Numinous

One

"He's here again." Lacey whispered into Avery's ear, funnel in one hand, salt shaker in the other. Avery felt herself jump in surprise at the other girl's voice, heart pounding like a hammer. She gave the girl a look that was completely ignored. Lacey was supposed to be refilling the salt and pepper shakers, but she was too busy gossiping to focus on the task at hand.

She had just gotten through with telling Avery all about the new hire, Jason, that was training to be a shift lead who had been looking at her ass all day—as if that were something to be proud of instead of insulted by. Lacey was like that though. She liked to focus on anything other than her work. She probably couldn’t wait to be off work every day she was here just so she could go out and live a life that wasn’t stagnant and boring like Avery’s was. Didn’t mean that Avery had to like putting up with her spacey coworker.  

Avery was busy wondering what that felt like. 

To be able to f**k off at work and not have to worry about the repercussions of it. Lacey could do whatever she wanted to do, and that always messed with Avery’s head because they got treated so very differently here at work. Lacey had been hired almost a year ago, and in that time, Avery had come to understand that Lacey was just better than her. Lacey was prettier, nicer, treated like a person, and while Avery might be a little brighter than the other girl, she knew that didn’t matter. Brains didn’t matter when men liked you for your looks. When they respected you for them. When they didn’t; even your existence was irritating. 

If Avery made a mistake, she was in deep s**t, but if Lacey made a mistake, she was okay. It used to piss Avery off before she learned to just let it go because there were too many things to worry about every day, and Lacey wasn’t about to be one of those things. Avery never let herself sit and brew in anger anymore, as a general rule of thumb. She had given up being angry a long time ago when she had gotten herself into this huge mess she had no hope of ever cleaning up. Now? She was just trying to survive and endure. She would do anything to survive this without letting her anger overcome her, and endurance was a strong suit, right?

Avery was sitting on the counter next to the other girl, her legs crossed as she folded dinner napkins from a bin right next to her and placed them into another bin that was sat beside that one. She was facing the kitchen, opting out of people watching because she got distracted easily, and it slowed her down a lot. She didn’t like to be slow, or to look like she wasn’t busy. She would definitely rather be intensely folding napkins than whatever punishment she was due for if she goofed off and didn’t take this job seriously, like it was life or death; because it honestly was, and that terrified her to no end to think about. 

She snorted in response to Lacey’s observation but looked over her shoulder anyways, over at the table by the doors. She already knew where to look, and that was oddly comforting. Not a lot of things were certain in her life, but one thing that was certain was the man who came in three times a week and only ever sat in her section. 

It was the third table in, the one with only three chairs because the fourth chair broke when Allen had gotten angry and threw it across the diner at her. She still remembered that day clearly, although it would have been years ago now. Allen was just too cheap to buy another chair. The man sat in a chair facing the kitchen, and in turn, facing the two girls who were obviously talking about him, but he acted like he couldn’t see them, for some odd reason. He just looked intensely down at his computer like he was really engrossed in whatever was on his screen. 

There he was; her stalker. At least, that was the running joke here at work between Lacey and herself. She had no idea how she even found time to have inside jokes with someone who was practically a glorified acquaintance, in between wanting to kill herself and wanting to kill everyone else.

Avery actually hadn't seen the man anywhere else but at work, to her relief. He'd only been coming in the last six months or so, sitting at the same table around the same time three times a week. He seemed nice enough. He always liked to leave a three-dollar tip on the table, sometimes a crisp ten and three dollar bills if it was particularly busy in her section. He always sat in her section, always asked for her, was always so damn sickly sweet to her, but Avery usually thought nothing of him.

A man being nice was a man who wanted to be nice, and in her experience, a man wanting to be nice meant he wanted something from you—usually s*x. Avery didn’t want to have s*x with anyone, let alone this strangely attractive man who seemed like a crazy person with all of his uniformity. 

