Bones by the Wood by Catherine Johnson

she was surprised to find out that Elvis had been spreading himself around, but she wasn’t. 
     
    The thought of truly giving up any hope of finding someone, if only to share time with occasionally, filled her with a loneliness that spread an inky darkness over her soul, but the thought of being used and taken for granted over and over again depressed her much more.  Unfortunately, Thea had a bad feeling that Annelle had only been pretending to drop the subject of her romantic life.  Annelle wasn’t a meddler, she usually had more respect for a person’s boundaries, but Thea thought maybe she was motivated by the presence of new blood in town.  It didn’t matter, they were all the same, whether they wore MC patches or not, and Thea was tired of the whole goddamn game.
     
    ~o0o~
     
    It had been a shitty week anyway, and Annelle’s revelation that morning had only made it worse.  To cap everything off, Thea was working a double shift, and if that wasn’t bad enough, a thunderstorm blew up in the early evening.  It was a brief exhibition of thunder and lightening, but the heavy rain soaked the dirt, and she’d spent the rest of her shift mopping muddy footprints away in an effort to keep the crappy floor of the convenience store clean.
     
    It was getting close to closing time in the very early hours of the morning when three teenagers wandered in.  Thea’s nose told her as soon as they stepped in the doors that they were stoned, and she knew that meant she was in for a hell of a long wait while they sauntered up and down the aisles giggling at fuck all.  She bit back a stream of curses at the sight of all the mud that they’d tracked in.  Eventually, after the predictably long wait, they left, having bought armfuls of sugar-laden, munchie-busting junk. 
     
    Thea set to mopping away their dirty footprints.  It looked like they’d made a deliberate effort to get mud over every inch of the floor.  What they’d been looking at frozen chicken fillets for, Thea couldn’t imagine.  She followed the footprints past the section containing toilet paper with some trepidation, but it seemed that they’d only been intent on relieving the needs of their stomachs.
     
    She’d had to empty and refill the mop bucket twice to tackle all the mess.  As she swept the pine-scented water over the last muddy splotch, she looked up to check the clock over the doors to see if her shift was finally at its end, and that was when she saw the whole new set of dirty prints at the end of the aisle.  She slammed the mop back into the bucket, and used it to shove the bucket back down the aisle to the new patch of mess.  Doing so caused filthy water to slop over the sides of the bucket and she cursed again in frustration, having just made more work for herself.
     
    As soon as she reached them, Thea could tell for certain that these were new prints rather than ones that she’d missed.  They were bigger for a start, and the print was closer to a work boot than that of a sneaker.
     
    “Don’t folks wipe their fuckin’ feet anymore?  Ignorant bastards.”  She muttered loudly to herself, almost as mad that someone had come in without her noticing as at the mess.  She’d be lucky if the register hadn’t been emptied while she’d been playing Cinderella.  She took her frustrations out on the mess and swung the mop across the floor a little harder.
     
    “Sorry.”
     
    Thea looked up at the sound of the raspy voice at exactly the same time that she walked smack into Dizzy’s chest.
     
    “Shit.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean....”  Thea could feel her cheeks glowing bright red as she took a big step back.
     
    “S’okay.  I didn’t mean to make a mess of your floor.”  Dizzy hitched his thumb at the bald excuse for matting in front of the doors.  “But that shit’s worse than useless.”
     
    “Yeah.”  Thea sighed.  “You’re right.”  She took another step back and froze as Dizzy took a step