by Tim Waggoner
The toy store wasn’t crowded. It was a small shop and it was early afternoon on a weekday. There was a woman in her twenties or thirties – it was hard for Blanche to judge people’s ages if they were significantly younger than her – at the register, and a man she guessed was in his sixties looking at a display of build-it-yourself robots. The lighting was bright inside the Blue Elephant, to make the wares seem more appealing she guessed, and there were shelves containing realistic-looking stuffed animals, challenging puzzles of both the 2-D and 3-D variety, toys and games designed to inspire and sharpen a child’s imagination and creativity, and best of all, not a mindless fashion doll or violent video game anywhere.
Blanche realized she must’ve made more noise than she’d thought when entering, for both the girl at the register and the middle-aged man turned to look at her. They both seemed concerned, and she figured she must look like a crazy woman to them – face pale, expression alarmed, gasping for breath and trembling with terror. She opened her mouth, intending to tell them what was coming, to exhort them to hide, but nothing came out. Part of this was due to her trouble catching her breath, but she also had no idea what words to say. How could she describe what she’d seen, what was coming for them, for her? She didn’t have to, though, for an instant later the glass door shattered and death’s dark emissaries flooded into the store. She tried to run, but the best she could manage was an unsteady, teetering walk. She heard the sounds of displays and shelves being knocked over, heard thick plaps as items liquefied and dropped to the floor. The girl at the register screamed, and the man in front of the robotics toys gaped in stunned disbelief.
Blanche turned down the first aisle she came to, this one containing shelves of toys based on a historical theme, dolls, games, and activities focused on different time periods from Ancient Egypt all the way to the American Revolution and beyond. The shadow things spread throughout the store, but none of them followed her. She’d gotten lucky, for the moment at least, but she doubted her luck would hold out long. Still, she didn’t intend to give up. She hadn’t lived as long as she had to surrender to death without a fight, even if she couldn’t put up much of one at her age.
The monsters destroyed toys and the shelves upon which they were displayed, both melting as she’d seen the vehicles in the parking lot do. One of the things slashed the middle-aged man on the arm, and he cried out in pain and clapped a hand to the wound. His voice began to drop in tone, and Blanche watched as his face began to soften and sag. He looked at her, eyes stretching downward as his features melted, lips surrounding the long oval of his mouth twitching as if he wanted to say something, perhaps beg for her help, and then he collapsed like a broken water balloon, clothes and all. Reduced to a spreading puddle of organic and inorganic material.
The same thing happened to the girl behind the register, only she’d attempted to run toward the back of the store, where presumably a rear exit was located. One of the creatures clipped the back of her head with its claws, the impact sending her sprawling forward. She burst apart into splatters of glop when she hit the floor.
Blanche had reached the far end of the historical toy aisle when one of the creatures came running after her. She knew it was going to get her, knew she would die in the same horrible manner as the man and the girl. But still she kept moving, kept fighting, trying to eke out a few more seconds of life before she fell into eternal night. One good thing about becoming a human version of a rapidly melting ice cream cone – at least her death would be over swiftly.
She felt claws rake her back, slice through her coat and top, cut deep lines in her skin. The pain was excruciating, and she thought of how her doctor had used that very word and she almost laughed. The sensation of dissolution itself was curiously painless, and as her body liquefied, she waited for her consciousness to fade, like someone slowly turning off a light set to a dimmer switch. She struck the ground, broke apart into fragments that quickly began to lose what little solidity they had left. But even in this state, her consciousness continued on, and after several moments it showed no sign of dissipating. She realized with a horror deeper than anything she’d ever felt before that there were some things worse than death. Much, much worse.
She lay there, an unmoving sentient puddle, as the Shadowkin continued destroying the Blue Elephant.
* * *
Sharilyn Boland glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard of her Corolla. Three-oh-one. She was officially late for her shift at Go Mart. FML, she thought.
It had been raining for the last several hours, and it showed no sign of letting up. Her car was ancient, and the windshield wiper blades were long past the point of needing to be replaced. The one on the driver’s side was the worst. The wiper’s rubber strip had torn halfway off, and it flopped around on the glass, doing little to clear away the rainwater. Because of this, Sharilyn was driving five miles under the speed limit, earning her angry looks from drivers stuck behind her. To make things worse, her gas tank was dangerously low. She thought she had enough fuel to make it to Go Mart, but she didn’t know if she’d have enough to get home. And although Go Mart was a convenience store with gas pumps out front, she didn’t have enough money to buy fuel. She’d just have to hope the gods of transportation would look kindly upon her later.
Sharilyn was twenty-one and lived with her grandmother. Her parents had split up when she was in middle school, and she had no idea where her dad was these days. The last time she’d heard from him, he’d been living in Arizona, but that was several years ago. Her mom was bipolar and a barely functioning alcoholic, and it was all she could do to take care of herself. So Sharilyn had gone to live with Grandma. She loved her grandmother, but she was desperate to get her own place. She was taking business classes at the community college in Waldron – when she could afford them – and working two jobs, and she still didn’t have enough money to get her own place, even if she had a roommate to share expenses.
