Tales From the Gas Station 2

by Jack Townsend

  Jerry walked into frame, just in time to get snatched into a headlock.

  “Are you listening to me?! I just told you that the world as you know it is a façade. There’s a devil here. And one of you is working for him!”

  It all played out exactly the way I remembered, and yet I still jumped when I saw Spencer step out of nowhere to crack open the back of the bearded man’s skull with a shovel.

  I wanted to fast forward through this part, but I couldn’t. Whoever sent me this video wanted me to know something, and I couldn’t afford to miss it.

  Spencer took Tony to the floor, mercilessly beating him into submission while I sat behind the counter with a blank stare on my face.

  I willed myself across the void of time to get up. Say something. Do something. Stop this madman before he kills again! But I was frozen. And from the look of it, I didn’t seem to care at all. The complete lack of emotion on my face was the scariest thing in the scene.

  Spencer locked Antonio and Jerry in the cooler, then came back. I remember this part.

  He set up two chairs facing each other in front of the counter and made me sit in one while he took the other. Benjamin’s lifeless body was on the ground behind him, bleeding all over the place. I thought he was dead. We both did. I remember this part.

  We sat there, and he explained that the dark god wanted to talk to me. That this was the great plan. That he wasn’t really sent to kill anyone. I remember this part, and I remember what comes next. Benjamin is about to wake up and kill Spencer.

  I really didn’t want to watch it, but I had to.

  Benjamin rolled onto his side and moaned in pain. Wait. Spencer, alerted by the noise, turned to look at the man regaining consciousness behind him. That’s not how it happened. Benjamin caught him by surp—

  Spencer leaned over in his chair and said, “You’re still alive?”

  The me in the footage pulled something out of his pocket, lunged forward, and grabbed Spencer by the hair.

  Suddenly, I remembered everything.

  While he was distracted, I clicked the box cutter blade out, stuck it into his neck below the ear, and pulled. It was amazing how easily the sharpened blade designed for cardboard could slice through skin and arteries.

  I fell into my seat. Spencer turned around in his chair and looked into my eyes as the fountain of blood erupted from his neck. He held the palms of his hands against the grisly wound and struggled to speak. When that failed, he tried to stand, but not even that was possible anymore. All he could do was fall to his knees in front of his emotionless killer. He kept his eyes on me until the very end, when the life left him, and he collapsed onto the ground.

  The footage continued for another four minutes. In that time, Benjamin slowly regained consciousness. He rolled onto his side, pushed up onto all fours, climbed to his feet, then studied the room. He must have pieced it all together. He tried talking to me, but I was unresponsive. I’d been sitting there, in my seat, staring at the body of Spencer Middleton the entire time. It wasn’t until he took the box cutter out of my hand that I finally snapped out of it.

  Benjamin kicked the body, spat on him, and said, “That’s what you get!” He turned to me next, and said, “Alright, asshole. Where are the others?”

  That’s where the clip ended.

  I stared at the computer, trying to wrap my head around this… I remembered it wrong… Benjamin wasn’t the one who killed Spencer… What else… WHAT ELSE have I been remembering wrong?!

  “Good morning, Jack!” she yelled with a big smile.

  I grabbed the laptop and smashed it onto the floor as hard as I could. She screamed and jumped back as the computer shattered into several pieces.

  “Oh, hi Rosa. I didn’t see you come in.”

  With eyes wide open, she yelled, “What the hell was that?!”

  “I was just… watching… a pornography.”

  “Oh. Sorry to interrupt.”

  “No problem. Are you ready for your first day?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rosa was standing next to me with a big smile on her face and a brand-new nametag pinned to her shirt, listening intently while I explained how our time clock worked. She had a pen and pocket-sized notebook in her hands, scribbling away as I spoke (like there was any way she could forget “scan badge, type in employee code”). She was curious, full of questions, and eager to learn. Of course, none of those things boded well for her future here.

