Tammy’s stomach churned and a sickening, green stench rose up through her blouse in a hot cloud, burning her nose. She was sure she’d throw up soon, or her abdomen would rupture, turning her into a human-sized stink bomb of sick filth and nervous gas. She looked at her manager with pleading eyes.
“You can’t be serious,” the manager hissed. Her eyes darted nervously to the crowded bank lobby, a dense line of impatient customers snaking all the way to the double glass doors leading outside. “You’re done with training, you don’t get a scheduled lunch hour anymore. Get back to your station and we’ll work lunches out once the line dies down.”
Tammy breathed heavily through her nostrils and bit her lower lip. She shook her head. “I’m really sorry,” she said, “but I need to take my lunch right now. It’s… it’s… an emergency.”
The manager’s left eyebrow twitched and she squinted at Tammy. “An emergency?” she repeated. “What kind of emergency?”
Tammy’s knees felt weak. She’d have to find a different job, and soon. This clearly wasn’t going to work out, but she couldn’t afford to quit right away. “I, uh…” She desperately wanted to explain the truth, but it was forbidden. Besides, nobody would believe it. Tammy shifted from side to side and took a deep, gasping breath. “It’s…” Why couldn’t she think of anything to say? She glanced over her manager’s shoulder at the clock on the wall. Eleven fifty two. The appointment was at noon sharp, and it would take nearly ten minutes to get there. “I’m late for an appointment,” she said.
“And it’s an emergency? What kind of emergency?”
An apocalyptic emergency, she wanted to say. No, she wanted to scream it, to flail her arms out and spray her manager’s face with feral, foaming spittle. Instead she doubled over, her wrenching gut begging for the conversation to end. Tammy turned her head and looked at the swarm of customers. The merchant teller had his own line of business owners and trusted bank runners on high alert clutching fat canvas bags. One of the service bankers was wandering around the lobby asking if they could help anyone perform their transaction at the ATM. The hum of low satisfaction ratings barely rose above the excited complaints and cursings of a woman refusing to show ID at a nearby teller window.
None of it mattered, not if Tammy missed her lunch appointment.
The manager groaned and slid off her stool by the computer where she had been monitoring the teller line. “Fine, just go,” she murmured, shuffling toward the cash box vault. “I’ll open a window to cover you. Just… be quick,” she added. “We’ll talk more about this later.”
“Thank you!” Tammy dashed to the break room where her purse was hanging on a hook behind the door and burst out through the security door connecting the teller line to the lobby. Angry customers turned their heads to follow her as she flew by, her long black hair trailing like a cape. She heard someone begin to complain loudly, but she was already out the door in the heat of high noon.
She didn’t check the time. She rushed across the packed parking lot, furiously tapping the unlock button on her car’s key fob. In bad traffic the cafe was about fifteen minutes away. She guessed she had less than five minutes to get there. Getting pulled over would mean the end of the world. Getting stuck in traffic would usher in the apocalypse. An accident could end billions of lives.
Tammy needed a miracle.
She threw the car in gear and tore out of the parking lot onto the street. Her ancient maroon Toyota Camry grumbled but still managed to press her into the back of her seat as the nose pitched up and the rear suspension groaned. The engine growled as she continued to build speed. It was, thankfully, mostly a straight shot. The ten to fifteen minute trip mostly came down to four traffic lights and how many other cars she had to contend with.
The light directly ahead turned yellow. Tammy held the accelerator down with determination and watched the light turn red directly overhead as she flew through the intersection. Her heart was pounding. Her breaths were heavy and thick in her throat. There was a thumping in her brain that almost outpaced the pistons firing in the overworked engine.
She changed lanes to avoid a line of cars waiting to get into a popular left turn lane. She swerved back into the left lane once she was through the next light. Someone pulling out onto the street slammed on their brakes and honked, shaking a fist at her through his open window.
Two more major intersections to go. The city around her was a blur of grey and brown smears at the edges of her vision. Directly ahead she saw a row of red lights. Her heart sank and she tentatively lifted her foot off the pedal. Her eyes darted around the intersection, watching for movement. Could she run it? Would she make it through? There was a single car waiting at the light in the other lane. She had a clear shot…
The light turned green. She floored the gas again and caught a brief sensation of weightlessness as the gentle undulations of the intersection sent the body of the car on a roughly parabolic trajectory on its suspension. She listened for sirens, but couldn’t hear anything. Even the roar of her engine had faded.
The final intersection was still in miniature, close to the horizon. If the world knew what was good for it, nobody would get in her way. She needed a siren of her own, a way to let people know not to mess with her, not to delay her arrival at the little cafe next to her favorite musty bookstore.
A lone pickup truck puttered along in the right lane up ahead. Without signalling and at the last minute, it began to drift into Tammy’s lane. She slammed on the brakes and swerved into the right lane. Her tires screamed and the rear of the vehicle didn’t get the memo to go right. The car’s trunk swung around in a smoky cloud. Tammy wrestled with the steering wheel but nothing she did had any affect. The car twisted and squealed all on its own until it rocked to a violent, explosive halt.
