“I assume that won’t be a problem?”
The man’s eyebrows seemed to have, impossibly, arched higher than before he had uttered that question. His face was otherwise a mask of civil duty, but to her eye, he had a subtle air about him that screamed condescending. He was not a man made for customer service.
“Yeah, yeah- sure- just give me a second here…,” Sighing heavily, the woman began to dig hurriedly around her cluttered purse, all the while wondering about why it was so hard to return a blender. An unopened, completely perfect blender. As she rummaged, the man behind the counter let his countenance slip, if only for a second; and if she had looked up in that moment, she would have seen an annoyed, albeit tired, man who just wanted to go home. Or get a raise. Or a promotion. Anything to just get away.
“And it should be… Ah-ha! Here we are,” The women smiled with a twitch of her lip, handing the crumpled white paper to the worker.
“M’am, I’m afraid this receipt is expired. It’s clearly put that the blender must be returned within 90 days of the purchase.”
The woman’s jaw tightened; she was displeased beyond measure by hearing these words. It had been a long day, and every minute she spent arguing in the return aisle of Walmart added more strain to her words that she would have loved to avoid.
“Well, if someone had told me about 90 damn days ago that I would be out of a job by the time I needed to return this blender, then I would have been here weeks before this conversation would have ever needed to exist. Can you just...forget the rules this one time?”
The man’s eyebrows came crashing back down into the orbit above his eyes from whence they started; they knit together, pulling the rest of his features into a diplomatic frown.
“M’am, if you knew how many times people asked me that a day, then you would know my answer is already an affirmative no. I’m sorry, really, but it’s not store pol-”
“I demand to speak to your manager,” declared the frazzled woman, squinting her eyes at the worker’s shirt corner, “Clint. And they will let me return this blender!” Her words, once frantic and borderline motherly, were replaced with a cool, undulating tone.
Clint resisted the urge to throw up his arms and cartwheel away from the situation. He was in full anticipation of yet another break down in his return aisle of Walmart. Now he had to hold back a snort; all the crazies come out to play in his return aisle of Walmart. People who come trying to return stupid buys, or get back a couple of bucks to accompany their sob story- almost none had their required receipts or they never came back in the proper timeframe.
The woman stood, her back straight as a pencil and her eyes a piercing green as she waited for Clint to summon the manager.
“Look, lady, he isn’t here right now,” Probably off nursing a hangover, he thought quietly, “And he’s not going to come in for something like this. Why don’t you go sell it on E-bay? You could get more from it there anyway…”
The witch wouldn’t have it, of course, and she continued to shriek and hold up the line. Now the people behind her were raising their voices in protest as well, most not even sure what they were protesting against.
Then, something in Clint just snapped. He only had an hour or two left on his clock before he could leave- then return the next day and do this all over again. But that time would be an eternity. He needed to get out now. Walking away from the counter, he pressed the intercom button. The lady, assuming he was calling the manager, leaned back and crossed her arms in a miniature display of triumph. This only fueled Clint’s anger. He leaned in towards the microphone, his movements measured and slow.
“Walmart? This is Clint. I have breaking news for all of you, so for those of you in the clothing department, get the cotton out of your ears and prepare to find a new pair of socks, cause I’m about to knock yours off.” He breathed in; was he really going through with this? “If you need me, find me in the city because. . . I quit.”
And with his new found sense of freedom, Clint did exactly what he had to restrain himself from doing everyday he had worked in this hellhole- he threw his arms up, and cartwheeled away from Walmart.
-
Clint discovered really quickly that people did not like it when you didn’t give a 2 week’s notice; then Clint thought back to 2 weeks ago and remembered he had yelled at his manager. He considered that notice enough. He didn’t care that Walmart was understaffed, he didn’t care that he was now out of job and had no way to pay his bills or pay for food…
“Oh my God, I’m out of a job with no way to pay my bills or my food. Oh my God!”
Clint could not allow the panic to get him- his next move would be, naturally, to find a new job. Preferably one that did not force him to talk to stupid people, yet after a quick run through of his skill set, he determined that would be impossible. He half-wondered how Walmart was handling his termination, while the other half of him wondered why he had stayed for 6 long years. He shrugged his shoulders and prepared to walk the 2 miles to the train station; maybe the city would provide him with a better job.
