Relapse

Keith poured himself another cup of coffee, it was 4 in the morning. Outside he could see the outline of his dented car forming a shadow on the asphalt from the streetlight overhead. The streets were empty and no one had been in in over two hours. He walked out from behind the counter and out into the parking lot, lighting a cigarette, smoking by the front door. This was an awful shift. He came on at 11pm, when there was still a steady flow of customers buying beer, cigarettes, condoms. But after midnight it quieted down, and frequently he wouldn't see anyone between 1 and 6 in the morning, and Keith would listen to music, drinking coffee, reading this month's magazines under the convenience store's fluorescent lights. He poured out his coffee. This was nothing to stay awake for. He looked around at the place his insomnia called home, examined the magazines and cartons of cigarettes, the freezer of ice cream, the racks of stale snacks, the refrigerated aisle full of milk, water, soft drinks, beer. Beer.

He looked out at the parking lot, then up and down the street before pulling a tall bottle of Heineken out and opening it with a key from his pocket. He would crouch down, taking quick swigs from the bottle in case someone drove by. He reached behind the thin cardboard barrier and got a porn magazine out, leafing through it casually, sitting down on two stacked up plastic milk crates. He opened another tallboy, then another. He got up and locked the glass front door, turning off the outside sign. Putting his beer up on the counter, he pulled at a spool of lottery scratchers, scratching the rubbery grey surface off with an old coin, then detaching the card from the roll, putting the winning cards in a pile on the counter next to his beer, throwing the losing cards onto the floor.

The first customers started coming up a bit after 6:00 in the morning. Keith was still scratching, rolls of discarded tickets on the floor, a pile of 2 and 5 dollar winners next to 7 empty tallboys, the front door still locked, people knocking on the window beneath the pink early morning sky.