Mr. Maclendon entered the supermarket with a sigh of vast reluctance.Vera always did the shopping, and she did it alone; but today she had taken ill, and had insisted he go. He had resisted all day, but the be-damned woman had pestered him until she wore him down.
She had, however, had the foresight to provide him with a shopping list. A list which, he now realized after rummaging through his pockets in a panic, he had forgotten to bring with him.
So now, what?
He considered calling home, but remembered that Vera had just taken her medication when he left, and was no doubt sleeping like the dead, and snoring like a foghorn. Going back home was also unpalatable; Vera would just chastise him for forgetting her list, and use the incident as a further example of his ineptitude.
No, he would just have to try and remember what he could of what had been on the list.
As always, when nervous, he felt a need to pee. He decided to ignore this feeling, and push on. The sooner he was done here, the sooner he could be back home, in his comfy chair; where the noise and speed of the world could be safely ignored.
He walked toward the racks of shopping carts and attempted to wrestle one free. The cart seemed welded to its rack, but finally wrenched free with an unpleasant metallic screech.
“There, damn you.” Mr. Maclendon muttered under his breath.
A tall woman standing beside him gave him a glaring look.
“Are you talking to me?” she asked.
“No Madam, I was swearing at the cart.” Mr. Maclendon replied.
The woman looked at him as if he were bonkers, and retrieved a cart with barely any effort.
Mr. Maclendon looked up to the heavens for solace; finding none, he turned his cart and maneuvered it through a glut of loitering shoppers. This wasn’t easy, as the cart’s wheels kept skewing him to the left.
His first stop was the produce section. He couldn’t recall if there had been any fruits or vegetables on the list; the tinkle of supermarket music from the tinny speakers made concentration difficult.
Just to be sure, he put a pound of grapes and a bunch of bananas in the cart. Vera loved grapes, and he was fond of bananas, so it was a safe bet that both were on the list. He moved on.
He lingered awhile in the frozen foods aisle, but nothing rang a bell.
The meats section was practically deserted, but it reminded him of something that had been on the list: ground beef. He went to the cold counters and picked his way through the shrink-wrapped packages of meat and poultry, until he found the ground beef.
The sudden growl of machinery startled him.
He looked up. Just beyond the meat counter, three large windows looked into a white room, where the butchers sliced and packaged the meat. There was only one butcher there now, operating the meat slicer. It was the roar of the slicer, as it was switched on, that had startled him.
Mr. Maclendon looked into the room. He couldn’t make out what the butcher was slicing, but whatever it was; it was spraying out a profuse amount of blood. The butcher’s whites were smeared with it, and his beard was dripping with it.
The butcher felt himself being looked at, and looked up at Mr. Maclendon. He smiled with his red teeth, and waved.
Mr. Maclendon dropped his ground beef into the cart and scurried off.
He turned a corner and nearly collided with another cart being pushed by a small foreign woman. She was old and bedraggled, and her cheeks seemed spotted with mold. Her cart was filled with packages of poultry atop many cans of creamed corn.
“Pardon me, Ma’am.” he said, as he pushed his cart past her.
She mumbled something unintelligible under her breath, as she turned the corner and vanished. Mr. Maclendon tried to shake the notion that he had seen the old woman’s poultry struggling against the shrink-wrap.
He began to notice that there were less fellow shoppers than when he had entered, and as he traveled down the aisles, the less he saw. Perhaps it was a slow night.
Another thing, the plaques above the aisles were all wrong. The one above the hair treatment products read: Beverages; the cereal aisle read: Dairy Foods; and so on. Perhaps they had changed the layout of the store, and hadn’t gotten around to resetting the signs.
As he puzzled over this, Mr. Maclendon entered what seemed to be the pet food aisle (the plaque read: Snacks).
Bells rang in his head: dog food!
Of course, dog food. He remembered seeing it on the list, a big sack of dog chow; how could he have forgotten?