She’d started her morning at five a.m., when she’d gotten up, showered, ate a cold Pop-Tart, and headed off for her morning shift as a server at Rise-N-Shine, a restaurant that specialized in serving breakfast food all day. Mornings were Rise-N-Shine’s busiest time, and when her shift ended, she was exhausted. She had to keep hustling, though, and she’d changed out of her Rise-N-Shine uniform shirt and into her Go Mart one in Rise-N-Shine’s restroom before leaving. She wished she had time to run home and shower. She smelled like bacon grease and stale coffee, but there was nothing she could do about it. She’d just have to hope the customers at Go Mart wouldn’t notice.
And to top it all off, she was congested and feared she was catching a cold. With her, colds often turned into sinus infections, and she definitely did not need one of those right now. She couldn’t afford to miss work. For that matter, she couldn’t afford an antibiotic, either.
By the time she reached Go Mart, she was already stressed. When she saw Darlene’s Prius parked in front of the store, she groaned. She was tempted to drive on past Go Mart and call in sick – which technically wouldn’t be a lie as she was sick of dealing with Darlene’s bullshit. But she thought there was a good chance she’d get fired for calling in sick at the last minute, and she needed the money, so she reluctantly pulled into Go Mart’s parking lot and drove around the side of the building where employees were supposed to park. After she turned off the engine, she sat there for a moment, listening to the rain hitting the roof of her car. Maybe it wasn’t Darlene’s Prius after all. Hers was hardly the only one in town, right?
There was a pounding on her car window then, and she jumped, startled. She turned to see Darlene leaning forward, her face close to the window. She didn’t have an umbrella and her long black hair hung down the sides of her face in wet strands. She made a half circle gesture, and Sharilyn knew Darlene was asking if she could go around to the passenger side and get in. Sharilyn didn’t want to let her, but Darlene was drenched, and she looked cold, too. Reluctantly she
nodded and pressed the control on the arm of the door to disengage the car locks. Darlene gave her a grateful smile, then she hurried around the back of the car. When she reached the door, she opened it, slid into the seat, and closed the door behind her.
“God, I’m so wet.”
Darlene wasn’t the type to make double entendres, but Sharilyn couldn’t help wondering if that was how she’d meant the comment. They hadn’t been together sexually for over a month now.
“I can’t talk,” Sharilyn said. “I’m late for work.”
She didn’t like how icy her tone was, but she couldn’t help it. The last thing she wanted to do right now was deal with her crazy ex.
Darlene ignored her statement. No surprise there.
“It’s so good to see you, Shar.”
Her voice was soft and Marilyn Monroe-breathy, almost a little girl’s voice, which clashed with her sharp features and startlingly green eyes. This contrast had been one of the things that had initially attracted Sharilyn to Darlene. Now she found it repulsive.
“You need to stop doing this shit,” Sharilyn said. She glanced briefly sideways at Darlene, but she didn’t want to meet those green eyes, didn’t want to give her the slightest sign of encouragement.
Then why the hell did you let her into your car? she thought.
She told herself to shut the fuck up.
“I miss you,” Darlene said. There was sadness in her voice, along with an edge of petulance, like a child frustrated she couldn’t have what she wanted right now.
Sharilyn had actually met Darlene here at Go Mart. Darlene had filled up the tank of her Prius, and afterward she’d come inside to buy a diet soda and a bag of peach rings – gummy candies that Sharilyn couldn’t stand. Darlene was eight years older than Sharilyn, and she carried herself with an easy confidence that Sharilyn envied. Darlene smiled as she placed her items on the counter for Sharilyn to ring up, and she looked directly into her eyes and held her gaze without looking away. Sharilyn had taken that as an invitation.
“Do you really like those things?” Sharilyn held up the bag of peach rings. “They’re way too sweet for me.”
“I love them,” Darlene said, still holding her gaze. “They’re great after sex.”
The comment had caught Sharilyn off guard, and she lost her grip on the bag of candy. It hit the counter, and both women looked at it for a moment, then looked back at each other. An instant later they started laughing.
They’d dated for nine months after that. Darlene had begun suggesting she move in with her after the first week they’d been together. In retrospect, Sharilyn knew she should’ve seen this as a red flag. Suggesting soon became urging which then became a combination of pleading and nagging. Darlene was an elementary school art teacher, and whenever she wasn’t working, she wanted to spend time with Sharilyn. She resented Sharilyn working, resented her spending time with friends or with her grandmother. Darlene wanted her to quit her two jobs.
I may not make a ton of money, but I make enough to support the two of us. If you didn’t have to work, you could spend more time on school. You could take out loans to pay for classes, and I can help you out financially too. The more time you study, the higher your grade point average will be when you graduate, and then you’ll have a better chance of getting into a really good law school.
Sharilyn’s ultimate career goal was to become a lawyer, and Darlene’s argument was tempting. But Sharilyn knew that Darlene’s primary motivation for making it was to free up more of her time so she could spend it with her. It wasn’t that Darlene didn’t care about Sharilyn’s education, but it was definitely a secondary consideration for her. Sharilyn had almost given in. Even if Darlene claimed a lot of her time, she figured she’d still end up with more hours to study than she had right now. Grandma knew she was a lesbian and was completely cool with it, although she wasn’t completely sold on Darlene as a partner for Sharilyn. And Grandma was still old-fashioned enough to believe two people should take the time to thoroughly get to know one another before taking such a big step as cohabiting.
