My Turn

Merideth gets to run the counter and Dennis finally returns to work.

Merideth leaned against the wall beside the door in front of the store. She'd been waiting for nearly half an hour for the others to come back, deciding to wait about as long before calling them to find out where they were. Excursions like this didn't happen very often, but she knew it wasn't anything to be concerned about. At least, not unless it took them a while to come back.

She took out her phone and located Erik's phone number, hitting 'dial' and bringing it to her ear.

Several blocks away, back in their apartment, Erik's phone started to ring. It was answered relatively quickly by a lone Erik sitting in an armchair, looking more miserable with himself than he usually did.

"Hello?" he answered.

"Hey, Erik," Merideth greeted. "I'm at the store, where'd you guys go?"

"Oh, uh... Hi. Yeah, we had to go do something."

"Something? Okay, then, cool. Oh, and can you ask Sam if he found that CD I lent him last week?"

"I'm... actually not with Sam at the moment," Erik answered, looking around the empty apartment. "Or Mark."

"Huh?" Merideth responded. This was unusual. "Well, where are you?"

"I had to... get something from the apartment after the thing. They're on their way back to the store now, though, so give 'em a few minutes. I'll be there in... I don't know, half an hour."

"Okay then," Merideth said, slightly wary. "See you soon."

Erik didn't hear Merideth's last sentence. He'd already ended the call, now staring at the phone in his hand.

He let his head fall backwards into the back of the chair and looked up at the ceiling, losing himself once again in his own thoughts.

I erased someone, he thought. And then I altered my two best friends' memories. Plucked them right out of their heads and sent them on their way. Took the last hour or two from them and shredded it. I changed them both.

"F**k," he mumbled to himself.

Merideth stowed her phone back into her pocket and looked out across the road, towards the apartment, where the two would appear. Sure enough, a minute or two had passed before Mark and Sam finally showed up, chatting at they rounded the corner and waving as they noticed her waiting for them.

"Oh my god," Mark said in a low voice through gritted teeth.

"Stay cool," Sam responded in a similar manner. "Erik said not to tell her."

"Hey, guys!" Merideth greeted.

"HI!" Mark replied with far too much false enthusiasm. Merideth's smile instantly became forced and worried.

"Is he okay?" she asked, looking to Sam.

"He's FINE," Sam answered, elbowing Mark in the arm. "Aren't you?"

"YEAH," Mark continued, drawing the word a little too long. "I'm fine. Totally fine. About a lot of things! Anything about anyone, actually. Absolutely anything, I'm totally fine about!"

Merideth stared in confusion as Sam avoided all eye contact. Mark tried to keep his grin strong and without suspicion. He was failing miserably.

Suddenly Merideth stopped. She looked at Sam, then back to Mark. Then her eyes widened and her smile vanished.

"Oh my GOD," she whined, bringing her hands to her face, "he TOLD you!"

"N-no he didn't!" Sam cried, looking back up at Merideth and raising his hands. "I mean, WHO told?"

"Oh my god it's been OBVIOUS," Merideth cried back, turning around and pressing her head against the wall in a mixture of anger and fear.

"Uh, w-WHAT'S OBVIOUS?" Mark squeaked, his grin losing sincerity by the second and his voice no longer containing any whatsoever.

A little later, they were inside the store. Merideth was sitting behind the counter with Sam and Mark on either side of her, having managed to calm her down enough to convince her to move inside. She still had her face buried into a solid surface, however, now using the counter to block the world out. The three of them were trying to keep their voices down to avoid disturbing the customers, but not very hard.

"I can't believe this," she complained into the counter. "I didn't want anyone to know."

"Merideth, it's okay," Sam said, comfortingly. "Really, it's not even a thing."

"Yeah," Mark agreed. "Do you really think we care about whether you-"

"Argh," Merideth groaned loudly, "don't SAY it!"

"Geez," Mark winced. "What's your problem?"

Merideth rose from the counter and removed her hands from her face. "I didn't want people to know," she continued, trying to find the right words, "because... because..."

"Why?" Sam asked. "Do you not know for sure? Do you think things will change? Come on, Merideth, we're not going to treat you any differently-"

"You're doing it RIGHT NOW!" Merideth complained. "You're being all comforting and condescending about something you don't understand about! Ugh, God help the both of your future girlfriends!"

"God help yours, too!" Mark retorted.

