Blues - Chapter One

“It’s all gone, Bro! All of it!” You shout as you turn around to face him, exasperatedly throwing your hands into the air. Bro’s hidden gaze is bearing down on you with the full fury he normally keeps so bottled in. Though you’re too far gone to care, you want him to be angry; to be as angry as you are: “What the fuck do you want from me?! To apologise? It’s my life, I fucked it up! So fuck your apology, you conceited shit!”

Before you realised it, Bro’s hand was holding the front of your shirt, and through his ridiculous shaded eyewear, you could see the orange irises practically flaming with fury. You can feel your breath hitch in your throat, knowing that your anger saw you let your guard down, and a pissed off Bro was an unpredictable beast.

He slowly loosens his grip, “What do I want?” He says in an eerily calm voice, still slouched over to meet you at eye level, “I don’t want anything from you, let alone an apology, David.” The fact he used your full name sent a shiver of discomfort down your back and you take a step back. Bro capitalises on your fear and moves forward, still meeting your gaze, and you find yourself helpless to break the stare-off. “You fucked up, kid,” his words come out after an agonisingly long pause, and before you realise what’s happening, your own the ground, the back of your head throbbing with a blunt pain.

From your crumpled position, you can see Dirk walking into your room, and beginning to pack up all your DJ equipment, “Bro, I…” You mumble as your eyesight darkens further. He pauses to look over at you, but only gives a shake of his head.

You really fucked up.

~*~

The descent into mediocrity had begun. With cheap black dress pants, equally unflattering shoes, and the most hated blue polo you had ever worn was donned. Tussled, perfectly styled and once famed blond hair rested casually on your head, and a pair of black aviators covered your eyes.

Put simply, you were Adonis in a cheap, servile uniform. Bro had called you a worm who was ‘perpetuating the capitalist lie.’ Yeah, Bro was still weird. It was even worse when he went off on tangents about the social injustice done against those with smuppet affinities.

However Bro’s mocking would only intensify if he knew what had brought you to such a low in your life. The lowest of lows; the most pathetic job a Strider had ever taken. You, Dave Strider, worked at Best Buy.

Swallowing what little pride you have left after you found all your equipment packed into a closet, you walk through the entrance as the sliding doors part and allow you access. Cold, dry, air conditioned air assaults your skin and eyes, and you can practically feel both drying out in the stifling atmosphere. Before you were all the movies, and to the right the mobile phone department. To your left the checkout tills, and to your right the home audio systems, however you spy Customer Service a little ways down to the left, and so you make your way over.

Customers are looking at you quizzically, eager to pounce on you so that you can help them with whatever pointless problem plagues them, and you’re glad your jacket obscures the Best Buy logo on your blue polyester polo. As you arrive at the Customer Service counter, a young woman with jet black hair and bright green eyes, hidden behind dorky looking circular glasses eyes you over. “You must be David!” She says cheerfully, and you force a frown to not come over your face. How you hate being called your full name. Lalonde knows why and she uses it against you all. The. Time.

The young woman behind Customer Service rounds the corner to meet you, and from the looks of her long black skirt and unkempt, thick head of hair, you can imagine she gets all the hot guys. Definitely. Nevertheless, she seems nice, and so you decide to gently correct her, instead of being the obtuse asshole your other friends know you to be, “It’s nice to meet you,” you lie plainly, your fake positive tone as transparent as her glasses, “But I go by Dave.” Your addendum is met with a puzzled expression before a dusting of pink appears on the girl’s face.

“I’m so sorry!” She says hurriedly and it’s then you notice her nametag, which has the name Jade written on it. It’s a bit of a heavy handed metaphor for a girl with such brilliantly green eyes to have the name Jade, and you bet that she loves to use green text, too. “I’m Jade, as you probably saw,” she taps her nametag once, and you merely offer a nod, though she continues, “Company policy doesn’t allow for sun glasses inside, but I hear our Operations’ Manager allowed it, so if anyone gives you any guff, bring ‘em to me!” She says, looking more and more awkward as you don’t speak.

