“Hey, you there!”

Ray keeps walking, because it’s never him that they’re talking to, shouting at- which is exactly why he’s thrown when there’s a tight hand clamped to his shoulder and he’s whirled around to face an angry convenience store clerk. He tries to put on a smile but she’s seeing red at the edges of her vision, and suddenly the snacks Ray has stuffed in his pockets don’t seem like the best of ideas. 

“Guess I’m just lucky I caught sight of you on the camera-” She says, as she unceremoniously shoves her hands into Ray’s pockets and starts pulling things out. It’s not even that much- Ray doesn’t shoplift to excess on non-work days. “If I ever see you again I’m calling the cops. You homeless delinquents-”

He’s shoved as she walks away, continuing to mutter as to his mentality, and Ray shakes himself off, trying to figure out what went wrong. He hasn’t botched a shoplifting since he was eight. She said she got lucky- maybe he should just tone it down a little and focus on himself for an hour or two. He’s been hitting it kind of hard- but it’s not like he can just turn his power off. Ray stuffs his hands in his now-empty pockets and starts walking, tapping on his cellphone while he tries to think this out. He’s suddenly lost the appetite he had for those snacks.

And then the car drives by and soaks him with a puddle.

Ray freezes on the edge of the sidewalk, water dripping off of his nose and onto the ground, glasses fogged, smelling of dirty street. The car continues on like nothing has happened- but Ray can’t even remember if it rained last night- and looking sideways through the fogged lenses of his glasses he can see it didn’t- there just so happens to be a busted fire hydrant right there on the other side of the street, draining onto this side because the storm drain right under it is clogged.

Dripping, starting to get paranoid, Ray pulls out his phone and starts walking. He’s halfway through a text to Michael to come pick him up when the cane of a man walking next to him taps right into his foot and sends him wobbling and then careening towards the ground, and his slippery hands can’t hold onto his cellphone. It goes flying as well and bounces three times all the way down the sidewalk- Ray actually sees the screen split and crackle. He lays there for a few moments even as the older man asks him is he’s alright, and he carefully pushes himself to his feet and ignores the feeling of scrapped hands and knees to shrug it off and tell him he’s fine. Ray picks up his shattered phone and pockets it before the old man can see, assures him everything is fine, and then keeps walking.

There’s a standard for how his days go and this is not the way the cards are meant to fall. He goes over it in his head as he carefully watches for cracks in the sidewalk so he doesn’t trip over them. Eventually, he ends up stopping near the motel to lean against the wall, and he focuses on the street. There’s a car puttering up on its last legs to the gas station across the street, looking like it needs gas. It could give out well before it reaches it, so Ray (being a good Samaritan) focuses on the car getting there so the driver can fill up and head on their way. He then watches, in distinct horror, as the car stalls, the rear tire goes flat, and the hood pops up with steam rising from the engine.

Ray remembers the clerk from earlier, who caught him lifting snacks from her store. ‘Guess I’m just lucky I caught sight of you on the camera’ She said. Ray swallows down the bile rising in his throat.

She didn’t get lucky-