Doggone Mess
A Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count)
By R.J. Blain
Chapter One
After a long week of work,I couldn’t really blame anyone for grabbing fast food on the way home, but did everyone in Long Island have to visit my specific branch of McDonald’s? From vanilla humans, lycanthropes, practitioners, and centaurs, to devils, demons, and even an angel, everybody wanted a hit, and they wanted me to give it to them.
I questioned the angel. How could they eat without a head? Did they eat? Why did an angel want nuggets? Why did everyone want nuggets today?
While all the lines were busy, mine had twice as many people, and I doubted I’d survive to the end of my shift in an hour.
I considered asking some divine for help, but I opted against the idea. With my luck, the devil would join the mayhem and give me one hell of an order.
The nuggets held the place as the day’s reigning champion of sales, with the smart people ordering twenty, as it was approximately fifty cents more expensive than ordering ten. Burgers took the second spot of the day, and the underdog salad came in a close third, resulting in general mayhem in the back, as we hadn’t prepared for a salad bender.
Oddly, the lycanthropes led the charge on the unexpected salad bender. Had someone slipped pixie dust into our dressing when I hadn’t been looking? While filling an insane order consisting of a hundred and sixty nuggets, ten fries, and enough soda to float a boat, I checked one of the labels to make sure.
Nope, no pixie dust.
I could’ve used a hit of pixie dust, but for some damned reason, the CDC got cranky when those infected with a contagious life-altering disease became snuggle fiends. My driver’s license specifically barred me from ingesting any pixie dust without a prescription, the cruelest of blows in my life outside of my accidental infection with lycanthropy. Pixie dust turned me into a snuggle fiend out on a mission to love everyone, making me a high infection risk.
They would consider removing the flag after I mated, as they believed I would become a snuggle fiend with my mate, something they viewed to be acceptable.
I hated the CDC, especially as my virus agreed with their idea. I bet my terrorist virus just wanted me to settle down and used pixie dust to its advantage, although I’d resisted its wicked ways thus far.
Damn it, I needed a vacation. I also needed more than three days off before my next chain of thirteen days of twelve hours a pop. If I worked fourteen days in a row without a break, the labor board might get upset. I should have complained about the low pay and long hours, but I needed the money to pay my rent. I kept smiling, bagged the boxes of nuggets, triple counted boxes to make sure I wouldn’t have a cranky lycanthrope storming back complaining he’d been shorted, and went about my work with the same general efficiency and life as the average robot programmed to be the perfect public servant.
No matter what, I couldn’t afford to join the ranks of the unemployed. As a confirmed lycanthrope, jobs came few and far between, and I didn’t have a pack.
Single lycanthrope women in packs didn’t stay single for long, and I refused to have anything to do with the local packs, especially since I had no idea which one of the mangy bastards had infected me in the first place—or if I’d been the victim of an unidentified hot spot.
Considering how I’d spent a long time in the hospital thanks to some asshole, I’d been infected by a mangy bastard. Judging from my virus’s reaction to some men, she hated anyone who resembled the asshole who’d stolen my humanity almost as much as I did.
The CDC wanted to do tests to determine if I had a known strain, but I’d refused. The way I figured, I was better off not knowing.
My virus and I agreed on little, but it disliked that I hadn’t been a willing victim with a male on hand to cater to my every need. My virus wanted me to find someone—anyone—to scratch my various itches, and I considered myself lucky that wild part of me didn’t push too hard.
I figured the CDC’s perfume helped with that.
As the restaurant’s token wolf, present to serve those who either were willing to risk the virus to get their food faster or were also confirmed lycanthropes, I’d stay hired as long as I kept my work performance up and didn’t complain I only got three days off every thirteen or so days.
According to my nose, only a few in my line were infected, and to my disgust, right before I was scheduled to escape, Wayne Barnes proved to be one of them. Thanks to my wolfsbane perfume, a gift from the CDC to keep my status as an unmated lycanthrope female hidden, most customers assumed I was the sacrificial lamb chosen by the managers to deal with the cranky lycanthropes, using the perfume to deter customers. As far as Wayne was concerned, I was the annoying holdout in what would one day be his apartment complex, refusing to move out to make it so he could purchase the building.
I bet the bastard had come to my workplace to make yet another offer to get me to move.
I worked through the orders until it was his turn, and bracing for the worst, I went through the ceremonial greeting and asked for his order.
“Busy night, Joyce,” he commented, regarding the menu as though he hadn’t just spent twenty minutes waiting for his turn. “I can’t decide, so pick your favorites, give me six orders worth of it, and surprise me for the drinks. It’s to go.”
For fuck’s sake. One of these days, he’d really kill me, but I went to work tapping in my dream order, which involved two different salads, a Big Mac, six chocolate chip cookies, two regular cheeseburgers, three grilled chicken sandwiches, and twenty nuggets. As his nose couldn’t tell if I had the virus thanks to my perfume, I’d play as an uninfected human for a while. I gave him unsweetened iced tea, and then I duplicated the order six times before submitting it and gesturing to the digital display. Then, as I still had receipts showing I’d purchased all of these things in my wallet, I showed him as proof.
He chuckled, submitted his payment, and checked my receipts. “I’m impressed.”
“You asked me for my favorites. I just happen to have a lot of favorites, so I give myself variety.”
I was sure the businessman could afford the bill, which was about average for a lycanthrope during a virus spike. My blessed perfume kept my food bill tolerable, although I could eat through a shameful amount of food during a spike.