He was a nice looking guy, with unkempt honey golden curls on top of his head, and warm hazel eyes. He had dimples in his cheeks, they showed when he opened his mouth at any time, to laugh, to respond to something Avery had said, even when he yawned, his dimples were ever-present. He wore fairly decent clothing; jeans, sneakers, and a nice sweater most days, a t-shirt on warmer days. She could tell that perhaps he had money, but it made no sense to her why he would choose to keep coming back to the same shitty, rundown diner when he probably had hundreds of choices in this city alone. 

He always had big black headphones around his neck and he was usually on a laptop while he sat and drank his coffee. He looked to be in his mid to late twenties, no younger than Avery herself, who was around twenty-three years old—she had never really known her exact birth year. Having a complicated past like hers did that to a person. Made even facts about herself seem foreign and strange, like she was taking a test she hadn’t studied for. 

Avery thought maybe, just maybe, he was a really particular guy who liked particular things a particular way, and he was minding his own business like she should be doing. She thought it was sad, if anything, that this guy had such a specific routine, that she and her co-worker had started to gossip and poke fun at him. But then again, he was a man, and men were malicious and violent and angry at heart.

"Lacey, he's just a regular. Are you going to do your job?" Avery muttered, turning back around to finish what she was doing. Lacey frowned, obviously not liking how defensive Avery had gotten over the strange man in her section. Avery didn't like it much herself, thinking maybe she was going soft. "I am doing my job. You do yours and go get that table, before Allen gets here and sees we have customers waiting to be served." Avery huffed but saw no way around it. She didn’t want Allen to flip his lid again—she knew best of all what would happen. She hopped off of the counter, fixing her skirt, tightening her ponytail, and taking her notepad out of her apron, starting her way across the dining room.

She arrived at his table moments later. 

He was listening to something on his computer, headphones up, fingers busy typing away. He looked up after she tapped the table with her notepad firmly and flashed her a bright, toothy grin. He had two perfect rows of dazzling white teeth. A glorious smile if she'd ever seen one. His eyes had turned a subtle green, the color of Cottonwood leaves just before they started to turn golden in the Autumn. Avery didn’t usually pay attention to looks, but she had of course noticed he was handsome, and tall, with a lanky frame and long spider-like legs. 

He pulled his headphones down to rest around his neck. "What can I get you?" She asked in a dull tone. "Just a black coffee," he told her cheerfully, smiling at her again. She didn't even write anything on her notepad, she just turned to go as she noticed his eyes raking up and down her body. She had noticed the way he looked at her. She would be stupid not to. But he’d never been outwardly disgusting about it, so she found it didn’t bother her like it usually would. "You look lovely this morning, by the way." Avery rolled her eyes and left the table, feeling a cold sweat coming on. Just because it didn’t bother her like it usually did didn’t mean that it didn’t still make her nervous. 

She looked the absolute very same every single day. 

She wore the same short skirted uniform she always had, and white non-slip Keds on her feet. Her hair was always in a tight ponytail except for when she was running late and she showed up in braids and she never wore makeup or jewelry—mostly because she didn’t have makeup or jewelry. 

Yet, this man always seemed to want to make it a point to tell her how lovely, or beautiful, or pretty, or stunning she was every time he came in. She knew it wasn’t true. She knew she wasn’t any of those things. Her body was full of bruises and scars, her face pock-marked and dark circles were ever-present underneath her eyes. She was skin and bones due to malnourishment, and her posture was ruined from many injuries sustained over her lifetime. The only men who looked her way were men who were willing to pay to do whatever they only imagined they could do to the women they actually wanted. That isn’t to say she had always been this way; she might have been the spitting image of her gorgeous mother, but that was before. 

Years and years of bullshit had stolen that from her. 

"Wait, before you go, can I ask you something?" Avery turned, biting her cheek to keep from saying anything snarky. She didn’t like when guys asked her if they could ask her things. The questions were usually perverted and ended with her becoming uncomfortable and too scared shitless to speak up. But she wanted her tip. No matter how badly she wanted to put this guy in his place, he tipped well, and she never got tipped well. She was a snarky b***h, even when she meant not to be.

