Chapter 4: The Back Office Trap
The pharmacy smelled like every other Tuesday—artificial cherry, dust, and the faint chemical undertone of medications that had been sitting on shelves longer than anyone cared to admit. Ashanti knelt on the cracked linoleum, surrounded by half-empty boxes of pain relievers, her fingers working mechanically as she stocked the bottom shelf.
The lollipop clicked against her teeth. Red and artificial. The kind of sweet that coated your tongue in a film of regret.
She had tied her hair back in a loose bun, but strands had already escaped, curling around her face in the humid air. The crop hoodie she'd thrown on—a faded purple thing with a hole in the hem—rode up as she reached forward, exposing the small of her back.
The fluorescent lights buzzed. The clock above the register ticked. A customer wandered the aisles with the aimless energy of someone killing time before a bus.
Then the door slammed open.
The bell above it didn't just jingle—it crashed, the metal clapper hitting the glass so hard it rattled the frame. Ashanti looked up, ready to greet the customer with the standard retail smile, and found herself staring at a mountain of green flesh and fury.
The woman filled the doorway. Her shoulders brushed both sides of the frame. Tusks curved up from her lower jaw, yellowed and chipped, and her arms—thick as Ashanti's thighs—were crossed over an impossible chest that strained against a worn flannel shirt. She wore jeans that had seen better decades and boots caked with something Ashanti chose not to identify.
Her face was a storm cloud. Her eyes, small and dark, scanned the pharmacy with the precision of a predator.
Gotherik's wife.
Ashanti recognized her from the photos on his desk—the ones he kept in a drawer, half-hidden under paperwork, as if he could hide his family from the part of his life that happened after hours. In those photos, she'd looked softer. Warmer. A bit rough around the edges, sure, but smiling, one arm around their kids.
This woman was not smiling.
"Where." The word came out like a punch. "He."
Ashanti slid the lollipop to the corner of her mouth, letting it rest against her cheek as she slowly rose to her feet. Dusting off her hands, she gestured vaguely toward the back of the store."Back office. Doing paperwork." She let the words hang, deliberately casual. "He said he'd be in there until closing."
The orc woman's eyes narrowed. She took a step forward, and the floorboards groaned beneath her weight. "You're the new girl."
"Ashanti." She offered a small, pleasant smile. "And you are?"
His wife's nostrils flared. She didn't answer. Instead, she turned and stalked toward the back office, her boots leaving scuff marks on the linoleum. The door—already flimsy—didn't survive her arrival. It slammed open hard enough to crack the drywall behind it.
"GOTHERIK!"
Ashanti winced, then turned back to her shelf. The lollipop rolled between her teeth.
A shouting match erupted from the back office. The walls were thin enough that she caught most of it—Gotherik's deep, rumbling voice trying to soothe, his wife's answering roar demanding explanations. Something about a text message. Something about a "friend" who'd seen his truck parked outside a motel.
Ashanti's hand paused over a box of ibuprofen. Interesting.
She filed that information away and kept stocking.
The customer who'd been wandering the aisles—a middle-aged man with a comb-over and a perpetual expression of mild confusion—approached the register, holding a bottle of antacid. He watched the back office with wide eyes.
"Is... everything okay?" he asked.
Ashanti straightened, brushed a strand of hair from her face, and offered him a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Just a domestic dispute, sir. Nothing to worry about. Would you like a bag for that?"
He blinked. "Uh... Yes, please."
She rang him up, sliding the antacid across the scanner with practiced ease. "That'll be six forty-nine."
He fumbled with his wallet, still glancing toward the back office, where the shouting had escalated to what sounded like furniture being thrown. The crash of a chair hitting the wall was unmistakable.
"Six forty-nine," Ashanti repeated patiently.
The man handed her a crumpled bill, grabbed his bag, and scurried out without another word. The bell above the door jingled a final, pathetic note.
Ashanti watched him go, then leaned against the counter, crossing her arms. The lollipop clicked against her teeth.
From the back office: "—YOU THINK I'M STUPID? YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'VE BEEN DOING?"
Gotherik's voice, a low rumble: "Hilda, please, let's just talk about this—"
"TALK? YOU WANT TO TALK NOW? AFTER I FOUND—"
The rest was swallowed by another crash.