-
Meanwhile in the residence of Robert Stickler. . .
Hank squared his shoulders, placing the water bottle on the work table before ducking his head back into his work with vigor. He used a wrench to tighten a few loose bolts and-
“Okay, so this device is used, well, can be used to store trace amounts of radioactive material-”
“Jesus Luthor,” his friend cut him off, “we don’t live in a stateless society here.”
“Um,” the smaller scientist furrowed his brow, “what does living within a governed country have to do with this?”
“It means,” the Italian started, “that there are certain laws in place to prevent people like us from coming in contact with radioactive elements. When would you ever use this?”
Hank adjusted the tiny glasses on his nose, waving his hands about in controlled movements.
“It’s all hypothetical, Rob. And believe me, if I wanted to get my fingers on some dangerous elements, nothing would stop me.”
Robert crossed his arms and pointed between them with his finger rapidly, “Walmart. Employees.”
Hank chuckled and did the same, “Chemistry major. Genius.”
“Man, how did we ever get stuck working at Walmart?”
Robert’s companion looked him straight in the eye and deadpanned, “We don’t live in a stateless society.”
The genius could no longer keep a straight face, and smiling toothily, he turned to face the wall.
“Yeah. I know. God bless America.”
“And God bless Walmart.”
Hank took a miniscule sip of Robert’s offered scotch and scrunched his face, “No wonder I’m always sober. How can you drink that?”
Rob flashed him a signature Stickler Smirk and put the flask to his lips, “Years of practice, buddy. Keep working at minimum wage and you’ll get here too.”
He didn’t have time to take a swig of his drink, for his phone decided to buzz at that exact moment. He grumbled, but set the Coney Island glass down and swiped his phone from his back left jean pocket, flipping it to his ear with practiced hands.
“Supreme lord Stickler, servicing.”
Hank watched as his expression turned from mild boredom, to exasperation, to sheer annoyance. He continued to watch as he snapped the phone shut and threw it at a spinning chair, where it landed with a dull thud.
“Well what is it, Mr. Bigshot Manager?”
Robert ran his hand through his lush Italian locks and sighed, “Well Hank, my ‘sick day’ has been cut short. In extension, I’m ending your day off. Walmart says I have to find my missing employee or face termination- and I’ve grown really attached to my life of leisure. Let’s go!”
-
Clint had only spent two hours in ‘the Big Apple’ before deciding that nothing was worth this amount of needless walking and that maybe being homeless wasn’t the worse thing in the world. His phone kept buzzing non-stop, no doubt Walmart calling to tell him to either come back to work or, redundantly, that he was fired. Clint would have thrown it away out of spite, but he wasn’t that foolish; he only had one phone and he didn’t have the funds to go spend money on a new one. He was enervated, the sun was blistering, the crowds were stupendous and he was dying to go back to his apartment and check to see if CSI: Miami was still recording; but he stayed out in the heat and the crowd because he wanted to keep his apartment. He liked his place; his goldfish, his fake plants that he watered anyways- he couldn’t lose that. He couldn’t give up, knowing that in doing so, he would lose his residency and his life.
And so he scoured the streets, checking in shop windows and corner newspapers, desperately searching for a job. Any job, really. Any job besides Walmart employee. Hours passing on the clock, he ended up strolling onto a rather dilapidated street on the west side of the city. A structure with a few lights lit caught his flighty attention. His feet still clad in brown loafers, his shirt a deep blue with his nametag in the corner and his legs covered by khakis, he marched straight into a shady building that read “Dry Cleaners: Help Wanted.” The place was old; brown paint was peeling down the sides and a layer of dirt caked the sign and the windows. The entire street itself seem to scream ‘KEEP OUT,’ something anyone would have noticed when they saw that all the buildings were in similar conditions. If he had not been so exhausted and the day had not been so long, he would have indeed noticed that his hours of walking had led him into a rather dangerous area of the city. If he hadn’t been so out of his head, he would have noticed the lack of the proverbial washing machines in the windows and that the sunlight had all but faded from the streets. But, since he was exhausted and the day had been long, he let himself enter the sketchy ‘Dry Cleaners.’
