❝Early this morning
When you knocked upon my door
And I said hello Satan, ah
I believe it is time to go❞

The monster-sex ended around 9 a.m.

I couldn't take the credit. No, the only thing remotely sexy I would be getting would be through the Hub and even that wasn't an offer—to quote Mr. Darcy—'handsome enough to tempt me.'

It had only taken Megan a hot minute after stomping my dreams to an end to have her newly adopted booty call back in the apartment. I'd been in my room, lying wide awake on my mattress while staring at the ceiling like a man deceased when I heard 'Javier' sneak in. It wasn't long after that the dinosaur wails began again, and this time, it was a thousand times louder than before.

After all, her ugly little secret was out in the open now. Along with a lot of other things, judging by the grunts of encouragement Javier let out. It was like live porn for clowns.

Eventually, I fell asleep with my pillow over my head, curled up into a ball of self-loathing. When I awoke, the sun was high up in the afternoon sky and penetrating through the thin curtains in my room. I rolled over and picked up my phone.

2 p.m.

Getting to my feet, I threw on a t-shirt and tip-toed over to my door, pressing my ear against the wood.

It was all silent on the Megan front. As it should be for a Thursday afternoon. Unlike me, she had a day job she loved as an accountant. She wouldn't be back home till much later tonight, or so I hoped.

I was surprised she hadn't bolted in before leaving for work to remind me the clock was ticking. Perhaps she'd felt subjecting me to audio-sex while I was in my self-inflicted prison was punishment enough. She didn't know that I was too stubborn to let her version of solitary confinement break me.

"Guess she's letting the caged artist roam free today," I mumbled to myself as I grabbed my laptop and opened the door, heading to the comfort of the couch in the living room.

Safely in front of my trusty laptop, which, unlike my poor hard drive, was still in one piece, I decided to dive straight back into the job listings I'd been pouring over before I'd passed out. Graphic design positions were a dime a dozen, but it seemed like most of them were tailor-made for soulless drones who'd sold their creativity for a 9-to-5 paycheck. I couldn't help but let out an exasperated sigh.

"Graphic designer needed to make boring things slightly less boring," I muttered as I scrolled through yet another uninspiring posting. Pausing, I added sarcastically, "Must be willing to accept that 'thinking outside the box' is punishable by death."

My fingers danced over the keyboard as I scanned the digital wasteland of job listings. Graphic design had become a battleground between artistic integrity and capitalist conformity, and I was straddling the line like a tightrope walker with vertigo.

Inwardly, I groaned, hating myself for even considering these gigs that were more about feeding the masses than feeding my soul. It was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and I wasn't sure if I should be the peg or the hole in this metaphor.

I leaned back in my chair and glanced at the time again. My stomach, having voiced its displeasure earlier, had now formed a rebellion and was staging a hunger strike. I couldn't ignore it any longer.

"Alright, alright," I muttered, patting my stomach. My melodramatic internal monologues could wait. It was time to tame the beast.

With a resigned sigh, I saved my unfinished job applications and shut down the laptop. As I shuffled into a pair of faded jeans and threw on a worn-out hoodie, I couldn't help but frown at the plate of spaghetti that was still left on the counter. I'd made that for Megan but the only spaghetti she'd slurped on last night was Mexican.

Sighing, I pocketed my keys to the apartment and left. As I strolled down the streets of my residential New York neighborhood, I couldn't help but relish the rare tranquility. The bustling city had momentarily hushed, giving me a reprieve from the sensory overload that came with living in the heart of the Big Apple. The autumn air carried a crispness that signaled the arrival of fall but the air still carried a sharper warmth in it that almost stung, no thanks to global warming.

The 24-7 grocery store was not too far off from the apartment complex. I knew the place inside-and-out, having frequented it far too many times on late nights spent staying up designing only aided by energy drinks and snacks.

The cool gush of the air conditioning hit me in the face as I stepped in and grabbed myself a trolley out of habit. As I ventured into the wild aisles of the store, my thoughts took a detour into the financial labyrinth that was my life.

I had enough savings to sustain myself in a shoebox-sized apartment for a couple of months, and if hell froze over, I knew I could always reach out to my parents for support. But, I didn't want it to get that bad. I knew they'd push the trust fund they'd kept aside for me since I was 18 into my lap but I didn't want to take a single penny from it. Call it a matter of personal integrity, or maybe it was just my way of avoiding a lecture on responsible adulting.

My entire personality was built upon my love for portraying realism through art. While I made a living as a graphic designer, my heart had always belonged to oil painting. I'd entered the graphic design field with the mission of emulating the texture, depth, and authenticity of my beloved oil paintings through digital pixels. And just when I'd started making a name for myself in New York's bustling art industry, COVID had struck, and the sales, along with my dreams of popularity, had plummeted faster than a bungee jumper with faulty cords.

I shook off the weight of my thoughts, bringing myself to focus on the task at hand: sustenance. The fluorescent lights and neatly stacked shelves greeted me, offering a strange sense of comfort amid the chaos of my life. My footsteps echoed squeakily in the nearly deserted aisles, and I couldn't help but appreciate the peace that came with a Thursday afternoon.

Score for being an unemployed loser, I suppose.

I headed straight for the snacks section, where I absentmindedly picked up bags of chips and jars of dip, my hand moving on autopilot. Then, as reality kicked in, I returned them to their respective shelves. It was a tough pill to swallow, realizing that I couldn't afford to be as carefree with my choices as I once was.

With a sigh, I veered toward the frozen section, my eyes scanning the shelves for something quick and easy to reheat. My eyes lit up as I spotted the frozen pizza section, my brain firing up with the mental image of exactly the one I wanted. Who said I couldn't treat myself? I deserved to have one last hurrah before I moved to more budget-friendly dining options for....who knows how long.