Ashanti sighed. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, checking the time. Four hours until closing. She could probably manage to look busy for the rest of her shift, even if the pharmacy had just become the stage for a very public marital meltdown.
A few more customers trickled in. She served them with the same detached pleasantness, ringing up cold medicine and bandages and the occasional unlabeled bottle of "vitamin supplements" that some guy in a tracksuit insisted on buying at the exact same time every week.
Behind her, the back office had gone quiet.
That was somehow worse.
Ashanti pretended not to notice. Her hands moved through the motions—restocking, straightening, checking inventory—while her ears stayed attuned to any sound from the back. The silence stretched long enough that she started to wonder if Gotherik had actually managed to calm his wife down.
Then the door to the back office exploded outward, and Hilda emerged.
Her face was a mask of barely contained rage. Her tusks were wet—she'd been crying, or snarling, or both—and her hands were clenched into fists at her sides. She stormed through the aisles toward the front door, not even glancing at Ashanti.
The bell crashed again.
The door swung shut.
The pharmacy was quiet.
Ashanti exhaled slowly, her shoulders dropping. She rolled the lollipop to the other side of her mouth and waited.
She rolled the lollipop to the other side of her mouth and waited.
The silence stretched. It had a texture—thick and sticky like the spilled syrup at the diner earlier. Ashanti counted the seconds. Seven. Twelve. Twenty-two.
The door to the back office creaked open.
Gotherik emerged, and the air in the pharmacy changed. He'd looked rough before—hungover and rumpled from their morning encounter—but this was something else. His skin had taken on a dark, mottled green that his wife had left behind, the color of bruised leaves and swallowed screams. His tusks were bared slightly, not in a smile but in the kind of grimace that horses do before they bite.
He straightened his shirt, tugging at the collar with thick, calloused fingers. His hands were shaking, just barely. Ashanti noticed because she'd spent enough time watching those hands to know every tremor.
He ran a hand through his hair, flattening it down, then addressed her with a low growl. "Finish up and make sure the store is in order. I need to get a drink."
Ashanti nodded. She popped the lollipop out of her mouth, holding it between two fingers while she licked the sticky residue from her lips. A slow, deliberate motion.
"Am I staying late tonight?"
He grunted. Not a word. Not even a meaningful look. Just a sound that could have meant yes, no, or get out of my way before I put my fist through a wall. Then his boots hit the floor with a heavy rhythm, each step carrying him closer to the door.
The bell jingled as he shoved through it. It didn't crash this time. It just swung, back and forth, back and forth, with a tinny skittering that died as the door settled.
Ashanti stood alone in the empty pharmacy.
She turned the lollipop over in her fingers, staring at the glossy red surface, then shoved it back into her mouth with a sigh. The clock above the register read 4:47. Thirteen minutes until closing.She got to work.
The floor had to be swept. She found the broom in a narrow closet near the break room, a sad instrument of bent bristles and duct tape. The sweep of it against the linoleum was a rhythmic, hypnotic sound that filled the silence. She moved aisle by aisle, collecting dust and crumpled receipts and a single hair tie she'd lost three weeks ago.
The shelves needed straightening too. She worked with her hands, adjusting bottles and boxes so that the labels faced forward. It was mindless work. The kind of work you did when you didn't want to think about what had just happened.
Hilda's face. That snarl. The wetness on her tusks.
Gotherik's hands, shaking.
She paused, gripping a bottle of cough syrup so hard the plastic creaked. He'd been with her this morning. Inside her. And now his marriage was a smoldering wreck, the flames started by a text message or a motel sighting.
Ashanti set the bottle down. Pushed the thought away. It wasn't her business. It wasn't her problem.
She finished the shelves. She wiped down the counter. She counted the cash in the register—a hundred and twelve dollars, mostly twenties and ones, plus the six forty-nine from the antacid guy. She wrote it down in the logbook with a pen that kept running out of ink.
The clock hit 5:00.
She locked the front door. Flipped the sign to CLOSED. The lights buzzed overhead, fluorescent and unforgiving.
With the store empty and silent, the echoes of the shouting match lingered in the walls. She stood at the counter, hands flat on its surface, staring at her reflection in the dark glass of the cooler case.