Merideth made a strangled sound and returned her face to the counter.

"Mark!" Sam yelled.

"What?"

Sam turned back to Merideth. "Listen, Merideth. We're not treating you differently, we're treating you how anyone would treat someone who's clearly upset about something. You're burying your face in the counter and being really stirred up, of COURSE we're going to try to be comforting. And it's not condescension, we just don't want you to think we're not taking this seriously."

Merideth was silent for a few moments before rising again. She rested her head on her arm and stared into space.

"I just... I didn't want anything to change."

"Why do you think it will?"

"Because it just HAS. Your perceptions of me are different, now. It might not be in a bad way, but it's DIFFERENT. Right now you probably see me as someone who's been keeping a secret for no reason, and that's just not what I used to be to you. I was always just a girl, just your friend... but now I'm that closet lesbian everybody wants to comfort."

Sam tried to choose his words carefully. "Um... Merideth? We've..."

"Kinda had our suspicions for a while," Mark finished.

"Wait, what?" Merideth asked, breaking her stare and looking at the two in shock.

"So we've seen you this way for ages," Mark concluded.

"Not someone we need to comfort, though," Sam corrected.

"Yeah, 'course. Just the closet lesbo."

"Mark!"

"What?"

Merideth looked back ahead in surprise. "I... don't know what to say."

"You could try yellng at Mark for opening his trap just a bit too far."

"Hey, don't make this about ME!"

Merideth's lips curled into a small smile at her friends' banter.

"Okay, okay," she said, interrupting them. "Can we maybe just drop this now? Not for a while, just be done with it?"

"Sure," Sam said. "Not like it matters anyway, right?"

"See, it's talk like THAT that makes me think it DOES."

"Bah, women" Mark scoffed. "Make up your minds."

"That's kinda sexist, Mark," Merideth smiled, caring little to none.

"How? You're a woman, aren't you?"

"Making a generalization about women based on a single one is sexist," Merideth responded, perpetuating the faux argument.

"Not at all! It'd be a generalization if I said all women are crazy because you're being crazy!"

"Now you're calling me crazy! You're off the rails, Mark! You're out of control!"

"Well lah-di-dah, Merideth! I'm so SORRY if I've offended anybody!"

"Actually," a middle-aged woman began from a few feet away, a cross expression on her face. "I thought you were being quite rude when you said-"

Mark raised an open palm towards the woman behind him, not looking in her direction. "Rhetorical statement, lady," he announced. "My apologies are meaningless."

"Excuse me!" she said. "Now I will not stand for-"

"Oh, shuffle on out," Mark groaned. "I'm not gonna listen anyway."

The woman gasped and made a face of intense offence before indeed shuffling on out, giving Mark a poisonous glare he didn't even dignify with visual contact.

"Well that was fun," he chuckled, sitting back down on his chair.

"Come to think of it," Merideth began, "do you even SERVE people these days?"

"Hm?"

"You're always jerkin' them around, I never see you actually do any real work besides messing around in the aisles."

"That's 'cos I-"

"Don't?"

"Har har. Look, I was never the kind of guy to get a job, okay? I like livin' life without having to do anything. Free time to spend with friends or on the internet, y'know? Since apparently 'free time' doesn't exist in the adult world, that was never an option. The next best thing is working here, where nobody gives a f**k how they're treated since it's all part of the charm."

"The 'charm' of a s****y music store?" Sam asked, eyebrow raised.

"Exactly. We're as alternative as the music we purvey, at least in the Alternative section. Erik refuses hipsters and party rockers, you refuse rappers, and I refuse work in general. Everyone gets laid into for something and can get what they want if they choose wisely enough."

"Is that how Dennis sees it, or are you just REALLY lucky that you haven't been fired yet?" Merideth asked.

"Neither," Mark answered. "He just never leaves his cave to correct us."

"Sometimes I let them slide," Sam piped up. "The rap fans, I mean. Like, if they use manners and form a perfect sentence."

"So, never?" Mark joked.

"A few manage it. Once I had a greasy teenager struggling for like five whole minutes to articulate properly. He practically jumped with joy when I finally let him pass."

"And you find all this FUN?" Merideth asked. "I never really questioned it before, but do you guys really care that little?"

"Sure!" Mark answered. "Hey, how about YOU try it?"