"Sure," she said, meeting his eyes. He looked surprised she actually gave him the time of day. Avery found herself a bit shocked by her response as well. He cleared his throat and sat up straighter in his seat. She braced herself for the worst. "I—I wanted to know if you'd maybe, possibly want to…get a drink with m-me…sometime?" Avery laughed out loud, before covering her mouth with her hand in shame.

The look that crossed his features made her feel like a piece of s**t. 

It was a look crossed between hurt and embarrassment as she'd caused some customers to look on with interest. She noticed the tips of his ears grow red as he tried to not react to her laughter. "A simple no would have been fine." He grumbled, looking down at the table in front of him. Somehow, seeing the hurt on his face made Avery feel bad for what she had done, even if she hadn’t meant to laugh at him. He just seemed like such a genuine person, especially with his stuttering and stammering, that it made it a little upsetting that she had wiped the smile from his face and replaced it with a frown. 

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to laugh, it wasn't funny. I'm a d**k for laughing, it's just why the hell would you want to get a drink with me?" She asked incredulously. She was mean, she had the worst resting b***h face, she made little to no effort with her appearance, her waitressing outfit was hideous on her, the only time she did anything hospitable, it was for a tip. There were a lot of reasons as to why asking her out for drinks was a bad idea for a guy like him. For any guy, really, but he seemed so soft, and nice. Avery didn’t know how to treat men like him. Men who looked to be harmless. 

He seemed utterly kind and thoughtful, he seemed like he knew what he was doing with his life, he seemed like a put-together person who could have any other put-together person he wanted. So, why had he asked Avery out, and not someone else? Not someone like Lacey, who had a welcoming smile and curly blonde hair and dimples in her cheeks and had a great personality—or so she figured. Avery had no idea what that girl was really like, she barely paid her any mind. The point is, she was never anybody’s first choice.

He closed his computer and she thought maybe she'd pissed him off by not saying yes, but he looked up at her instead with a shy but determined look on his face. He didn't seem so intent on convincing her to go out with him; he was just an intense person, she observed silently. 

"Because I think you're beautiful and I have this weird notion that I should know you. I've been trying to work up the nerve to ask you out for a drink ever since I first saw you,"

"That's a crock of s**t," she responded without even meaning to, reaching up to cover her mouth again like she could swallow the words back down. He smiled at that and it pleasantly surprised her. "It is not. Give me a chance to prove it, meet me at The Metro tonight at six." He proposed. 

A bell rang, the front door had been opened, stopping their conversation abruptly. 

"Avery! I pay you to work, not flirt with the guests!" Allen’s booming voice broke the calm environment of the diner, harshly bringing her back to reality. Her face flushed, her hands becoming clammy, a chill running down her spine as fear took over her body. He had just arrived for the day as he strode in from the front door to her side, hand landing on her shoulder, fingers digging into her flesh painfully. It was hard keeping the tears out of her eyes, but she bit her cheek to stop them. "Is there an issue?" He asked the man. 

He stole a look at Avery, frowning slightly, before he shook his head ‘no’ once, eyes trained on Allen's hand on her shoulder. Avery didn’t know why, but she thought she saw a flicker of concern in his hazel eyes, maybe even a flash of anger. "Not at all," he began, but Allen hadn’t expected an answer from him. 

"Then go get this man's order and stop wasting time, girl." He ordered her. She didn't even spare a look back at the table. Allen was a monster; she was sure of it. He treated her like dirt, in front of whoever he wanted to, and had a certain way of putting enough fear in her and everyone else to get her to do what he wanted and to get the rest of them to think what he was doing was normal and warranted. 

But maybe she was a monster too, because she never tried to stop him anymore, knowing it would be too easy to overpower her. He would just hurt her, and the thought of that made her feel sick. He had stopped beating her as often once she figured out how to shut the hell up and do what he asked her to so she could get it over with. She felt a lurch in her stomach and swallowed the nauseous feeling in the back of her throat. 

