by Kay Brandt
“Roland!” I heard Stephanie's muffled cries from the other side of the bathroom door.
Stepping into my wet jeans, I didn't reply. Her fists pounded the door.
“Hey! What happened?” She sounded panic-stricken. “Where did they go?”
Opening the door, I glared, overcome with hate for her. “You set me up.”
“Paranoia, self-detroyaaa...” she sung a bar from the popular song by The Kinks, sounding like a dying bird.
And then I realized the mess was gone. Like the murders hadn't happened. No guts, body parts or blood—just the same old cracked and dirty cement floor. I almost passed out, having nothing left in my reserves.
“Roland?” she asked, looking worried.
Silence crept between us. I resolved to stay where I was, safe in the door frame, with blood pouring from my swollen mouth and bashed in nose. There was a noise, a ruffling sound of paper and plastic...
From behind a stack of boxes, one of the leftover thieves sprung out and grabbed Stephanie around the neck. “What the fuck was that, man?” he asked me frantically, squeezing her throat, cutting off her oxygen on purpose, then pointing a gun at her head. “You killed them! You fucking murdered my friends!”
“No, that wasn't me.” I didn't recognize my voice, body wrecked, barely hanging on to consciousness. I felt the world slip away fighting a fainting spell, unable to save either of us.
“Get on your hands and knees!” The thief ordered, turning the gun on me. “Crawl to the front room and open the fucking register, shithead!”
“It's open,” I groaned, rolling on the ground, too broken to get on all fours. “You don't need me to do it.”
“Yes, I do,” he insisted. “You ain't callin' the cops on me, asshole. Now, get up and get me my money!”
“Can't anyway,” I snorted, “the phone doesn't work.”
“Get out there!” screamed Stephanie, her sheet white neck blemished with red streaks and bruises. He choked her harder. Her tongue slid out the corner of her cracked lips.
My heart was beating through my chest. I did the army-crawl to the desk, muttering, “If this is fake, Stephanie, if you're behind this, you know you're going straight to jail.”
“Shut up, fucker!” The thief kicked me in the ribs, and I flattened on the cement, feeling the coldness on my battered face. “Keep moving!” he roared.
“Do what he says, Roland!” Stephanie sounded like a drowning rat, gulping at the air, and I can't tell whose side she's on, innocent girl or premeditated criminal involved in the plot. “If you want to live, do it.”
His foot came at me again, and I jerked before he could kick my ribs a second time. “The register, idiot!”
“Relax, fuck-face!” I yelled back as he repeatedly kicked me onto the sales floor.
He responded with a gunshot to the new security camera, shattering it over our heads. Positive my ribs are broken, I clutched at the torn carpet, using shreds of it to pull my body to the register.
And then the register drawer flew open.
Melinda's gold-plated, knife-like letter opener shot out, and grazed the side of my head. It flew at the thief, slicing through the air so fast the gold blade looked like fire. It hit his chest, stabbing through layers of clothes, and embedded in his lung. The sound of the blade breaking flesh and bone was putrid yet satisfying, and I watched as he stood there, his brain in total shock.
The room was still and everything ran in slow motion. He lost his grip on Stephanie when he couldn't draw a breath, and fell backwards. Tight on the trigger, his fingers stiffened as he hit the floor, sending a burning hot bullet right into Stephanie's head.
I don't recall hearing the gunfire, or the howls of the dying, if there were any. Blood sprayed everywhere, and dripped from the open register drawer onto my head. I ducked behind the desk, and waited and waited. Expecting retaliation, resolution, or to be hit by a bullet, too, I didn't move. Blood dripped down my face to the thrashed carpet, collecting in the worn foot marks from where my mother used to stand.
My mother. I want my mother.
Sniveling like a child, I slowly got to my feet, seeing the dead gangster and a blood-soaked Stephanie. She was still alive, but missing half of her face, crawling for the door.
“Don't move!” I told her, going to her side.
“Get away from me!” she gurgled.
Not even a hole in her head could stop her mouth, I thought. Choking on a gush of blood, her escape was cut short.
