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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/SunHeadPrime on 2024-10-30 21:47:50+00:00.
The night shift at a second-rate fast-food taco joint is where time goes to die. Minutes take hours and hours take years. There are only so many times a person can fill the sour cream and guacamole guns in one go without wanting to put them to your temple and pull the trigger. Would it kill you? No. Would it make a mess? Absolutely, and what a godsend that would be.
It would give you something to do.
Más Tacos was in the “Bentwater Corners,” a small suburban strip mall with little to no foot traffic. Every store here was the generic version of something more successful. Like a copy, it never looked as good as the original. I told friends Bentwater Corners was the island of misfit toys. It surprised me we stayed in business at all.
We were located between Burgers Ahoy, another also-ran chain restaurant, and the confusing Bank of Chester. I don’t know if someone named the bank after a founder or a city named Chester and it was never explained to me. In the five months I worked at the taco shack, I’d never seen a person enter or exit the bank. Hell, I’d never even seen anyone use the ATM.
Not even to pull out drug money.
My school schedule forces me to work late nights. I’m there from six in the evening until around midnight or a little after, depending on how much cleaning we have to do. Often, I’m in my car by 12:01. Like I said, we’re never busy.
After our “dinner rush” of about six to fifteen people, we have nothing but time to kill. We clean and prep and, once that’s done, we double and triple check our work. If we still have time, the entire shift takes turns fucking around on their phone while keeping an eye out for Mary, our manager.
I didn’t mind Mary. After years of being a stay-at-home mom, her divorce suddenly threw her back into the workforce. Sometimes she acted a bit harried and cracked the whip, but she was also understanding. Mary wasn’t the ogre some of my fellow co-workers made her out to be. She was the boss and had to do boss things occasionally. Those actions often flew in the face of people trying to do as little as possible and still stay gainfully employed.
Most nights, I worked with the same crew of miscreants. They were an eclectic bunch, but we all got along. It’s like soldiers in the army. You’re thrown into a foxhole with whoever and end up bonding over your shared trauma. Most nights, it was me, an aspiring rapper named Doug (aka Tha Dougfather), Jenna, a social media influencer in training, and a rotating cast of new hires. This night, the new guy was a pale, goth guy named Reggie. If you ask me, Reggie isn’t exactly a goth sounding name, but who am I to judge?
Tonight, while we were going about our normal “dodge Mary” routine, I heard Mary let loose a string of curse words from her little office that’d make a sailor blush. I took this as a cue to put my phone away and pick up a mop. As I was wringing out, a frazzled Mary came rushing up to me. Her face was panic-stricken and slightly pale. Something was wrong.
“Jill, my asshole ex just called. He was letting Jeremy play ‘Superman’ at home…”
“Superman?”
She sighed. I could tell this had been a point of contention before. “The asshole ex lets him jump off the top bunk into a pile of pillows. Anyway, Jeremy landed on his arm funny, and the asshole ex thinks he may have broken it. They’re off to urgent care right now. I have to meet them there.”
“Of course,” I said. “Should we close up or….”
“I can’t close early. Mr. Adamyan would kill me if he found out we did.” She sighed. “Can I trust you to close up the shop tonight? I can give you the alarm codes and keys.”
Her face was pleading as intensely as her words. I saw the worried mom look in her eyes and my heart softened. “Of course. Go be with your kid.”
“Oh my God, thank you! I owe you, big!”
“It’s family stuff, no worries.”
She gave me a quick hug and whispered, “I can’t trust anyone else. You’re the only one here going places, present company included.”
“Not true,” I said, smiling. “You’re going to be with your baby.”
She gave me a friendly smile. “Thank you. You’re a hero.”
She ran back to her office to gather her things. As soon as she was out of sight, Doug sidled up to me. He nodded toward Mary’s office. “What did ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ want with you?”
I grinned. “She put me in charge for the night.”
Doug laughed. “Fuck, dog. This whole place is going to go up in flames then.”
“Shut up,” I said, punching his arm.
“How come she picked you? She should’ve picked me,” he said, frowning.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Doug feigned offense. “Shit, if I ran this place, I’d have us going toe-to-toe with Taco Bell in two weeks. People be beating down the doors to get our Sopa de Awesomes and Sombrero taco boxes.”
“Uh huh.”
“And once I launched our new mascot, Mr. Taco, shiiiiit. We’re rolling in dough.”
“Or tortillas, as it were,” before adding, “and Mr. Taco? That’s the best name you got?”
