Author's notes: This tale, penned by me, Nachtsider, is dedicated to two esteemed colleagues of mine – Neo-byzantium (a fellow Angelica fan) and Deathra (who served as the basis for the story's narrative persona) – and is based on the excellent anime/manga known as 'Gunslinger Girl', which is the brainchild of Yu Aida, also utilizing the continuity of my previous yarn, 'A Day in the Life of a Gunslinger Girl'. Following in the footsteps of Chapter Two of my Gunslinger Girl Gulf War chronicle, 'Battlezone', this account – related by a young female storekeeper – attempts to give the reader a bewildered lay person's look at extra-normal junior operatives and their business. Bearing in mind that all original concepts, characters, their distinctive likenesses and related elements featured in this publication are my property and may not be used without my express permission, enjoy the story, and feel free to drop this author a line at the relevant electronic mail address (nachtsider at yahoo dot com)!
NIGHT SHIFT
Tonight was not a good night to be me. It had all been a straightforward misunderstanding – when my boss Madame Bocelli and I had gotten down to conversing and the jokes started to fly, how the freaking hey was I supposed to have known that the old bag's father was a rabbi and half-Irish? And now it was two in the morning, an hour I reckoned I had seen the last of approximately two months back when I finally – after weeks of industrious service – made my getaway from the graveyard shift at Bocelli's Convenience Store. The luxuries of daylight, lunch and my favorite nighttime TV soaps had been mine once more. Not to mention the company of customers, as well – bona fide breathing people who wished to purchase stuff and occasionally even verbalize – you know, without quaking precariously, blinking out of synchronization, or, worse, throwing up. Or, in the case of Mr. Rambaldi, one of the resident hobos, all of the above – if his warp speed narration of extraterrestrial-related government conspiracies could pass for talk, that is.
"Still," I reflected as I gave my battered, dog-eared copy of The Devil Wears Prada another shot, "even Rambaldi would be light years scrummier than this."
Two in the morning was, to me, the most awful time of the day. It was the time when, for maybe half an hour, all of Rome was spirited away to Morpheus' realm. The time when the streets emptied, the sidewalks cleared and the flies took a break from their unremitting, elliptical flight path over the trashcan in the corner. The time – a quarter of an hour after I had completed cleaning every nook and cranny of the shop, as the boss required – when the acrid vapor emanating from the detergent bottles made my respiratory system just give up and call it a night.
Hypothetically, this was the ideal time to lie back and unwind, but Madame was not one to tolerate 'slackers', even going to the extent of monitoring us employees' every movement using the store's hidden security cameras. Perhaps listen to the radio or take up a hobby? The former was not an option – Madame, contemptuous of contemporary music, which included the neo-classical numbers that I so enjoyed, had locked the fox mike onto only one station, which played nothing but boring oldies. Where hobbies were concerned, I had tried singing. I had wowed the crowds at karaoke lounges everywhere with my coloratura soprano renditions of Naturaleza Muerta, Solo Con Te, and Tu Quieres Volver, among others. And yet, it all seemed so inane, crooning to the cans of food with the soul-razing bass of the refrigeration unit as my musical accompaniment. But it was not that the fridge was the worst part, oh, no.
I was never conscious of it to begin with. The dodgy fluorescents, which flickered like strobes, were distraction enough. Then, one night, when I was midway through Bridget Jones' Diary and the lights decided to behave themselves for once, I heard what sounded like nails on a chalkboard.
The noise was coming from the hamburger-making machine, whose patties of dubiously-meat product gave its inner workings a permanent, glistening sheen of gooey, viscous grease, so thick, in point of fact, that the device appeared to have attained some degree of sentience. In what other manner could one explicate how it constantly knew to squeak at the precise instant I arrived at all the juicy portions in any volume in order to fully wreck my attentiveness? On one occasion, however, it was as quiet as a library at midnight for an entire five minutes. That was a first-rate night. No, hang on – it was a bloody irritating night, for the darn thing abruptly burst into flames. After lugging a heavy Pyrene over to put out the fire and nearly coming down with hernia from doing so, I had to clean the foam and soot from the appliance with a powder-puff – my powder-puff.
Right on cue, the infernal contraption began its cacophony again.
I admitted defeat, chucked my novel to one side and collapsed over the glass counter, my bleary eyes peering through my mascara out into the pitch-black void known as two in the morning. The lights guttered and the fridge rumbled to life once more.
"Life... at least it has something to do at this time," I grumbled, giving the counter a token wipe. A haggard old crone of twenty-four gazed despairingly back at me from the surface of the glass and innumerable scratch-and-wins looked mockingly back at me from under it. A sigh escaped my lips. I had spent my spare dough on the wretched tickets for God-knows-how-long, and what had I to show from all of it? The answer: nothing but severely worn car keys, coins and fingernails.
