"What the fuck is a Peropkop Bar?" Chelsea asked, opening a box to stock a shelf in front of the counter.

"That's an energy bar made from these little creatures called Peropkops," Monica said, "They're these cute little guys who get harvested specifically because they give you a ton of energy, but they're also kinda addicting from what I've heard."

"What does a Peropkop look like?" Chelsea asked, looking over her shoulder at Monica.

"Like a mix between a badger and a hyena," Monica replied, as Chelsea started stocking the bars.

"That doesn't sound very cute to me," Chelsea said.

"You get stuck here for a long time and see how your tastes change," Monica remarked, the both of them chuckling. While Chelsea was doing this, she'd given Juno a small laundry list of tasks to manage around the shop, just so they'd get done faster, and it must've been working because she hadn't seen her in over an hour. The bell over the door rang, and a tall completely black humanoid creature lacking any facial features and their body moving like TV static shambled in through the doorway. Chelsea and Monica glanced at him as he approached the counter, and Chelsea sighed.

"Take care of these please," Chelsea said.

"Number one, I don't work here, and number two, I can't really touch things cause I'm a ghost," Monica said.

"That's horse shit, I've seen you touch lots of stuff, stop using your incorporeal existence as a means to avoid things," Chelsea said.

"Okay well the first part still stands," Monica said.

"I can pay you, if you'd like."

"The hell do I need money for? What am I gonna buy? There's no makeup line for ghosts, Chelsea," Monica said, making Chelsea laugh loudly as she finally scuffled around behind the counter and looked up at the tall creature in front of her. Chelsea waited patiently, smiling politely, until they finally craned their head down towards her.

"Can I help you?" Chelsea asked.

"I'd like 150 scratch off tickets please," the creature said, "the ones at the top, the Genies Wish."

Chelsea nodded, turned and went to grab them, when she noticed a small piece of paper hanging beside them. On it was a photo of this creature, and in big bold words it said 'do not sell to'. Chelsea rolled her eyes and sighed. Nothing could ever just be easy, could it?

                                                                          ***

Juno had, in fact, been taking care of that list Chelsea had given her. She'd done some inventory, removal of old stock, swept up, all sorts of little things. Now she was back near the dumpster behind the shop, tossing yet another box of expired bags of FluKus into it. Juno sighed, tossed the box in after as well, and turned to start heading back through the door when she heard a rustling from the dumpster. Juno stopped and turned back towards it, raising an eyebrow.

"Hello?" she asked.

Some more rustling, and Juno approached cautiously, always aware it could be something potentially dangerous.

"Someone there?" she asked.

"You just throw anything away, huh?" a voice asked, as the box she'd thrown in climbed out and sat on the rim of the dumpster; they wiped themselves off best they could, then added, "that's kind of rude, you know. Just because I'm cardboard means I'm automatically disposable garbage?"

"No, I...I'm sorry, I didn't..." Juno stammered, half confused, half trying not to crack up at the absurdity of it all.

"Oh, you think this is funny?" the box asked, "really? This is humorous to you? Tossing a lifeform with thoughts and feelings and emotions into the trash huh? Yeah, real comedic. You know, young lady-"

"I'm not so young," Juno mumbled.

"-you could stand to learn some manners, some respect for others, especially if they don't fit into your ridiculous beauty standard criteria of what you think a sentient creature is," the box finished, and Juno nodded in agreement.

"Anything that gets me out of work. I'll take sensitivity training any day of the week," she replied. Anything to get her out of restocking.

                                                                               ***

"So," Chelsea said, returning to the counter, "...I'm apparently not supposed to sell these to you. I have no reasons as to why, but I do have a sheet of paper with your photo on it that specifically states I'm not supposed to sell to you. Do you maybe wanna clue me in on why that is?"

"She put up a sign?" the creature asked, just as the bell over the door rang and Polaris strolled inside. He passed by, patting the creature on the back.

"Hello Garvin," Polaris said, "what brings you in today? The usual?"

"She won't sell them to me!" Garvin replied, "Luna's put some kind of blanket ban on me!"

"Well, thankfully, Luna isn't here, is she, Chelsea?" Polaris asked, turning his eyelass gaze in her direction, which always made her uncomfortable. She shivered, then bit her lip and regained her composure, putting her hands on her hips.

