The shrill sound of a beeping alarm woke Miranda up.
The damned thing was relentless. Miranda reached up and rubbed her eyes, turning toward it and flailing at the air until, eventually, her hand fell on her phone, and she retrieved it. She then quickly turned the alarm off and sat up.
"… Fuck," Miranda muttered with a groan. "What time is it?"
Another glance at her phone answered that question for her. It was 6:30 am. Miranda looked around her bed and found some of the companions who had helped her fall asleep last night.
A vibrator casually resting by her legs and her laptop, which had been left looping the lesbian porn she'd been watching. Between her legs were the dried-up fluids she'd so gracefully squirted out thanks to that video.
[… Goddammit,] Miranda thought as she let out a long yawn. [It's just thirty minutes before work starts. I can't handle these fucking hours.]
As much as she hated working at this time, she couldn't quit. Mainly because she relied on this job to pay the bills. And because she also relied on this job to give her something to do all day.
Something besides rubbing her clit to girls eating each other out, anyway. Her pussy was damn near sore from how often she did it.
Groggy and tired, Miranda went and took a shower, prepared some coffee for herself, and finally put on her blue and red King of Burgers uniform.
She decided she might as well save a little bit of time and just have her breakfast at King of Burgers. With that in mind, she finished up, turned off the tv, took one last sip from that coffee, and moved to walk out the front door.
As she did, however, one framed picture on a nearby table caught her eye.
The picture showed a ten-year-old Miranda smiling as she posed for a photo along with her parents.
Her late parents.
The same ones who had hoped Miranda would do something with her life. The ones who wanted her to become a successful doctor or something along those lines.
By now, she'd mostly gotten over the car accident that had taken their lives a few years ago, but… Every now and then, she wondered what she'd be like if they were still in her life. Would she be the loser she was today? Maybe, maybe not.
Maybe she'd still have something to live for or people she cared about. Instead, right now, on her own, she had nothing.
Nothing at all.
There was no point in contemplating that too hard, though. Miranda had burgers to flip.
---
"Hey, Miranda, can you put these fries away? The rookie put salt on them. Customer didn't want any."
"Y-Yeah," Miranda answered as she quickly took the tainted food and put them aside.
"The guy didn't say he didn't want salt…" Miranda heard one of the other employees mutter, but, she didn't pay any attention to that. Other people's fuckups were none of her business. She just wanted to be done with this day, and all other days, as quickly as possible.
To that end, Miranda did what she usually did. She tried to clear her mind, kept her mouth shut, and focused entirely on her work, hoping that it would keep coming in the form of a steady stream of orders so that she wouldn't actually have to think at any point.
Unfortunately, today ended up being a slow day, which meant that there were barely any customers.
[Crap…] Miranda thought as she looked around. [Please, please, please, can't a bunch of people just come in already? This is gonna be so boring!]
"Hey, Miranda," a co-worker then said.
"Y-YES!?"
She was worried she'd just been caught slacking. On second thought, however, there were literally no customers. Slacking was most of what she could do right now, outside of maybe cleaning up her station.
"Did you catch the new episode of Game of Crowns?"
Miranda blinked slowly.
[Game of what?]
She wasn't the type who kept up with pop culture stuff like this. She had no clue what her co-worker was talking about.
"Uhm… No?"
"Are you asking or telling me?" The girl replied with a smirk.
"I, ehm, no, I haven't," Miranda replied. Someone else said they did and the girl turned toward them, disregarding Miranda's existence completely.
[Kill me.]
---
After what had to be one of the slowest days of work Miranda had ever suffered through, as the clock struck 5:00 pm, she finally got to go home.
Which also meant she'd get to go back to looking up random lesbian porn, as she usually did until she'd wake up tomorrow and repeat the process all over again.
Before she'd become an actual adult, school had mostly kept her busy. Once she graduated high school at the age of 18, however, she found that she simply did not have the desire nor the energy to go to college. So, she dropped out and turned her part-time King of Burgers job into a full-time one, so she could pay her bills.
And now, six months after she made that change, every day was one big blur. The only friend she had was her vibrator and, unfortunately, it couldn't hold a conversation too well so, most of the time, Miranda had her head in the clouds, listening to the clock tick and tick and tick, as one thought would occasionally pop up in her mind.
The same one she was thinking of right now.
[What am I doing with my life?]
As always, her brain did not produce an answer. However, as she kept her head low and walked down the sidewalk, something took her attention away from that question.
An explosion happened to Miranda's left. She flinched, putting her hands up defensively.
[What?]
For just a split second, she was back in that car, watching it crash into another oncoming vehicle. As her eyes fell on flames, however, she was brought back to the present.
In front of her was a burning building with a crowd building up, watching it with both curiosity and terror in their eyes as the fire spread. Miranda, however, didn't really care beyond her initial reaction. She sighed, muttered a quick "damn", and moved to leave the area.
Her path would then take her back home where she'd keep doing the same things over and over again. Where she'd keep wasting away until eventually her time came, and she'd join her parents wherever they were.
The world had other ideas, though.
A second explosion happened.
Miranda, instinctively, stopped once again. As she turned her eyes to the burning building, however, she noticed that there was something different about this one. This time, the building spat something out through one of its windows.
An office chair, of some sort, flew out from the building, soaring through the air, covered in flames like an overly dramatic, screaming cannonball sent to break down a medieval castle's walls.
Miranda's eyes widened as she watched it.
Her first thought was:
[Damn.]
Her second thought was:
[Wait…]
And her *final* thought was:
[Isn't that headed for me?]
The world went black then as the chair crashed into her face.
For a moment, Miranda couldn't feel anything at all. It was as though she'd been transported to a void, becoming completely formless.
Then, her eyes opened on their own.
She was now in a black room. A place so incredibly cold that Miranda wondered if she could stay here for long without freezing to death. She then remembered the flaming chair that had just kissed her head a little while ago and realized:
[Am... Am I dead?]
"Indeed," a feminine voice responded to that question.
Miranda then looked forward and her eyes fell on a figure that could not be described as "human", but rather, looked more like what Miranda imagined an angel would seem like. An ethereal, glowing white body dressed in transparent, ghostly robes. There was a woman standing here with silky white hair that reached all the way down to her feet and eyes that felt like if Miranda stared at them for too long, she'd never be able to pull herself away from their grasp.
"You have died," that woman said, confirming Miranda's suspicions.