In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes – Benjamin Franklin

  “Order up!”

  I tucked my notepad back into my apron pocket and hurried over to the window, grabbing a far-too-hot plate of a Breakfast Breakdown and hurrying to deliver it to its destination with a smile. It was unusually busy at the little twenty-four-hour diner that I worked at, but I supposed that was because we were one of the last places still open. Ever since monster encounters had become more common, fewer and fewer places were willing to still operate during the prime time for creatures going bump in the middle of the night.

  With the food sitting in front of the tired trucker who had ordered it, I hurried over to another table that had arrived, an exhausted couple that looked like they had gotten into a fight shortly before they’d entered the building.

  “Hello y’all, I’m Bridges, and I’m going to—”

  “Bridgette?” the woman asked with echoes of bitterness still very evident in her voice.

  I wasn’t really a fan of being interrupted, but I understood that it was part of working in one of the few safe public places that people could go after midnight. It was all about meeting people where they were at.

  “Ah, no. Bridges, actually!”

  “What kind of name is Bridges?”

  Okay, maybe they had gotten into a couple of fights then. But I wasn’t about to let their tension become mine, so I just smiled a bit harder.

  “My kinda name, I’m afraid. Now I’d love to tell y’all about the specials!”

  The woman looked as if she very much had an opinion on that plan, but the man with her let out a long sigh, and thankfully, she let me move along with my job.

  I wasn’t worried about her prickly nature, however. I’d long since found that there was a lot that could be eased by a hot meal and a smile, so hopefully, she would be in a better mood once the check came. Even if not, her hubby seemed like the type to leave a good tip.

  Which was definitely needed. Despite living largely on ramen and rice, I was still a bit short of my internet and phone bill that were due in just a week. It would have been nice if the diners offered a shift meal, considering how much I was on my feet there, but no, it was a 50 percent discount up to eight dollars, which meant no protein for me unless a few generous people came in.

  I used to be able to get by with eggs, but ever since a blight wiped out most of the hatcheries in both the United States and the EU, the prices had skyrocketed, and they never came back down. I didn’t really understand how there was still a shortage three years later. How long could it possibly take to hatch chicks? But I figured it just came to farm stuff that I didn’t understand, and in the meantime, didn’t eat eggs except on special occasions.

  “Got a fry platter and a double cheeseburg, all the fixings,” I called to the back while hanging my ticket in the window. My last waitressing job had everything automated with electronic POS systems, but that restaurant had gone out of business when the whole calamity thing was going on. And sure, while the day had been saved, there was still plenty of evidence of it lying around.

  “Yeah, yeah, workin’ on it,” groused one of the line cooks in the back. As usual, he was either hung over, currently inebriated, or somehow both. I didn’t care what people did in their free time. I just hated when some of the kitchen staff showed up to work and decided to make their choices my problem. Still, most of the folk I worked with wanted to just get in, do their jobs, and get out. We all had bills and were barely surviving.

  It was funny. Money was supposed to be less of an issue after the apocalypse when the gods took over and implemented their System. Lots of speeches and promises about sponsoring humanity into prosperity, but I wasn’t feeling particularly prosperous as I rushed to grab a coffee pot and refill every empty mug in the place for my equally overworked patrons.

  Granted, maybe that was because I wasn’t pledged to any of the gods in the pantheon. I couldn’t even say the last time I’d gone to a temple, and when I passed their events, I made sure to give them an extra wide berth.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like the gods or thought they were evil—goodness knew that I’d read enough insane conspiracy theories online. It was just that, well, I was pretty reticent to swear fealty to any of them. Worship was supposed to be worship, or at least that was how I felt, and this new System seemed so . . . so . . .

  Transactional.

  Either the gods wanted to bring prosperity, or they didn’t. What did me praying to them affect? And if they really were these all-powerful beings, why did they allow such awful things to happen? Things that they very much had the power to stop.

  Like my mother dying.

  I understood the whole free will thing they espoused, so it made sense there were some events that had to take their course, but what did free will have to do with cancer ravishing someone’s body? Why couldn’t any of them just reach into her brain, her lymph nodes, or even her lungs and just take it all away? Or use one of those fancy healing spells that could literally regrow an arm that had been bitten off by a monster?