He pushed his cart past the canned chow and chew toys, and towards the end of the aisle, where the big sacks were stacked.
At the end of the aisle, there sat a boy of about five or six, hunkered down on the floor, and eating from a small bag of cat food.
Mr. Maclendon was appalled.
“WHAT are you doing?!” was all he could get out.
The boy looked up at him, and smiled sheepishly. He was drooling, and his drool contained flecks of cat food in it. He did not answer, but instead offered a handful of cat food up to him.
Mr. Maclendon waved it away. “Where are your parents, son?” he asked, in his best “grown-up” voice.
The boy giggled; a high girlish sound that cut through Mr. Maclendon like fingernails on chalkboard.
“Are you lost, son?” he asked.
The boy stopped giggling, and his eyes darkened.
“You’re lost.” he replied.
“Son, I think we should go find your parents---“
“Asshole…” the boy muttered.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?!” Mr. Maclendon gasped.
The boy started laughing loudly now, in a wild and deranged fashion, louder and louder; his face expanding and distorting beyond any semblance of sanity. Mr. Maclendon backed his cart out of the aisle, and hurried away; dog food be damned.
He decided right then, to just get the hell back home. He would deal with Vera’s recriminations if he had to; nothing was worth this level of discomfort and unsettlement.
He soon realized, after some time walking through deserted aisles, that he was, indeed, lost. The directional signs were no help; they were as useless as the aisle plaques. To make matters worse, his bladder felt like it would explode, if he didn’t urinate soon.
It took some time, but he managed to find his way back to the produce section quite by accident. Like everywhere else, it was empty.
Mr. Maclendon’s eyes fell on something he hadn’t seen before: two aluminum-plated swinging doors with round porthole windows at the far corner of the produce section with the words EMPLOYEES ONLY stenciled over them.
The first thing that popped into his mind was: the employee’s restroom! Sure, there had to be one! Just thinking of a restroom made his bladder ache all the more.
Abandoning his cart, he sprinted over to the swinging doors, pushed them open, and walked in.
Inside it was dark, but dimly lit somehow; and everywhere he looked, there were piles of boxes. Many of the piles went very high, to a ceiling he could not see because it was beyond the range of the light.
“Hello?” he yelled, “Anybody here?”
No answer, but the weird echo of his own voice.
Up ahead was a door marked RESTROOM. He walked over to it, and opened the door.
It was dark inside, and stank of urine. He tried the light switch, but the light didn’t come on.
He did not want to have to pee in the dark, but such was his need that, he would if he had to.
He considered using his pocket penlight, but remembered that its battery was nearly dead. He found, though, that by keeping the door open, some of the light from outside it would spill through, and illuminate (somewhat) the restroom.
The door, however, resisted all attempts to keep it open. Mr. Maclendon ended up having to use a box of canned beans, from one of the smaller piles, as a doorstop.
He looked inside. The light was slight, but at least it was no longer pitch dark. The restroom was unusually long, but sparsely furnished: one sink with mirror, one paper towel dispenser with trashcan below, and at the far end of the room, one toilet.
He noticed two things when he stepped inside.
The first thing was that the restroom floor was lower than the store floor by about three or four inches. The other thing was that the restroom floor was flooded by about an inch. That was why it stank to high heaven. The floor was slippery because of it.
He carefully sloshed his way toward the toilet; his bladder approaching critical mass. He reached it, unzipped, unfurled, and cut loose.
Relief felt so damn good, it was like Heaven.
The sound coming from the toilet, though, was odd. It did not sound like he was pissing into standing water; it was more like a tippity tappity tippity tappity sound, like the stream was hitting a wet rag.
Perhaps someone had dropped something in the toilet?
It was not unheard of; who has not come across a public toilet stuffed with paper beyond its capacity to handle?
It would certainly explain the flooded floor.
Mr. Maclendon leaned forward, but could see nothing; the light was too dim to show what was in the toilet bowl. It was a pool of darkness.