  I gave her the complete tour of the gas station, starting with the coffee pot. It didn’t take long to explain how everything worked, especially considering that she already had it all written down from the last time I gave her the first-day-of-training speech. Apparently, she’d gone so far as to study her notes the night before, so this was mostly a refresher.

  “What’s with that stain?” She pointed to the brown shape on the floor by the coffee machine, just like I knew she would.

  I gave her a shrug. “It doesn’t come up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it’s been there for years.”

  “Well, where did it come from?”

  “It’s a long story, but the short version is this: We don’t know. The shorter version is this: Magic. Yes, we tried vinegar and dish soap.”

  “I bet I could—”

  “You already did.”

  “Oh.”

  Next, I showed her the grocery aisles and explained how to front and rotate stock. It felt strange going through the motions all over again, but when the shapeshifter took away their memories, she cut deep. Nobody else could remember anything that happened after they arrived at the gas station.

  Once again, the official report stated with certainty that there was nothing supernatural involved. Saul’s disappearance, my fingerectomy, and all the blood and damage to the building were blamed on Spencer. The sheriff begrudgingly admitted that O’Brien was right, and a closer examination of the circumstances surrounding Middleton’s “death” revealed a series of innocent clerical errors and hilarious misunderstandings.

  The new and improved cover story 2.0 went thusly: Spencer staged a breakout, killed a guard about his size, stole his uniform and traded identities with him, then walked right out the front doors during the ensuing confusion. The autopsy of the guard proved beyond any doubt that it was not the body of Spencer Middleton, but this was the last autopsy before the coroner went on a week-long vacation, and somebody forgot to make a phone call and someone didn’t read all the paperwork and somebody made some assumptions and “you know how it goes sometimes.”

  When I finished my spiel about grocery stocking etiquette, I looked back to see Rosa holding a lawn gnome in her arms—a younger male with a brown beard and a red hat.

  “Be careful with those,” I warned.

  “I know. Don’t touch the ones with green hats. Why is that, anyway?”

  “There’s some ingredient in the green dye that reacts to your skin and makes your hands smell funny.”

  She carefully put the gnome back on the shelf and wiped her fingers on her pants. When she spoke again, she used her serious voice. I was expecting this. Actually, I was surprised it didn’t come sooner.

  “Hey, Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m really sorry I fell asleep and slept right through everything. I honestly don’t know how that could have happened.”

  “It’s okay. Try not to think about it.”

  “But it doesn’t make any sense!”

  “I know. Try not to think about it.”

  “But I’ve never done anything like that before, and—”

  “Rosa, listen to me.” She gave me her undivided attention. “Try not to think about it.”

  She looked me in the eyes, nodded, and said, “Okay.”

  “Great. I think your training is pretty much done. There’s just one last thing.”

  I walked her back to the front where my backpack was sitting on the counter, reached inside, and pulled out one of
my favorite books—a fantasy-themed murder mystery about an Orc detective and his Elven sidekick. If things went according to plan, this was going to be a slow night. No surprises, no monsters, no Spencer, no Sagoth. And if that were the case, she would need something to keep her from going crazy out of boredom.

  She ended up reading the whole thing cover to cover before the sun came up.

  ***

  Amelia O’Brien came into the store the next morning, wearing jeans and a plain gray tee. Seeing her out of uniform was going to take some getting used to, but I was happy to see her at all. She bought a cup of coffee and took a seat in the booth. As soon as the other customers were gone, I made myself a cup and joined her.

  “How’s everything going?” she asked.

  What she really meant was anything strange to report?

  “Things have been quiet. How about you?”

  She sipped her coffee and muttered sarcastically, “I’m having the time of my life. A vacation like this is just what I needed.”

  Rosa was annoyed with herself for falling asleep at the job, but aside from a little shame and embarrassment, there wasn’t any harm done. Jerry already had plenty of practice blacking out entire nights, so it didn’t take much for him to bounce right back. O’Brien, though, was a different story.

  No amount of clever misdirection was going to excuse the fact that she was on location and asleep while Spencer wrought his unholy havoc. There were too many questions she couldn’t answer, and until the internal investigation into her professional conduct and state of mind had concluded, she was forced to take a leave of absence.

