THIS STORY IS NOT SUITABLE FOR READERS UNDER 12
Tom popped his head around the door. “Lisa’s here.”
Velma nodded at him and continued sweeping the empty cafe, but he didn’t leave. He seemed to want a verbal response. “Okay,” she said.
“Just thought you’d want to speak to her, you know, after last week.”
Velma sighed. She had no clue what he meant. “What about last week?”
“You must remember – she said someone had made a complaint about you.”
She was still clueless. “What complaint? Why would anyone make a complaint about me?”
Tom shrugged. “I don’t know – you’re great!” he grinned, “but that’s why I thought you’d want to talk to her. To straighten it out.”
Velma resumed sweeping. There was less than an hour left of her shift and she still had the mopping to do. She couldn’t afford to be late out today. “Well, Lisa knows where I am if she wants to talk to me,” she said as she lifted another chair to sweep under it. “I haven’t got t-” she looked back at Tom and discovered he had left the conversation and was retreating through Menswear. “Why do I keep talking to that guy?!” she asked herself with exasperation.
Lisa, the area manager, was rarely seen and never there long. The store managers had always seemed happy with her work so the thought that they had complained about her was disappointing. Hurtful even. But she couldn’t think about that now, she had more important things on her mind.
Muriel was having a bad night. “No one else turned up,” she told Velma sadly. “I’ve been here for three hours on my own.”
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Velma knew how hard it was, trying to appeal to people’s better nature in a location where most didn’t have one. Having to do it alone was even harder. “I got here as soon as I could. Who else were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. I put a call out on Facebook.” She looked over her shoulder at the diners behind the window. “How can they not care?” Muriel’s frustration was exacerbated by the fact that she’d felt it so many times before. “How can they go in there, choose a live animal from the tank, and say I pick him. I’ll eat him tonight. Go – boil him to death!?’”
Velma shook her head. “I know. It’s like that episode of Angel when the baddies try to eat the live werewolf and they call it a delicacy!”
“But worse.” Muriel hadn’t seen that one, “coz this is real!”
“It’s good you came,” Velma told her, “but there’s nothing more you can do right now.”
A small group of men in suits left the restaurant and walked past them. Their conversation paused briefly as they looked at Muriel and laughed.
She shouted after them, “What’s the matter with you? Those animals have feelings you know!”
“But they taste so good,” one of them shouted back.
Velma had been facing the other way, memorising the faces of the diners through the restaurant’s window. She turned back when she heard the juvenile jeer to see four men walking backwards away from them, pointing, laughing, amusing each other with their stupid banter.
“Which one said that?”
“The slimy one,” her friend told her.
Velma studied the group of men and frowned, “could you be more specific?”
“Red shirt, black tie,” Muriel whispered before lifting her voice to yell at him again. “Why don’t you go-”
“Don’t waste your breath,” Velma said softly. “Come on, you’re cold. You need to get out of these wet clothes.”
While Muriel slowly struggled to her feet and picked up her banners, Velma became the mist and disappeared for a moment.
“Velma?” Muriel turned 360º “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere,” said Velma with a smile and a tap on her shoulder, “I’m right here.”
The two women walked slowly to Muriel’s flat two streets away. Muriel said she was going to have a shower and an early night and Velma said goodnight.
***
Come back tomorrow for the next instalment, unless you want to read it now 😀
Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating funny, exciting and sometimes slightly creepy vegan fiction since 2012
Violet's Vegan Comics 
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