Tammy’s back was drenched in cold sweat. She glanced around inside the car and caught a passing glimpse of her white knuckles clutching the useless steering wheel. The stench of burnt rubber filled her nostrils and made her eyes water. She looked straight ahead, but the view was all wrong. She saw a sidewalk on her left but it was running across her view at a sharp, awkward diagonal. Her eye followed it and found the road to the right. There were cars, but something wasn’t right about them. They weren’t getting smaller, they were coming nearer, growing larger. She saw their empty headlights, the sun glinting off their windshields.
Her heart froze. She was facing the wrong way. Her front driver’s side tire was against the sidewalk. The other cars would arrive soon.
Quickly she cranked the wheel to the right and put gentle pressure on the gas. The nose of the car began to swing around, but something was still off. There was a low, muffled rumbling sound and she felt too close to the ground. Metal scraped on the pavement and her stomach sank. There was a serious problem with the nearest tire, but she didn’t have time for it. She held the tight turn, ignoring the grinding, thumping sounds, and floored the gas once she was looking down the road the right way.
The flapping, bouncing tire protested violently while she pushed the car faster and faster. Eventually there was a powerful jolt that yanked at the steering wheel and jostled the whole car. Afterwards she heard nothing but screeching from the low corner of the car as she pressed on, hardly noticing the shower of sparks out her side window.
She tore through one final, blessed green light, then she saw the entrance to her destination’s parking lot off to the left. She coerced the car into the center turn lane and flew through the turn. The front end of the car slammed into the ramp into the lot with a loud, scraping thunk. Steam was hissing out from under the hood as she screeched to a halt almost in a parking spot and yanked the key from the ignition.
The car sighed with defeated relief as she slammed the door and ran toward the entrance to the cafe without looking back. She was dripping with sweat, gasping for air. She wiped her stinging eyes with the back of her hand as she stumbled through the cafe’s front door.
There He was, sitting calmly at their usual table. He was upright but relaxed with a peaceful smile on his jovial face. His glossy brown hair always looked exactly the same, never longer or shorter, every hair in its precise place. He always wore a simple dark suit over a white shirt with a golden tie. He never carried anything with Him. He sat at the table casually taking in the sights of the cafe, smiling congenially at the staff as they moved about, keeping His hands folded in his lap.
Tammy fell toward the table and collapsed into the seat across from Him. Her soaked blouse was cold against her back. Her drenched bangs were plastered to her forehead, sticky and stiff. Now that she could breathe, her fingers trembled and vibrated and a sharp pain pressed into the sides of her brain.
“I thought you might be late today,” The Man said kindly. He smiled at her with warmth and familiarity.
“I made it on time?” she asked weakly.
The Man shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”
Tammy stared at Him, her eyes bulging slightly at the absurdity of His demeanor.
“How’s the new job working out?” He asked.
She sighed. “It’s not,” she said. She collapsed further into the chair and crossed her arms. “I need to find something else.”
“Maybe,” He mused with another, smaller shrug.
Tammy gawked. “How can you…” she began, but she couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
He smiled and His eyes twinkled. “Let’s get down to business then,” He said. He leaned forward onto His elbows and took a quick breath. “What do you say? Do we keep going?”
Tammy took a deep breath. Her heart was still racing. She thought of her incredulous boss, the dirty looks from the customers, the entitled woman refusing to show ID… It was so hard to look past all the bad. She sighed, and tears welled up in her eyes. “Maybe not,” she said, choking on the words.
The Man’s eyebrows lifted and He turned His head a little. “So there are no good people left to save? Is it the end then?”
She thought of her own reckless driving, the accidents she narrowly avoided. She could have killed someone. She brought her hands to her face and tried to hold back her sobs.
Several minutes passed. The Man said nothing. Tammy cried. Her mind raced.
After a long while had expired Tammy pulled a napkin from the crusty chrome dispenser at the table and wiped her face, sniffling.
“One more day,” she choked.
The Man leaned forward and clasped His hands together. “Alright, I will spare them one more day, for your sake.” He stood. “Let’s go install your spare tire so you can get back to work.”
Tammy looked up at Him with red, burning eyes. “I’m probably going to get fired,” she said, half laughing. “I don’t think I need to go back.”
The Man shrugged. “You’ll still need to change your tire. Come on.”
Tammy drove back to work, partly on autopilot and mostly because it didn’t feel right not to go back. She cursed her sense of duty.
When she walked into the lobby she found that the bank was quiet and a couple of the other tellers were missing from the long line of windows that had all been occupied before.
“Tammy, can we have a word in the back?” Her manager sounded stern and Tammy’s stomach twisted into a knot. The manager stooped to lock her cash box.
Tammy quickly punched in the code for the locked “Employees Only” door and slipped into the back room. She hung her purse on the hook behind the door and her shoulders slumped as her manager entered the room.
“I’m sorry,” Tammy blurted. “I’ll look for a new job. I…”
“What?” the manager gasped. “No! Please don’t do that. I like you, and I hope you’ll stay. I wanted to apologize for being so hard on you. I was stressed and didn’t handle it well. You made it clear in your interview that you needed to take lunch at 11:30 sharp every day, and I didn’t honor that. I’m sorry.”
Tammy’s mouth hung slightly open and she stared at the manager until tears began dancing in her eyes again.
Tomorrow, she knew, it would be a lot easier to tell The Man to stay his hand another day.
This story is based on a prompt from Reedsy Prompts. Specifically, this prompt:
View my contest entry [here].
Mermaid Pirate Dispatch 
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