"I'm not selling anyone anything until I at least hear a remotely viable reason as to why you have been banned from purchasing them," Chelsea said, proud of herself for sticking to her guns, adding, "then, and only then, will I even consider it. Why are these so worth getting in trouble over? They're just scratch offs."

"Did you read the name?" Polaris asked, taking one from her, "they're Genies Wish. If you win, you get the chance to grant one wish, and have it fully granted. Now why wouldn't that be appealing to, oh, just about anyone? After all, Chelsea, isn't there a wish you always wanted to have come true?"

Chelsea's mind immediately went to her sister, but she'd done that by brute force via Todd. She sighed and nodded, turning back and taking the entire box from the shelf, then splitting them between Garvin, Polaris, Monica and herself.

"Okay, but if we're gonna do this, we're gonna do it together, alright?" Chelsea said, "that way we're all held partially responsible."

"That sounds fair," Polaris said, as she reached into the register and gave all 4 of them a single nickle each to use. With that, the 4 of them started leaning over the counter, scratching away. Chelsea really hated going against Luna's wishes - this was her shop, after all, and she had given her this job - but Polaris was so damn good at convincing her to do otherwise that she just couldn't help herself. In a way, she was starting to understand why Luna didn't want him around. He was clearly manipulative, even if not for bad reasons.

"Are wishes transferrable?" Chelsea asked.

"It's just a ticket, Chelsea," Polaris replied, "whoever holds the ticket gets the wish granted, not whoever uncovers it."

"That seems like kind of a sketch reward system, that means if someone wins it, then drops it on their way home, they lose their chance," Chelsea said.

"That's why it's often smarter to just use the wish the minute you win it," Monica said.

"You know..." Chelsea said, stopping momentarily, "I don't think I've ever done a scratch off ticket, or any kind of lottery or gambling. Until coming here, I lived a pretty sheltered life. You know, I'm starting to think you guys might be kind of bad influences," she finished, grinning, and everyone chuckled.

                                                                                ***

Juno had jumped up on the lid of the dumpster to sit with the cardboard mimic, swinging her feet back and forth as she did. Juno had never actually met a mimic in all her time here, which was surprising cause she'd always gotten the impression that they were fairly common. The mimic was still cleaning himself off from the various debris he'd been dumped in with before finally looking up at her.

"I guess I don't know what to say since I've never interacted with one of you before," Juno said, shrugging, "do you get mistaken for trash often?"

"More often than not, yeah," the mimic said, sighing, "it's hard. I didn't ask to be born this way, you know? It's just a happenstance of nature, and I had no say in the matter, and now I'm saddled with this issue for the remainder of my life."

"I know what that's like," Juno mumbled.

"It's not so much the conditioner that bothers me, as it is others perception," the mimic continued, "I like myself plenty. Others are the ones with a problem with me, and that's where I take offense. Just cause I look like trash don't mean I am trash. But...well...most folks aren't too eager to take advice from a piece of corrugated cardboard, so."

"How did you learn to like yourself? Cause that's been hard for me," Juno said, "I'm also different than everyone here, and I know they're all constantly judging me for it, even if they're doing it unawares. Nobody really knows much about me, if anything at all, but even still. So how do you get past the hangups you have with yourself?"

"You just convince yourself they aren't hangups, that's really all you can do," the mimic replied, "...you wanna see something?"

Juno nodded as the mimic hopped down onto the ground, Juno following its lead. Together, they started to walk away from the shop, and Juno couldn't help but wonder if it was safe to follow this random mimic to whatever it was they were leading her to, but, really, who would even notice she was gone. Nobody ever really did. Nobody ever had before, so why would they now?

                                                                               ***

"These things aren't a scratch off, they're a rip off," Monica grumbled.

"Sore loser isn't a personality trait, you know," Polaris said, making her glare at him as they each continued, taking another ticket individually and still searching for a wish. Chelsea opened another bag of chips and started eating them as she kept doing her own scratch offs, Garvin finally sighing and tossing both his tickets and his nickel on the counter and burying his head in his hands, his elbows on the countertop.

"This is hopeless," he said, sounding like he was going to cry, "this has always been hopeless, she was right to ban me from buying anymore of these...these...paper lies."

"Hey man, you never know, the next one might-"

"I just wanted to go home," Garvin whispered, and Chelsea looked up, chewing, tossing her hair from her face; he continued, his voice low and shaky, "I just wanted to go home, that was all. But I'll never find a wish. I'll never get to go home."

