Note: This story deals with the subject of suicide and discussions about it.

"People find it difficult to let go of their pain. They prefer familiar suffering because they fear the unknown."

Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Monk (1926 – 2022)

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“…five in the morning, and here’s the news. A fatal stabbing last night at the Starlight Nightclub…unknown assailant. The scorching heatwave enters its third week…no relief in sight. In international news, tensions are growing…”

The voice of the radio host pierced the quiet of the slum apartment, jarring its sole resident from her restless slumber. Like everything she owned, the clock had been scavenged from a dumpster and was on its last legs, its harsh static foretelling its inevitable demise.

Milly groaned as she tried to silence the alarm clock with a sleepy swipe of her palm. “Why won’t you turn off? Some of us would like five more minutes of sleep, thank you very much.”

Finally, she swatted the right place, and it gave a final, strangled cry before it fell silent. She looked at the time and groaned.

“Ugh…why do I have to wake up at this ungodly hour?” Milly muttered as she stared at the black mold stain on her ceiling. The landlord assured her it was livable, though she had her doubts. “I’d give anything for another hour of sleep. I’m just another faceless call center drone—would anyone even notice if I came in late? Well, Xavier would, since we share a cubicle and I wouldn’t be there to do his work for him. And Mr. Fredrickson would notice—he looks for any excuse to yell at me. I wish I could just quit. But this crappy apartment won’t pay for itself.”

She sat up with a resigned sigh, sticky with sweat from the oppressive heat. Her long black hair fell to the small of her back, tangled after a night thrashing in her sleep. She woke up anxious today, her chest tight as if someone were squeezing her heart.

The nightmare had returned—the worst night of her life played on endless repeat. She could still feel her foster father’s calloused hands holding her down. Smell the alcohol on his breath. Hear the powerful storm that had veiled her cries. She remembered every detail…no matter how hard she tried to forget.

“It’s been four years since that night, so why does it still hurt so much?” she muttered to the empty room.

She buried the dark memory deep inside and swung her legs off her too-small bed and sat up, ignoring the musky smell of the old shag carpet.

“Rise and shine, Vera” she yawned to the wilting aloe vera plant on the windowsill. Vera’s previous owner had thrown her away and Milly had tried for months to revive her. But no matter how much she watered her, she didn’t perk up.

But she didn’t die either.

That certainly feels like a metaphor for your life, doesn’t it? she thought to herself. I’m stuck in limbo. Wake up. Two-hour bus ride to work. Ten-hour shift. Bus ride back. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. I earn just enough to afford this apartment, my bus pass, and enough food to keep me alive. And my reward is to do it all over again, day after day.

Yay, me.

As if on cue, the phone on her nightstand buzzed.

“God, what now?” she said irritably as she reached for it. Acicentre made it mandatory for staff to have access to their work email after hours to ‘improve communication flow’. In reality, it meant staff couldn’t disconnect from the drudgery of the office.

It sucked.

She couldn’t afford a cell phone, but she’d found one in a dumpster the same day she’d found the alarm clock and managed to get it working. It had ten minutes of battery life, and she had to steal her neighbor’s wireless, but it had been enough to satisfy her boss, Mr. Fredrickson.

“Doesn’t anyone at this company sleep?” she complained as she opened the email. Her heart sank as she read the message.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

“That wasn’t my fault! Calista dumped that paperwork on my desk three minutes before the end of the day! I didn’t have time to finish it!” she cried in frustration. “Ugh, why does he keep picking on me? He can’t even get my name right. It’s Milly, not Milby.”

She glanced at the stack of unsuccessful job applications piled high on her dresser. She was trying to find another job—she really was.

“But no one wants to hire a depressed high school dropout, I guess. So what choice do I have? I can work in the call center of a third-rate insurance company…or starve.”

There was a time when she dreamed of something more. A job where she could help people and earn just enough to climb out of poverty and support a family of her own.

Her dream died in her foster father’s calloused hands, and she’d hadn’t dared let it rekindle.

“Ugh…okay. That’s enough self-pity, Milly. Come on, time to get moving,” she said finally. “Those calls won’t center themselves.”

Resigned to another long day at Acicentre—another day on autopilot—she snatched her towel and headed to her tiny bathroom. She flicked the light switch, and the tinkling of the struggling bulb filled the room.

“Come on, little guy. You can do it,” she encouraged the bulb. “I believe in you.”

After a few tense seconds, the bulb flared to life, though it flickered as if to remind Milly it could take her light away at any moment.

Her bathroom was little more than a closet with a rusty bathtub, a leaky toilet, and a cracked sink that had been ‘repaired’ using a single piece of duct tape. It was much like her landlord’s fix for the black mold: ineffective.

“It’s a fine repair,” he had insisted. “And if you don’t like it, there are plenty of people interested in this apartment. We’re in the middle of a housing crisis, after all. Why don’t you think about that, Mildred, before you decide to push your luck?”

Mildred. Mildred Persephone Hawthorn.

She would never know why her parents named her that. Her mother died of an overdose when she was five years old, and her father abandoned her before her mother’s body grew cold. She had grown up in foster care, and her name was all she had to remember them by.

Maybe it could be a beautiful name, if it belonged to someone else.

“Tsk, tsk. Your thoughts are growing dark again, Milly. Can’t have that,” she warned as she stared at her reflection. She grabbed the bottle of anti-depressants next to the sink. The six remaining pills rattled around inside—the last of her supply. She twisted off the cap and swallowed one with a quick sip of discolored water.

Dr. Anthony said I need to wean myself off these. She won’t give me anymore. But this hasn’t been a good start to the day. I don’t think my depression cares about her timeline. Or mine.