Mark leant over the counter and scanned the store. He noticed one girl lift up something in the Popular section and smile.

"There," he said, discretely pointing to her. "She looks like she's holding a Nicki Minaj single. A cardinal sin in these waters."

"She's not THAT bad," Merideth began, but Mark cut her off.

"Let's pretend we're Erik," he said. "Now get into position, she's coming."

Mark and Sam stepped aside as Merideth was plunged into the clerk position faster than she could deny them. By the time she'd recovered, the girl was already handing her the case.

"Jus' this," she said, her voice dripping with the sweetness found only in 'that' clique of teenage girls. Merideth felt the tiniest bit better about what she was expected to do.

Merideth took the case in her hands and looked at the cover, trying to think quickly.

"I'm sorry," she finally said, trying to keep her face blank. "I can't sell you this."

"What?" the girl asked. "Why not?"

"We've had complaints about this music being offensive."

"Offensive? To who?"

"HUMANITY."

Mark stifled a giggle while Sam rolled his eyes.

"Very funny," the girl said, the sweetness fading from her voice. She rested her hand on her hip in a universal stance of sass. "Just give me the damn CD."

"I'm sorry," Merideth repeated, "but such a demand puts you in the same scope as the offensive material. I'll have to ask you to get the hell out."

"Are you trying to be FUNNY?" the girl asked, raising her voice.

Mark stepped forward and patted Merideth's shoulder. "You get a B for material," he said, "but a D for execution."

"What'd you expect?" Merideth mumbled. "It's my first time."

"I've heard that one before," Mark smiled.

"Could one of you losers ring up my CD so I CAN get the hell out of here?" the girl demanded, her eyes narrowed in an evil glare. Mark resisted the urge to pat the little cutie on the head. What might be considered 'evil' in high school was definitely not intimidating in the slightest in the real world.

"See, you've put yourself in a slightly awkward position," Mark told Merideth, all but ignoring the customer. "The conversation has been really civilised on your part, which isn't really the right mood to cause a customer to storm off. Nor is it particularly funny, unless it's pulled off perfectly."

Merideth found herself genuinly interested in what Mark was telling her, even if she didn't care much for annoying the customers.

"Also," he continued, "you're missing a BRILLIANT opportunity here. Let me demonstrate."

Merideth allowed Mark to take her place at the register, taking a step back and prepared to witness a professional in action. Well, she prepared to watch Mark make a young girl run away from him.

"I'm sorry about my friend," Mark told the customer, "she's a little 'challenged'."

"Hey!"

"Although," he continued, "she wasn't lying about the first part. Legally, we can't sell you this CD."

"Ugh," the girl scoffed. "And why's that?"

Mark pushed himself over the counter and leant forward towards the girl. "'COS YOU A STUPID HOE," he cried, mimicking the lyrics to the music she was attempting to buy. "YOU A, YOU A STUPID HOE!"

"Stupid, stupid," Sam announced from behind him, not taking his eyes off the screen he was working from.

The girl jumped back in shock from Mark's suddenly uncomfortably close face. She yelled something before walking quickly and as angrily as she could manage towards the door. Mark repeated the lyrics until she had left the building and his eyesight, with Sam providing backup with increasing volume.

Merideth stopped holding her laughter back and exploded, covering her mouth with her hand and nearly doubling over. Mark and Sam chuckled, too, while the rest of the customers in the store exchanged looks of being apalled, shocked, and entertained.

"See?" Mark said, looking back at Merideth. "Fun, right?"

"I can see how it would be," Merideth answered as she calmed herself down. "If you get it right."

She turned to Sam, who was still looking at his work. "And you," she said. "I thought you weren't the 'insult the customers' guy."

"I couldn't resist," Sam smiled. "Frankly," he said, turning to her, "I'm apalled that you could."

"You wanna try again?" Mark asked. "It takes a bit of practice."

Merideth thought for a moment before Mark tapped her on the shoulder again.

"Look," he said. "Hipster at two o' clock, about to come in. They're easy, just go for it."

Merideth wiped the smile off her face as a man in his early twenties walked into the shop. He was wearing thick-rimmed glasses and, despite the relatively warm weather, a sweater and scarf. He looked just like the kind of guy Erik would toss right back out through the door.

"Excuse me," Merideth said, getting the man's attention. He turned to face her with a look of distaste. "Where'd you get your sweater?"

