I should be sleeping, but I can't quiet my mind. All I can think about is the incident at Wendy's. Basically two grown ass adults tried to throw down with me cuz I told em to lay off an employee. They were cutting into her for asinine things (an order error and slow food prep I think?? I don't even know for sure) when it was a) her second day, b) very busy, c) an understaffed location (three or four people running the whole joint), and d) this chick was doing two people's jobs. Oh yeah, and I was just a patron. Never even been to this Wendy's before.
The first moron was some big boomer fart with a kid under 5, shouting and hollering and dropping swears all over despite the presence of the child in his custody. Apparently he tried to rattle me by calling me "brainy", but I legit didn't even know he'd done it til Kat was laughing about it later. Like what is this, you gonna call me four eyes and try to gimme a swirly too? You're spineless and clearly unaware of what decade this is. Laughable that you'd crumble so fast when a tiny little thing like me bares their teeth. It's easy to rip and roar at an employee in a metaphorical cage, but you can't handle yourself when someone else stands up to you. But it's not this one who gets me. It's the other one I can't shake from my mind.
A woman of average height and a penchant for pointing fingers. All I wanted was some spoons for the frosty, but there she was, getting up in the cashier's business and yelling about something I really couldn't even parse from the angry babble. She hadn't even been in the store when that first guy's thing was going down. What I intended to suggest to her was to calm down about her dumb sandwich and let this girl do her fucking job so the sandwich error could be corrected and we could all sit the fuck down and enjoy our meals and then go about our business. I didn't get more than two words in before she was physically up in my face, saying and spraying and waving her finger no more than an inch from my nose, telling me redundant angry statements. I couldn't look away from her upper lip. To say it was quivering with rage would be an understatement. It was more like twitching it was so violent. Thank God my time as a manager has hardened me to this bullshit, cuz I somehow didn't even flinch to the point where an older man in line gently suggested I back down since I wasn't getting anywhere. He looked very nervous. I stepped down. The woman then kept on her bullshit with the cashier and started taking pictures of the employees, even going so far as to harass the manager, who said he was gonna have to call the cops if she didn't calm down. We left. But still her stupid face haunts me.
There was something almost erotic about watching her lip twitch, like watching a hungry tiger up close. It must've been the adrenaline. But now when I close my eyes to sleep, it's all I see. That stupid lip. That and a playback of other alternate encounters where I was less pleasant; where I told her not to spit on me again; where I told her she better move that fucking finger and then bit her hand when she inevitably refused; where she hit me when I turned to look at that worried old man in line and I retaliated with a solid hit from a pair of those kitty self defense knuckles that I don't actually own; where I draw blood from about her throat and it feels so good. The escalating power fantasies are the reopening of wounds I'd done so much to accept and heal, and everything is so raw. For a moment I thought I saw the monster inside me again, awakened with bloodlust. But I have to tell myself there is no monster, no wolf within. There is only a dog who momentarily remembered.