I woke up the next day at noon, Artie prodding my face for a late bowl of tuna and kibble. The sorrow I had slept on the last night had left me and in its place was a numb, hollow feeling. The grim recognition of the unchanging nature of things. Even as the light of a perfect late summer day flooded the cabin, mockingly.

As I drove to work I contemplated the futility of my life from here on out. I'd be living in some dingy suburb on the eastern side of the state. Halfway between Boston and Providence, but too far from Boston to be in Boston and too far from Providence to be in Providence. Just a fate of inescapable wage slavery, indentured to McMansion Boomer petty tyranny.

The moment I left the car and walked down the driveway to the twee little house with powder blue walls where the coop was, I felt faint. I suppose it was just the intensity of the humid afternoon sun. I braced myself for whatever reprimand Rene would give me for leaving early and opened the door.

"Hey" I called to the counter as I set down my things.

Rene poked her head out instinctively to greet me, but her face soured as she remembered she was angry with me and receded back to her post.

I walked to take my place at the counter and decided it was best to be upfront.

"Sorry about yesterday." I said.

Rene sighed. "No, whatever, yeah. I mean, it's your loss. I just wish when things went wrong you at least worked something out with me rather than just leaving me to pick up the end of your shift for you."

"I'm sorry. The other day was an emergency."

I looked out to see the cafe mostly empty in the afternoon.

Rene sighed. She wasn't going to keep up the guilting routine. "It's fine. Just do me a favor and clean out the restroom for me, okay? Then we're even."

"Alright!" I said stepping out from the counter. "I really am sorry!"

"I know. Don't worry about it." She grunted.

It wasn't often Rene, the most genuinely happy person I even knew, was in a bad mood, but when she was, gods help you, you would be cast into an oubliette of deep shade.

I took the mop and bucket along with some disinfectant into the bathroom and lost myself in the cleaning. I guess it was the same thing as the ritual: Something to get my mind off the precarity and futility of my life. The restroom wasn't even that dirty, but putting in my whole elbows and scrubbing every surface to spotless white porcelain also erased the worries from my mind.

I had to stop for a moment, because the light in the bathroom, which had been blinking and flickering the whole time from a bad bulb, finally kicked the bucket, and I was cast into complete darkness. I stood up, and was about to leave the room to get a replacement, when the light came back on, and I almost screamed.

There, standing behind me to my left in the mirror, was this thing... It had the figure of a nude woman. Its skin was obsidian black and slicked with some liquid like oil or black pitch. It was rubbing its breasts with its bony hands which ended in long, curled claws. Worst of all was its face, it grinned at me with yellow glowing eyes like a cat with a smile filled with fangs and a tusk that curved up her skull.

I instinctively turned behind to face it, or in my panic, to make a run for the door only to be ensnared in the fiend's talons, but there was nothing there. The thing was gone when I looked back to check the reflection in the mirror.

I fell on my ass to the floor. I started to laugh.

Holy shit! It worked!