Lester sighed as he entered the lunchroom to clean up after "the animals", which was how he always described the kids at the high school. He had been working as a janitor here for over twenty years now, and they only seemed to be getting worse. Loud. Messy. No respect for their elders. No respect, particularly, for Lester.
Not that they'd ever had much respect for him. On his very first day on the job, he'd been approached by an affable jock who greeted him with a firm handshake and welcomed him graciously to his new workplace. Lester was pleased by this, especially since he'd never been treated very well by the jocks when he had gone to school here. When a bunch of the jock's pals arrived, the jock said, "Guys, I want you to meet our new janitor... Uh, what's your name again?"
The janitor grinned sheepishly and said, "Lester."
"Lester?", asked one of the jocks. "Is that short for Mo-Lester?"
The entire group burst into raucous laughter, and the nickname Mo-Lester stuck from that day onward, passed down from one generation to the next. An entire mythology built up around the hapless janitor, with claims that he spied on the girls' shower room, the boys' shower room, the teachers' lounge... Over the years, the tales of Lester's supposed perversions grew more elaborate and kinky. Lester was tempted to lash out at the kids and tell them the claims were false, but he needed the job and didn't want to get in trouble, so he endured the taunting with a grim smile that masked his ever-increasing resentment. Every year, he grew older and fatter and balder, only to be ridiculed by another batch of young and beautiful teenagers.
Life sucked.
As he swept the floor and wiped down the tables after the cyclone of lunch hour, he noticed someone had left behind a golden ring on one of the cafeteria tables. School policy would dictate that he should turn it in to lost-and-found, but one of the few perks of Lester's job was finding stuff and keeping it. His one-room apartment was almost totally decorated with items he had confiscated from the school, even to the point that he had papered the walls with Post-It notes he'd lifted from the supply closet. He had no idea if the ring was valuable or what kind of stone the light blue gem might be, but there was definitely something entracing about it. He didn't have anyone in his life who he could give the ring to, so he'd probably just end up hocking it at a pawn shop, but at least he'd have the satisfaction of knowing he'd taken something that belonged to one of these spoiled brats.
On the other hand, it did look kind of sharp. Impulsively, he looked around to make sure nobody was watching, then slipped the ring onto his left pinky -- his other fingers being too plump for it to fit. He'd never worn any kind of jewelry, and he sure as hell wouldn't have gone out and bought himself a ring, but he had to admit it gave him a little class. He even got a little jolt as he slipped it on, like the shock he'd sometimes get from touching a doorknob. Of course, if whatever little shit who lost the ring ever noticed him wearing it, Lester would be in a load of trouble, but he decided to leave it on for now.
Lester finished his work cleaning up the empty cafeteria and rolled his mop bucket back to the janitor's closet. All the while, his eyes kept being drawn to the ring. For some reason, he couldn't stop looking at the thing. He was so distracted by the shiny bauble that he wasn't even paying attention when he rounded a corner and ran right into a group of...