  She promised me that she was going to take a vacation until the whole thing sorted itself out, but we both knew better. The gas station had its claws in her now, and for better or worse, Amelia O’Brien was stuck here just like the rest of us.

  She looked at me and asked, “Have you heard anything from… ?”

  “No. But I don’t think Spencer is coming back.”

  She knew I was lying.

  “So that’s it?” she asked. “Maybe now things can go back to normal.”

  “I’m pretty sure that ship has already sailed, crashed, burned, and sunk. Spencer was working for somebody. The sheriff’s probably in on it, too. I can feel it. It’s all building up to something bad.”

  O’Brien stared into her coffee and said, “I had a dream last night. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but it had something to do with the gas station. There was this... unspeakable creature. A monster made of darkness and hate. It got inside my head. It told me that this was just the beginning.” She raised her eyes to meet mine. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” I shrugged, and she cracked a smile. “I didn’t think so.”

  Jerry walked through the front door wearing an oversized blue t-shirt with a giant number “4” painted across the chest.

  “Hey Rosa!” he said with a wave.

  “Hi Jerry!”

  He fixed himself a cup of coffee and came to join us at the booth, slumping into the seat next to me. “Hey, it’s Notorious A.O.B.! I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “Cute,” she said, sarcastically.

  “Jack, you got my sobriety chips?”

  While he sugared up his drink, I pulled a bag of barbeque flavored potato chips out of my backpack and set them down in front of him, as per our arrangement.

  A couple days after the shapeshifter encounter, I went out to his place under the guise of playing video games. As soon as he was distracted, I threw the Russian radio into a roaring bonfire then threatened to kick his ass if he ever tried to rebuild it again. That night, we hashed out a deal: he would put the radio behind him for good, and in exchange, I would help him unlock all the bonus characters in Smash Bros and buy him a bag of chips for every consecutive day he stayed clean. This was day four.

  He opened the bag and offered them to us. O’Brien hesitated, but took and ate one.

  “You busy after this?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t suppose I am. Why?”

  “Because I have a third controller. You ever play Smash Bros before?”

  The door swung open and a man rushed inside, screaming, “Oh my God! I made it! Oh, thank you, God!”

  He was middle-aged, with a short beard and unkempt hair, wearing tattered and dirt-stained clothes, with no socks or shoes on. O’Brien moved to leave the booth, but I caught her by the arm.

  “It’s not your job anymore,” I explained. “Plus, I want to see how she handles it.”

  Jerry noisily crunched down a chip and nodded in agreement. O’Brien slowly leaned back in her seat and watched as the man staggered up to the counter where Rosa was busy sorting the week’s merchant credit card receipts. She shot him a smile and a friendly, “Hi! How are you? Can I help you find anything?”

  “Yes! Please! You have to help me! I’ve been trapped out there for days! The rest of them are all dead! You hear me? Dead! I need to use your phone.”

  “Okay! Not a problem. It’s going to be twenty-five cents a minute, pay in advance.”

  “Twenty-five cents? Per minute? Are you crazy? It’s just a local call!”

  “Sorry, sir. Store policy.”

  “That’s ridiculous! I’m not paying that kind of scratch for a phone call. Come on! It’s an emergency!”

  As the man angrily tapped his bare foot, O’Brien looked back at me and whispered, “Should we do something?”

  I shook my head. “No, she’s got this.”

  “Sorry,” Rosa explained. “No exceptions. You’re welcome to wait here until the deputy comes around for his daily check in.”

  “And you’re welcome to eat my butt!”

  With that, the man slammed the counter and stormed out, never to be seen again. Rosa looked our way. Jerry clapped, and I gave her a thumbs up. With that sign of approval, she beamed and went back to sorting receipts.

  It was undeniable. Things weren’t going to go back to the way they were before. But as I sat there in the company of friends just as messed up as me, I couldn’t help but dare to wonder, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.