I pulled my eyes open, as if stretched by speculum to prepare myself for brainwashing or torture, and promptly shut them again when met with the sun's intrusive brilliance that leaked through my blinders.

'Ugh... where's the dimmer switch...' I moaned, my mind finally registering the annoyingly shrill alarm my brain had learned to tune out. But now it drilled into my skull. As designed, but still. I needed to kill the noise before it killed me.

In one swift, decisive motion, I rolled out of bed onto the floor, tapping the "stop" on the screen during the tumble. Thump.

I laid there for a minute or two before I remembered the reason I'd been bothered to interrupt my own slumber. The floor was comfortable in the short term, but in the long term, financial stability might prove more comfortable. Might.

I peeled myself off the rough carpet and flung myself to my feet, like a balloon after being smacked to the ground.

I slipped out of my pajamas and into my most presentable set of clothes: a white dress shirt, a deep green clip-on tie, a black skirt that seemed to end at my ankles, and a blazer whose color resembled a heated blanket. I then set out for the bathroom.

And there I stood in all my disheveled glory. Hair so thin, wiry and ambiguously brownish blonde I looked like I had gotten my head shaved, glued, and stuck to a tumbleweed.

No matter the shampoo and conditioner I combined like a witch before her cauldron, the mat of hair that rested on my head and shoulders couldn't be tamed by mere brush alone.

As I gazed into the bathroom mirror, I noted that while my dark eyes were shaped like melting semicircles, they always had a little glimmer of life to them.

I guess that was a good sign, as otherwise my pale skin might suggest otherwise. My round, puttylike cheeks might even be mistakeable for postmortem bloating.

Once I was done overlooking my lackluster image, I brushed my teeth, applied some makeup to mask my pallid flesh, meticulously picked the sleep from my eyes, and sprinted to the kitchen and out the door with a piece of unbuttered toast in my mouth.

● ● ●

Shit. I must've bit my tongue while nodding off. I slid my tongue out of my mouth and started massaging it, wary of not drawing any attention.

Luckily, there seemed to be only like five others on the bus. From the looks of it, a mother and her kid, a maybe-homeless guy, an old lady, and an elderly, ambiguously-Asian man who was talking the bus driver's ear off.

Sandman was a sleepy city, so the ensemble of passengers didn't really surprise me. Also, the average businessman typically wasn't 15 minutes late on a Monday, so the fact that I was the only worker here... it was typical.

I allowed my eyes to flutter closed again, and let the bus ferry me to my destination, while my mind was ferried to the realm of incomprehensible unconscious daydreaming.

● ● ●

After stepping off the bus and escaping the dull, damp atmosphere that was Sandman in the late morning, I promptly made my way to the address outlined on the referral form.

21 Mongoose Lane. 21 Mongoose Lane. Ok, got it.

After around maybe five to six minutes, and nearly walking in front of a car, I found the address.

Before looking up at the building, I promptly checked my phone to gauge how screwed I was. Guess I'd overestimated the bus drive. Only seventeen minutes late and counting. Great. A new record, even.

I glanced at the building. Huh. It looked... decent? Almost like a defunded and repurposed police station, with purple trimmings and a dark grey concrete exterior.

Quaint, but a little surreal and imposing against the mundane, washed backdrop of Sandman. Like Daigon Alley, or something.

Where you'd usually see the police station's signage, there stood large, steel lettering, reading "PARALA." So, it really didn't stand for anything, huh?

I realized I'd been standing here for longer than I'd wanted to, wide awake at that.

Maybe I was rattled at the sight of a police station first day on the job. But I'd push through. For the money.

Hesitantly, I pushed through the revolving door and into the reception area.

Nice. My old place didn't have one of those. Even if it was a little disorienting, I appreciated the flair.

The receptionist, a strung-out looking Korean lady with a black bob-cut and glasses that didn't quite fit her face, glanced up from her desk as I entered.

'Ephialtes, I presume.'

'Just Ethel's fine. I'm here for... um... orientation.'

'Right through that door, take a right and head up the stairs.'

'Um... thanks, Miss.'

● ● ●

As I dragged my feet across the hallway on the second floor, I noted the rows of equipment lockers as I approached the wide-windowed room at the end of the hall.

Wow. They really were desperate. There it was. A locker with "Ephialtes" cleanly pasted on it, likely with a label maker.

The locker was low, I was short. It was much appreciated.

As I readied myself to lift off the ground, my eyes were suddenly drawn to a peculiar set of crimson, bedazzled heels that stood across from me.

I felt like a noir protagonist as my inner monologue shifted with my eyes as they climbed from her heels to her ankles, and kept going. This dame had legs for days.

'Son of a gun...' I murmured, finally pulling the mystery lady's upper half into view.

While I'd tried to look presentable for work, this lady looked presentational – possibly for a different line of work, though.

Leather jacket, a short, studded leather skirt, snakebite lip piercings, and jet, crazy hair somehow wrangled and wound into a scorpion tail that ran down her back.

And it barely ended there, she had eyes like a predator – I could've sworn her pupils were slits – elegant, almost elven features, and glossy, gothic, yet glittery makeup that would give a drag queen a run for their money.