She slinked away from him and made her way quickly back to the kitchen where she grabbed a cup of black coffee and a saucer, seriously considering burning herself with the pot of hot coffee before snapping out of it, bringing his drink back out to the table, relieved Allen had decided to take a lap around the restaurant and was all the way down at the end, near the public restrooms. The man at the table hadn't put his headphones back on. He was waiting for her to arrive again, a tight smile on his face. Avery could swear she felt the dread as a weight on her chest as Allen headed back toward the kitchen, side eyeing her the entire time. She gulped back the urge to puke, once again. 

"I'm sorry if I got you in trouble with your boss. I let him know it was my fault, and that you weren’t flirting with me." he told her earnestly. She didn't know how to respond to that. He seemed so genuinely sorry about it, it made her dizzy. Were men capable of feeling remorse? She thought that was strictly a feminine trait. "Was that a yes, back there?" The man was asking her when she set the coffee down on the table in front of him, her hands shaking, sloshing around the dark liquid inside the cup. She sighed distractedly, peeking back at the kitchen, where Allen watched with beady black eyes through the smudged window of the double doors. He was watching her every move. "I don't think that's such a good idea, I mean, I don't even know your name."

"I find that hard to believe, I've told you my name several times." She laughed humorlessly, raising her eyebrows, wiping her sweaty hands off on her apron. "I think there's a hint there you aren't getting," she said. He grinned, taking her aback. She thought her attitude would scare him off of flirting with her, but as he licked his lips, she knew that wasn’t the case. He was handsome, she'd give him that, but she'd said it to scare him off, which it hadn't. He seemed dedicated to his cause—whatever that may be. 

"Regardless, my name is Benj. I'll be at The Metro tonight at six, standing outside waiting. If you show up, I guess I'll know where we stand and if you don't, I guess I'll still know where we stand." He set his headphones back on his head and she heard music begin to play from them. It was upbeat music, a song with a lot of bass. She turned away from him, heading back into the kitchen slowly, ringing her hands together. 

Her arm was snatched up almost immediately, and she was dragged into the back office, the door slamming shut, the lock twisted with a definitive click.

She pulled free from his grasp and rubbed at her arm sorely. "What did I do?" She demanded, looking into Allen's eyes angrily. She couldn’t help it if a customer flirted with her. She couldn’t help if he asked her a question. She couldn’t help what someone else did. She had no control over other people. But every time someone hit on her, every time someone paid her attention she didn’t mind receiving, he punished her for it, like she wasn’t allowed to interact with people who didn’t want to hurt her. 

She didn't like the man one bit. He was a fat, gross, perverted old man and he single handedly made her life a living hell. If she wasn't desperate for a safe place to stay, where she wouldn't be hunted down and punished for leaving, and she wouldn’t have to resort to selling her body again for money, she would have left by now. But she did need a safe place to rest her head considering all the skeletons she had in her closet. She needed it to survive, although she wasn't sure this was much better than death.

"I've told you on multiple occasions to stop whoring yourself out during your shifts," he spat at her. "That's my job." He finished coolly. She grimaced, her arms wrapping around herself absentmindedly, like she could suddenly shield her body from his prying eyes. 

"Talking to customers is whoring myself out?" She asked, already knowing she shouldn’t speak. "Don't talk back to me, girl." She pursed her lips as he brooded over her. She just wanted him to get on with it so she didn’t have to spend any more time anxious and waiting for it to be over. 

"You were being a disgusting little tease, batting your f*****g eyelashes—I'm surprised you didn't f**k him on the table. Your disgusting, you’re a f*****g slut, you’re used up and f*****g useless." He shouted, and she flinched at the volume change, at the vulgar words being shouted at her. None of it was true, she knew that. But it was something about the way he said it was such conviction. It didn’t matter if she didn’t believe his words; he did. It made her feel absolutely disgusting, like maybe she had done something wrong. She felt tears prickle behind her eyes but forced them to stay where they were. 

“You think anyone wants to touch your disgusting body? You think anyone actually f*****g wants you? You have nothing to offer anyone—you’re just a washing up w***e. Someone I pitied and gave a f*****g purpose other than lying on your back and letting simpletons c*m inside you for a wad of ones. You’re an ungrateful little b***h!”

