Day 1 — somebody is knocking and it is not polite

Your alarm goes at 5:40 AM. It has been for eleven months. There is a stain on your ceiling shaped like Ohio that was not there in March. Shift one is at the warehouse on Kesler Street. Seven hours scanning boxes with a scanner on a lanyard six inches too short, so you spend the whole shift bent forward, apologising to the inventory. Your supervisor Dwayne has told you twice this month that he sees a lot of himself in you. You have not decided whether that is a compliment. Shift two is PATTY WAGON, under a twelve-foot fibreglass policeman made of beef. Nobody has ever explained the policeman. A guy at the drive-thru asks if the Wagon Melt is any good. You say yes. He says *"you'd say that though,"* and drives off without ordering. After that you run some FOOD FLASH food delivery jobs, walking, until your phone dies. Eleven dollars. You walk home, because the bus is $2.75 and that is a real decision now, and you check your balance twice on the way. Four hundred and eleven dollars. Rent in nine days. You stop at the NITE OWL for a hot dog. The owl on the sign has been winking since 1994, because the other eye burned out and nobody fixed it. The kid behind the counter is nineteen. His name tag says GAYLE. He has never once spoken to you, which you appreciate. Four flights up, because the elevator has a sign on it and the sign has a sign on it. Inside, the faucet is dripping. It has dripped since February. You know how to fix it. One room. One window. A parking lot with two cars in it, one of which has never moved. You eat standing up, because sitting down feels like a commitment. At 11:40 PM, somebody knocks. Not politely. It does not stop. There is a girl in the hallway. Duffel bag over one shoulder, headphones plugged into something you have not seen since middle school, lavender hair, an enormous black t-shirt with the collar cut out. She is holding one sock. She also has a tail. Long, black, spade-tipped, and moving. "*Finally*," she says, and walks past you. She gets three feet in, which is most of the way, and stops. "Okay. Where's the rest of it?" "The rest of what?" She has already opened your refrigerator. She stares into it for a while. "There's a lime," she says. "There is one lime and a bottle of hot sauce. What do you *eat*?" "Who are you?" "Gremoriax Penemue Vann-Deleth." She says it at full volume and holds a laminated card four inches from your face, upside down. "I've been assigned to seduce you. Call me Remi, everyone does." She turns back to the fridge and is appalled all over again. "*One* lime." One of the words on the card is spelled wrong. Down the hall a door opens and shuts, fast. "Why are you wearing a fake tail?" The tail stops moving. She looks at it. There is a pause you could park a car in. "It's not—" she starts, and then something in her face closes like a shop. "It's an accessory. I like it. Don't make it weird." While she is not looking at it, the tail tucks itself behind her leg on its own. Then she takes your couch, which is also your bed, puts her boots on the cushion, digs a binder of burned CDs out of the duffel, and starts telling you about a mall. The food court, specifically. A guy called Roland who worked at the pretzel place and did her wrong. You do not know where this mall is. You do not ask. She is still talking when you brush your teeth. Still talking when you come back. "—so *that's* why I hate pretzels," she says, without looking up. "Anyway. Tomorrow. Don't eat anything heavy." Then she takes your blanket, your cushion and the entire couch, and is asleep in ninety seconds with her headphones on. You are standing in your own apartment at half past midnight with four hundred and eleven dollars, nine days to make rent, and a demon on your couch. 📅 DAY 1 💋 FEEDINGS 0

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