Past The Patch

Dr. Homme simply walked away as Kim shook her head and Joyce said a pleasant no thank you, trying to keep the smirk from her face. Maria drank an average of six “diet shakes” per shift. Usually while eating a bag of chips. Kim turned to leave as well, but Joyce gave a tiny yank on her sleeve.

“Kim, I really wish you and Melissa could figure out how to get along.”

“Joyce, I have nothing against her, “ Kim said in a low growl. “But Dr. Homme has made it clear she doesn’t care for me.”

“She’s just…” trailed off Joyce, trying to find the word.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Kim stormed off back towards the front of the store, momentarily too pissed off to worry about all the creepy folks running around. Thru-Drug was a larger chain, but far from one of the biggest. Joyce had lost her last two pharmacists to national chains who could pay more. Basically if it came down to it, Kim was dispensable if the risk was losing Dr. Homme.

Swearing to herself. Kim rounded the corner to the checkout area and stopped short. It was empty, abandoned. No customers, no employees.

Wes wasn’t at his register, Maria wasn’t raiding the cooler. Dwight wasn’t even loitering about.

“Wes?” she heard herself whisper.

Mankind does not truly know the meaning of silence. We still can hear vehicles in the distance, the hum of electrical lighting and other mechanized devices running. In more primitive times, that silence would have been filled with the rustle of leaves, the movement of furtive animals and perhaps water lapping against whatever nearby shore. Yet, were we to have those few seconds of utter quiet, it would still not be true silence. We can not help, in those times, but hear the beating of our own heart.

Standing there beside a towering display of men’s shaving products, Kim heard the sound of her own heartbeat and nothing else. What she felt, however, was something horribly foreign, something incorrect and near- reprehensible. This feeling is what made her scream.

“Wes!”

“Kim! What the…” squealed Wes as he popped up from behind his counter and promptly fell over. “Ow! Damn it!”

“What were you doing?” Kim said, her voice shrill as she ran over to him. “Where were you?”

“Fucking hell, I was stocking the gum! I was just sitting here reading the stupid new flavor descriptions. Why are you freaking out on me?” Sure enough, five cases of bubble gum lay scattered out in the space behind the counter, a rainbow of sugary yumminess. Kim clutched at her face and tried to get her breathing back under control. Something was definitely off today, something more than just her being spooked by weird customers – she was sure of it. Looking out, she saw that night had fully enveloped Logres, Trick Or Treating in full swing in other parts of the town.

“Okay,” she said, making an exaggerated whistle and motioning wildly. “Have you had any customers since I left?”

“Yeah, Mr. Jermyn came in, just like he does every day,” replied Wes as he got up off the floor. “Bought his two lottery tickets and bottle of root beer, just like he does every day! What is going on?”

“Where’s Maria? Or Dwight? Have you seen Dwight?” Wes rubbed his elbow where he had fallen. “No, neither. Why are you spazzing?”

Kim looked up at the large digital clock that was above the far counter that held all the tobacco products. It was only a quarter after seven. Thru-Drug closed at ten. The last three hours would not be able to pass fast enough.

“You saw that fat guy, right Wes?” she said in a quiet voice.

“Yeah…” Wes replied, slowly.

“Angie saw the old lady with me. Maria saw an old man. Only…

only I saw the little boy.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kim gave her head a hard little shake. “I need to go find Maria and Angie. Shit, and Dwight. Just… just don’t leave here, okay? Please?” Wes’s face was unreadable. “Gotcha, Kim.”

Going back the way she had just come, down the aisle of medical supplies, Kim found she was hugging herself. She had put on a long-sleeved black thermal underneath her red Thru-Drug polo, and while she had been fine earlier, she was sweating now. Of course, her gesture was one of psychological comfort not temperature. Realizing how shaken she had become, she paused to pull out her hairband and tie her long black tresses back up in a tighter ponytail. Flicking a loose strand behind her ear, Kim took three more steps to scan down the second perpendicular aisle, hoping she didn’t see anyone surprising.

Anyone, no. Anything…

Something was on the floor, a mess of some kind. It was a few aisles in, between pet supplies and children’s. Something spilled? Kim’s sense of job duty and her innate human instinct to investigate the curious led her to walk forward. Not even twenty feet away, right along the end display of dog collars and matching leashes. Right on the floor where anyone could step in it.

The smell hit her first, thick and warm. A pile of feces had been strewn out, the perpetrator squatting, leaving his mess, and then playing in his own shit. Defecating on the floor in the middle of the store would be bad enough, but that someone would then paint and mold their steaming delight seemed an abomination. The worst offense was the art itself, some abstraction or symbol that struck Kim more horrid than the stench.

She backed away, gagging and eyes watering from the fetid stink, or perhaps from what the befouled lump had been shaped into. A sea of nightmare images washed through her imagination, each one more atrocious than the one before it. This wasn’t the product of ill customers or Halloween pranksters. Some primal, instinctual part of Kim recognized the sigil scrawled in shit and felt her soul desecrated by the sight of it.

Running, stumbling, falling. Kim made her way back to the front of the store. She crawled the last few feet around the corner to bring her head up and find Wes engaged in a conversation with Maria. Wes joking, Maria drinking her diet shake. Kim’s voice wouldn’t come, the sounds from her throat nothing more than choked bleats. She coughed, once then harder.

Get up! she told herself. Holding back an urge to be sick, she pulled herself up by the metal shell that held shopping baskets.

“Holy shit! Kim, what happened?”

Wes rushed over to her, Maria close behind. Kim yanked her eyes off them long enough to gaze at the doors. Something was in the Thru-Drug, something sadistic and perverse, something diseased and hungry. She could feel it now, behind her eyes and low in her stomach.

As she came to these conclusions, a scream tore out from the back end of the store.

“Joyce! Was that Joyce?” asked Wes.

“Ohmigod, what’s going on?” yelped Maria.

Kim looked back to the doors and let out a small groan. Angie stood there now, having appeared out of nowhere, looking nothing less than an incarnate of hell. Her glasses shattered, but the frames still hanging on to her pallid face, her hair was streaked back with filth and her eyes had been gorged out. In the hollow sockets, a visceral blackness oozed like hot tar, the same bubbling and running from her mouth. An arm raised, one that looked irreparably broken, and Kim saw that the liquid blackness squirmed under the skin of her extended digits as well.

Maria had spun at the Kim’s sound of terror, and she too had screamed. However, Maria had then taken off as fast as she could scramble past the cash register counters. Angie’s head snapped with the motion and her arm tracked Maria’s movement. Glittering shards, obsidian-like and sharp, projected themselves from Angie’s stretched arm and toppled Maria into a display of cleaning supplies. The pharmacy tech howled in agony as Angie very calmly glided over to her, those wet black orifices never leaving Kim and Wes. Her neck cracked, head twisting one hundred and eighty degrees to watch them behind her. Retrieving a bleeding, sobbing Maria and dragging her shuddering form along the floor, Kim trembled when she registered that the projectile spikes had been Angie’s own fingers.

“Angie, hon?” Wes tried as she came upon them. “Can you hear me?

Please, you in there?”