“Gotta keep the names simple for Americans. We’re simple people. Check this, though. Mr. Taco would have a huge sombero and those bullet things across his chest. But instead of bullets…they’d be little tacos. Pretty slick, right?”
“The Taco guy would have smaller tacos as decorations? In a world of living, breathing tacos, wouldn’t those little tacos be baby tacos? Kinda fucked up, Doug.”
“Jill’s right, the name needs work,” Jenna said, joining us by the nacho station. “I know branding and Mr. Taco doesn’t cut it. When I started my GRWM videos, I started calling them ‘Watch a bitch glow up’ to stand out. I gained two hundred followers overnight.”
“’Cause you were showing off the curves, Jenna. You got it easy.”
Jenna laughed, “Easy? You try coming up with compelling daily content to satisfy thousands of parasocial stans. Boobs and ass can only take you so far.”
“To that end, maybe Mr. Taco needs a lady friend? Senorita Carnitas?”
“Ooh, I like that,” Jenna said. “Name is better, too.”
Doug waved us off. “Maaan, y’all overthink things. Mr. Taco don’t need a lady. He’s too wild to be tamed. He’s got that iconic Ronald McDonald energy, for real. Kids would be taking photos and shit with him. Drawing pictures. I’d probably win awards for creating him.”
“Let’s get a normies view on this,” Jenna said. “Hey Reggie, what do you think of Mr. Taco?”
The quiet guy just shrugged his shoulders. Doug nodded, “See! He knows it’s fire. Good shit, Reg! And y’all ain’t even heard about Taco Land yet. It’s full of kick-ass characters!”
Before I could further explore the origins of Taco Land (is that where Chester is located?), Mary came back into the kitchen with her purse on her shoulder and keys clutched in her hands. She called everyone over and sighed. “Look, my kid hurt himself and I have to go. Jill is in charge while I’m gone. What she says, goes. If she tells me you guys made her life hell, so help me god, I will have you cleaning the grease traps for a week. Am I clear?”
Everyone nodded. Mary turned to me and placed her hand on my shoulder. “If you need anything - anything - don’t hesitate to call or text, okay?”
“Got ya.”
“Thanks again.”
“No worries, go see Jeremy. I know he needs his mom.”
Mary gave me a kind nod before blowing out of the shop. Seconds later, we saw her taillights speed down the road. I turned back to my staff and saw that all of them had pulled out their phones already.
I wasn’t upset. We were ahead in our cleaning, and the real boss was gone. At this point in the evening, we were just running down the clock, anyway. I just prayed no fires broke out in the last few hours we were open. Seemed simple enough.
About twenty minutes after Mary left, the restaurant’s phone started ringing. It gave us all a shock - we’d never heard the phone ring in here before. Hell, Jenna admitted she’d actually never seen a landline in person before tonight. The phone was in Mary’s office. Jenna, Doug and I made our way over there. Reggie was in his own world and we didn’t bother him.
“Should I answer?” I asked.
“You’re the boss,” Doug said.
“What if it’s a supplier with questions about, I dunno, stock or something?”
“No supplier is going to call a store at close to ten o’clock at night,” Jenna said.
“It could be Mr. Adamyan,” I said. “What we he think if he called and Mary didn’t answer?”
“Just tell him she’s taking a huge shit and she’ll call him back,” Doug said. “Guarantee he won’t ask any follow-up questions.”
“Vile, Doug,” Jenna said, her face twisting in disgust.
“I solve problems Jenna. Sometimes that means going a vile route. Oh shit…vile route. That’s a banger,” Doug said, jotting the note into his lyric book.
“I’m gonna answer,” I said. I walked into Mary’s office and plucked the receiver up from the cradle. “Hello?”
“Hey, this is Paul over at Burger’s Ahoy.”
“Uh, hi? If you want something, just come over and order. We’re super slow.”
“No thanks. I was calling to ask if you knew that you have a dude who’s been standing at your drive through speaker for, like, ten minutes?”
“What?” I asked, confused. When someone pulls up to the drive through speaker, a whole host of things happen. A timer starts, bells ring, and the staff jumps into action. But nothing ever sounded. The shop had been quiet. I told Paul as much.
“Well, we’ve been watching him for a while. He’s just…standing there. It’s unsettling.”
“What’s going on? Who is it?” Jenna asked.
“Paul from Burgers Ahoy. He says someone’s been standing at the drive through ...
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