-
Hank did not see a purpose in any of the actions they were currently taking, especially the one that led them into walking down the city’s infamous, self-proclaimed Funeral Boulevard. Robert walked a few steps in front of him, hurriedly muttering to himself  in soft tones, his eyes glued to the phone screen in his clenched hand. He caught various words, most rather unpleasant to the ear, but some he could string along and determine that one, he was angry at Clint for being ‘an idiot,’ and two, he was hoping that someone named Crawshanks wasn’t still in town. Clearly, Robert had been down this road before.
Just a few hours prior to their supposed death march, Robert had employed his privatized, need-to-know basis ‘Master Hacker’ techniques to track Clint’s phone. When Hank asked if this business was illegal, Robert simpered and said only, “If you think that’s bad, you should hear about what Walmart did…” Hank didn’t ask to know the details. He watched Rob’s calloused fingers as they shoved all the fast food wrappers off his desk and rapidly attacked the keyboard with a mechanic’s precision and a pianist’s grace. Soon enough, Rob had somehow synced his phone with Clint’s GPS, and they departed into the city to hunt down the rogue employee. The whole situation was completely insane and needless, but Walmart was pulling the strings, and no one could stand against Walmart. Not even Target, not even puny K-Mart; Walmart was bigger and more supreme. What they say, goes.
Hank slacked his pace, “Rob, I’m all for you staying in a job, but honestly-”
Rob stopped jarringly and flicked the shorter man’s lip with the tip of his index finger like a toddler, effectively cutting him off, “Keep your voice down! Do you know where we are?”
“No?”
“Obviously, O sweet country child, but us city rats know this place too well. Funeral Boulevard; this neighborhood is known for its numerous drug dealings and high crime rates- don’t even get me started on the number of Fight Clubs.”
Hank eyed his friend suspiciously, “How would you know this stuff, ‘city rat?’ Honest, Rob, it’s like I don’t even know you sometimes.”
Rob turned away quickly, looking at this cellular with a new urgency, “Stories of another life. Now keep your voice low or nonexistent, we’re close.”
-
After he had walked through the front door, Clint had discovered a few important things. Firstly, there were, in fact, no operating washing machines in the opening room. Coffee-deprived Clint naturally thought, They must be a new establishment, shipments will probably come in any day now. Next, he processed that there were no people either; something he found odd but decided not to question. Lastly, he heard some noise echoing out of the back room, and, like a fool, decided the most logical thing to do was to walk straight into the center of things. The ‘center of things’ being what appeared to be a rather rowdy fist fight, which abruptly stopped as they all turned to stare at the intruder entering their ranks.
Clint did not approve of the illegal goings on that were so openly occurring right in front of him, nor did he condone criminal activity of any kind. Before his sudden mental breakdown that had happened hours before, this was a man who didn’t dream of breaking any laws of the land; he had never smoked, had a whopping total of one speeding ticket in his lifetime and rarely drank any beer. Clint would have been a cop in another life, had it not been for his sister’s illness. In that other life, he would have gone to college, left the state, gotten married; instead he chose to care for his sick sibling Natalie, giving back to her all those years she had spent raising him. Truly though, his greatest regret at the moment was leaving blender-woman in his aisle, for he would take her lunacy than the scene before him any day.
Clint felt like a deer caught in headlights as he stared into the eyes of what had to be a 6 foot tall bald man who was wearing nothing but black athletic shorts. Around him stood about seven other men, all varying heights, but all very well built. If Clint could was feeling anything other than the overwhelming knowingness that he had colossally screwed up, he would have gulped. Or ran away screaming. Instead, he watched in slow-motion as the Walmart version of Vin Diesel raised a questioning finger to the intruder’s offending blond hair.
“Who,” he hissed out through yellowing teeth, “are you?” Clint could only stare uncertainly at the men before him; he wouldn’t have gotten a chance to talk anyways, since one of the shortest men in the room decided to pitch in his voice, accented heavy with city.