You nod once, hooking your thumbs into the pockets of your dress pants, “Thanks.” The one word seems to placate her for the moment, and you take a second to make note of the other individual at Customer Service. You’ll be working up there mostly, so it’s best to figure out who’s who in your new living nightmare. A young man looking to be a year or two younger than you with black hair and dark brown eyes is leering at you mistrustfully from a distance, and his brows are creased with disdain. Jade follows your gaze, and waves a hand dismissively at her co-worker, “Oh, don’t mind Karkat. He’s a big jerk half the time, but you get used to it. He’ll grow on you, I’m sure!”

You can’t help but inwardly smirk at how unhappy you could make him with merely a few modifications to his name. Karkitty came to mind, and you believe you’ll keep to it for a while. Karkat huffs once at Jade’s shooing, and eventually walks through a set of hanging black, plastic… things. It looked like the entrance to a carwash, but that’d just be a silly name for the place behind Customer Service. “Anyways, I’ll go grab Tavros, he’s our Supervisor, and will be giving you your tour.”

Deciding to be coy, and moreover because it’s in your nature, you lean forward, your expressionless face inches from her own, “Can’t you, Jade?” Her eyes widen behind her glasses and she pushes them up without thinking. A deep flush overcomes her face, and she sputters out an incoherent answer, though you don’t listen at all. You’re too triumphant in your ability to woo random girls at the drop of a hat.

However your parade is thoroughly rained on as you hear a new voice coming from the black-plastic curtains that don’t hide anything. You need to think of a better name for that place. A scrawny looking fellow with black hair and a tuft of orange sticking awkwardly out in the front hurries toward you, clipboard in hand, “David! I was getting worried, it’s been 3 minutes since I expected you, hahaha!” His fake laugh is completely plastic, and it’s clear that this is Tavros and you two already don’t like one another.

~*~

“I’d like to think I’m great with people, “ you lie shamelessly as you’re walked around the story by an overly positive, yet somehow off-putting supervisor. You think his name was Tavros, but such a ridiculous wouldn’t ever be owned by a human being, right? Nevertheless, the young supervisor who looks to be younger than you, nods eagerly at your words, eating all the bullshit up like it was a political convention.

You continue down what they call the ‘Race Track,’ but in reality it’s just a strip of cheap linoleum that separates filthy carpet from its equally filthy likeness across the way. The Race Track makes a wobbly square in the store, separating customer service and the tills at the front and to the left in the store, home theater all across the right side of the store, computers in the back, gaming in the back left corner, while mobile and cameras are in the centre. Tavros is rattling terms off like ‘connected solutions’ and ‘digital imaging,’ but fuck him and his weird, orange-brown streaked hair, that shit is computers and cameras.

You turn with the Race Track, as you sarcastically refer to it in your head, and pause as a newcomer comes up to you two, ignoring you entirely. She’s, unsurprisingly, a teenager in an equally unflattering blue polo with a name tag with another stupid name on it: Aradia. Who the hell names their child Aradia, you wonder? Her parents must have been hippies. “Tavros, I’m selling a laptop with a Total Protection Plan, is it okay if I do $50 off?” Her tone was completely devoid of joy, and so you find her to be an admirable example of how to not give a shit here.

Your guide stops, a fist placed over his mouth as he contemplates the situation deeply. Aradia had the laptop under arm and it looked to be something a mediocre gamer would use, since a true gamer would have it custom built and would never use a laptop, but it was certainly expensive enough to warrant fifty stupid dollars.

You’re really beginning to not like this store. Aradia may be pretty, but her lack of ability to make a simple decision is grating on your frayed nerves. Why are they frayed, you ask yourself? … Why would you ask yourself, you know why: Bro was mocking you for working in this dump for the past week and it pissed you off. Even at the age of twenty eight, Bro is still as immature as ever. “Okay, you can do it, but make sure they know it’s a big deal!” Tavros says reluctantly, shaking his head in defeat. As Aradia goes to leave, he sputters out a garbled wait, and she turns around, a brow quizzically raising, “Aradia, I almost forgot to introduce you to our newest associate! This is David, he’ll be working with our online pickups and whatnot.”

She gives you an awkward wave before blurting out “Hi.” With that, Aradia leaves, laptop and paltry discount in hand. Well, metaphorical hand; you can’t hold a discount. The tour continues and Tavros is already blabbering on about the company vision and about how Best Buy wasn’t like any other big company, but you knew that was shit.

