3rd Shift

Chapter 2 - Catching Up

The quiet drone of vibration against his chest broke the vampire from his sleep. Instinctively, Finley lifted a hand and set it on the source of the disruption, causing a 'murr' of surprise from the creature on top of him. As his eyes slowly flickered open, he couldn't help the smile from spreading across his face when the first thing he saw was the little black fluff resting on top of him.

"Why do I ever go out?" Finley whispered his question to the purring creature stretching out to receive more scratches. "I have lived for almost two hundred years, and yet this is the most relaxing state of being I can think of."

Despite his outspoken views on simply resting with his cat, the vampire reached over to pull his phone off of its charger to see what he had missed during the daytime hours of his slumber.

Twenty missed calls.

Eleven voicemails.

Seven text messages.

And an unnecessary amount of notifications from social media and pointless phone apps.

Finley let out a long sigh as he began to sit up, forcing the cat out of its peace as well. He frowned at the screen full of notifications, swiping them away in order of least amount of importance to the most, leaving only the voice mails and texts still visible as a reminder to check.

It had only been thirty-seven hours since he had quit, and it seemed as though they were desperate to get him back.

Three of the missed calls had been from More For Less, the store itself, while the remainder were sent by Gray Wilson, his only friend.

As Finley stared at the notification for the missed calls, he ran a hand through his messy bed hair that had already been standing in every direction. He held his breath for just a moment as the thumb hovering over the phone in his other hand lightly tapped on the voicemails to go ahead and get them out of the way.

"Hey, Finley! It's Maria. I just wanted to check in with you now that you should've gotten some rest. We can still continue our conversation from this morning if you change your mind. I'm still willing to work something out with you if we can come to an agreement. Call me back whenever you can. Thanks, bye!"

The vampire immediately deleted the message. He had made up his mind, and going back was not an option.

"Fin. What the hell, man!"

The voice obviously belonged to Gray - agitated, cold, and distant. Typical of them.

"How are you just gonna leave me like that? I thought we talked about this. Yeah, it sucks here, but we promised not to make any sudden and obviously stupid decisions!"

Finley rolled his eyes as he deleted that voicemail as well. He began to push himself off the bed to feed the cat while his friend's voice came clearly through with the remaining messages.

"I'm not hanging these tags tonight. I'd better see you in here at 9pm like usual."

"Okay, Gray. If you say so," he laughed to himself, the dry food hitting the metal bowl filling the silence as he deleted yet another voicemail.

"Seriously, dude? It's midnight. Why aren't you here. I know you didn't quit for real. Don't play with my emotions like this!"

Finley shook his head as he erased the remaining messages. There came a point when they just sounded pleading and pathetic, obvious as to how Gray was taking the sudden situation. Of course, he did feel bad for his friend having to take up the extra workload but quitting that job was far overdue.

"They'll get over it. That's the thing about those types of jobs - everyone is expendable," Finley explained to Soot as the cat hungrily devoured the food now in the bowl. "I suppose I could call them back, though, and explain what happened. After all, I know for sure that I won't be able to hide from them forever. We were planning to get everyone together this weekend."