"Are you...not...from here?" Chelsea asked and he shook his head.

"I used to be like you," he said, surprising her as he added, "I used to live in a home with a family and everything. I miss it all so much, and I just wanted my old form back, so I could go home again. I don't want to be here anymore."

"How did you get this form?" Chelsea asked, and Garvin sighed.

"It was an optional thing. I thought it'd help me fit in better in The Elsewhere," Garvin said, "and, it has, but at the same time...all I want now is to go back. I thought I was doing, at the time, what was right for me, and now all I've realized is that, what was best for me, wasn't what I initially assumed it was. I just-"

"I got one!" Monica shouted, gleefully holding up a ticket and giggling as everyone looked in her direction before saying, "boy, it sure is tempting to use this to be alive again...but..."

She glanced over at Garvin, his eyes wide, and she sighed, smiling and handing it over to him.

"You need this more than I do," she said, and he cautiously took it, shocked. Holding it in his hands, he looked around at the others, and then exhaled, looked down at the ticket in his hands and spoke gently.

"I wish I could go home," he said, "and have everything be like it was before."

And with that, a blinding white light filled the store, and when everyone unshielded their faces, Garvin's skin was crumpled up on the floor, and whoever he was was gone, leaving behind this husk. Chelsea smiled weakly and stood up, gathered the remainder of the tickets and started to restock the shelf with them.

"Well that was anticlimactic," Polaris said flatly, adjusting his tie and standing up straight, stretching, "I suppose I should head on out. I do have other things to do than spend my entire day here."

"Don't lie to us," Chelsea said, grinning at him. He bid Chelsea and Monica goodbye, and once he was out of the door, Monica sat down on the counter again and crossed her legs while Chelsea continued to clean up the counter area of all its empty snack containers and putting the rest of the tickets away.

"I really wanted to keep that wish," Monica said, "but...I guess I need to just accept that this is my home now, this is my afterlife. Besides, can't leave you alone here. But boy it would've been nice to be alive again."

"Eh, being alive's a little overrated, but I'm sorry, Monica. For what it's worth, I'm glad you're here," Chelsea said before glancing around and asking, "where's Juno?"

                                                                               ***

Juno and the mimic had been walking for a good fifteen minutes now, further and further away from the city, and closer towards a small landfill, a deep hole in the ground where all the garbage got dumped. Presumably, Juno though, including all the garbage from the shop. As they approached, Juno started to get an anxious feeling chewing in her gut.

"This isn't going to wildly depress me, is it?" she asked.

"Depends on how easily you get depressed," the mimic said, shrugging, "I just think it's something worth seeing is all."

Juno nodded and stayed quiet until they reached the rim of the hole and then she put a hand over her mouth, her eyes widening a bit. Inside the hole were a thousand other mimics, all of differing variety, as if they'd been exiled to this space. None of them even looked up at them, and instead went about their business of moping. Juno looked down at the mimic, who kept staring out at its friends.

"This...this is where they all go?" she asked quietly, nearly whispering.

"Why wouldn't it be? Nobody likes something pretending to be something else," the mimic said, "so why shouldn't they cast it out, right? Who could ever trust something that acts as though it were a totally different thing? That's lying on such a high level that trust could never possibly be rebuilt."

Juno, sadly, knew exactly what they meant. She nodded slowly and sat down on the edge of the hole, mimic still standing beside her.

"Don't you have to get back to work?" they asked.

"...in a bit," she said, "this is more important."

When Juno finally arrived back at the store, Chelsea was already getting ready to leave for the night. She'd done the rest of the restocking, cleaning, and other little chores that she often had to do before her shift ended. When Juno came back in through the back door and wound up in the main area, Chelsea finally looked up at her and, broom in one hand, put her other hand on her hip, tossing her hair back.

"Where did you disappear to?" she asked.

"I took the trash out," Juno mumbled, before looking at the floor and noticing the husk of Garvin on the floor.

"Is that skin?", she asked, "Do you want me to sweep it up or hang it on the wall like a jacket?"

"Heh, do whatever you want with it," Chelsea replied, chuckling, "and then, after we're done here, how about we go out and get something to eat together. I think we both could use some company."

Juno smiled weakly and nodded. She might be familiar with the problems the mimics faced regarding identity, but...at least she with certainty knew that she would never be tossed in the trash.