ClopRock

ClopRock

Chapter 2: Mirror Image

"That'll be, uhh..." mumbled the store clerk, his eyes going slightly out of focus.

“Concentrate! You've got a customer here!”

He looked down at the pack of smokes.

"That'll be five dollars."

The woman, somewhere in her forties, handed the cash over, and departed via the automated doorway. That is, she tried to leave, but the faulty sensor pad that operated the sliding doors did not send the signal, thus the poor woman's face bumped into the reinforced glass. Hard.

Cursing, the woman reeled back from the exit, clutching her nose.

"Fucking door! I think it broke my nose!"

The clerk jumped the counter (nearly eating shit himself), and rushed to her side.

"Let me see!” said the young employee. Carefully, he pulled the woman's bony hand from her nose. "Well, it's definitely bleeding."

"Oh, fucking wonderful! What the hell is wrong with that piece of shit door?!" demanded the woman. Her words were nasal as she pinched the bridge of her nose in hopes of staunching the blood. The twang effect, combined with her already croaky throat, made her sound like some kind of troll. She looked about as mean as one, too.

"Umm... sorry, that mat there doesn't always work right," explained the clerk.

"Well, then why isn't there fuckin' sign to warn people!?" the troll shouted, its eyes bulging in anger.

“Oh shit! Don't laugh! Don't laugh!” thought the employee as he felt a smile creep its way onto his face.

"What's so funny!? Do you WANT me to sue your worthless ass?" spat the troll.

"No, nothing's funny, ma'am," the clerk stated while biting the inside of his cheek to stop his grinning. "Hold on, let me get you something to help you clean up."

He began to frantically search the shop for some kind of first-aid kit. The were a few stuffed onto an over-crowded shelf in the medical aisle. While tearing off the plastic wrapping, he dashed back to where the woman was waiting. She was still cursing up a storm.

"Fuckin' door... I'm gonna get blood all over my new jacket... Perfect, just fucking perfect!" she muttered.

"Uhh... here!" said the clerk, presenting the white box marked with a red cross. He pulled out a few bandages and clean linens. With the utmost caution he cleaned the blood off the woman's mole-ridden face. He looked closely at the bridge of her nose, and saw there was no bruising. "I don't think its broken... Just a bad bump is all," he diagnosed while handing her a tissue. The blood was clotting already.

"Who the hell are you? Doctor House?" mocked the troll. "Of course it’s broken! And you or your manager or whoever the fuck runs this dump will be hearing from my lawyer!" she threatened.

She snatched the tissue from the clerk and made for the door. This time, however, she stopped short. The mat sensor still wasn't working, and instead of simply pulling the door open, the troll jumped madly up and down on the pad like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Finally, the doors recognized a person trying to get through (or an angry troll in this case), and slid open. In a final act of anger, the troll showed the stunned employee how long her middle finger was, and stormed out of the store.

Sighing, the clerk trudged back behind the counter. He leaned forward, covering his bloodshot eyes with his sweaty hands.

“Well, that could've gone better... I wonder when Matt'll get here. My shift's nearly over, and I don't think I can put up with any more shit if she decides to return...”

  At the moment, he was the lone cashier of a cramped convenience store attached to a gas station off Route 30. The day so far had been long and slow, with customers in need of service being few and far between. Night was starting to tint the sky purple, which signaled to the clerk that his work day was almost over. Today's only highlights had been scaring off a bunch of kids who tried to steal from the ICEE machine, showing a hot girl where the bathroom was, and that door incident.

“Well, there was also the partaking of a little of the good stuff...” the clerk mused, smiling as he remembered the brown paper bag in his locker. “Maybe... I should have a little more. I could use a break...” he told himself, removing his clammy hands from his eyes.

“No! Matt's gonna be here any minute! I don't need to give him another excuse to fire me.”

Matt, the night manager, had been getting increasingly suspicious of his employee's "breaks" in the bathroom. He had made it perfectly clear that if anyone was caught with any kind of "substance," they would be sacked. No exceptions.

“Yeah, definitely don't want to get fired. Gotta pay the bills somehow...”

The clerk got up, and headed back to the store's only bathroom so he could wash his face, and (hopefully) look like he wasn't as high as a kite. He reached the restroom, shut the door behind him, and turned on the tap. He splashed the cold water over his face, and began feeling himself descend back to reality.

“Ohh, that's refreshing...”

The clerk looked up into the mirror at his reflection. He was tan and a five o'clock shadow was forming along his jawline. His face was fairly young looking with a little baby fat  still visible around the cheeks, but the bloodshot eyes aged him significantly. While the whites of his eyes were painted red, his irises were a dark brown; an almost-black, just like his hair, which had bangs that tickled his brow. He wore a red polo shirt with a name tag pinned to the chest that read: "Hello, my name is Chasan Bayer." The cold water had washed the haze from his eyes, and while they were still red, he could now pass as a “late sleeper” rather than a dopehead.

He cupped some more water and splashed his face a few more times before wiping the liquid from his bottom lip.

He paused. “The hell is that?”

In the mirror, he saw a reflection of something drawn on the far wall. Chasan turned on his heel to get a better look at the drawing.

