What I Expect

Dollar Store

Tips are rare to get in retail jobs. Supermarket cashiers don't get them anyway. However, this Game Shop is very helpful, and prides itself on good customer service. We tend to assist and spend time with individual customers, so it feels like we justify having a small tip mug at the front, like coffee shops do. Our tip mug proudly announces itself as 'Hungry for Tips - but our workers get them all' to avoid being misinterpreted as certain chains that steal their workers' tips. Today it's Friday and with my 5 hour shift and a busy rush hour I end up with $1.50 in tips by closing.

I can't buy much with it, but that's why dollar stores exist right? I've always wanted to go to one, and apparently you can find some gems among the mass-produced crap. I go up to Akefia's room to see if he wants to come with. "Why would I want to come to a boring dollar store with you? That isn't worth getting out of bed for!" He throws a pillow at me and I step from the doorway to dodge it, ending in the pillow just slumping against the opposite wall in the corridor. He lies back on his pillow in defeat "Gimme that back,"

"No," I lean back in and stick my tongue out at him. "Get it yourself!" I whisk downstairs just as another thud comes from the above corridor, another pillow flung from his bedroom. He seems to have an endless supply of those.

I reach the dollar store, which is so crowded I feel cramped, the walls caving in on me from all angles. I need to pull myself as the mounds of misplaced Christmas tack encroaches on me. I feel claustrophobic, I can't breath. Fuck. I stare at the neglected garden equipment at the back wall ahead of me, focusing on the clock, how the hands move. Counting by the seconds. I'm no longer choking, but I can't stop hyperventilating. My breathing isn't listening to me, as if my body's freaking out while my mind returns to somewhat calm. I find one of those stools to reach high shelves and sit down on it, just trying to quieten my breathing.

Suddenly a hand is placed on my shoulder and I jerk backwards, banging my head on the end of a shelf. A large stuffed spider, leftover from Halloween falls into my lap. "Ouch," I reach back, feeling my scalp. It's not bleeding, thank Ra.

"Are you alright?" The hand asks me. I look up and see the hand is attached to a person. A person shorter than me and broad, with a square-ish face and long, white ponytail pulled high. A sweeping fringe sits over their forehead, exposing almost crimson eyes. They're wearing a light blue shirt that's somewhat plain, white super skinny jeans and pink flats.  "Can you stand?"

I guess that shock must have reset my nerves or something. I find my breath, but am aware of it now, acknowledging its presence consciously rather than in the back of my mind. "Fuck, I'm fine," I pull away from them and wobble on my feet slightly. I realise that what I just experienced was a panic attack. I've had attacks before but never like that, never triggered by something that feels so trivial. Even at my worst time in the hospital, I've never been claustrophobic. But this place somehow  reminds me of the tomb and that makes no sense. "I'm Marik. You?"

"Bakura Touzoku. You look like a friend of mine - Melvin. You aren't related are you?"

They know Melvin?! "Actually, I'm his flat mate! I work the Game Shop with him,"

"Ah, you're another work-for-rent boy," they grin. "That was a joke by the way,"

I laugh, uncomfortably, and Bakura isn't convinced. "My day is free so I can walk you home since I know where it is, if you'd like. You look exhausted," come to think of it, I do remember this person in the Game Shop around Halloween. But I think they were dressed as Elvira?