  And even if somehow her death was meant to be, couldn’t they have made it painless? Why did she have to waste away into nothing but a skeleton?

  “. . . er, please?”

  I jerked myself back to reality and realized that one of the diner’s customers was looking at me with a bit of concern.

  “Sorry there, sweetheart,” I said, leaning into the easy-going drawl I’d always had. I never actually lived in the South, but I picked it up from the nice ol’ granny who ran a daycare out of her apartment that I went to from age two to kindergarten. “’Fraid I drifted. What was that?”

  “May I have some more creamer, please? The bowl is out.”

  “Sure! I’ll have that out for you in a jiffy!”

  Taking the empty bowl, I hurried off to do just that. Sure, maybe my job didn’t pay the best, and maybe tips had been much skimpier than usual lately, but I still enjoyed helping people. The world was a confusing place at the moment, and I figured every drop of niceness mattered.

  *

  Goodness gracious on a duck’s back with a quack attack, my feet huuurt by the end of my shift. One would think after being a waitress for multiple years and always working menial jobs that I would be used to it, and yet at the end of the shift, my feet always ached, and my soles always burned.

  Occasionally, I would dream of getting some of those really fancy orthopedic shoes with cushioning specifically for those on their feet all day, but they were so far out of my budget, it was unlikely they would ever be anything but a dream.

  At least I could take comfort in the fact that there was only one more shift before I would actually have the weekend off. That was pretty rare without me specifically begging for time off at my jobs, but somehow, the multiverse had aligned to give me both Saturday and Sunday off. Who knew, maybe the gods were on my side after all. Honestly, it would have been one of their better recruitment strategies.

  “Good morning y’all!” I bid the remaining patrons goodbye with my own little, tiny half-joke since it was somewhere around four a.m. Just early enough for sunrise to come after I arrived home, but plenty late enough for me to feel a bit more like death than I would prefer.

  All I got was grunts in response, but that was par for the course. Throwing on my reflective vest, I went out back to the bike rack I’d chained my ride to.

  Thankfully, after several years on the grind, I was pretty used to being short on sleep. Did I enjoy it? No. But I did enjoy having my own apartment and the ability to eat, so I did what I had to.

  Who says you need to subscribe to the new god’s System to survive?

  At least my ride back home wasn’t too difficult. There was only one hill, and it was a small one. Other than that, it was fairly smooth sailing. A few more stoplights than I would prefer, but it was late enough that I usually just blew through them on empty roads. Because the one thing I really hated was just sitting alone in the dark waiting for the traffic lights to turn green. It just made me feel so . . . vulnerable.

  I didn’t like to think that I was paranoid. In fact, I considered myself a rather optimistic gal, but there were some things that I needed to be practical about. Such as there were certain dangers involved with traveling around on my own as a nineteen-year-old, nonaffiliated female. It was better to watch out for them and experience nothing than be caught by surprise by any of the many threats that inhabited our world.

  Eventually, I did get home safely, and I rolled my bike into the hallway that led to my apartment, then fought with it to get it through my door. It was always a struggle, but I wasn’t willing to risk someone jacking it by leaving it outside. Chaining my bike out front wasn’t exactly foolproof security. I’d come out of my apartment more than once and seen other people’s bikes lying on the ground with their wheels and handlebars all stolen.

  Once everything was arranged, I peeled myself out of my uniform, took a quick shower, and finally got to enjoy a little me time before getting some sleep so I could power through my last two shifts then have an entire weekend to myself. Sure, I had back-to-back shifts with my barista job and then a closing shift at the diner, with barely enough time between to do my makeup and hair for the diner and eat some food, but after that was my glorious weekend off.

  At least I didn’t have all three of my jobs on the same day. I did my best to make sure there were no triple overlaps, but every now and then, they struck. And every time, I would always convince myself that it wasn’t that bad, and I needed the money.

  It always was that bad though.

  Ruminating over the stresses of juggling three jobs would just ruin the time I did have off, though, so I ignored it and sat down at my sewing machine. After all, I had a dress that needed a hem, and the garment certainly wouldn’t sew itself.

  “It’s not always going to be like this,” I assured myself. “It’s gonna get better.”

  Strangely enough, that was the same thing I’d been telling myself since my mother died.