"Is that...? No... No way..." he said aloud. "Is that... Applejack?"

“Yep, that's Applejack... Or at least it’s a horse wearing a cowboy hat,” he observed.

The drawing looked like it had been done solely with a black marker. All in all, it wasn't very detailed, but what few lines the artist had drawn managed to get the effect across (to Chasan, at least). The picture was about the size of a baby's hand, and was nearly invisible in the shadow cast by the toilet. The fact that he had noticed it was pure luck alone, and even if someone else had seen it, they probably wouldn't have recognized where it was from. This “Applejack” didn't have the orange coat of the farmer pony, and the eyes weren't right, and yet...

“Yeah, that's definitely Applejack. Why else would somebody draw a pony with a Stetson hat?” wondered Chasan, trying to think of any other symbol that matched the drawing. He found that he couldn't think of a similar character. “But why draw it here? In a stuffy gas station bathroom, of all places... Is brony graffiti a thing now? Wait... what's that?”

Underneath the drawing, written with a fine-tipped pencil, was an address, with a date and time provided as well. Chasan had to squint his eyes until they were almost shut in order to read it, but he was able to make out the handwriting.

“‘The Outlet’? I know that place... It's close to my house,” he thought, remembering having eaten at the small restaurant a few times. “And that date's tomorrow... At six? What is this? Is some brony trying to hook up?”

Chasan smirked at the thought of some fat, hairy, glasses-wearing guy in his mid-twenties trying to hook up at some random restaurant.

“Trying to find some pegasister to rut, buddy?” he mused. “Well, not that I'm much better...”

The nineteen-year-old dopehead clerk had been a closet brony for about three years now. When he had gone over to his uncle's house to babysit his little cousin, she insisted on watching the new My Little Pony show. Chasan had brushed off the cartoon as "little girl's show" at first, but after watching the two-part pilot episode, he was totally hooked. Soon afterwards, he discovered a whole community of "bronies,” the members of which were mostly men and women around his age who enjoyed watching and analyzing the show. The online community enthralled him, but Chasan never found it in himself to come out to his friends. He was afraid to even get a steady girlfriend for fear of her thinking his obsession with a children's cartoon was completely weird, perhaps even perverted.

“But if I got a girlfriend who was pretty, and into MLP as well... Well, that's just too good to be true, isn't it?”

Chasan pretty much believed that any girl who was into My Little Pony and was his age would have to be some total nerdy-looking, socially inept freak.

“I mean, looks aren't everything, but I at least want a face that I can wake up to in the morning...”

"Well, whatever..." he sighed as he made for the door out of the bathroom. He took one last look at the Applejack graffiti before turning the knob. "Though I wonder who... MATT!!! W-what's up?"

Waiting right outside the bathroom was Matt, the night manager. He stood, arms crossed, with a nasty grin on his bony face. The red shirt he had on was the same kind as Chasan's, but the name tag on his shirt read "Official Night Manager: Matthew Halladay. He wasn't very tall as Chasan easily towered over him, but he had this Napoleon-esque thing working for him that made him look fairly intimidating.

"Finally got you, Bayer!" jeered Matt, the smile on his face becoming even gnarlier.

"Umm... what do you mean?"

"Don't try to deny it! I know you've been doping up in here! And now I've finally caught you!" he shouted, spit flying from his mouth in Chasan’s face.

"Ugh... Matt, I don't know what you’re talking about...."

"The hell you don't!" he snapped, and pushed his way past Chasan into the bathroom. He walked into the middle of the room and pointed his nose into the air. He started sniffing here and there like a bloodhound.

"Didn't know you enjoyed the smell of piss so much," joked Chasan, mentally patting himself on the back for deciding not to smoke.

"No smoke...." Matt whispered, his eyes wide with confusion. He turned on the spot to glare at his subordinate. "Okay... I’ll let you off this once. But if I ever catch you with anything in here..."

"Whatever man," the clerk sighed. "Look, my shift's over now, so I'm gonna head out."

The manager continued to glower at Chasan as he made his way back to the employee locker room. Taking off his work shirt, he replaced it with a more comfortable black T-shirt, and took his "lunch bag" out of the green locker. Then, he collected his keys, punched out, and made his way to the parking lot out back. Matt had crept back to punch in for his shift, and kept eyeing the paper bag his employee was carrying.

"Had a good 'lunch,’ did we?" he asked sarcastically.

Chasan turned to face him with a big, shit-eating grin.

"Yeah, it was delicious," he taunted. Deciding to push his luck even further as he reached the back door, he added, "Got my daily amount of greens..." And with that, Chasan left via the back door, slamming it shut behind him and catching a glimpse of his manager's dumbfounded expression. He breathed a heavy sigh, and leaned back against the door. "Jerk... Everyone has their own way of unwinding. He should go yell at the old bitch from earlier. I'm sure her lungs are far worse off than mine..."