Feeling as excited as a five year old on Christmas Day, I wheeled my trolley over to the frozen pizzas and pulled open the handle.

"Tombstone, Tombstone....where you at?" I muttered under my breath, the irony of my favorite brand's name not escaping me. To my disappointment, it was out of stock.

My mouth turned downward and I decided to pluck a lame-ass cheese pizza when something got my attention from my peripheral vision. Even without my glasses, I would recognize that cardboard design anywhere.

There it was. The coveted Tombstone Roadhouse Loaded Double Down Deluxe Pizza. A mouthful to say, and a mouthful my stomach demanded to have very soon.

Piled high with pepperoni, Italian sausage, red and green peppers, caramelized onions, and two layers of mozzarella cheese, all on a thin and crispy crust, it was a frozen masterpiece that could rival any takeout joint. Yes, this would be my last meal indeed at Megan Penitentiary.

It was stacked on top of a bed of items in an abandoned, half-filled trolley. I looked around but there was not a soul in sight. Approaching it, I saw a number of other items, mostly other foods from the frozen section. Perhaps a store employee had been stocking up the aisles and gone for a quick whiz.

Either way, that pizza was in the wrong place. With a triumphant grin, I plucked it from the other cart and added it to mine, letting it nestle beside a bag of chips that had miraculously found its way back in. It was a small victory in the grand scheme of things but enough to bring a smile to my face.

Nothing like pepperoni to lift my spirits on a blue day.

I wheeled my trolley back to face the store exit. Sporting just a couple items, I turned a blind eye to everything else that beckoned to me in the store, heading toward the self-checkout section. I was just about to exit the section and take a right to the checkout tills when I heard something loud enough to rattle the items off the shelves.

"Hey, you!"

The shout cut through my shortly-discovered serenity like a sonic boom, and I couldn't ignore it. Turning my head, I scanned the vicinity, puzzled by the urgency in the voice. I was only halfway through looking over my shoulder when another shrill and pitchy shout followed, much closer this time.

"Oi, kid! I'm talking to you, shortcake!"

Apparently, some punk was mistaking me for a kid—either that or they had a very peculiar way of getting someone's attention. Irritated and curious in equal measure, I turned around, ready to confront the source of the commotion.

And that's when it happened.

The collision was spectacular, a perfect storm of shopping carts and groceries that left me stumbling backward, my pizza box flying through the air like a saucy frisbee. I gaped at the girl who had just rammed into me, fury radiating from her like the vengeful aura of a Greek goddess scorned.

As the aftermath of our collision unfolded, I found myself slipping on the glossy tile floor, my feet losing their grip like a novice ice skater. For the second time in twenty-four hours, I landed unceremoniously on my ass, at the mercy and under the unjustified wrath of yet another woman.

My luck was truly something to behold.

I blinked, dazed and disoriented. My prized Double Down Deluxe Pizza had been sent hurtling across the aisle, a casualty of our cart collision. It lay there, still in its box, like a fallen soldier on a battlefield of frozen foods.

As I pushed myself into a sitting position, I finally took in the girl standing before me. The shock of our encounter momentarily gave way to sheer amazement at her striking appearance. Literally striking as she stood perfectly below an unnecessarily bright tube light, the fluorescent surrounding her like a blinding halo.

She had long wavy black hair that seemed both trussed and messy, like she'd just emerged from an intense windstorm. As far as I was aware, the weather was perfectly fine outside. Either it was uncombed or just naturally a mess. An oddly alluring mess. Her sharp amber eyes bore into me, reminding me of this rare, nearly-extinct Arab beetle I'd once seen on display in an archaeology exhibit. Except, between the two of us, it was she who considered me an insect, staring me down like I was some kind of vermin she'd found stuck to her shoe.

Her freckled creamy pink skin gave her an otherworldly glow. Or maybe that was just the lighting. It had to be—her tall frame blocking it. She huffed and put both hands on her broad hips and I gulped. I'd drawn models like her before back in my oil painting days.

A beautiful, curvaceous women on a canvas, whipped up from my imagination and yet she stood before me as if she'd walked out of the recesses of my artistic subconscious. A waist cinched to perfection, creating an hourglass figure that defied logic, she loomed over me like a statuesque goddess with a towering presence that was nothing short of formidable.

"What are you, some kind of dumbass?"

And just like that, the illusion was shattered.

I tried to regain my composure as my admiration for her beauty was quickly overshadowed by gnawing anger. This was not the New York encounter I'd anticipated, and my usual witty comebacks had abandoned me. Instead, all I could do was glare, damn near blinding myself in the process.

With a scowl that could curdle milk, she leaned down, her face inches from mine.

"Give me back my goddamn pizza."

I opened my mouth to say something vile.

"I'm 28."

That was not a curse. That was a number.

"I'm also not a kid," I reiterated, sounding more like one by the second.

She glanced me over, scowled again, and turned her back on my fallen soul. I was momentarily distracted by the way her hair seemed to bounce animatedly with her every step, barely registering the way she snatched my pizza off the ground and loaded it into her half-stocked cart.

Oh.

That had been her cart.

Okay, so that was my bad but she'd nearly just murdered me on the floor of a grocery store. Where was the sense in that?

The unnamed devil-woman threw one last loathsome glance at me over her shoulder before wheeling away, leaving me sitting on my ass with a pizza-shaped dent in my ego.

I had to hand it to the universe. It was winning.

Bat-shit Crazy Women Who Wanted to Murder Me - 2.

Le Poor Me - 0.

_____

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Song: Me and the Devil by Soap&Skin

P.S. Here's the pizza the two are obsessing over. It's real. 

P.S.S. I can't believe I tortured myself by looking up pizzas I'll never get the chance to eat. :')