Dark Favors

IT WASN’T NOT MUCH to look at.

The house.

It was ordinary. Plain. Much too common for the likes of Locke, but that didn’t matter. It never mattered to him. It never had. If he wanted something, he took it. Maybe he bought it or maybe he stole it. I didn’t know. I never asked him that sort of thing. I just signed the lease and wrote the checks, and that was it.

The house...there was always something weird about it, something strange. It was always the type of place that begged to be fixed up. It should have been painted a bright, vibrant blue, but it was beige. That always struck me as strange.

Then again, a lot of things did.

There were little inconsistencies in the way the home was designed. It was big, but the interior was simple: not fancy. The flooring was new, but the faucets were worn and aged. The appliances all worked perfectly, but none of them matched. It was a strange sort of house in a strange sort of place. I tried not to worry about it too much. Instead, I put that sort of thought on the back burner, and then went to class. By the time I finally got home from work each night, it was dark. It was too dark to see the boring beige color of the rental. It was too dark to see much of anything.

That was my life.

Day in and day out.

I did the same thing every single day, but it never really bothered me because I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. It was a good life, I thought. It was normal, ordinary. It was the type of life most people only ever dreamed about. I was going to college, after all. I was making something of myself. I was doing something good, something incredible. I was doing something just for me.

And I was going to show everyone.

Everyone.

I might have been some no-good punk from the trailer park, but that was the past and my future looked bright. I was going to be a teacher. Better yet, I was going to make a difference. I was going to help change lives. I was going to help change the whole damn world.

That’s what I was going to do.

“Are you going to ring me up or what?” The cranky, shrill voice of a customer brought me out of my daydream. For a minute, I forgot I was at work. Sure, it might be a Sunday night, but that didn’t mean anything. People still needed their groceries for the week.

“Oh, sorry about that,” I mumbled, trying not to make eye contact with the bubblegum-chewing lady in the checkout lane.

“You should pay better attention, you know,” she said, still chewing her gum even louder. Her lips smacked. I could feel her eyes boring into me, but I didn’t look up at her. I couldn’t. Embarrassment washed over me in a wave I couldn’t shake. I didn’t want her to know I was bothered by this interaction, that she was making me feel humiliated. After all, I was a 27-year-old cashier. It didn’t matter that I was going to college. This lady didn’t care about that. She just thought about me as a loser.

For a brief second, I felt like the kid in the trailer park again. That kid had big dreams, yeah, but not much else. That kid was always teased and made fun of. No matter how hard that kid’s mom tried, everyone knew who she was, what she was. They knew she was poor, and that was all people ever really cared about.

Silently, I bagged the woman’s purchase. It wasn’t much. She got a pre-packaged sandwich, a six-pack of root beer, and some chips.

“Anything else?” I asked her.

Meaning cigarettes or stamps.

“Not unless you’ve got lotto tickets back there,” she said.

“Sorry,” I shook my head.

“Whatever,” she swiped her card, input her PIN, and grabbed her stuff. She left without looking back, and I didn’t speak up to wish her a good afternoon.

I should have handled it differently, I shook my head.

“Rough day?” This time, the person in my lane’s voice was nicer. Kinder. Deeper. Also, it was familiar. I looked up sharply, surprised to see the man I couldn’t stop thinking about. I was renting a house from him – albeit a weird house –and I owed him just about everything in my life. He was the one responsible for giving me a shot. I was a college-dropout who was trying for a second chance at finishing school, and I had no credit and no hope. He’d taken a big chance with me, and I wasn’t going to let him down.

“Locke,” I breathed. His blue eyes pierced into my own.

Had he seen that entire interaction?

Did he notice me daydreaming at work?

“Mr. Locke to you,” he said politely, but firmly. I knew he

meant it, too.