if I one day saved her from some giant Cthulhu. No chick could deny a bonafide knight in shining armor, right?

  Wait. What am I thinking? Nope. Double nope. Quitting. No monster fight was worth it. Then again, we were talking about DeeDee here. She was a perfect ten. Too bad I was a two. Okay, I was a physical six who could maybe hit seven if I dropped a couple of pounds, but debt and living with my Mom made me a two. And there weren't gonna be any epic monster battles. I couldn't do this. I had to quit.

  I put on my clothes, and when a comb magically appeared on the vanity, I took that as a sign I needed to brush my hair. I wiped the steam off the mirror and dropped the comb in shock. No way. The cuts. The bruises. The swelling. It was all gone. My face was fine, as if Demon Caroline had never used me as a battering ram. And now that I thought about it, my epic skull-crushed-on-the-linoleum headache was gone, too. I glanced at the shower. Dude. What was in that water? This place is unbelievable.

  I had to give Faust credit. The employee lounge with the personal chef and infinite food? The posh magic-healing five-star automated shower? He gave you all the tools you needed to treat yo'self. I could get used to this.

  Oh no, you won't. Don't even think about it. Faust is THE Devil. I think? Didn't matter. He was close enough. This place was insane. The night manager was a talking cockroach. Caroline Ford Vanderbilt went full Exorcist in aisle five. I fought a snake dude with some hot dogs and a Michael Bolton CD. No shower could erase that face beating I got tonight. Okay, it could actually erase the damage, but not the memory. It wasn't gonna get easier or safer. It could only go down from here. You're quitting, Lloyd.

  But I need the money.

  No. There had to be another way to make ten thousand dollars.

  I contemplated the most gentle way to French exit this job. (I wasn't gonna Comb-over Carl and ru
n screaming. I wanted to at least leave quietly and with some dignity.)

  When I stepped back out front, clean and dry, I was shocked by the state of things. The store was spotless. No green barf. No broken glass cooler door. Not a single item on a single shelf out of place. Man. That cleaning crew was on top of their game!

  DeeDee sat on a stool at the beer cave entrance picking her black-painted fingernails, like this had been any boring, normal night. My head spun. How did she deal?

  Well, it doesn't matter. This is not my problem anymore. I'm out. I turned to leave, and my plan fell apart. The impossibly handsome Mr. Faust stood outside the front door talking to a tall, smoking hot brunette with two platinum blonde streaks in her hair that made her look like a sexy skunk. He smiled, she smoldered, both of them laying on the charm. A moment later, she sauntered off across the parking lot and Faust stepped inside.

  “There you are, young Mr. Wallace.” He put his strong, impeccably manicured man hand firmly on my shoulder. He was dressed head to toe in a black designer suit. Even the shirt and tie were black. He smelled expensive, like crisp new money fresh off the press at the U.S. Mint. “You did excellent work tonight. Excellent. Dee Dee and Kevin informed me of your bravery, singular focus, and innovative use of food products in not one but two instances of gate breach. You're certainly the right man for the job. Bringing you on board was an excellent decision.”

  I just stood there, stunned. No boss had ever said so many nice things about me. Come to think of it, no boss had ever said any nice things to or about me. Not once. So...it was probably best not to tell this guy I was gonna quit. He was too smooth, too convincing. And, you know, probably the devil.

  “Good news. I was just informed the entity that entered Caroline was a doomed soul and not a denizen of our gate. She was temporarily inhabited by a Mr. Homer Wiley of Plain City, the self-proclaimed leader of the Angels of Divine Eventuality.”

  “The what?” Was that a bad Swedish death metal band?

  “They were an aspiring, but already failing, doomsday cult that formed in a subreddit two weeks ago. They met once, in person, earlier this evening in a conference room at the Sleep Rite Motel on Highway 37. Naturally, it ended in disaster. You'll read about them in the news tomorrow, I'm sure,” Faust said. “Mortals are fascinating creatures. Such imagination. I digress. Where were we? Oh, yes. The absolutely stunning Ms. Destiny informed me...”

  “Who?” I was not following any of this. Were you?

  “Destiny's the reaper for Doomed Souls Gate thirty-seven. She frequently graces the stage at Sinbad's as well. Lovely woman. Absolutely radiant.”

  Wait. There was another gate? At the strip joint across the street? And the sexy skunk was a stripper and in charge? Brain...not...computing. My dick did tingle, though, because dude, I was only a man.

  “She informed me that Mr. Wiley intended to release the twelve late members of his cult to seek revenge on the world. He was angry that his afterlife predictions were incorrect. The others had already been ushered through the proper gate, but he escaped right before crossover. Of course, he wouldn't be able to use our gate, but if he had stumbled upon the correct one, we could have had twelve more possessions. The owners of those stolen bodies would have surely perished. Not everyone would be as willing to stop a possessed individual non-fatally, as you did this evening. Your proper handling of the situation saved up to thirteen human lives tonight.”

  I just stood there, blinking, while he pelted me with words I didn't understand. Thirteen human lives? Me? Saving lives? Sexy stripper? Doomed Souls gate? My brain hurt.

  “I am genuinely impressed. You've done a great job, especially for someone so new and fresh,” he said. “That is why I did a quick soul search. The reward for your excellent performance needed to be personal, meaningful. Here. This is for you. I believe it's exactly what you need.”

  Faust handed me a thick, blood-red envelope, and said, “You have a bright future here, young Mr. Wallace. Keep up the good work.”

