Dreaming Demons

Meg untied her apron. Verna was a struggling new supermarket chain and Meg had scored the job a year before through one of her husbands business associates. Although the franchise was failing, corporate had decided that late weekend closing would be just the trick to help boost the failing franchise.

Meg punched in her worker card at 10:07pm. The day was slow for a Sunday and not one single customer had come into the supermarket after 7pm.

Outside, the wind shook the vacant cars parked in the parking lot. Standing close to the supermarket was Megs’ ’94 Toyota Eclipse, which rocked heavily on its old shocks. A lamppost near the trolley isle dimly lit the faded grey paint of her car.

Meg pulled open her beige locker, stuffed her apron on the top shelf and removed her car keys from the side of her hand bag. Dangling from a key chain was a bright yellow ball with a faded black smiley face. She glanced to the inside of her locker door. Stuck up with scotch tape was a picture of her and her husband the morning of their wedding. Meg had decided that she wanted to remember the time before the rest of their lives started. There it had stayed for almost a year now, reminding her of why she had to keep working. She hadn’t known it at the time but that photo was the last truly happy moment in her life.

Thinking back, she had never expected her life to turn out this way. Greg had been so sure that his marketing business would have rocketed off the ground and that they would looking towards a beach house in Cuba by now and an early retirement but life had a funny way of playing out.

Meg knew different now, she had too. Her life had taken a sudden unexpected turn away from splendor and headed straight towards constant hardship. She was prepared to fight though, the picture reminded her of that too but her body had aged through the stress of it all.

She looked down at her hands. A week ago, she had started to notice wrinkles spreading across her fingers and thick...