Fiction: Retail,..Death,...and Rehab or/ A new beginning.

                            I worked behind the cash register of a rural community chain gas and convenience store. Nightime would overshadow the desolate parking lot with the sordid sprinkling of iridescent lighting.       Customers would pass through the transparent windowed doors into the commuter threshold,.. oblivious,....with an uncaring air of ease,...removed from their commercial society yet,..at the center of it all. Merchandise and fuel on the side,...winged with overpriced medicinal products and fresh sandwiches from the deli. Packaged soups and policies to overlook the well-oiled machine of  corporate demi-gods.
                           At the epicenter of financial transactions is where I cashed in my tedious eight hour work days,..either crawling through the vast endless hours with sweat and anguish,,... temporarily avoiding disaster,........or gliding with ease along smooth strides,.. accompanied with the numbing comfort of my only and best friend at that time,...let us call him,.."opiates",.. as an alias. Long drawn out lines of quick faces and short expressions assembled the multitude of customers. Never a lull in business when you needed it,...and always dead when you wanted something to fill up your mapped out time.
                        Clocking little to nothing over minimum wage is hardly an excuse to go out and celebrate,..although being placed in the thick of it,... living a forty hour -a - week lifestyle,...it was the best damn excuse anyone could've ever gave me to get high.  As the evening hours would descend and transpire into the diminishing inevitability of the night,....my blood would settle,...with the warm knowledge of being set free to the vices of my own lonely lifestyle. The cycle would unravel,..flatten,..then recreate itself as if it never began in the first place. The only difference was me,..a mere physical creature,..softly and desperately beseeching the doors of death and destruction to let me in. There would come an end to the retail cycle,..but not the conclusion that I planned or set out for,..but plainly the opposite.
                         It was a bleak January afternoon, the heaping white drifts of snow carelessly accumulated around the circle of the paved walkway,.. at the center of the courtyard..the institution I was currently placed in,...on the behalf of my own broken accord,...couldn't of been more full of lost endeavors,...and void of all things involving joy or contentment. The depressive early morning awakenings provided me with feeble attempts at effort. The mocking faces of long termed sobriety dug at my aching side with "I told ya so,..you should of listened to yourself a long time ago,..then maybe you wouldn't be here",...roaming the empty fluorescent lit hallways,...faces disposed to the artificial sleep that never rested them.          It was all a lie,...the pleasure,...... and the dream,...I never woke up,..but I believed in it.