"Once," I whispered, looking to the Heavens with soulful, puppy-dog eyes. "Could you give me a break, just once? How about it? Give poor little Teresa a little break? It need not be a miracle, you know... Please? Pretty please?"
The only response I obtained was an exceptionally piercing and protracted squeak from the hamburger-making machine.
"Thanks a billion, Mr. Holier-Than-Thou," I muttered, depositing my posterior on the rock-hard, extremely uncomfortable stump Madame Bocelli termed a chair and starting to gripe. I had missed all my soaps and still had four hours to go. "What kind of nutzo wants to buy provisions at this hour, anyway?" I grated angrily, feeling tears of frustration begin to pool in my eyes.
"I do," said a soft, timorous, girlish voice.
"JESUS!" I yelped in fright, simultaneously leaping backwards off my seat and hitting my head against a rack that was mounted behind me, sending packets of sweets and chocolates flying everywhere.
"Oh, gosh, Miss, are you all right?" cried the speaker anxiously, hurrying over to my side and soothingly rubbing my aching noggin. "I'm terribly sorry… I didn't mean to startle you."
As the pain faded and my vision cleared, I could see that my unexpected customer was a pink-clad girl of no more than nine or ten years of age, with long ebony hair and delicate, china-doll features that displayed great concern for me and probably worry at getting into hot soup as well. She was adorability personified, and exuded an aura of innocence that instantly dispelled any annoyance I felt over being surprised and immediately roused all my protective instincts.
"No worries, honey," I replied amiably as I got to my feet, drawing a sigh of relief from the youngster. "I'm fine. It's you who really needs worrying over – what's a sweet young thing like you doing out so late?"
"It's because I'm hungry," she replied, her forlorn tone and expression tugging at my heartstrings, "and so are my friends."
The next few minutes I spent talking to the wee lass, who introduced herself as Angie. It was such a joy at being able to speak with someone, and Angie was wonderful company who made every second of conversation worth it. Although young, her speech denoted a maturity that was beyond her years, which probably stemmed from the fact that she did not know who her family was and had been living in at a center for social welfare for as long as she could remember – orphans grow up fast. I know I did. But unlike most parentless children, including myself, Angie did not seem the least bit unhappy about her plight. She loved her life at the home, stating that she had many friends among the other children and the staff – she was especially close to one of the teachers called Marco, whom she revered like a father – and that the institute often took them on enjoyable trips.
"You sure got it better than I did, posset," I said wistfully, remembering the veritable concentration camp in which I spent my childhood years.
"It isn't rosy for me all the time," said Angie, proceeding to relate how dinner for her and four of the other kids that evening had been prepared by one of the teachers, and how it had been absolutely dreadful. "The chocolate bricks we couldn't break with two-by-fours," she recalled with a shudder. "Pancakes like you wouldn't believe – made of flour and water and served with syrup made of sugar and water. There was some kind of grease involved, too. Cookies that felt like they were made of wood – we'd soak them in tea and they'd blow up like balloons. The mashed potatoes had the consistency of mud. And as for the roast, we opened up the tureen and inside was congealed fat with bits of ancient steer mixed in. Only the sausages could be called food… but then they didn't taste of anything. It was weird. No matter how much mustard, ketchup or pickle we put on them, they still didn't taste of anything."
"Good Lord… not even the midnight dogs they sell to drunks in Helsinki can quite manage that," I cringed. Angie's description was bringing back horrid memories of what passed for grub at my old orphanage – sordid experiences that I wished no one else would have to undergo.
"I tucked in for Mr. Hillshire's sake, and so did everybody else," Angie went on. "He's such a nice person and really made an effort to satisfy us; we couldn't help but eat. But once I got back to my room I was sick in the toilet and went to bed with an empty tummy once more. I tried to sleep but I just couldn't – the hunger was just so bad. After a while, the others who had been invited to dinner came over and told me that they were suffering just like I was – if not worse. Claes was semi-prostrate and mumbling about something I couldn't quite understand, and Triela was wild-eyed and chewing on her ponytails. We knew we had to have a square meal, or we might just drop dead.
"Going to Liesel's apartment would have solved all our problems – she has a fridge chock-full of goodies and is always willing to share – but she was away and the place was locked tight. It would have been wrong to break in and help ourselves – although we could have done just that – so we decided to buy some chow downtown instead. After pooling what money we had, those who were still well enough drew lots to see who would sneak out to get the food. I got the short straw, and so here I –"
"Angie, stop, I beg of you… you're breaking my heart," I cried – by now, I was almost overcome with sorrow at the predicament that the poor girl and her friends were caught up in. "You can't afford to tarry any longer; please," I gestured towards the shelves, "please take as much as you can."
"Thank you, Miss," said Angie exuberantly before hurrying away. Before long, she had plunked a veritable mountain of victuals on the counter – three cartons of fruit juice, two large bags of chocolate chip cookies, eight muffins, four cans of potato crisps and over a dozen candy bars. "This is all I'm able to afford," she announced, scarcely out of breath.
"Are you sure you can carry all those things by yourself, pet?" I asked incredulously as I calculated the amount that had to be paid and packed the items into paper carrying bags. "I can always close the store and help you take them back home, you know."
"No, thank you, Miss – I'll manage fine," smiled Angie in reply, fishing a fistful of crumpled notes and tarnished coins out of her pocket and placing them before me one by one, silently counting the money as she did so. "I don't mean any offense, but I don't think you'd be able to keep up with me if you do come along."
I cocked one painted eyebrow in astonishment at this exceedingly odd statement, and was about to ask Angie what she meant, when the roar of a shotgun assailed my ears and the front door exploded, sending shards of glass showering all over the floor. The metal "OPEN" sign, propelled by the force of the eruption, whipped end over end through the air like a shuriken and thudded into the wall calendar behind me, vibrating. I flinched, but Angie amazingly did not – she merely glanced around to see who had intruded. Nevertheless, I wasted no time in hustling her into the broom closet, fiercely whispering for her to stay hidden and remain silent.
No sooner did I close the cabinet door and take a step away before a hefty thug, clad in a balaclava, a sleeveless jean jacket and reloading a double-barreled sawn-off strode over the wrecked door, followed closely by another burly hoodlum wearing a holstered automatic, an eye-patch, a padded leather waistcoat and a handkerchief tied over the lower half of his face. They stepped to either side of the door and a third ruffian, dressed in black and smaller than the other two, stepped between them, fingering a serrated, foot-long combat knife. He wore a domino mask over his eyes, and his straggly hair glistened with so much Brylcream that it looked as though it had been slicked down with butter.
"Evening, signorina," the rangy man smiled like a shark that had spotted a bare behind, giving me a mock bow and introducing himself as Estaban.
"S-State your business," I stammered, trying to sound courageous and struggling to keep my knees from knocking against one another.
"Madame Bocelli's an elderly woman, is she not?"
"She is going rather gray."
"That's right. Her mind can hardly be in the shape that it used to – perhaps age has made her a tad forgetful?"
I was about to say, "You don't know the half of it," but then remembered the store's security cameras and Madame's ability to read lips, therefore going "Not that I know of," instead.
"You see," Estaban went on, stroking the blade of his knife, "if that was the case, it would explain a good many things, not the least of which being why she hasn't remembered her insurance policy with our firm lately."
"What insurance policy?"
The gangster's face darkened. "It's her 'Fork Over Your Cash, Or We Wreck Your Goddamn Premises' insurance policy, you ditz! Touch that and you're a deader woman than Cleopatra!"
My trembling foot leapt back from a silent alarm switch mounted in the floor behind the trashcan.
"Grab some ceiling!" he barked, and I instantly complied. "Empty the till and the safe, on the double!"
I could almost swim out of my sweat-soaked dress as I bent gawkily at the waist and tried in vain to open the till with my teeth.
"Put your arms down first, bimbo!"
"R-Right…"
The till rang open and Estaban emptied its contents into a sack. "Now for the safe," he indicated.
"I… I don't know the combination," I admitted quietly. "I'm sorry."
"No, you're not," said Estaban coldly after a pause, "but you will be."
Before I knew it, I was dragged kicking, scratching, biting and screaming behind the counter by the two massive henchmen before being securely pinned down. My incessant struggling only served to gain me a cruel blow to the side that sent me limp and motionless almost immediately. The leader clambered atop my aching form and began to cut away my clothes. "Even if you're not the sorriest bitch in Rome by the time we've taken turns," he purred, "…you'll certainly be the sorest."
This is it, I thought as I heard the sound of trousers unzipping.
"Enough!" shouted the familiar voice of a little girl – a voice that was a delicate flower wrought of iron.
Oh, God, Angie, I told you to stay hidden…A pink blur swept across my field of vision. Estaban was knocked right off me and against a wall. I caught a glimpse of his face, contorted in shock and agony, before Angie, who was wielding his knife and had it buried hilt-deep in his groin, dragged the weapon upwards with the swiftness of a cheetah. An enormous gout of crimson leapt high enough to spatter over the fluorescents – turning their light a nightmarish shade of red as it did so – and purplish lengths of viscera flopped onto the floor, followed a split second later by what was left of Estaban.
