Princess of the Fae - Chapter 1

Erica, Customer Relations Associate - 1572 words
The register beeps as plastic-wrapped products float above the red lasers. The flickering fluorescent lights cast an artificial atmosphere over the dilapidated super department store. After another soul-crushing shift, Erica is over it. This has been the worst week ever and today, Friday, was easily the cherry on top of the shit pie.

The customer in front of her is angry. She doesn’t bother making eye contact.

“Sir, I’m not allowed to accept void coupons, but if you go to the Customer Service desk, you can work it out with them.” Erica uses her most disinterested voice.

That’s all it takes to send him right over the edge. His eyes bulge, veins pop out on his mottled, balding head as he lays into the small cashier. People glance at him nervously from across the store, rubbernecking the confrontation like a horrific car crash.

Erica might have cared about de-escalating the situation on Monday, but certainly not today. She bags his items, hits “Accept Payment” on her register, and wishes him a good day.

His entitled rage crashes against the rocks of her antipathy, leaving no trace on her uncaring expression. The man mutters something about her generation not giving a damn as he leaves the store.

He’s not wrong. She doesn’t give a damn about him. Erica’s mind starts to wander. She’s got bigger plans for the weekend. Her heart rate quickens. She’s been planning this for weeks, she can’t believe that she’s finally doing it. 

The next customer is her favorite type: headphones on and silent. No unnecessary interaction. She scans their items.

There’s a sale in the baby department this weekend. It’s also Erica’s birthday tomorrow. It’s the perfect opportunity to finally dive into her newest kink: diapers. Even the word gives her a small blush. Weeks of anxious planning have led to today, the day before her 30th birthday, as the day she was finally going to try them. The customer silently bobs to their music and passes Erica some paper coupons, reminding her of the old guy.

Why should Erica give a shit about an expired coupon for his knock off boner pills from the pharmacy? He’s probably just going to jerk it alone to some shitty, exploitative porn when he gets home. He’s probably peeps on his hot neighbor, the creep.

Why should she care about any of these people? It isn’t like they’ve given a crap about her since she moved here a couple of years ago. She sighs, hitting “Accept Payment” as the headphoned person gathers their stuff to leave.

Erica goes over her plan again. She’ll clock off, avoid her supervisor, and change in the employee bathroom. She brought baggy, inconspicuous pants and a hoodie. She’ll grab a pack off the shelf and use the self checkout. She can’t let herself be recognized buying diapers!

The blissful peace of the silent customer ends with a shriek from a small child. A boy grabs a chocolate bar from across the lane. He opens it right in front of her, looking her dead in the eyes while he takes a bite. Erica rolls her eyes and looks to his mother, who’s on the phone and not paying any attention to her little terror.

The clock on the register reads 18:50. Taking a deep breath, Erica just shrugs it off, scanning the mother’s items while the boy steals candy. Ten minutes until she’s free. She doesn’t care if they’re still understaffed, that’s not her problem. She only stayed two hours late for the extra cash, not to be a “good employee”. She scans more items, actively trying to ignore the brat in front of her.

It’s not like she planned on working a cash register in this armpit of a town. She moved here to start her dream career. Coming from a big city and a very liberal college town, Erica knew she had taken a chance on moving to Forest Cove. The big, handmade “Visit Forest Cove” sign at the entrance gave the classic romantic small town first impression. That didn’t last long.

The boy shrieks again. Erica glances at the mom, who’s just laughing happily along with whoever’s on the other end of her call. When mom doesn’t do anything to reprimand her kid, Erica gives the boy the nastiest, meanest glare she can manage. He just points and laughs, continuing his chaotic orbit around the register. Erica rolls her eyes, her eyes going back down to watch her hands scan barcodes without any conscious thought.

Finally the mother pays and drags the boy with her. Rubbing her temples, briefly, Erica checks the clock again. Seven more minutes. The next customer must have raided the entire produce section. Bag after bag of various fruits and vegetables roll toward her in plastic bags. Her fingers typing the codes in automatically, Erica glances across the store toward the produce area.

Prudence Atwater, the CEO of Save-A-Lot, smiles soullessly back at Erica. It’s a ridiculous poster. This rich woman, wearing a gaudy sunhat, kneels in the soft dirt in heels and her casual business wear. She’s holding a perfectly shaped, clean potato, beaming with pride. As if she had plucked it from the ground that way herself. 

Erica hates that poster. She hates this job, she hates this place. She sighs. It didn’t start off that way. She was excited to become a part of the small town life, idealized by tv and romance novels. She wanted to make a difference, bring culture and new ways of thinking to the sticks.

But after a few years of constant clashes with the community and her supervisors on the direction she wanted to take with her position, she threw in the towel. The fights weren’t worth it.

Two minutes. She passes the “Lane Closed” sign down the line and turns off her lane light. She’s been both looking forward and dreading tonight all week. She’s going to spend the weekend how she always does: gooning her brains out to the raunchiest, kinkiest porn she can find. Maybe it’s not that different from how she spends her weekends lately, but it’s the one thing she looks forward to every week. Tomorrow being her birthday only made her want to masturbate more.

After she quit her dream job, Erica spent the next few months unemployed. Caught in the first serious depression of her nearly thirty years, she coped with cannabis and porn. She spent hours reading, watching, and even writing a little bit of smut. She didn’t have anyone in her life who shared her perversions, so she played solo. 

Sex toys started showing up in the mail all the time. She built a collection equal to some of the many starlets she’d started following online. Stuck in a lease for her apartment, she couldn’t really move away, so when her bank account started to get uncomfortably low, Erica begrudgingly got a job at the local department store.

Extremely overqualified, Erica didn’t mind cashiering at first. But the tedious monotony quickly overtook the novelty. In a community that valued “the grind” and “individual freedom” more than everything else, she felt trapped. She’d been raised to respect diversity and communal effort towards common goals. Feed the poor, nurse the sick. Ensure everyone, no matter what their personal situation was, had access to a happy, healthy life.

The locals here though, wanted nothing to do with what Erica thought were commonsense philosophies. They had neither diversity or open hearts and nor did they want them. She could feel her soul slowly being sucked out of her body with every incessant beep her station’s scanner made as bar code after bar code passed over the glass platform.

Finally, her register reads 19:00. She rings up and bags the two remaining people left in her lane. As she finishes up, a tall guy in a suit, talking through his wireless earbuds, pushes her “Lane Closed” sign out of the way to put a 30 pack of awful beer on the belt. Erica glares at him. Not today.

Without another word, Erica logs out of the register and walks away. The suited douchebag stops his call to yell after her, but she ignores him. Probably for the first time he’s noticed being ignored by a woman in a long time.

Near the dairy section, under the poster of Prudence Atwater pretending to milk a green screened cow, she makes eye contact with Sheri, her manager. She hadn’t seen him since he asked her to stay late. She had droned on about being too busy with TPS reports or something and couldn’t pull away to help out on the floor. Now, she has the same look on her face as Erica rushes past her. 

“Wait, Erica, you can’t leave your register until I log you out…” 

“I can log myself out Sheri, remember? I stayed late, I need to go home.” Erica just keeps walking. Sheri starts to follow after her, surely to berate her over some mundane performance goal or obtuse paperwork fiasco. For once though, she gets an assist from one of the terrible customers. 

Some little old lady catches Sheri’s attention over some items from the sale section. Erica manages to get to the staff room alone. Taking a deep breath, she grabs her extra clothes and locks herself in the restroom to change before embarking on the most stressful single purchase of her life.