  He bid goodnight to DeeDee, and waltzed through the storeroom door, leaving me standing there with a fat envelope in my hand. My heart thumped hard against my ribs as I carefully opened it. Really slowly, because come on. Anything could be in there. The envelope could open up into another dimension, or a man-eating centipede could crawl out.

  Phew. Nope. No swirly vortex cloud. No dickhead talking bugs with bad attitudes. It was a slip of paper, a little bigger than a personal check. It was yellow on the ends, purple in the middle with a green bar across the top that said “United States Postal Service Postal Money Order.” It was made out to Jennifer Wallace for $677.85. The memo line said, “Mom. I wanted to repay you for the exterminator because I love you. Sorry about the ants. It won't happen again. Love, Lloyd.”

  Chapter 9

  Eeeeeoooooooowch! The big black dude in the white lab coat couldn't have pushed the needle into my vein any harder. He wasn't gentle, and I got the vibe he probably wasn't trained in any sort of nursing or medical field either. I mean, registered nurses didn't wear cheap jet-black sunglasses when they drew blood, did they?

  He wasn't subtle either. He'd grunted and called me “big boy” when I weighed in, muttering something about how I needed to lose twenty pounds, before saying “fatties like you are ruining us.”

  Rich, coming from a guy who had his own budding spare tire growing around his middle.

  I guess I should have expected as much. The plasma center was sketchy, nothing like the clean, sterile, sunny office filled with smiling people portrayed in their website photos. There were about forty narrow yellow recliners jammed into one big windowless “donation” room. Anemic fluorescent strip lights flickered cold and white overhead. About half of the seats were filled, and the crowd skewed heavily toward vagrants, broke college kids, and haggard working-class roofer guys. There was one hard-as-nails, seen-some-shit grandma with an epic permed mullet sprinkled in for good measure. They sat in their chairs, tubes of blood leading from their arms into a tiny centrifuge which spun and hummed and whirred, then sent the leftovers right on back into where they had come out. Gruff, white-coated techs paced the room with clipboards, putting needles in arms and pulling them out. Every single one of them wore dark sunglasses. Inside a windowless room. That was totally weird, right?

  Welp. I had officially hit rock bottom. If this place were a soap opera, they'd call it the Broke and the Desperate. The web sites made plasma donation look all hospital sterile and professional, but let's face it. These places didn't exactly thrive in nice neighborhoods where people had steady, good-paying jobs. And trust me, I'd checked out a few. Blood 'R' Us was the nicest of them, and that wasn't saying much.

  I sat in that chair for the next ninety excruciating minutes, my blood getting sucked out, spun then put back in. Every second of it was a reminder of how many rocks I was hitting as life dragged me face-first across the river bed of my personal rock bottom.

  I gave Mom the money order for the exterminator as soon as I got home from work this morning. I didn't plan it that way, but I stepped in around seven a.m., and Mom was awake, getting ready for work, standing in her robe, comatose by the coffee machine waiting for the pot to finish brewing. I swear she'd just lie under the drip with her mouth open if there were a way to pull that off without second-degree burns. She wasn't a morning person.

  Still, the money order lit her up like a million-watt stadium bulb had flipped on inside her. She literally cried when she saw it. Cried. Like, real tears, and enough of them to totally streak down her cheeks. And worse, she had that tight sad/happy “I'm so touched” smile she gets when she's hyper-emotional. She hugged me so tight my head nearly popped off and told me, “I'm so proud of you, Lloyd. This new job is really turning your life around.”

  Fuck. Once again, I embraced my inner chicken shit. At that moment, there was no way I could tell her I had to quit, and I finally understood what my grandpa had meant when he always said, “You can't win for losing.”

&
nbsp; I'd have to have another job lined up before I quit. For Mom's sake. And some money in the bank. Okay, in my sock drawer. I couldn't open a checking account because my last one had been overdrawn ninety percent of the time. So here I was, spending my day selling plasma and applying for other jobs. Safer jobs. Jobs without demon vomit and talking roaches and devil bosses.

  I'd filled out so many applications today that my fingertips ached from typing. McDonald's. Popeye's. Wendy's. Pappy's Good Times bar (although the vibe was more 'Where alcoholics go to die” than party palace.) The Ponderosa Steakhouse Buffet and the Golden Corral. (Dude. So many buffets. The Midwest needs to step away from the all-you-can-eat chicken drummies, if you know what I mean. Seriously. Step away.) Target. (I could stock the hell out of some socks and diapers.) Speedway (Maybe I could parlay my two nights at Demon Mart into experience?) Jiffy Lube (I lied and said I knew how to change oil. How hard could it be? That's what YouTube is for.). I walked right on past Starbucks. Know thyself: I couldn't deal with the half-caf no-whip coffee shop crowd. Plus, most of their baristas had bachelor's degrees. That didn't feel good. I couldn't even compete for entry-level.

  Surely, though, some offer would roll in soon. I just had to wait. Maybe I could turn this plasma thing into a decent side hustle in the meantime. I flipped through the brochure. Fifty bucks for the first four donations, then thirty bucks a pop if you donate twice a week. Wait, the rates actually went down? Crap. I looked at the dude who'd stabbed in the needle. He looked back at me and grinned, an extra toothy grin. My stomach churned. I didn't think I could put up with Mr. Stabby for thirty bucks a pop. Ugh. Okay, new plan. More applications. Tons more.

  I grabbed the newspaper out from under the trashy celebrity magazines on the chipped-up side table next to me. I didn't even know they still printed news on paper anymore. I stopped cold before I made it to the want ads. There, on the front page, was this headline: