by Joshua David
“Can I go now? I don’t feel like talking about this. I know that what I say won’t be what happened. It never is… they’ve changed it.”
“God, Richard, where? Where do you imagine yourself going? I mean really, you don’t see that you’ve got only two options here? You either sit here with me and we talk and I write and we make some actual progress so that I can go to the sheriff’s office tomorrow and say ‘no really its ok he’s better now, please ask the store not to press charges’, or you keep this all to yourself and you get a court appointed psychiatrist and sit in a cell for a few months because they think you’re a danger to society.”
“But I didn’t do anything wrong!” Richard protested, but he was sure that the look in his eye told the Doctor that he really didn’t know for sure what had happened. The last he could remember clearly, he was walking into Doctor Hays’ office after his out burst at the warehouse. If anything, he expected to be in trouble for that. This thing about the Pharmacy was escaping his memory entirely. “Do you think they’ll press charges?”
“What do you think? Do you remember what happened to you at 11:53 pm last night, at the pharmacy down on Washington and Main?”
“Geez, you sound so precise.”
“I have my reasons.”
“You want me to tell you what I remember?”
“I think you didn’t have to ask that to know my answer.”
“Can I start where we left off yesterday?”
“You know you can.”
“Yesterday was Thursday, right?”
“Right.”
“I remember leaving your office around 2pm. You let me hang out for a bit and then I said I felt that it was ok to leave. During that time we talked about the recent episode I had and you said you thought it may be the prescription that contributed to the missing time. Then I left from your office and hitched a bus back to work. The place looked deserted enough at that point that I was able to pick up my car and head to the pharmacy. I drove straight to the pharmacy because I wanted to get home before it got dark.”
He hesitated, thinking heavily to himself. When he looked up his eyes were glassed.
“Go on Richard, its ok. I want you to tell me.”
“I sat in my car for awhile looking at the bottle that was in my console. I was trying to decide whether to take my last sleeping pill before I went in to pick up the new prescription you gave me, or if I should wait till after. It was still a little before five and I didn’t want to take it too early, you know? But then if the clerk at the pharmacy was too slow checking me out it might be too late. It was really hanging me up, you know?”
“Because you thought you might have the dream?”
“Because the people, the things in the dream are appearing to me in my daily life now. They're everywhere Doc. I’ve told you that.” Richard was shaking a little. His mind was so frazzled, so tired, so weak… He could hardly think straight enough to form whole sentences. “I’m way beyond having dreams now Doc. I’m beginning to think that Steven is right.”
“Ten minutes or so shouldn’t make a difference Richard. I’ve told you that. Even up to an hour before or after shouldn’t make any difference at all.”
“It does make a difference. I’ve told you that!”
“Ok, I’m sorry. What did you decide about the pill?”
“I didn’t, I kinda dazed off, I was thinking about waiting there for a few minutes, or driving the block a few times. I should have driven the block. Instead I started staring at the foam coffee mug in my cup holder. I hadn’t seen it before.”
“What was special about the cup that drew your attention?”
“Nothing really, it was just an old coffee cup, the disposable kind like you’d get from a convenient store at a gas station. I haven’t been drinking coffee since you told me to stop, which is why I was so curious toward it. Had I gotten it? Had someone else driven my car without me knowing? Why was it there?”
“I don’t know Richard, why was it there? Is there a chance that it’s been there all this time. You know, since before you quit drinking coffee.”
“No, no it was somewhat fresh.”
“How do you know?”
“I drank it.”
“But you just said that you don’t drink coffee anymore.”
“I know, I know I’ll explain, I’ll get to that.” Richard put his hands up in defense. “Anyway, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something important about that mug, something that needed to be resolved and was more pressing than picking up my prescription.
“Was Steven there? Was he telling you to investigate the mug?”
“No, which is strange… I decided myself that it was something that needed to be done.”
Doctor Hays must have been intrigued by that fact, because he scribbled a few notes down on his clip board.
“So you left the pharmacy then?”
“Yes.”
#
He was three blocks from the pharmacy when he passed the large sign on the Chuckee’s Fuel Station. The big black eyes of the kind hearted tiger stared down at him as he passed. He came to a halt at a red light and looked down at the wreckage that was in his car. Paper was everywhere, trash, and the cup that once again caught his attention. He looked in his rearview mirror, the tiger still leering at him, and then he U-turned into the gas station.
Walking in, he set the cup on the counter in front of the store clerk. “Do you sell this?”
“Coffee, well yea, we sell coffee? It’s in the back.” The store clerk couldn’t have been older than nineteen. Long wavy blonde hair poked out of his orange trucker hat with the Chuckee’s logo on it. His Red orange collared t-shirt completed the standard Chuckee’s uniform. “It’s discounted when you bring in your own mug. Technically you’re supposed to have a Chuckee’s Javaholic mug to get the discount, but if you want to fill up in that you can.”
Richard went to the back and looked for a match, but they had none. He walked back up to the front, the clerk appeared ready to check him out. “Have you recently switched brands?”