As you continue on your way, you see a few employees gathered around a long desk in front of the new UHD and 4K HD TVs, and from the group one young man separates. You can’t get a good look at him, but from the insane amount of keys hanging off one belt loop and the phone hooked into his pants, you assume he’s a manager of some sort. He has the strangest hairstyle you’ve seen in a while; black strands stuck out in random angles and waves, and alone they looked terrible, however terrible it seemed perfectly put together. You could tell he wore a pair of rectangular glasses, but beyond that you couldn’t make anything out for sure: he was already racing off in the other direction.

You give a mental shrug, you’ll no doubt not like him. He’s probably another fake douche like Tavros. You’re surprised this guy hasn’t gotten his ass beaten down in the ghetto neighbourhood around the store. Something about a shopping district seems to bring out all the weird ones. You’ll have to make a bet with Jade that if he wheels himself in on a wheelchair, she’ll owe you a coke.

As you contemplate the ironic fineries of making an intricate bet about a crippled Tavros with a girl whom you flirted with for no reason whatsoever, you feel your phone vibrate repeatedly for a few seconds, indicating someone was madly texting you. Ignoring it for now, your tour guide has brought you back to Customer Service where a very fat and sweaty man is brow beating Jade. Or at least, you thought he was until she speaks: “Sir you can take your return to another store, because the moment you swear at me is the moment you’re no longer welcome.”

Her words are calm, but she’s clearly pissed. Her verdant gaze is flickering with intensity, and you feel a smirk tug at your lips as you watch the large man’s little eyes go wide with shock. Tavros is already on his way to intervene, and evidently the irate customer is more than happy to talk to the man with the italicised word ‘Supervisor’ written below their name. “Excuse me, Tavros, but can you tell your employee that she needs to get her facts straight? She says she can’t return external hard drives once they’re opened,” his tone is entirely condescending, and the fake smile the plucky supervisor was wearing fades like a dream.

“Sir you swore at my associate. Please leave,” are his words, and you find yourself surprised at Tavros’ lack of willingness to bend over backward to the guy. Good for him, you surmise, it’s good to see a bit of moral fibre- “But once you’ve calmed down, I can definitely do the return for you.” And there goes that glimmer of hope.

At his words, Jade merely walks into the place-behind-the-weird-carwash-curtains, and you decide to join her. She seems pretty cool, after all. You can hear Tavros practically massaging the fat guy’s chode with his apologies and promises to discipline Jade, but you doubt he’ll actually go through with it. That seems like more confrontation that a weird guy like that is willing to do through. He seems to lack self-confidence, and you’re going to exploit that somehow.

Behind the carwash rubber things is an area where products are held. Simply put, it’s a narrow hallway with shelves on either side, filled with people’s junk. The lowest shelf is about four feet below the one above it, allowing one to sit if they so desired. Jade is doing just that a ways away from you, and her phone is in her hand, though the screen is blank and she appears to just be staring at her reflection. “Is it always like that?” You ask, taking a seat next to her.

Jade pockets her phone and shakes her head, “No, it’s always like this. Rude customers trying to bully their way into getting things. Tavros buckles half the time because he doesn’t want them getting mad at him. John won’t stop him because he’s too busy and stressed to care, and, eugh…” The black haired girl stood, looking through the slits between the rubber privacy… thing.

Deciding to not be a morally abhorrent individual, you keep the topic away from ironic statements, and inquire who John is: “John? I don’t think I met thing.” Jade looks back at you, a bit puzzled as to why you would not have, or so you assume from the face she’s giving you. Pushing a few strands of messy black hair back, she leans against the shelf behind her, placing her hands on its cool, beveled edge.

“John’s our Operations Manager. He and I go way back; we went to the same junior high and high school. We got jobs at the same time, but after some stuff, he stayed with the company and I stayed as part time while I went to school,” her words were strangely vague, though out of respect you decide not to press the topic out of respect for your clearly beleaguered co-worker. Silence falls over the two of you as you contemplate her words, worrying you might not like the lifer twenty-something boss. Though after your little spat with Bro, you’re sure even the worst of managers couldn’t annoy you.