He finished his business, and zipped up.
Out of curiosity, he took out his pocket penlight. Sure, the battery was near dead, but since he had not used it in a while, it might yet give one good last beam of light.
He flashed it at the toilet bowl, and found he was right.
For about one or two seconds, bright light illuminated the bowl, and he saw what was in there.
Inside the bowl, almost to the rim, there floated a thick mass of what seemed to be pale, mottled flesh, with tufts of long wiry hair.
In the moment before the light died out; it jerked around violently, splashing water, as if startled out of sleep.
Mr. Maclendon gasped.
He turned away and started to run, but tripped on his own feet. He avoided falling face down into the filthy water by landing on his hands, but his pants got soaked.
He started to get up, but was frozen in place by sloshing sounds from behind him; the sound of the toilet thing flopping out of its nest.
The watery “plop” that followed, broke him out of his paralysis. He got up and ran toward the door, but slipped on the slippery surface, and fell headfirst onto the flooded floor.
Pain radiated from his forehead to all sections of his head, as he fought to keep from passing out. He propped himself upon his hands; just in time to see that the box that was holding the door open, was oh-so-slowly being pushed out of the way, by the weight of the door. One corner of the box managed to hold on for a second, but lost its grip.
The door slammed shut, leaving him in darkness.
He tried to get up, but was hit with waves of dizziness. All he was able to accomplish was to turn himself onto his back. His clothes were now entirely soaked; but his head felt a little better.
He decided to try to sit up, when something suddenly grabbed his feet.
He shrieked, as the toilet-thing propelled itself on top of him. Screaming he tore at it, feeling his fingers go through its awful, mushy flesh. It wrapped cold, wet tendrils around his neck, and dropped a mass of itself on his face.
Having just screamed, Maclendon inadvertently sucked in air, and got a mouthful of foulness instead.
He turned on his side and vomited.
Still gagging, he forced himself to get up and stand. Once up, he started tearing the toilet-thing off of himself. It was still trying to wrap itself around him, but it tore as easily as a wet napkin. He tore it off his face, neck, limbs, and body; until he was sure it was all off him.
He walked over to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the light. He started to walk away, when he felt something in his mouth that made him throw up all over again: a long wiry hair.
After the heaving subsided, he walked out through the swing doors, and back into the produce section.
He was cold, wet, and in pain (not to mention foul-smelling). All he wanted to do right now was go home, gargle mouthwash intensely, take a long bath, take some aspirin, and go to sleep.
He ignored his cart, and walked off in the direction, he was sure, would lead to the exit. He never even noticed that all the produce in the produce section had gone to rot.
He pressed on, passing aisle after aisle; stubbornly sure that he would find the way out. This wasn’t a labyrinth dammit, as much as it felt like one; sooner or later it had to end somewhere.
He ignored all the signs, which were not only wrong, but were now complete gibberish. Nor did he pay attention to the increasingly alien and disturbing products on the shelves; or notice that the store music had become dissonant and jarring.
He just pressed on: aisle after aisle, until at last he reached the check-out lanes. Empty, of course; but beyond them were the exits.
For one chilling moment, it seemed like the doors would not open, but to his relief, they sluggishly yawned apart, and he stepped outside.
It was dark.
Had it been dark when he arrived? He couldn’t recall.
He walked out into the parking lot. It seemed to extend forever in all directions, under a starless night; the parking lot lights providing the only illumination. It was empty, except for his car. Far off, in the distance, something wailed.
He sprinted over to the car, while removing a keychain from his wet pants. He unlocked the door, and got in.
On the dashboard was a slip of paper. He picked it up, and looked at it. It was a shopping list. He scanned the list; nowhere did it mention either dog food or ground beef. He crumpled it, and threw it away.
He slipped the key into the ignition, brought the car to life, and started driving.
He looked at the fuel gauge, and hoped he could find his way out before he ran out of gas.
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