"A store," he answered sarcastically. "What's it to you?"

Merideth felt the need to reclaim her honor rising. "Oh, a STORE," she said, with twice as much sarcasm as she had been served. "Please pause for a moment and tell me more of this hitherto unknown concept of clothing aquisition!"

Mark and Sam exchanged a modest nod.

The customer took two strides and was at the counter. He leaned in closer to Merideth and whispered loudly to her suddenly shocked face.

"THIS SWEATER," he hissed, "WAS WOVEN FROM THE FLESH OF FRIGID W****S LIKE YOU. AND I ALWAYS HAVE MORE ROOM IN MY CLOSET FOR ANOTHER BITCHY SWEATER."

The customer turned away and continued into the store, his expression annoyed. Merideth, Mark and Sam stood in shock at the counter, not moving a muscle.

The front door opened, making way for Erik, finally returning. He saw Mark and Sam at the counter and felt a twinge of guilt, but tried to ignore it.

"Hey," he said, noticing their expressions. "Who died?"

He was answered with silence.

"Aw s**t," he said. "Somebody actually died, didn't they."

"I-I don't wanna work cashier anymore," Merideth mumbled.

"Me neither," Sam agreed.

"Me neither," Mark agreed. "If I did. Properly."

"What happened?" Erik asked, unsure of whether he really wanted to know.

"Merideth just got threatened really passive-aggressively," Sam explained.

"He THREATENED you?" Erik asked.

"Um," Merideth answered, "in a way, I guess... But I was messing with him."

"Did you pick a fight with him?"

"Not really, but-"

"It was a baiting, technically," Mark explained. "She tried to compliment him so he'd give her a reason to go off at him.

"Then 'technically' that's your own fault," Erik said, sitting behind the counter. "Don't go looking for fights just 'cos you feel like it, only when someone deserves it. I mean, by OUR retarded standards."

"I'm sorry," Merideth said.

"It's nothing," Sam said.

"Yeah," Mark agreed. "Really, you're the only one who got hurt there."

Merideth looked down at the counter.

The customer, already done with looking through the store, started to walk past them. Erik looked up and narrowed his eyes when he saw who it was, but didn't say a word.

"I'm not buying anything from here," the man said, "since everying sucks a*s. Have a nice day, dipshits."

Erik stood up from the counter and walked towards the man, arriving there far too quickly.

"Wh-" the man began, but interrupted himself with a shriek. Erik had tripped him up and grabbed his waist as he fell, picking him up and holding him upside-down.

"AAgh!" he yelled. "Let me go! Let me go or I swear I'll-"

Erik had opened the door and thrown the man straight out through it, closing it without even watching him land. He locked the door with a flick of his finger and rested his back against it, looking dead ahead while the man got to his feet and started to pound on the door, yelling obscenities.

Merideth, Mark, Sam, and every other customer inside the store watched as the man eventually got tired. He finally resorted to kicking the door and leaving in a huff, yelling something about telling all his friends to avoid the store like the plague. After a few more moments of silence, Erik unlocked the door.

"What a d****e," he said.

"That was..." Sam began.

"Awesome!" Mark finished.

The discussion on whether or not Erik's actions were justified settled down after a while. In that time, most of the customers that were present at the event in question had left, either trying to be discrete about doing so or simply disregarding it and going about their business as normal. Erik had also decided to flip the sign on the door to 'closed', one of their many attempts to shake up the day's monotony.

"So," Merideth finally asked. "Were WERE you guys this morning?"

"Hm?" Sam asked.

"Whuh?" Mark mumbled.

Merideth rolled her eyes. "You guys left the store unattended for like an hour or two this morning? Where'd you go?"

"We had some grocery shopping to do," Erik answered, avoiding eye contact.

"We did?" Sam asked, turning to Erik.

"Yeah," Erik replied, still looking away. "Did you forget already?"

"No, I... oh wait, yeah, no I remember."

"Yeah, we did!" Mark realized.

"There we go," Erik said, gesturing to the two, as if showing his evidence.

"Huh," Merideth responded, a little skeptical. "Okay... why this morning, though?"

"What?" Sam asked.

"Why go shopping instead of going to work? It's a bit irresponsible, don't you think? Even by YOUR retarded standards."

"Well," Mark began, but wasn't very confident. "You see, we... Uh..."