“No we have one supplier.”
“Do you recognize this brand? Do you know what chain of stores sells this kind of coffee?”
“No, man there are prolly fifteen different chains within two hundred miles of here. Prolly a hundred different stores. Why, are you a cop?”
“Uh…Yea I’m a cop, …now tell me the truth about your coffee or I’ll take you down… downtown… to the station.”
“You’re not a cop.”
“Yes I am… I’m investigating a disappearance, I need to know where this mug came from.”
“You don’t look like any cop I ever saw. Get the heck outta my store you crackhead. I’ll chase you out with my bat if you don’t listen!”
Richard walked out.
He hopped in his car and drove another five miles to a Dixon Food & Fuel that sat on the edge of town just as Tenth Street converted to the Rural Route 5. He gave the clerk there a pretty good scare, but could tell that the guy didn’t recognize the mug. His car was getting low on gas. He pulled his car up to a pump, but the clerk wouldn’t turn it on for him so he had to drive to another store, this time pumping his gas before going in to question the clerk. No luck. It was useless.
He drove back to the pharmacy to get his prescription.
#
“So that’s when you arrived back at the pharmacy?” Doctor Hays interrupted.
“Yes, but I didn’t go in right at first.”
“I know, but why?”
“I don’t know, I was still just looking at this cup, this strange cup that I’d never seen before. I’d never heard of the brand or the store. And then the next thing I know, I popped out of it like I always do and it was nine fifteen. I panicked, I didn’t know what to do, so I threw the pill in my mouth and downed it with a swig of coffee from the cup. It was cold and disgustingly sweet, like gas station coffee usually is, but it didn’t taste old. It wasn’t old.”
/> “Then what did you do?”
“I ran into the pharmacy.”
“So after that you drove straight to the pharmacy after leaving here, you arrived at about four forty in the afternoon then left in search of the supplier of the coffee mug in your car, and after a bit you came back to the pharmacy and fell asleep in your car until about nine fifteen, then you went into the pharmacy?”
“Yea, that sounds about right, why?”
“We’ll talk about that in a second. First I want to know about what happened in the pharmacy. This is very important Richard, I want to know everything that you remember. Every detail. Do you think you can do that?”
Richard frowned. “I can.”
“Go ahead, whenever you’re ready.”
“I walked straight in. They have those doors that chime when you come in. You know the kind. I walked back to the actual pharmacy part of the store, but it was closed. The metal screen was pulled down and the lights were off inside. I could just make out the shelves with medicine. I walked back up front to the little woman behind the counter and asked her to open the pharmacy. I told her I was there to pick up my prescription…”
Chapter 8 : The Pharmacy
“I need in the pharmacy, could you please call the pharmacist.”
“I’m sorry sir the pharmacy closed at 8, you’ll have to come back first thing in the morning if you want to speak to the pharmacist.”
“Look you don’t understand.” He leaned over the counter toward the small woman. “I have a condition, I need the pharmacist to open that grate and get my prescription. It’s sitting in there ready to go. I know because my doctor called it in today. I won’t trouble him long, I just need this one thing. You understand right?”
“No sir I’m sorry, I can’t do that. The pharmacy is closed, and it won’t open until the morning. I’m sure though, if you come by then, the pharmacist will gladly serve you. Now if you have no other purchases to make, I need to ask you to leave. The store will close at ten.”
Richard looked up at the clock on the wall at the front of the store. It was nine twenty. “You have to make that call, I have to have that pharmacist here now!” he slammed his hand down on the counter.
The clerk was startled by Richard’s uproar. “I’m sorry sir, there is absolutely nothing I can do for you right now.” She said in a shaky voice. “Now please be on your way, I don’t want to have to call the sheriff.”
“No, no… no sheriff.” He turned and walked away from the counter. He walked down the side aisle that led to the pharmacy window. The dark pharmacy lay dormant beyond the steel store grate. Richard stood in the center rear aisle of the store. Sweat had formed on his forehead.
He let out a quiet tearless sob of panic. The floor was shiny from recently being buffed. The lady at the store front really did want to close soon and he didn’t want to trouble her. But looking at the grate again, he knew that somehow he needed that bottle of pills. The grate was secured at the base by a locking mechanism on the inside of the pharmacy. The small side door had a keyed padlock and tamper guard protecting the latch. There was no drive thru window by which he could climb through. It was no use.
He stood there pondering what his next move might be. She didn’t understand, if she did, she would open the grate and let him in. He considered for a moment the notion that she had been lying to him about not having access and that there was a key behind the register. Of course, there had to be, what if a fire broke out in the pharmacy, the store clerk would have to be able to unlock the door to extinguish the fire. He felt in his pockets for a book of matches or a lighter, but there was none.
He looked around the store, there wasn’t anyone there with him. He thought maybe he could overpower the clerk, somehow subdue her without hurting the woman and then he could gain access to the key and his medicine. He thought he had a pretty common face, he could be anyone. He looked once more at the grate, do they sell saws here?
It would need to be the little fine toothed kind to get through a grate like that. Would she notice the sawing sound from the front of the store?
He took a trip down the small aisle that looked like it contained tools and hardware items. There were glasses repair kits, picture frame fastening kits, shoe shine kits, furniture touch up kits, but no hack saw or anything of that sort. He happened to look up at the ceiling and noticed the little black orb in one of the tiles. There would be no way to get past the all-seeing eye. He sighed and went back to the aisle next to the pharmacy. He heard a whooshing sound of the doors at the front and turned just as the entrance bell chimed.
The door slid quietly shut behind them as they separated and came down the individual aisles toward him. The empty look in their faces cut through Richard’s soul. He began to scream, first in guttural belts of shock and terror, then in loosely framed words.
“GGGhhhaaahhhhh! NNNnnoooo!!!! Help me, someone HHellpp!! NNNnnoooo!!!,” He clawed at the shelf sending bottles and boxes of medicine flying at the tall one in the collared shirt, the one that was closest to reaching him. Richard watched as the cold black pupil filled eyes melted like wax revealing the stormy black hollowness from within.
Soon the creature had no face, just blackness like a fog and Richard knew that the fog hid something far worse. Richard thrashed and kicked at the creature violently. It did not slow the thin man down, and Richard reeled backward as the man reached for him with boney pale fingers.
He slipped on a medicine bottle and fell hard to the floor, striking the lower part of his jaw on the smooth tile. Droplets of blood sprang out of a fresh burst in his lip. Richard screamed again as the tall one grabbed his ankle, there was power behind the man’s frail features. He seized Richard’s ankle with a machine like grip and began to drag him toward the front of the store.
Richard’s bearings went askew as he flailed about on the floor, gnashing at the shelves frantically, streaks of blood following him. He looked up at the store clerk as they drug him out of the chiming door. The personality drained from her face, she stared coldly back at him.
#
“That’s the last thing I remember. Her face was just like the woman the other day at the supermarket. Its like they see, but they don’t see. Like there is a blackness behind their eyes too and any second they could become one of those things.”
“Richard… are you absolutely sure that’s what happened. Search yourself deeply and tell me.”
“He sat there in his heavy green jacket, staring at his hands. “I know that’s what happened, my mind says that’s what happened. Heck, my face says that’s what happened. “
“Do you remember how you got here?”
“The deputies, they pulled into the parking lot just as the thin people were about to take me back to the laboratory aboard their spaceship. When the headlights hit them, they released me and fled. The deputies couldn’t console me, it’s true that I was hysteric. I know they brought me here because they think I’m crazy, but you know I’m not crazy and I know I’m not crazy. These aren’t dreams I’m having, I know they aren’t Doc?”
“No Richard, they aren’t just dreams anymore, I’m afraid not…”
“What do you think they are?”
“I don’t know how to present this to you in a way that will be taken positively, but I feel that you need to see it. I want you to know that I do trust you Richard and no matter what, I want you to know that we’ll get to the bottom of it. I want to talk real to you for a while and not scientific. There is a part of you, that I feel you don’t know about. It is a deep part…”
“What are you saying??”
“I was able to obtain this from the sheriff’s department, because I told them it might help you to realize what is happening when you get taken by these people, in your dreams.”
“What are you saying??”
“Doctor Hays put a disc into his computer and spun the monitor around to face the office. He then sat anxiously in the chair next to Richard.”
“What are w
e watching Doc!? Answer me, please…”
“Just watch.”
Richard watched as video came up on the monitor. The video was of the pharmacy parking lot. The lower right corner showed the time in white numbers with colons separating the different units. The time read 16:32:45, the seconds ticked up slowly.
“You don’t get there for awhile,” Dr. Hays said as he punched the forward arrow making the disc run at x2 speed. The clock at the bottom right buzzed forward until Richard’s car could be seen zooming into the frame from the side entrance of the lot.
Richard watched with vivid recollection as his video self sat in his car. From the angle of the camera, they could see clearly into the front of the car. Doc Hays pushed the play button and Richard watched himself looking back and forth between the storefront and the cup in his console. The numbers read 16:58:13.
“Here’s the thing Richard you never leave from this spot. Not until you go into the pharmacy, nor do you fall asleep. I’ve watched this, I mean the sheriff’s department showed it to me in fast time and one thing I know is that you never leave or fall asleep.”
“That’s impossible, I was there, I know I did.”
“No Richard, watch.”
He pushed the arrow once more to speed time. Richard watched as his head bobble back and forth inside the car. Forty minutes ticked by on the clock, then Dr. Hays pushed play again.
“I think it’s coming up here, I had a question about this.”
Richard watched intently, he felt somehow sick, somehow offended that this video existed. The white numbers read 17:55:50. On the screen, the fake Richard leaned forward in the seat, disappeared momentarily from the video and then reemerged holding some silver device. He then went back to bobble heading back and forth in the car, holding the silver object to the front of his head.