"What the hell…?" The man with the balaclava let out a yell of incredulity, his eyes and mouth forming three Os – it was looking like a navy blue bowling ball – but quickly recovered from his surprise and threw up his weapon, aiming point-blank. Angie whirled in a swirl of pastel-hued fabric. The shotgun roared, but its payload hit nothing but empty air. Angie had already leapt upwards, snatching the empty firearm from its wielder's hands as she ascended. The moment her lightning-fast jump brought her level with the heavy's face, she deftly shifted her grasp on the gun to its business end and swung it at his crown in a wide arc, all while in mid-air and seemingly within the space of a heartbeat. There was a loud crack as the shotgun's stock shattered against the man's head. The blow must have sent splinters spalling off the inside of his skull and into his brain, for he dropped immediately – hitting the hamburger-making machine with a loud clunk on the way down – and did not rise. Angie somersaulted over his motionless body, made a flawless touchdown and spun around, fixing the lone survivor with smoldering eyes.
Something more pungent than perspiration trickled down the robber's trousers as he drew his pistol with his hoary hands shaking, hurriedly took aim and pulled the trigger. The shot missed. He steadied himself, but somehow the second bullet also went astray. He fired again. The handgun was definitely on target this time, but Angie stood unscathed. The ruffian took a tottering step towards that miraculously invulnerable little figure and fired twice more to no effect. The hairs on his scalp I actually saw standing on end as a strangled cry of "What witchery is this?" escaped his lips. With a howl of sheer desperation he hurled himself forward, pressed the muzzle of his sidearm into Angie's body and jerked the trigger again and again. It fell silent after two further shots – Angie then effortlessly wrested it from the rogue's grasp and turned it on him, sending the ammo clip's final round into his black heart.
I swooned. Well, not really – I tried to, at least, but my joints were frozen with terror and my mind was numbed by bewilderment.
"Oh, gosh, Miss, are you all right?" a worried Angie inquired for a second time that morning as she helped me up, draped a coat stripped from one of the bodies over my semi-clothed and shivering frame and poured me some hot coffee from my thermos, which stood near the cash register.
I downed the steaming brew, stared blankly up at her and nodded weakly. What seemed to be an eternity went by before I pulled myself together sufficiently to give my cheek a hard pinch, consequently proving that this was not a dream, and then ask a question of my own – the only one that mattered to me. "Who… what are you, really?"
"No good at all, is what I am," answered Angie shamefacedly, looking down at her Mary Janes. "Some of my friends can delete their targets in half the time I took to delete mine… and they wouldn't have hesitated the least bit if someone was in danger. I could have come to help you quicker than I did, Miss, but I didn't… all because I was sitting there in the broom closet worrying about whether I should risk revealing what I am by lending a hand. It's true that I would definitely get into big trouble if anyone outside the Social Welfare Agency found out that I was anything but normal, but it's even truer that I shouldn't have been such a selfish little dimwit… I'm so s-sorry…"
With that, the poor girl burst into tears. Distraught at her grief, I held Angie close, drying her tears with a Kleenex and gently cradling her the way I used to cradle my younger fellow orphans back at my torture soul asylum of a welfare home.
"You came to help me all the same, Angie, and that's what really counts," I comforted her, softly patting her heaving shoulders. "I'm safe because of you – it's all that matters, and I'm grateful for it. Truly, I am."
"N-no, it isn't…" sobbed Angie. "It can't be all that matters – there's something else. B-back when I was passing you the money, just before those three came in… I-I realized that I couldn't possibly pay… I'm a Euro short!"
Momentarily turning away to place the bags containing Angie's purchases beside her, I continued: "You don't have to pay for your food, dear. Make it my treat for what you did for me." And for what you did to those poor bastards, I thought with a shudder as I gave the luckless scoundrels' pathetic corpses a sidelong glance.
"But... I can't do that, Miss. This is a shop. You know, a place of exchange. There's got to be payment. Settling of accounts: a good for a good, an eye for an eye, like what Marco taught me. There's got to be... got to be balance..."
I could not help but crack a sad smile in admiration at Angie's ironclad integrity. "Put it this way, sweetheart… I'll give you fifty percent off what you're buying. The rest is on me. You won't get a better deal than that."