“Boss, it don’t matter who he is. He’sa trespassing. Whaddya want us to do wit ‘im?” He stepped forward assertively, putting up his fists in a truculent manner. Clint managed to find his legs as waves of consternation crashed over him, sending him tiptoeing backwards.
“The si-sign outside, it um- it said. . . Help Wanted? I see mistakes were made; I’ll be seeing myself out now.”  His right hand sprawled out behind him, searching for the door handle as a way to let himself out peaceably. Two other henchmen made a move to stop him, when the door burst open for a second time in 10 minutes.
“Rob! Are you sure this is-” Hank was cut off once again, as he turned his head to face front, almost walking straight into Clint’s back. He froze.
“Hank, I’m telling you this is where the GPS has led us; my methods don’t lie. Clint is here. . .” He bumped into Hank, shifting him ahead, which made him hit Clint. The scene was completely comedic; besides the fact that they were now aggravating an already annoyed wall of muscle, and that this wall of muscle had no qualms about beating up a bunch of Walmart nobodies.
Rob was the first to recover, pushing himself in front of his comrades to see what they were facing.
“Alright, what have you done ,you blond freak? Who are your friends here?” Robert raised his eyes and stared straight into the tall man’s line of sight. He hid a small squeal of shock as he ogled at the face from his past.
“Oh, my- Hi there, Crawshanks. We didn’t mean to intrude. Nope. Not at all, we’re just here collecting a friend,” Rob quickly threw a sturdy hand onto Clint’s shoulder and gripped it with the force of a metal vice, “So if you don’t mind, we will just be on our way.”
He spun Clint around and shoved him towards the exit (which Hank had already escaped through a long time ago) but before he had a chance to follow through himself, the man named Crawshanks snatched his bicep.
“Not so fast, Ronald,” he crowed, “It’s been so long since the last time you were among us. When was that? Nine years ago when you turned us into the coppers? A City Rat never forgets, Ronald.”
Robert was a man who had never learned to hold his tongue, even in the most dire of scenarios. He wasn’t about to bite back the sarcasm now.
“Actually, it’s Robert. I turned you in eight years ago, and clearly a City Rat can forget, because I know for a fact that your real name used to be Francis Pollhimer, not Crawshanks. Can you recall that? Now, since it is late and my friends back there are rather jaded, we are going to take our leave. Adieu, gentleman.”
And with that, he yanked his arm forcefully out of the strong man’s hand and sprinted through the first room and then the front door. He could hear the vexed roars behind him, but he ignored them in favor of ramming Clint and Hank out of their daze and down the street; the twilight sky casting a dark shadow over the rugged landscape that led to their freedom.
“Run!” He shouted, racing away from the offending Dry Cleaners. “Run for your lives!”
-
The train ride home was tense and filled with a lot of huffing and wheezing. They sat in the far back of the car, and no one even attempted to sit in their vicinity; they smelled very strongly of sweat and they had a sort of crazed look in their eyes. For the first ten minutes, they sat in uncomfortable silence, broken only by Robert.
“What the hell were you thinking, going in there?”
“Why were you following me?” Clint shot back, internally grateful that they had saved him from a certain smack-down, but externally he wouldn’t express his gratitude.
“Walmart, Clint. Walmart. Or did you forget how you dropped everything and left? You started a strike, Clint. No one is working, and if I didn’t bring you back, they were gonna fire me.”
Clint blinked. He had that power? He turned to Hank, “Still doesn’t explain why you came.”
Hank threw his arms into the air and swallowed a groan, “He made me.”
Clint nodded as if it made all the sense in the world. A few more minutes passed, and soon the strain of the day had caught up with his body; he fell asleep with his face pressed against a metal rail.
“So,” Hank started, “City Rat, not city rat.”
“What?”
“It’s not just a term, it’s a gang.”
Robert shifted uncomfortably, “As I said earlier, remnants of another life.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me? Don’t you… Don’t you trust me?”
“I trust you, I just didn’t want you to think of me any differently. Besides, I didn’t think it mattered.”
