Bailey Farren felt his life slipping away. Working nights at a convenience store robbed the light from his days and stacked huge slabs of time together until whole years slipped by unnoticed.

Bailey had worked this dead end job for two years and was used to the monotonous routine, but tonight there was something different - a regular customer, a transient night stalker, was sleeping under a shelf. Like a final, pulsing flourish to the chip display, she lay curled in a ball, her dirty toes protruding from her worn flannel nightshirt. She looked innocent. The flannel stretched and disfigured from holding her knees within to give warmth. Her dark hair falling to her shoulders, the oiliness of neglect binding strands together.

"Excuse me," Bailey said softly.

The woman didn’t move.

"You can’t sleep here." Bailey leant down and gently rocked the woman’s shoulder. She woke with a look of terror in her eyes, trying to place where she was.

"You can’t sleep here. Not inside the store.”

The woman nodded as if she understood - she didn’t. She said nothing as she got to her feet, walked down the aisle, out the doors and into the dark car park before disappearing into the distance. Bailey stood watching as the night swallowed her scuttle down the street.

The next time Bailey saw her was two nights later. She arrived with flowers picked from a neighbour’s garden. She placed them on the counter.

"For you,” she said with a smile.

Bailey didn’t know how to take the gesture. The woman giggled and left the store. She became a regular visitor after that. Once or twice each week she’d arrive, take some straws, sugar sachets and other free items, then leave. Sometimes she’d bring a gift: an old newspaper, a treasure masquerading as junk or something more significant, like a hand-made card that said hello in a more eloquent way than she ever could. One night, almost unnoticed, she began calling Bailey by name. He asked her name.

"Kylie," she said with growing confidence.

Bailey suspected she had a crush on him. She didn’t.

One night Kylie arrived at three, looking shaken. She wore her usual flannel nightshirt with bare feet. She had blue markings on each temple, the result of shock treatment delivered by a well-known hospice she called home; a halfway house for Kylie’s mind to catch up with the rest of the world. She began with small talk and slowly crept towards her treatment at the hands of one of the male nurses watching over her.

“He fucked me. I told him not to, but he doesn’t listen.”

Bailey stopped stocking cigarettes and looked to Kylie with concern.

“He raped you?”

“They control you. I have to sign a paper that says they get to do what they want.”

“Not rape. You have to report it to police.”

“They’d get mad at me, and I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Bailey wanted to help, but he wasn’t sure how. He gave Kylie a coffee, a free doughnut and set up a milk crate for her to sit.

“I’ll go with you if you want?”

“It’s okay,” she said.

Kylie never raised the subject again. By the time the sun came up, Bailey had put the story down to a cry for attention that Kylie had backed away from when he offered to help. But the night marked the start of a genuine friendship brought on by the boredom of night shift and a recovering drug addict’s insomnia.

One night a young woman entered the store. Bailey didn’t notice. To him she was just another in a long line of vacant faces, wandering the aisles, chasing a fix for a late night craving. Kylie spotted her glancing at Bailey. The woman scanned the shelves: the chocolates, the biscuits, the batteries, but always she came back for a sly glance to the front of the store. At first, Kylie thought she was a thief, checking to see who was watching. But she never took a thing.

"She’s pretty?" Kylie whispered.

Bailey stopped stacking shelves and looked. The woman was beautiful, and she moved to the counter the moment Bailey looked her way. She stopped at the doughnut display, gazing at them as if she could make one levitate.

"Are these fresh?" She asked.

"Yes," Bailey said.

"They’re yesterday’s," Kylie added. "He’s got the fresh ones out back.”

Bailey looked to Kylie dumbfounded. Kylie laughed and released some red slushie into her coffee. She showed no sign of regret over her betrayal. "Could I have a fresh one?” The woman asked in a flirting tone. Bailey went to get a fresh doughnut.

The moment the woman left the store Bailey turned on Kylie.

"She was off her nut! Do you think she cares if the doughnuts are fresh or not?”

“She liked you, idiot. She kept looking to see if you were looking." Kylie let go a giggle as Bailey’s annoyed expression left him. He replayed the last few minutes in his head and realised Kylie was right. He mentally kicked himself for missing the signs.

Next Chapter: Nocturnal Clubbing