I'd never wanted a stranger to give me a hickey so badly.

And now, as she smiled at my dumfounded expression, she poked out her split tongue - and I probably looked even stupider, because she started to cackle.

I say cackle, but contrast to her looks, she laughed like a 17th-century aristocrat.

'Hehe, what a cutie~' she purred, and I could feel my ears growing hotter.

'Uh... I'm-'

'Ephialtes~ cute name for a cute face. I'm Lilith, but my friends call me Lilly~ Ugh... it's been so lonely, I'm so happy to get another girl who isn't tired of my... advances~'

If this girl wasn't overwhelmingly... what's the word... smoking, I would've been annoyed at the use of my given name. But as is, she'd lured me in with her siren's cackle.

'Just- just Ethel's fine...' I stuttered, watching as her modified tongue danced while she spoke.

'Ethel~ even cuter...' she continued impishly, her voice trailing off into a whisper. I was so glad I wasn't born a man.

Suddenly, a gravelly, flat male voice boomed from the room at the end of the hall. His voice carried a tone of playful routine.

'Lilly, stop sexually harassing the new hire!'

'Aww~ you're no fun,' Lilly pouted, her heels taking her back to the room, leaving almost musical clicking and clacking in their wake.

● ● ●

With that little... introduction... out of the way, I followed the long legs to the source of the man's voice.

As I stumbled into the... relatively small... open-plan office? I noted several occupied cubicles arranged along either side of a long central desk as I did a onceover of the office.

And by the entrance, the sight almost made me trip backwards into the hallway. Sitting on a leather swivel chair by the door at a much smaller desk sat the maybe-homeless man I'd seen on the bus that morning.

'H-how...' I stammered in a daze, only to be immediately answered by the shotty-stubbled man with a mess of curly blonde hair that threatened to rival even my own mop. He looked like if Kurt Cobain had missed the shot and moved on to harder drugs.

'You walk slow.'

'I almost got run over.'

'Tough shit, kid. I almost got run over too, but I bet yours wasn't even trying.'

'Um...' I had no idea how to answer that, so I quickly tried to come up with a change of topic. But before I could try, the gravelly voice interrupted my silence.

'If anything, getting run down by a car should give you a boost of speed. Like tying fresh steaks to yourself and running down the street to get stray dogs to chase you! Great exercise.'

I'd decided then and there that this man was insane. And because that was how the world worked, I now knew with one hundred percent certainty that he was the one in charge around here.

'... You must be...' I started, using a tenth of a second to glance down at his nametag, 'Bret. I'm the new hire, the one who didn't need to apply.'

'You and everyone else, shortcake. You're here because you're another lady of the night – not in that way (I mean, maybe Lilly) – who's been confined by the oppressive rule of the day-walkers for far too long,' And thus begun Bret's tangent, his passion only growing by the second as he raised his fist with a zeal I had thought only possible for a specific brand of WW2 soldiers.

'D-day-walkers... like Blade? Does that make us vampires?' I asked, still overwhelmed by the ambiguously-homeless man's fiery fervor.

'Who? What? No, my dear new hire, you see, they are the vampires- sucking the life out of those who truly live it!'

'They?' I queried, shook by the sudden volume. Please don't be antisemitic please don't be antisemitic please don't-

'The white man! C'mon, catch up, Ethel!'

I breathed a sigh of relief, disregarding the fact that this was one of the whitest men I'd ever seen, then started to ask the question that'd been on my mind since I stepped in. 'How did you guys all know my... my... name?'

'Your caseworker recommended you, obviously. Why else do you think, what're you dense? Think you're a ghost of the system or some shit, Ethereum? Jeez, I hope to God you wake up at night,' he berated me, clutching the bridge of his nose between his fingers – and yes, maybe he had a point, regardless of getting my name wrong.

Ephialtes was my legal name, and the caseworker probably knew I was too lazy to contact the agency. Maybe I was dense. A tad.

'Anyways, you should probably get acquainted with the girls. Who knows who your partner will be on your first deet,' Bret suggested, swiveling in his chair and flinging his feet onto his desk.

'"Deet?"'

'Security detail... I'm not that out of touch, am I?'

'Wait, girls—plural?'

'Yeah, what about it? 'Ladies of the night,' remember?'

After he (rightfully) belittled me again, I decided to actually take a look at the cubicles' occupants, and I felt the world begin the churn around me.

Girls. Girls. Girls. I felt like I had left the Pacific Northwest and stepped onto the mythic island of Lesbos.

At that moment, looking as if I'd seen a red apple in a black-and-white world, I suddenly felt a prick in the core of my left cheek.

'Woah... it's like quicksand. Fabulous!'

I'd been caught so off-guard I nearly squealed, but seeing Lilith looming over me, I promptly adjusted my clip-on tie and shot her a half-hearted death glare.

I swear I heard a small "pop" as I pulled away from her finger, cutting it off from my cheek's blackhole-like suction. I begrudgingly made my way over to an empty cubicle by the wide-paned window.