Torn between terror and wanting to save her, my mind raced with alternatives, and yet nothing spurred me to action. “I can't call an ambulance,” I reminded her, like it mattered. “Let me get you in my car and I'll drive you to the hospital.”
With her last breath, she scratched out, “Go screw yourself, dweeb.” These were Stephanie's last four words in her brief eighteen years on the planet. I responded with the expected slang. “Skank.”
A ring—the plain gold band she wore on her left thumb—slid from her hand as blood drained from her mouth. Too reminiscent for me of my parents' story, I left it alone and didn't touch it.
I'm not one for crying, having spent my life as an oppressed, emotional basket-case. I reserved any show of sadness for my own selfish needs. In the short time I knew Stephanie, I didn't particularly care for her, but her death struck a painful chord regardless. What fueled the tears streaming out of my eyes? Was it the loss of hope? I wondered. Or maybe the tragedy of death, or possibly the broken nose, cracked ribs or head trauma? There was no way to know with a blank mind and a heart that was hardly beating.
Tears flowed, purging any random thoughts of my return to the store being positive. The writing was on the wall, but I didn't want to read it.
Brushing the bloodied hair out of Stephanie's face, I decided to walk to the phone booth down the block and call the police.
My plan was suddenly stunted by a locked front door. Shaking it, kicking it, bashing it with my elbow—it wouldn't budge. I turned the sign in the window from open to closed and succumbed to plan B.
CHAPTER TEN
Standing in the middle of the godforsaken stockroom, contemplating the dead bodies of Stephanie and the thief, I dropped their legs carelessly. I suddenly felt like a weird, old man, dragging the dead by their feet. The murdering butcher next door who buries his victims in the freezer piece by piece, just for giggles, or in my case, shoe boxes. I was laughing, but I had no idea why. The room stunk from the mucky blood swamp on the floor, darkening the cement stains. I wasn't bothered by the gore. Death in the stockroom was like home to me.
The rolling racks looked innocent, swaying gently under the air conditioning.
“I'd kill for a shower, a meal, and something to drink besides wine and tap water,” I stated to the racks, and waited to see if they'd respond. They didn't.
“Do you want to eat them, too?” I tried again, knowing they could hear me. “They're fresh. Just killed in the other room.”
The racks were still.
“Why me?” I called out again. “Just burn the store down with whatever superpowers you have! Or kill me, how about that?”
Minutes passed before Stephanie's corpse slid to the racks, as if she'd been pulled by invisible claws. And then the thief's body followed. Together they were the next human pancake stack for the man-eating racks. WHAM! Stephanie and the thief were pulverized, minced, and then absorbed like the others.
I'll have to stay busy until morning, I thought, shell-shocked and numb, when the doors open and I can look directly into the sunlight until I'm blinded by it, which would prevent me from witnessing another horrible event at the store.
Like a madman, I grabbed a broom and danced with it, using the wooden tip like a microphone. “Might as well clean the place out tonight, and handle the tasks I'd planned for Stephanie to do, since I'm suddenly without help. No staff for Roland! Nope! Running this store is a one man job!” Then I pranced, and whispered to the racks. “It's nighty-night in the cemetery otherwi
se known as the stockroom. There's one last bottle of wine to drink, and it'll fill my semi-empty stomach with lukewarm, boozy slosh for the evening meal. If you'd open the doors a minute I could run to the liquor store and get more wine, and maybe some nourishment, too.” No clicks or noises of locks releasing. Insanely, I slurred, “I'm sure you understand when I say fuck this job. And fuck you, too.”
****
“I know you're in here, freak-a-zoids! Little shoezies, come out, come out!” I mocked after polishing off the wine. The room was spinning and I spun with it, circling and circling across the stockroom floor. “Where are you hiding? Come out and get me, you flesh-eating viruses!” Saying those last three words made me think of Stephanie. She'd said that to me earlier this morning―that she would kill me if the pins gave her a flesh-eating virus. Little did she know, that was the least of her concerns. Poor Stephanie. Bits of her corpse floated in the puddle of blood under the racks. Like a part of her was still with me. Like she might come back to life and be my drinking buddy again. I held that thought as a shred of comfort, regardless of how ridiculous it was.