Hank did his best impression of a Stickler Smirk, “I already thought you were a loon and a vagabond, so nothing has changed- and of course it matters, seeing as how we almost just got killed by your ‘unimportant past.’ Any other dark secrets you want to spill right now?”
Robert laughed, “I think it’s your turn, kid.” He stuck his fist out like a child asking for a fistbump, which Hank returned willingly. Clint rolled over from his peaceful slumber, landing with a clunk on the floor of the subway. He leapt up, hands flexed to fight into a stereotypical karate stance.
“Who? Why? Where?” Reality caught up with him, but a little too late; the train halted forcefully to a stop and sent him sailing to the ground again. His traveling companions chuckled as they hauled him up, nearly dragging him through the train doors.
“I take it we have to go to Walmart first?”
“Oh yeah. Prepare yourself.”

When Clint woke up the next morning with a massive headache, his first thought was, Was it all a dream? He tossed off the duvet that protected him from the chill of his underheated apartment, groggily scratching his blond hair and planting his feet onto the chilled hardwood flooring. Praying that it was all just a delusion brought on by some bad tuna, he went through his normal morning routine; he brewed his coffee, fed his fish (lovingly dubbed Stevie), and splashed freezing water into his face. He held onto the possibility that he hadn’t quit his job and run into a city gang the day prior, but the truth slapped him in the face like a frisky salmon when he saw the state of his Walmart uniform. He stifled a groan of despair.
The shirt, usually a clean, deep blue- was now sullied with dirt and sweat stains. His khakis were covered in more dirt, and in addition, had a decent tear running from the mid-thigh to the knee. None of that was surprising, considering the events that had transpired the night before; what was surprising, however, was the gold star that had been recently placed beside his name tag. He frowned, trying to recall the very last moments of his mid-life crisis adventure. . .
The district manager’s face was a perfect reflection of Clint’s when he was forced to deal with troublesome customers. Outwardly, it was serene; but you could feel the air of indignation that settled over her like a blanket. Clint sat in a wooden chair while Hank and his manager Robert waited by the door; soon they were dismissed with a flick of the boss woman’s hand while her viper tongue promised each a raise for their ‘civil service.’ Clint decided a few things in that moment; first and foremost being that this was the weirdest woman he had ever met, and second being that this felt vaguely like an interrogation or a shady crime collection. She stood, her hands never leaving the desk as she leaned forward across it. Her face was uncomfortably close to his own, and he found himself clenching the armrests of his chair a little tighter as he smelled her breath. Peppermint.
He tried to not squirm under her gaze but damn, this lady was terrifying. She sniffed him as a wolf would, and then decidedly leaned back. Part of Clint was certain that she would whip out a can of pepper spray out from one of her drawers to harass him further, but instead she took out a sticker palette. She ripped off a gold star and quick as a whip, slapped it on his shirt. Then she raised her amber gaze to his flabbergasted face.
“The people rallied behind you, Mr. Benton. When you left, so did your co-workers. It made us on the district counsel realize something; we need you. We need a person who the people will follow, and you are that person. Give me a few days and I can make a branch manager out of you; an upgrade from your old job, if I do say so myself. So, will you answer the call?”
Clint had stared at the proffered hand, unsure of himself. Was this real? He didn’t want to risk his chance; he leaned forward and accepted the manicured hand.
“I will.”
Clint leaned back on his bed with a sigh, relieved beyond measure. He flopped back into his pile of covers and flicked off his lamp, preparing to go back to sleep for another hour or two. By the dim sunlight that shone through the bedroom window, he stared at the picture of his family that was situated on his bedside table. It was glossy, black and white; held in a oaken frame. His dad held a smiling baby (Clint), while his mother kept a gentle hand on their 12 year old daughter. Natalie. His parents had died only two years after the photo had been taken; the children had went under the custody of their oblivious aunt, which meant Natalie had practically raised her little brother. Natalie who always had the answers until the day she would never answer anything again. He decided to visit her grave the next day, tell her about the promotion, thank her for everything she had sacrificed for his benefit.
He closed his eyes, his face settled serenely into a smile. Finally,  his life was looking up.