Lucia was exhausted.  The last minute call to pick up an extra shift had quickly turned into a double, and the night only ends when everything was done. It was why she was once again getting home as the sun peeked over the horizon.  She didn't mind working double or even triple shifts when needed, any extra money to throw at the cost of text books was a good thing in her eyes.  What she hated was the uniform, the three inch heels, tight fake leather everywhere else.  It made for some good tips, but by the end of the day she was more than ready to be done.  

She climbed the last few steps leading to her third floor apartment.  Allegedly there were elevators, they had not worked since she had been there, and she wasn't sure she would ever trust them even if they did.  Her entire building was probably a phone call or two away from being condemned.  Lucia didn't care though.  She was in an area that was close to work and school, not to mention cheap enough there was no need for a roommate or five.  

She made her way into her apartment kicking aside a pile of discarded newspapers.  She had no idea why she got the paper.  She didn't have a subscription, but it showed up at her front door daily anyway.  She engaged the locks with one hand while tossing her backpack onto the lumpy sheet covered couch.  She began to strip out of her work clothes on her way to the bedroom leaving a trail behind her.  

She grabbed some clothes from a pile on her floor.  Clean? Dirty? no one knew because she certainly didn't have the energy to perform even a cursory bachelor sniff.  


Lucia had been asleep for an hour, perhaps less when she felt more than heard a pounding on her front door.  She rolled over on her side and tried pulling a pillow over her head.  Her efforts yielded no results as the sound became more insistent.  She sat up pushing her blanket off as she did so.  Her eyes burned, it felt like her eyelids had been replaced with sandpaper. She rubbed them trying to get herself to focus as she got out of bed cursing quietly as her legs got tangled in the blankets. 

Her only goal became stopping the pounding at her door that seemed only to cause a matching pounding in her skull.  She made it to her living room where she stumbled over her earlier discarded shoes.  She stopped herself from falling, but had to pause with her hands on her knees panting with the effort of not falling over.  She scooped up one of her boots hurling it at the door meeting the noise with a satisfying BANG. "Keep your fucking pants on! I'm coming"  

She shuffled across the unevenly worn threadbare carpet.  She didn't bother looking through the peephole as she yanked the door open. "I don't want any cookies, or candy, or tickets to the police ball." She barked as she tried to get her eyes to focus. "Oh, and I found Jesus.  He lives upstairs and his boyfriend Carlos makes amazing tacos."  She said as she leaned against the door frame.  

The sight in front of him was one that almost defied description.  Her hair stuck out in every direction looking like something that would have been more at home on the head of an 80's punk rocker.  Her too large sweat pants and t-shirt hung limply on her almost too thin frame, and was that...Cheeto dust on her pants.  Dear God It WAS Cheetos, or Doritos.  Something noxious and an un natural shade of orange.  

"Seriously... You're still here? What the hell do you want?"