But my date with isolation was cut short by the appearance of one, then two, then all eight nightmarish shoes. They emerged from the rolling racks, looking nasty and electric.
“That was quick,” I mumbled. “I was only kidding. Kind of.”
My insides felt like a roller coaster of boiling anger and sheer fright. Sleep-deprived and inebriated, I envisioned myself thrusting my fists and feet on the floor and crying hysterically until the shoes were frightened off from attacking. I want my mom to hold me, and explain why she lost her mind and killed her husband. I have so many questions, and a bottomless pit of contained pain with no outlet. The static buzzing filled the space between me and the shoes, and I covered my ears, weaving back and forth, feeling like my eardrums would explode.
“What's the matter shoezies?” I asked through a clenched jaw. “Cute little enemies of mine, do you not like me when I'm drunk? Does it make me unattractive?” A hysterical laugh released from deep in my gut, and I heard it echo throughout the stockroom. “You hate me! You've haunted and hurt me my whole life. Now is your chance to have me for dinner!”
A loud slam startled me from my raging stupor. The metal cabinet shook and jolted, like an earthquake. And then the drawers burst open, expelling their guts. Decades worth of raw material like grease, nails, glitter, beads, and beaten-to-death suede were vomited out. Then streams of rotten glue squirted in the air, like a gazillion puss-filled pimples popped at once, followed by a putrid showering of nearly coagulated blood.
“You didn't have to do that, mother fucker!” I screamed and swallowed a massive glob of phlegm, trembling uncontrollably in full view of the violent, convulsing cabinet. My arms involuntarily reached for it, panicking, needing to slam the drawers closed and quadruple lock them. “Shut the fuck up!” I kicked the bottom drawer and my leg gave out instantly, like I'd kicked a stone wall.
Then, I went for it, compelled to make full contact. My entire body pressed up against the frigid metal, shutting the drawers with my hips, torso and chest. Freezing sensations shot through me, and I went numb, stuck like a tongue on ice. Its drawer handles rubbed into me, imprinting targets for bodily entry through my clothes.
I visualized what might happen next: five sections of my body pierced at once, the victim of a supernatural cabinet and its zombie drawers. The National Enquirer will post pictures of my dead body, impaled by office equipment, but the story will be seen as junk. Fake. My death in the store will make the news, like my lineage, but no one will save the pictures.
BAM! My ass hit the hard cement, punched by all five drawers at breakneck speed. Expecting punctures, gaping holes and impending death, I squinted at my body as I hit the floor. It was intact, with not a single scrape, but I felt the evil energy shred me from the inside out. Gasping, I make a futile attempt to roll over and scramble away. The cabinet kept my limbs from moving, locked in what felt like rubber glue.
“I won't fight you,” I stuttered. “Make it quick. It's the least you could do. I'd rather get this over with, so, end it, please.”
Minutes passed, then hours, without a response. I'd gone past the point of being scared or fearful of death. Sprawled on the floor, I gazed at my unimaginable surroundings. Pools of blood mixed with the fabricated guts of a spewed devil's curse. That's my ugly landscape. And quiet... a quiet I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Like no one else in the world was alive.
Heavy fatigue tilted the scales of sleep and I went under, dreaming of the dripping blood again—the phantasmal spout that once poured from the fitting chair.
****
“I'm here to finish the install?” The cracking voice of the video surveillance man boomed from the sales floor.
Feeling like moldy trash, I awoke at the sound and scooped myself off the unforgiving, cold cement. Somehow I managed to get to my knees and looked around. Blinking at the normalized environment, I wondered where the bodies had gone, as well as what came from the cabinet. Mouth like paste, I croaked back, “Hold on.”
Finger-brushing my greasy hair, trying to look a little better than homeless scum, I scuff to the sales floor, and say, “How can I help you?”
