BEEP,BEEP,BEEP,BEEP
The sound of an alarm clock rings off the walls of a small run down studio apartment. Tucked at the back of the 3rd floor of a building that should have been condemned and torn down by now, except for the fact that the greasy landlord still made money off those who couldn't afford anything else in this gutter swamp of a town.
A sleepy Mj rolls out of bed and sets her feet on the floor “COLD” she gasps as she pulls her feet back under the covers. “Ooh so warm” is the last thing that trickles across her mind as she lays back down and drifts off to sleep once again.
The sound of sirens and yelling through thin walls jerked her back awake. She sat up with a start and looked at her alarm clock “SHIT” was all that came out as she saw it was now 7:30, and she was already over half an hour late for work on a normal day, but today she was supposed to be up extra early. “Great”, she thought as she rushed to pull on her shirt and pants and stuff the wild, dirty blonde hair on her head into a messy bun and rush out the door.
MollyJay was a woman lost in the world around her, at almost 30 years of age she lived on her own, no family to speak of and very few friends, if she could even call them that as they were all just people she worked with. She was an ordinary enough girl, about 5ft 3 with dull blue-green eyes, pretty generic, neutral skin and dirty blonde hair. She was the poster child of forgotten. And mostly, that was ok by her. Mj watched the crowds on the street as she made her way toward the center of town. All the hustle and bustle of individuals and their messy lives. “It was hard enough to live day to day with the surrounding crap, let alone involve someone in that mess.” She felt watching as people scolded their kids for being late for school. Or as a couple had a very public argument about someone cheating on someone else while clothes and dishes thrown from a nearby apartment window to the unlucky adulteress below.
“Thankfully” she thought “I don't have to deal with any of that dumb shit, just my own foolish self and the inability to wake up on time.
“When the fuck am I going to grow up?” she huffed to herself with the realization she was now in her late twenties, working in a slaughterhouse in the same town she had been in for over 20 years!
She had little education outside high school and had no other real-world experience. “So doing anything else with her life didn't seem possible, anyway”. The depressing thought lingered as she made her way to work.
Mj worked 3 jobs at the moment. A part-time job at the slaughterhouse, a part-time position as a butcher's assistant and a night spot as a bartender. It kept her pretty busy, so a more social existence wasn't something she missed. But on mornings like this one, sometimes she wondered what it would be like to have someone to talk to.
The town of Lowder wasn't very big so Mj never bothered with a car. She would have had to maintain it and pay for insurance, and buying new shoes every couple months seemed more cost-effective and much less headache to deal with.
She reached the butcher shop and took a deep breath before pulling the door open “that better be one MollyJay Bijou” a yell came from the back room. An older man in his late 60s snakes his head around the door jamb and threw one hand up in the air. “What the fuck? You were supposed to be here at 4 to approve the new shipment of cutlets, but instead I have a sorry we missed you note pinned on my door this morning, care to explain?”