On the other hand, maybe Darlene’s neediness wouldn’t be so bad if they were together more often throughout the week. Then again, maybe it would remain the same or perhaps even get worse. She realized then that she’d begun to think of Darlene as an emotional black hole, an endless void that could never be filled, no matter how much time and attention a lover gave her. The following day after having this realization, Sharilyn broke up with her.
Darlene, surprisingly, had seemed to take it well. She didn’t argue, cry, yell, promise that she’d change, or tell Sharilyn that she’d regret this decision for the rest of her life. She’d asked Sharilyn if she was sure this was what she wanted, and when Sharilyn said it was, she’d said okay. To say Darlene’s reaction was anticlimactic was an understatement, but Sharilyn had been so relieved that she hadn’t questioned it. But of course it wasn’t over between them – not by a long shot.
Darlene began sending texts, leaving voicemails, having presents delivered to her grandmother’s house – flowers, jewelry, cute stuffed animals, gourmet chocolates…. She’d park her Prius across the street at night and watch the house, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sharilyn, who’d peek through her bedroom curtains periodically throughout sleepless nights to see if she was still out there. Darlene began following her after that, driving two or three cars behind Sharilyn, trying not to look too obvious and failing. Darlene had never stalked her at work before, though, and she’d never tried to make actual contact – until today.
“You need to move on,” Sharilyn said. “For both our sakes.”
“I love you.”
Sharilyn said nothing. What was the point? Darlene refused to hear anything she didn’t want to hear. “I have to go.”
Sharilyn opened the driver’s-side door and stepped out into the rain. She planned to go inside, start working, and hope Darlene got the message and left. She didn’t know what else to do.
She ran around the side of the building – as much to get away from Darlene as to get inside where it was dry – but when she was only a few feet from the entrance, she stopped. There were people running across the parking lot toward the building. No, not people. Shadows shaped like people. Their movements were too fluid to be human, and their arms and legs seemed to stretch and contract as they moved, as if they were made of rubber. The sight of them sent a wave of revulsion through her. These things were a violation of everything she believed to be real. They should not, could not exist. In short, they were wrong.
It was hard to gauge their exact number. They moved fast and they didn’t run in straight lines, crisscrossed in front of one another as they came, making it difficult to count them. There were perhaps a dozen of them, maybe more. A man – ball-capped, bearded, and beer-bellied – had parked his pickup in front of one of the pumps and was busy fueling his vehicle when the shadow things reached him. He hadn’t seen their approach, but some instinct warned him at the last instant, and he turned just as the first raised a clawed hand to strike.
He didn’t have time to scream.
Sharilyn thought the creature would slash the man with its claws, but instead its substance stretched, lost definition, become amorphous, and flowed over him like a wave of darkness. And when it rolled past, the man was gone. Destroyed or absorbed, Sharilyn didn’t know, and really, what did the particulars matter? Gone was gone.
With each death they caused, each bit of destruction they wreaked, the creatures grew stronger, as did their ability to interact with and affect reality. The others also lost their forms, and they all flowed together, merging into a single large mass of black. They washed over the gone-man’s pickup, and it too disappeared. The edge of the dark wave caught part of the gas pump, and half of it vanished. The residue of gas in the partially disintegrated hose splashed onto the ground as the black wave rolled on toward the building.
; “What the fuck is that?”
Darlene was standing at Sharilyn’s side. Her attention had been so focused on the shadow things that she’d been unaware of the other woman’s approach. Darlene’s voice jolted her out of her paralysis, and she grabbed the woman’s hand and dragged her inside the store. The man at the register – a skinny guy with curly red hair named Ray – looked over at them as they entered.
“Where the hell have you been, Sharilyn? My shift ended fifteen minutes ago!”
Sharilyn didn’t acknowledge his words, didn’t even look at him. The wave was coming, and she and Darlene had to get as far away from it as they could.
There were only a few customers inside the store – a heavily tattooed man perusing the snack cakes, a woman around Darlene’s age getting a bottled water from one of the coolers at the back, and an old dude with a thick white beard thumbing through an issue of Guns & Ammo in front of the magazine display. The three of them looked over when Ray shouted and when they did, they saw what was rushing toward Go Mart’s entrance. The tattooed man gaped, the woman screamed, the old guy shouted, “Fuck me!” and Ray said, “Jesus Christ!”
There was no sound of breaking glass or display shelves being overturned. The dark wave had absorbed the gone-man and his truck in absolute silence, and Sharilyn knew the same thing was happening now. She pictured the shadow wave flooding into the store, sucking in everything it touched with eerie silence, including Ray and the others.
Sharilyn was heading toward the rear of the store, hoping to reach the stockroom where there was an exit she and Darlene could escape through. Part of her realized that she could move faster if she wasn’t pulling Darlene along behind her, but she didn’t consider letting go of her hand.