Shaking his head, Chasan shrugged off the day's events, and made his way toward his car. It was parked under the lone streetlight at the back of the store. The light flickered dimly as hundreds of moths tried to claim the bulb as their own.The sun had already set, and the car's dark blue paint was blending in with the blackening forest that bordered the lot. It was a used 1994 Mazda RX7, but with Chasan's constant upkeep, it looked brand new when compared to Matt's beat up Toyota Corolla parked on the opposite side. The vehicle was the young clerk's pride and joy; one of the few things that didn't make him feel like a total deadbeat.

He climbed into the driver seat, resting his suddenly aching skull back on the leather headrest. The interior was just as nice as the exterior. While sitting there for a few minutes, rubbing his temples in attempt to appease his headache, Chasan remembered the Applejack drawing back in the bathroom. His eyes shifted to the passenger seat.

“I guess I could use a little company...”

The small light of the glove compartment came on as he opened it, revealing a colorful toy inside. It was a figurine of his favorite character from My Little Pony: Rainbow Dash. He'd gotten it as sort of a joke when he was at McDonald's a few years ago, but the toy had since become his driving partner - at least when no one else was with him. Grabbing the seat belt on the passenger side, he carefully strapped the little pony in, making sure not to ruffle its mane.

“God, I'm such a fucking weirdo... No wonder Dad always thought I'd turn out gay...”

Chasan shook his head.

“No, don't think about him. Not tonight. Not now.”

He rubbed his eyes, turned the ignition key, adjusted the rear-view mirror, and plugged his iPod into the stereo before turning back to Rainbow Dash.

"So what'll it be, Dashie?" he asked the toy.

The pony stared blankly ahead in silence.

"Yeah... I was feeling that too..."

“I need more friends,” thought the teenager sourly. He activated the iPod, and began searching for something to listen to.

Moments later, the song began to play as he pulled out of the parking lot, and headed back home.

Chasan hummed along to the falsetto opening of the tune. He loved the odd time signature, and the way it made him sway his head back and forth. The strumming pattern of the rhythm guitar accentuated the unusual timing, while the drums added a strong backbeat to cement the whole groove. The singer had a calm and even quality to his voice, which was offset by the softly harmonizing vocals in the background. On top of all this was a lilting guitar melody that mimicked the opening falsetto phrase. All in all, the song was quite relaxing, even as the crescendo of the pre-chorus built up, then jumped into a catchy refrain. He imagined that if he weren’t behind the wheel right now, the song could easily have lulled him into a deep sleep, perhaps full of beautiful dreams.

Rush-hour had ended, so traffic on the way home was light. He'd gone through a couple more of his favorite songs during the trip, and after about ten minutes he made it back to his street. The row homes that lined the sides of the narrow one-way road all had the same exterior aesthetic: maroon walls, angled roof over a small-fenced porch, and signs of decay and dilapidation creeping up the foundations.

His house was situated in the middle of the row. Noticing that the porchlight was on as he pulled up to the curve, Chasan wondered if his brother had left it on to assist in his parking. Parallel parking was never Chasan's forte, but he had gotten more efficient ever since he moved here three years ago. The town he lived in was like a small city, with numerous one-way streets and several stoplights. Kids either played basketball in one of the few black top courts or just ran through the streets like maniacs. Going down a couple of back alleys, you'd be able to catch at least one drug deal going down. The once thriving town was a shadow of America's industrial prime, but...

“It's home,” Chasan smiled. He pulled the key out of the ignition, then reached over to unbuckle Rainbow, and placed her back into the glove box. “'Til next time.”

Collecting his iPod and hash bag, he stumbled out of the car and up the porch to the front door. He turned around just before heading inside, as he remembered to check the locks on his car. The car's headlights flashed as he double-tapped the “lock” button on the keychain. Satisfied, he ventured into the small house.

"'Sup, bro?" greeted a voice as Chasan locked the door behind him.

"Hey," he answered. "You still up? Don't you have work early tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I was just about to head up. After this show's over. How about you?" asked the voice. Chasan walked down the small hallway to the living room to find his brother, Marc, laid back on the recliner in front of the television. Marc was two years younger than his brother, but looked pretty much the same. Same eyes, same complexion, only with shorter hair and a clean shaven face.

"You got work tomorrow?" he asked, muting the TV.

"Bryan said he'll take my shift tomorrow. Y'know, since he totally dropped his on me last week. But I think I'm gonna get some sleep anyway," yawned Chasan.

"Long day?"

"Don't even ask..." mumbled the older brother as he made his way to the stairs that led up to his room. Just as he was about to ascend, a question came to him.

"Do you know when Mom's getting back?"

"Nah..." Marc answered from living room. "Probably after midnight."

"Oh, okay... 'Night!" Chasan called. He climbed the stairway up to his room, and heard Marc shout back "Goodnight!" shortly before shutting his bedroom door, and collapsing onto his bed. Not even bothering to remove his shoes, Chasan gripped the soft pillow, and closed his weary eyes.

“What a fucking day...”

He allowed his mind to calm down, and sleep was soon knocking at his door. His body went numb, and his breathing became steady. The last thoughts to drift through his mind before giving in to complete unconsciousness were of the Applejack drawing, and whoever that mysterious brony might be that decided to leave that message.

“Hah... Applejack... bronies... worry... about that... tomor...”