Young Writers Society

Bags of chips and cans of soda gleamed from between sandwiches of shelf as freezers hummed. Daffodil stood in the candy aisle. Bags of candy swung on pegs sticking out from steel honeycombs and packs of folded over each other on racks. Layers upon layers of packaging and gleaming candies, sending sparse glints of light from neon tubes spinning off into the aggregate. It was half-dark, but still lit-up, half-shorted out, but still running.

Tak Tak Tak

Daffodil’s footsteps echoed on the flooring. It was cloudy out, a pale sunlight filtered through the window and tangled in her glossy blackish-brown hair.The gas station was dark, but still running. There was food here. Other things, too. And it was safe.

Tubes of neon light lined slanted metal shelves like waxy squiggles of cake frosting, glowing from behind glass freezer doors that reflected nothing. Bottles of Mountain Dew and Coca Cola in shades of black and lime leered from the shelves, rolled with brand-embossed labels and dripping with drops of condensation. A wave of cold air billowed out as she sucked open the sealed door, making her feel a little dizzy and reel, because she was so cold already. Clutching her hot water bottle to keep her head level, she grabbed a few rippled water bottles, of the cold kind, Dasani brand, and a lemon Gatorade, letting them drop into her eco-friendly cloth bag. 

Stumbling, she fell against a shelf. Her hot water bottle was by now more lukewarm, and losing heat fast. She wouldn’t be able to hold out for much longer. Soon, she would become gray and cold again. Her mind would cloud and the darkness would return.

She suddenly felt her fingers tingle, and her eyelids lift, to a flood of golden light. Her hands were on something solid and smooth. Rounds of pepperoni and melted cheese glistened as they sat on steel racks. It was the pizza warmer. She pulled herself up, onto her own two feet.

The darkness would have to wait a little longer.

There were no butterfly wings growing here. That was nice. Not many places were free of them, nowadays.

Packages of bright orange cheese cracker sandwiches oozing with peanut butter. A small frost-crusted box of pizza-flavored hot pockets that crinkled in plastic sleeves. Protein bars. Hershey bars. Wrinkled sausages of beef jerky that hurt your jaw muscles to chew. Moist snack cakes crumbling with glossy frosting and squeezing with cream filling. 

Food, that would keep her from dissolving into a ghost. That was important. So she needed this food not to rot. Some kinds of food would last longer than others. Like the frozen hot pockets compared to the beef jerky. She would probably expire before the beef jerky did.

She shook her bag and let the things shuffle around.

Food. Water. What else?

More things dropped into her eco-friendly cloth bag. Husky boxes of band-aids. A rattling pack of Advil. (Although a fever was probably the least of her worries.) A waxy tube of toothpaste, and a toothbrush with a faceful of soft bristles. A clicking lighter, a flashlight, dully shining batteries in glossy packaging. All of them went in the bag.

Running away. Packing. It seemed so natural. She wondered what she’d been like before she’d been so confused. What she’d been like when she was the real her. Had the real her thought of running away before? Had she daydreamed of leaving everything behind in lost minutes, of slinging a drawstring bag of travel supplies over her shoulders and letting the cords cut into her shoulders?

Was that why this was so easy?

Pushing aside the double doors, she felt around inside a grayish, waxy trash can standing outside, etched with white scratches and flapping a swinging lid. Her fingers hit plastic and she pulled out a soda bottle, empty except for a few iced-tea colored drops at the bottom.

Her shoes clacked across the floor and into the bathroom. It was almost pitch black, but a natural blackness. That thing couldn’t reach her here. She trickled a bit of bottled water into the soda bottle and swirled it around, then dumped it back out into the sink. Clean now. She pumped the soap dispenser, letting the slippery pink blob through the nozzle, bubbling sluggish, oozing bubbles. Soap. She would need soap, wouldn’t she? Soap was good to have.

Her arms ached. It seemed to come out so slow.

Why was she even getting soap from here? Here, a dark gas station bathroom hand soap dispenser?

What was she even doing here?

Well, here was safe. That thing couldn’t reach her here. Worms squirmed in her stomach as she thought of her house, blotted out with oozing shadow. It was an awful, cold blackness, that sucked away the light in her eyes and the feeling in her limbs. It was lucky she’d escaped. Lucky that here the floor didn’t ripple with water, or butterfly wings grow out of the walls and drip, or shadows didn’t collect in places they weren’t supposed to, with voices whispering out of them like tendrils of madness.

She was lucky.

Lucky.

She stepped out, bag now heavy with a bottle of hand soap. Bag now slung over her shoulder. AA security camera sprouted from the corner. Maybe it would have records of what it was like before all this. 

She went into the back room, and tapped the mouse. The computer screen lit up.

SURVEILLANCE RECORDS 9/9-9-29

>>9-9.mp4

The video was grainy, like sand, and had parallel lines sliding across the screen. A fluid image of a top angle of the counter rippled onscreen, dotted with a bubbly blue button.

>>PLAY

The picture unfroze, and started to move.

2X SPEED

The sky grew brighter. The cashier stood by the register, face jerking back and forth as her small movements were magnified. People blurred through the out-of-focus doors, swirling smeared paths around the shelves.

1X SPEED

Their movements slowed. She could see what they were doing now. A hassled woman dangled a pinched, glossy purse on her arm and rummaged for money at the cash register, ringlets of hair bouncing around her head. A man waited behind her, unshaven and unhurried, a bottle of coke in one hand and a dollar bill in the other. Two teenagers, pink-cheeked and glistening with the sweat of a recent run, opened the glass freezer door and handed each other a slick bottle of water.

What would it be like, she wondered? Just to live? With memories? Without butterfly wings growing out of you? Without shadows eating your home?

She closed the file, and clicked on the most recent one.

9-39.mp4

>>PLAY

It wasn't much different. The same cash register, the same counter, the same aggregate floor, the same tops of aisle shelves, the same crackly bags of candy, the same hot dog rollers and pizza warmers, glinting in the pale light. Except for one thing.

The light was a saturated blue. Not day and not night. Morning, early morning. When had the cameras booted up and started recording? 5AM? 6AM? Did they even turn off at all?

Because whoever was there, behind the grainy, watery file and the lines sliding across the screen, had gotten there earlier, and was eating a deer raw.

It splayed ungracefully over the terrazzo, half its skin peeled away like a corn husk, exposing the quivering muscles underneath. Its heart was still pumping, feebly, like a dying jellyfish, and the sinews shook as a boy, about fifteen, tore apart the entrails. His mouth was stained with layers of fresh blood on top of old, that dripped from its flesh and smeared the floor.The boy ate calmly, as if he was enjoying a steak on a Sunday evening. It was horrifying, but she couldn’t look away. Not until he got up, wiped his mouth, and dragged the deer away by its hind legs.

She held down the power button until the screen went dark, and didn’t move for a long time.