After a pause, Angie stopped crying and consented with a little nod as I returned half the money she had given me. "That's all nice and even, then," I smiled. "Now… you spoke of getting into a fix if anyone outside your Agency discovered that you're anything but an ordinary kid." It did not take me long to catch on that this girl must be some sort of cybernetically-enhanced super-soldier – one of many being operated by a secret government paramilitary outfit masquerading as an orphanage, whose 'teachers' were all actually armed forces and law-enforcement personnel. Being around Mr. Rambaldi for too long tends to do that to you. "We can't have that happen, now, can we?"
"You're not going to tell anyone, are you, Miss…?" asked Angie, growing anxious again.
"After you saving my life?" I could not help but laugh out loud. "Heck no!" My deep gratitude to Angie aside, however, I sure as hell did not want to be whisked away by a squad of Men in Black on my way to work and end up a missing person for all eternity. "There are security cameras hidden in this store, though, and they would have recorded everything from start to finish. They all feed into a unit round the back – you might want to do something about that, and also about the fingerprints you've left all over those weapons."
"But what will you say if someone asks you about what happened here, Miss?"
"Well…" a devious look slowly spread across my face, "I'll just tell them something that goes like this: a gang of baddies forced their way in and tried to take the shop money, but another gang also wanting to take the money entered as they were preparing to leave, and a fight broke out between the two groups. The first gang was wiped out in the slugfest, and the second gang ran off without so much as touching the cash because some of their number were injured and needed urgent medical attention, one of the unhurt ones having the presence of mind to bust the fingerprint evidence and take the security videotapes with him before they made a break for it. If they press me for details, I'll just tell them that I got knocked on the head and was woozy for most of the time, and so can't relate any more than that. No worries – I know it'll wash. If people can believe the stuff Dan Brown wrote in The Da Vinci Code, sweetness..." I gave Angie a wink and a grin, "they'll believe anything."
Angie was speechless for a while, and then gave me a hug that I returned fervently. Procuring a rag from the broom closet as instructed by me, she thoroughly wiped down the knife, shotgun and pistol. Skipping daintily over the blood that covered the floor in sizable pools, she then headed for the back room. I hear the sound of the lock splintering, followed shortly by a series of clicking and whirring noises. Angie then returned, slipping the security videotapes into her shopping bags.
"I'm sorry for making a mess of the shop, Miss," said Angie sheepishly as she eyed the red-stained floor, ceiling and lights. "Maybe I could stay a while and help you clean it up…?"
I waved her away. "Don't bother, cupcake – leaving everything as it is will help back up the cover story. Besides, I think your friends and your tummy have been kept waiting long enough, haven't they?"
"Golly!" Angie smacked her forehead in disbelief. "I nearly forgot I was running an errand, and even that I was hungry! I must hurry. Be seeing you, Miss, and thank you for all your help!"
"If anyone truly needs to be thanked, Angie," I chuckled, "it's you. Run along now, and take care!"
"You, too, Miss. 'Bye!"
With that, Angie bounded out the front door and into the dark, easily hoisting her load as though it was light as a feather. Quite some time must have passed before I slowly turned my gaze away from the gloom into which she had disappeared and poured myself another cappuccino before calling the authorities. As I dialed the emergency number, I noticed, to my immense delight, that the hamburger-making machine was not squeaking anymore – the second goon impacting against it as he fell dead must have rectified the problem somehow. In point of fact, it has been quiet ever since.
666
As it turned out, the police swallowed every last bit of the hogwash that I fed them with no further questions asked, and so did Madame Bocelli, for that matter, who permanently assigned me to the day shift and gave me a promotion, with my salary raised accordingly – this she performed not out of any concern for my safety, but because I had ensured that the robbers had not taken anything from the store, the hardnosed money-grubber. But I'm not complaining the least, for I'm richer now, the luxuries of daylight, lunch and my favorite nighttime TV soaps are mine once more, and nothing, absolutely nothing, is going to take all that away from me.
All this I owe to Angie, whom I haven't seen anything of since that night, and whose secret remains safe with me. Half a year later, my images of her are frozen in time, and although most of her story remains shrouded in mystery, her life did touch mine in a very special way. Thinking about her, I contemplate the humanity that continues to live on within even those who have been outwardly robbed of what makes us base and human, and the courage it takes to defy authority in the name of the greater good. I marvel at Angie's valor, her simple honesty and thankfulness. Most of all, I wish her and her brothers and sisters-in-arms well in all their endeavors, and wish each of them as long and as fruitful an existence that any of their kind deserves.
Every day I work at the store, I've watched for her to come by, Mary Janes, pink dress, matching ribbon and all. I'd like to welcome her with open arms, share a bite or go on a walk with her as a friend, and just talk… about everything.
THE END