A Way to Pass Time

1

Ch. 1     

It was freezing. I would add a certain 'f' word but I was trying to stop my unladylike language. Who was I kidding; dressing like a skinny marshmallow isn't ladylike.  

I didn't have a very thick winter jacket, but I wrapped myself in layers of every piece of clothing I owned.   

I walked into the small book shop where I worked to avoid the frigid, icy wind but it was only a few degrees warmer than outside. The old hardwood floors creaked under my slight footsteps, the peeling wallpaper looked even more gray than it did yesterday, there were lots of shelves lined up with books that no one bought and just collected more and more dust.   

"You're late." my skinny-assed boss yelled at me, smoking her cigarette. Someone long ago implanted it into Sheila Johns brain that she was too fat, too big, too stupid to understand life. I always described her as a stick: tall and skinny, nothing but a sack of anorexic skin and bones. A stick that had graying red hair and a sharp tongue.   

Her dead husband started the small bookshop but ended up getting sick with brain cancer. The hospital bills took out all the funds Sheila had and now she suffers from depression. She's moody, mean, and a stubborn bitch most of the times I see her.   

I acted like I didn't hear her and still watched the busy traffic outside of Denver, Colorado. Snow lined the places that people didn't shovel, making the place between the road and the sidewalk look like an igloo wall. Trying to warm up my frozen fingers, I blew and rubbed my hands together. But damn, it was freezing. The store couldn't afford a heating bill so Sheila just let it be.   

"Did you hear me?" she screeched.  

 I rolled my eyes and turned towards my boss her old and dying green eyes glared at me. I'm pretty sure they used to glow with warmth and happiness long ago, but that wasn't a time that I was around. I pretended to pick off imaginary dust particles that stuck to my clothing.  

 "Don't act like you didn't hear me, you ninny! Get to work!" she screeched. She whirled past me and I glared at her retreating figure.  

 After setting up at the dirty, vintage counter, I waited for another phantom customer that would never come. After thirty minutes with no bitchy boss or people, I got my cheap glasses out and picked up a book.  

 It was a random book, about a guy who was a lab experiment and living with his mutations. It didn't really interest me, it just passed the time. Past noon, and not a soul was in sight. People in a hurry to get out of the cold just kept on passing by the front of the store. For a moment, my imagination fantasized of the destruction of humanity and I was the last living soul on earth. Now that would be paradise.  

 In the middle of my daydreams, the door opened, letting in a wind that seemed to come from Antarctica. I sat on my stool, silently watching a couple walk in. They were around my age, with thick warm jackets covering them.  

 The guy started to take off his jacket, as if expecting a nice and cozy little hide-away from the frigid air. When he finally registered the equally coldness inside, he grimaced and kept his heavy jacket on. The girl did the same.  

 Goldens. There wasn't anything that really distinguished them as that, but I could just feel the color flowing through them. It was a painful reminder of how colorless I really was.   I went back to my book and studiously ignored them -or at least, I tried.  

 "Are you sure your book will be here?" the guy asks. "This place doesn't look very... Reliable."  

 My hands tightened on the book I held. The character in my book has been slated for execution because the institute is being shut down.