“I was here yesterday,” he said with fear in his tense expression. “And I had nothing to do with that!” The surveillance man waved an arm at the gun-blasted camera over the register.
“Yeah, I know,” I reassured him, smacking pasty lips together. “I threw a spontaneous party here last night. It got out of hand.”
“Huh,” he replied, shrugging, “it happens.” Relaxing, he studied my appearance, having no idea what to make of a blood-splattered, dehydrated, starving, petrified wreck of a teen with inescapable body odor. “What is it with everyone shooting guns at parties? Don't people know it's unsafe? Anyway, we can't replace the camera under warranty because that's not a manufacturer defect.”
I replied, “That's cool. I don't care.”
The poor guy was way out of his comfort zone. “Is this a good time for me to finish the install? I can come back later.”
“Later isn't good for me,” I said, not wanting to risk him being locked in the store with me. “The store's been closing earlier and earlier and you don't want to be here when that happens.”
“Okay. Then I should get to work in the back then?”
A bolt of fear stabbed my chest, heart thumping with irregular beats. “Yeah, well, if you feel like it's best, be my guest.”
“I'm just the install guy,” he told me. “What's best for your business is up to you. Most customers want cameras in their back rooms because that's where theft usually occurs, especially if your business receives frequent shipments of merchandise.”
“No, the store gets zero shipment,” I informed. “My aunt told me she had no need. The product wasn't selling.”
“Really,” he replied, “I buy sneakers like this all the time. So does my wife.”
“I bet. Sorry I didn't meet you sooner then,” I said sarcastically. “You could have saved my business.”
“Well, I don't know about that,” he countered. “It's a tough time for the mom and pops stores. One by one, they're vanishing.”
Suddenly, I felt a surge of hope and grinned. “That's good news, for me, anyway.”
With raised eyebrows he regarded me, nodding, clueless. “What happened to the girl from yesterday?” He seemed disappointed not to see her, like he was harboring a weird, secret crush.
“She was terminated.” I laughed like a goon, unwound at the seams. “I'm so short staffed that I probably don't even need surveillance.”
“A job's a job,” he retorted. “I wouldn't feel right if I left the work half-done.”
“You know,” I shared, “I would kill for a cup of coffee and a bottle of mountain spring water. Maybe even a Danish? If I gave you cash, would you get me some?”
“Uh, I'm not comfortable with that.” The line in the sand was drawn. “I hav
e other appointments on the books today. Need to be in and out.” He tapped the clipboard with a pencil, hard enough to break it.
Despite him being a dick, I still wanted to save the guy from the stockroom and made another attempt. “You seem tense. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, yes, just ready to get started,” he said without flinching. “Can I see the back room?”
“Sure, but, be careful of the shoes.”
He chuckled, observing my fake smile, and prepared to enter. “Every business has its own theme of humor, huh? You wouldn't believe the things we joke about in the surveillance sector. We see all kinds of things that no one else does. Get it? We see, and you don't!”
Gut too hollow to stomach his dribble, I swept my hands, motioning for him to go in the stockroom first.
****
The racks swayed like playground swings gently flowing in a breeze. So innocent they look, I thought to myself, recalling the gruesome scene from yesterday of the racks pulverizing Stephanie and the thieves.
“Wow, you keep it so clean.” He pretended the foul smell didn't bother him as he checked out the space. “Big room, lots of areas where cameras should go. Did you have a specific spot in mind, besides the obvious?”
“I was thinking that putting one up my ass might be a good idea, since I'm the only person who works here now.” I heard the words fly out of my mouth, and looked as shocked as he did at that moment. And then I punctuated the sentiment with, “God knows what I might do.”
Drip, drip, drip... the sound grew louder and louder. I didn't want to look. Instinctively I knew what it was.
The trickle of blood dripping from the fitting chair formed a river that ran directly to my feet. Hoping only I saw it, I didn't call attention to it.
But he did. “What is that? Shoe dye? You need to invest in better cleaning supplies.” Realizing what the fluid was, his jaw dropped open in horror, followed by a silent scream.