Inspired By True Events

It's NaNoWriMo again, so you know what that means. I've started a new project, since I've found I am incapable of successfully rewriting works in November.

Everyone, meet Death Wish!

The premise of Death Wish is actually very simple: it's about a retail worker who discovers that she suddenly has the ability to kill asshole customers simply by wishing it. This leads her to the discovery that she is a Grim and there's a whole world of Myths to which she belongs.

I often describe it as 'Death Note' meets 'Lost Girl'.

This book is my therapy. It exists because I will rejoice when some of these people finally die. While it dives fairly quickly into the fantasy aspect, there are still parts that are 100% events that I have encountered.

Which brings us to this post. I had an encounter at my day job this morning that soured the whole day for me. I have since written the scene into Death Wish. Now I will share it with all of you.

“Yeah, well I worked in retail. I’ve seen levels of stupid you could never imagine. There’s still one guy that I deeply regret not getting around to.”

“Oh? And what did he do that earned him your displeasure?”

“Got time for a story?”

“We are all ears,” McBride assured her.

“All right. So this one local is constantly a pain in the ass. Pretty average looking old guy, wears these big glasses straight out of the ‘80s, and always has this trucker cap on that says ‘Horse-something Bait & Tackle’ or whatever. Anyway, he’d always come in and make you do his shopping for him because ‘I can’t see in these fluorescent lights’. Mind you, our bulbs in that store have been LED for over half a decade and I’ve corrected him at least three times.

“Well, one day, this dumb fuck pulls up to the store. My entire parking lot is empty, but his ass decides he’s going to pull as close to the pallets out front as is possible. Whatever. I didn’t even realize it was him and I already knew it was a fucktard.”

“You have the most expressive language,” Howell said with a grin.

“Thanks. Anyway, he comes in and says he needs five nuts the size of the one he brought. I already knew getting him to walk over to the bolt aisle with me was useless because he’d just bitch about not being able to see. Besides, he moved at the pace of a snail, so it was faster just getting his shit and getting him to leave. Got the nuts and sent him on his way.

“Well, with his pace, it takes five whole minutes before he comes in and says that something is on his truck. I didn’t know what he was talking about at first as the word ‘wheelbarrow’ was not available in his brain at that time. I finally guessed what he was talking about and put on my coat to go out and move the damn thing.

“I don’t know if you guys remember, but I have that wheelbarrow rack where two are stacked and it’s open at the bottom for a third to be parked underneath. Well, we’ve had problems before of it falling over. Here’s the kicker. A month before, we’d put an eight inch cinderblock on its back leg to keep it from falling forward and dropping the wheelbarrows.

“I had actually forgotten about the block when I went out. And as we’re walking out the door, I’m making the snide comments of how that’s why customers weren’t supposed to park that close to the building and whatnot.

“Well, it was actually worse than that. When I got out there, there was maybe two inches of space between his tires and the pallets. I legit had to walk on the pallets to get to where my red wheelbarrow was leaning against his passenger side door.

“So he putzes around to the front of his truck and acts like he’s going to try to help me remove it. I was so pissed off that I just wrenched that thing straight out of the rack, over his mirror, and pitched it onto the pallet beside me. Then it got worse.”

“How?”

“I looked at the rack to see how it could have come down. First thing I noticed was that the block had been knocked off its spot. Fine. Could’ve happened whenever. But then I look at my bottom wheelbarrow, wondering why it’s super cockeyed, and find that this dumb fuck had actually hit my product. Not only that, but his tire had dragged the wheelbarrow tire guard and smashed it into the pallet of salt on the other side. That’s why the block was dislodged and the force caused the red wheelbarrow to fall out of place.

“How the fuck he didn’t hear that before he came into the store, I have no fucking clue. And all the time, I’m sitting here thinking, If this fucker tries to sue, I will nail him to a wall. There’s no fucking reason for him to have parked here.

“So anyway, because the wheelbarrow is lodged between his tire—hubcap, mind you, not just rubber; he literally scraped his tire along it until the hubcap snagged my wheelbarrow and kept going with it—I explain to him that he will have to back up.

“He actually asks me why he has to back up, so I have to repeat that my wheelbarrow is lodged and it is physically impossible for him to go forward. Then he asks how far back he has to go, and I’m looking at my poor little standing sign that’s behind his truck and know that he’s probably going to run over that plastic little bitch before this is over. I tell him that he has to back up at least far enough to get around the pallets.

“So he gets in and starts to back up, and I start to frantically signal to him to stop. Why? Because the wheel guard is now caught between the hubcap and the rubber on his tire. And he doesn’t fucking stop. I honest to god thought that his tire was about to get ripped open. Thankfully, it didn’t. And then he finally fucking stopped.

“At that point, I just shook my head and told him to go. I’d had enough, he was far enough back to not cause more damage—so long as he learned how to fucking drive—and I was over it. So he finally pulled out and I went back inside to help the customer that had arrived while I was dealing with his fuck up. Shortly after, my coworker came in and offered to fix the wheelbarrows for me. She’s the one that told me that idiot had actually fucked up the metal rack.”

“And for that, you want him dead?”

“Yes. I thought he was an irritant before, which was why he wasn’t high up on my list, but after that fucking incident? Oh yeah, I wish he was dead.”

It took all of three seconds for Lailah to realize what she said. When she did, they all stared at each other with wide eyes.

“Oh shit.”

Thanks for commiserating with me. Now I have to get back to writing. While real life inspires much of the story, it also interrupts writing time, so I'm behind. (I also hope you like the graphic I made for this. It's one of my favorite lines in the book. So far.)