She gazed at herself in the mirror as the light bulb flickered. She twirled her dull, frayed hair around her finger and wondered what it would look like if it shined. She stared at her pockmarked cheeks and wondered what healthy skin felt like. She couldn’t afford fancy shampoo or facial cleansers, or anything more than a cheap bar of soap, so luxurious hair and skin were just a faraway fantasy.

Her gaze drifted to the rest of her body with compounding disappointment. Her nose was a touch too broad, and her chin a touch too flat. She felt fat despite her subsistence diet—ramen noodles, potatoes, and frozen dinners—and the excess weight carried in her legs and stomach rather than where it might catch someone’s eye.

Not that anyone has ever looked at me that way. I’ve never even been on a date.

Her hazel eyes, the only feature she liked about herself, reflected a weariness that had settled in long ago and never left.

She stepped under the cold shower and touched the scar across her wrist. She’d tried to take her own life on the night of her foster father’s assault. She could still remember the warmth of the bathwater and the cool metal of the blade against her wrist. And the face of the paramedic who revived her.

But I survived that night and every night since. So why do I feel more helpless now than I did back then? What happened to the stubborn girl who survived?

Oh wait, I remember. She had to get a soulless corporate job that sucked out any remaining light that dared to survive childhood. Isn’t that nice? Ugh…I hate my life.

After brushing her teeth and working out the worst of the tangles, she threw on the plain black hoodie that she wore every day—her safety blanket against the world. It was a size too large for her, which helped hide her figure.

As she flipped up the hood to hide her lifeless hair, she saw the time on her alarm clock.

“Shit, I’m late!” she exclaimed, throwing on her tattered sneakers and grabbing her backpack. “That’s what I get for—what would Xavier say? Being pensive and shit.” She barreled down the stairwell, praying the bus wouldn’t leave without her.

She made it just as the bus driver was pulling away. Thankfully, it was the elderly driver who liked to smile, rather than the woman who got a kick out of leaving her behind.

Phew. At least something went right today.

As the bus pulled away, Milly glanced up at her apartment window, its curtains askew and windowpane cracked. Her apartment wasn’t a home. She’d never had a home. Just a roof over her head. And, sometimes, not even that.

Is this all there is to life? Living day to day, doing the same thing over and over again? Just trying to survive?

She reached into her backpack and pulled out a dog-eared comic called My Summer at Lac La Ronge. With no money, the library was her avenue away from this life. A place where she could lose herself between the pages of a story and forget about who she was.

It was her favorite—the story of Aki, an orphaned girl who spent a year in a remote village with her estranged grandmother and found family, love, and adventure along the way. She’d found it in a stack of forgotten comics on the bottom row of a dusty shelf, and, after borrowing it seven times in a row, the librarian had let her keep it.

We don’t deserve librarians.

My Summer at Lac La Ronge was a beacon of light in her dreary life. If her hoodie was her safety blanket, the comic was her escape from reality. Her hope for a better tomorrow.

She settled in as the bus weaved its way through the city streets and slowly filled with passengers. She flipped to the part where Aki first meets Abigail, the woman who would grow to become so much more, and lost herself in the fantasy.

Two hours later, as the bus screeched to a halt outside her office complex, she reluctantly closed the comic and returned it to her backpack. She gave a sleepy stretch as she forced herself out of her seat.

“Will I see you back here at five o’ clock, Milly?” the bus driver asked as his new passengers climbed on board. “Or do they have you working another late one?”

Milly’s only answer was a sad sigh, and he tipped his hat in sympathy as he closed the door and drove away.

She gazed up at the dilapidated office building, her anxiety growing as she thought of her impending meeting with Mr. Fredrickson.

“I need something—anything—to change,” she prayed, keeping her head down to stay unnoticed. “Please, I can’t do this anymore.”

With three deep breaths to calm her heart, she steeled herself for the day ahead.

Another day on autopilot.

Another day alone.

* * *

Far from Milly’s life, a trembling hand reached into the High Lord’s vault and stole the twin keys of the Nexus.

“Are you sure about this, Oracle?” the god Thoth whispered through the crack in the door, his ibis eyes scanning the hallway for their fellow gods. “He’ll kill us when he finds out.”

“I know, old friend,” Oracle, the Goddess of Foresight and Prophesy, whispered back. She clutched the keys tightly to her chest. “But what choice do we have? The High Lord is too far into madness to see reason. We are out of options.”

She hooked the keys onto her belt and slipped out of the room before she lost her nerve.

“This is our last chance to set things right.”

The Non-Canonical Aftermath:

“Welcome to Leveling Up In A Deadly Contest…With My Coworkers?!” exclaims the Author excitedly. “I hope you enjoy the adventure Milly has ahead of her. It’s going to be a wild ride.”

Milly glances up at the story’s title. “Author, this first chapter had no leveling up, no deadly contest, and no coworkers. Seems like false advertising to me.”

“Well, we’re establishing the essence of your character, Milly,” explains the Author. “You have some challenges in life to overcome.”

“Yeah, I noticed. You couldn’t have given me a backstory where I’m a beautiful princess who lives in a castle?”

“But then you wouldn’t have any coworkers to level up with,” the Author reminds her. “And that’s an important part of the story.”

“I’d have servants. They’re like coworkers, only I get to be the boss!”

“I…think we’ll stick to the original plan,” the Author says and turns to the audience. “Stick around after every chapter for some non-canonical fun!”

“Pop into the chat too!” Milly adds excitedly. “A cast member—like your lovely heroine—will be around to answer your questions and give extra tidbits of information.”

“And don’t forget to like each chapter and subscribe to the story!” the Author concludes. “It makes a huge difference to the cast of Leveling Up with Coworkers. Thank you for reading…and welcome to Milly’s journey!”

Character Art by Ayammbetutu (vgen.co/ayammbetutu)