Avery didn't want anyone in the kitchen to overhear what Allen was saying. It was disgusting, the way he spoke to her, it made her feel like less than nothing, and if the guys in the kitchen caught wind of it? They might start to treat her that way, too. She didn't trust men. They always banded together, and egged each other on. It was toxic, the way they tried to justify their actions by calling her all the names in the book, like they weren’t the ones labeling her. But she couldn't say that. Couldn't say any of that because she valued what little life she had and knew he could take it away.

"I'm sorry," she said, voice shaking with poorly masked anger. "I didn't mean to... to be a tease. I was just doing my job, being polite for the tips." Her voice was tight, thick with tears she refused to cry. She was trying to be strong, even though she knew it was fruitless. Her fingers were clenched up into the palm of her hands, her arms at her sides. “I don’t want to hear your f*****g excuses. You’re a terrible liar and you know that. If you were really sorry you would get over here and show me.” 

Her blood ran cold, and she didn’t know why. She didn’t know why her body suddenly felt heavy, and her mind was racing, trying to come up with some way out of this. Trying to think of some escape route, but she knew it was useless. She had seen this coming. She knew what he planned to do from the moment he had locked that door. Allen had her right where he wanted her and he was going to punish her. 

She watched Allen come around to the front of the desk and her bottom lip began to quaver. He sat on the edge of the desk, hand on his crotch, other hand up in the air, beckoning her forward. She'd been here many times. The uneasy feeling, the fear that curled around her heart, her mind, squeezing so tightly she couldn't breathe properly, couldn't think.

She couldn't move her feet. 

Not from the spot she stood comfortably away from him. Not from where he wasn't touching her. "Avery. Come. Here." His voice was menacing and she heard a whimper escape her. No matter how hard she tried, she was always reduced to a crumbling mess whenever he forced her to listen to him. 

"Please, Allen, please, not here, not now," she begged, hearing how desperate she was in her own voice and wanting to die. He stood and approached her, raising one hand and smacking her across the face. She staggered back, but he held her around the arm with his fat, chubby hand. She refused to let out the sob she so desperately wanted to. She would not break down in front of this man, at least not today. "When I tell you to f*****g do something, you do it!" He shouted at her, making her jump. 

"Get on your f*****g knees," he ordered, his voice dangerously low, his breath hitting her like a Mack truck. She smelled cigarettes and whiskey, shuddering as he pushed down on her shoulders. She dropped to her knees in front of him, feeling a tear escape and cringed as it rolled down her cheek as the skin of her knees cracked open on the cold concrete floor.

She closed her eyes as she heard the familiar zip of his cargo slacks. Avery wanted to disappear, wanted to melt into the floor. But as his grubby fingers dug their way into the back of her head, taking hold of her lengthy unmanaged curls, she knew there was nothing she could do but be present.

Maybe it would have helped had she had something pleasant to think about, something to take her mind off of what she was being forced to do. What she'd always been forced to do, but she came up blank. She thought about Benj. About what it could be like if she were normal. If she could go out with him. If she could let herself daydream about anyone—why not Benj? Maybe it was because he had expressed interest in her and she was always looking for validation that she wasn’t invisible. 

It was easy enough to conger up his features in her head. His bright hazel eyes, the dimples in his cheeks, the way his fingers danced over the keyboard he typed on while he listened to whatever it was that was blasting inside his headphones. His loose blonde curls, the way he smiled up at her as she waited at his table. She'd never had anyone smile at her like that. Or ask how her day was going, or leave the table as clean as it was before he arrived. Never had anyone ask her out for a drink, never had anyone asked her out for anything, really. She'd always just been told what she would do, always given no choice.

But he'd given her a choice. A choice. To go out with him, or not to go out with him. Avery wasn’t used to making choices. She was always afraid of making the wrong one. She had been wrong many times before and was now ruined because of it. But he seemed nice enough, and seemed easy to talk to. Uncomplicated, undemanding.

Nothing like she was used to.

Maybe that was what she needed to get out of this place; someone to be nice to her.