"We just..." Sam attempted. Neither of them were sure of why they went grocery shopping. In fact, they were a little fuzzy on the details overall...

"Dennis wasn't around to tell us off anyway," Erik answered, trying to conceal his self-hatred. Sam and Mark accepted the explanation and nodded.

"Right," Merideth said.

The four didn't say anything for a moment.

"Anyone else feel a bit awkward?" Sam asked.

"Y'know, I DO," Mark answered, scratching his head, "but I have no idea WHY."

Mark and Sam's confusion was interrupted by the front door crashing open, the large, furious figure of Dennis barelling through and glaring menacingly at the employees.

"Aagh!" Sam cried out in fright.

"Why the HELL does the sign say CLOSED?" He yelled.

"Dennis?" Mark choked in surprise.

"It's alive," Erik stated in a single tone.

Dennis approached them, holding his finger out accusingly. "I'll not have you people goofing off during store hours!" he demanded, showing a lot more interest in their shenanigans than he ever did before. "I'm not paying you to sit around doing nothing while potential customers walk right on by!"

"To be fair," Erik brought up, "you haven't been paying us at ALL."

"What?" Dennis asked, not breaking his angry rant voice.

"Dennis, you've been gone for half a month!" Mark said.

"Don't be ridiculous," Dennis continued, his anger faltering.

"Dennis, we're serious!" Sam said. "Look at the date on your phone or something!"

Dennis paused for a moment, as if contemplating what his employees had recently taken, but did take out his phone. "Now it's just plain unprofessional to make up bullshit like that to..."

Dennis stared at his phone, noticing the date was quite some time after the last day he was aware of.

"Um..." he began, but couldn't find the words.

"Where have you BEEN?" Mark asked.

"Yeah," Erik added, "you can't have just been sitting on your couch for weeks."

Dennis pocketed his phone and looked away, a look of confusion on his face. "I'll, uh... be in the back room, then," he said, setting off. "... finding out what I've missed... and WHY...?"

"You do that," Erik agreed.

Dennis reached the door to the back room but hesitated before opening it. He turned back to the counter and frowned.

"Wait," he said, getting the others' attention. "There's still the issue of what you were doing in my apartment this morning."

Erik's blood would have run cold if he were using it. He looked up in horror at Mark and Sam, who were frowning.

"What are you talking about?" Mark asked.

Erik threw out his hands. A cloud of fuzzy memories flew from Dennis' head and hovered around it, forming a cloud of static. Mark recieved the same treatment, his face going as blank as Dennis's.

"Erik!" Sam yelled, jumping back. "What are you DOI-"

Erik flicked his hand back again and de-memoried Sam, too.

"What the F**K, Erik?"

Erik spun to the side and realized Merideth was still around. Before she could move, he did the same to her.

Erik sat back down, panting. Using his powers on that many people in succession was draining. He'd need some extra nourishment later. He looked up at his three friends, standing nearby, staring into space with their very conciousness swimming around them.

I'm a monster, he thought to himself. I'm f*****g evil.

He looked over to Dennis, who he cared a lot less about. Suddenly he stopped, and traced his eyes back along the path they'd just taken. They rested on several horrified customers, staring right at him, flinching as he noticed them. He looked around the store as a whole and saw several more people he'd forgotten to check were present.

"Oh, for f**k's sake," he muttered as he raised his hands, just before a woman drew breath to scream.

For the next ten minutes or so, Erik sorted through the memories of everybody in the store.. Every customer and each of his friends had to have a minute removed, Dennis needed to forget thirty seconds and part of his morning. As he waved his hand over Merideth's face and a square drifted from the cloud to shatter, he looked down at his feet in shame. Twice now he'd messed with his best friends' memory, and now he'd done it to Merideth, too.

He sat back behind the counter and waved his hand over the store. The customers, Dennis and his friends all had their memory clouds sucked back into their minds, and after blinking for a moment returned to their day. Customers looked back to the shelves, Dennis shut himself into the back room, and the three employees resumed their conversation.

"Man, does he even KNOW he's been M. I. A.?" Mark asked.

"I don't think so," Sam answered. "Where'd you think he went?"

"Got me. Erik, what do you think?"

Erik was resting his forehead on the counter, his eyes clamped shut and his arms draped over on either side of his head.

"Dude, you okay?" Mark asked.

"Fine," Erik lied. "Just not in the mood to care, right now."