“Evening Lucas” I said whilst clocking in for the night shift at my local supermarket. I have worked here for about half a year and Lucas was definitely my least favorite team leader. “You’re late again John!” He said, clearly being annoyed as always. “Well it’s not my fault you decided that I should work on Tuesday instead of Wednesday.” I hated working on Tuesdays because I am always late from school and all there is to fill are the coolers.
“Anyway John, you’re on dairy duty tonight. I want everything to be stocked and cleaned up before eleven.” He knew I hated dairy. “Can’t I just do the freezer? I’m never going to be done in time.” “Nope, Jeremy got here an hour ago and he is already halfway done with the freezer.” Great. Well since Jeremy is here tonight, and we have been best friends for quite a while, maybe he’ll help me when he’s done, I thought to myself as I got ready to start working. “Oh, one more thing.” Lucas said grinning from ear to ear. “Since Lira is sick today, you are also going to have to take over and fill the Meat, Cheese and Spread Cooler. Good luck!” he finished sarcastically. I knew he was enjoying this, because I was never going to be able to finish on time. And then he would have another excuse to give ma a speech about how I should be more responsible for my work and how it was ridiculous that it took me so long to get my job done. This was going to be a long night.
Now, the dairy cooler would’ve been fine on its own but together with meat? That was crazy work, no one could manage that. I kind of hoped Cindy would be working tonight as well. She is one of the cashiers at our store. I have really taken a liking to her as I enjoy talking to her a lot. I really hope my feeling is mutual. It took me about two hours to get the Meat, Cheese and Spread cooler done because some idiot that had had the morning shift apparently could not understand the difference between sliced and shredded cheese, which meant that I had to reorganize half the cooler so that everything was back in the right place again. All the while Lucas was pacing around the store, acting like he was actually doing something rather then just check if we were working hard enough.
About half an hour later is when it all started going south. The store had emptied out and I was filling the old, moldy dairy cooler. The store’s PA-system was continuously hooked up to the store brand radio station, playing the same overplayed songs, commercials about deals in the store and the occasional “funny” commentary of the overtly cheery host, Michael. Now it was all received via a shoddy old FM receiver with minimal range, so even if we wanted to tune in to anything else, we’d just get static. The radio often had it’s quirks, but the most recent failure was when it played the exact same 30 seconds of audio on repeat, for half an hour. Apparently, a mouse had been chewing on a cable and got electrocuted.
Right in the middle of Dua Lippa’s Break my heart, which I was singing along to don’t judge me, it started skipping certain words. It began with the occasional beat, but soon turned into whole words with pauses of static in between. “Should’ve…home. Say…Knew…end…all. This went on for about five minutes, which was weird considering the song was only about three minutes long. “What is up with that damn radio!” I yelled down towards Jeremy. No reply. About ten minutes later, I started to get annoyed. Jeremy wasn’t responding like he usually would, and the radio was still playing the same broken song. I decided I had had enough of the repetition and went upstairs to the small server room where the radio was housed to search for Lucas and Jeremy. Maybe they where trying to fix it and could use some help.
As soon as I entered the little hallway that separated the break room from the server room and managers office, I could see the radio was missing from its place and a single, thick wire ran from the small room to the dimly lit office. “Lucas must have taken it there to try and repair it.” I heard myself think as I walk over to check. As I entered the office I started: “Need any help fixing… I stopped as a was met with a gruesome sight. In the corner laid Jeremy, or what remained of him. Torn apart in a bloody mess with his heart torn out of his chest and laying on the floor beneath me. In the far-left corner was Lucas’s body, slouched over backwards in the managers chair with a huge gaping hole where his heart used to be. I felt the need to puke. I don’t know how but I hadn’t noticed that the broken music wasn’t coming from the speakers, but from a tall, humanoid figure, made out of wire and bits of plastic casing. Instead of a head it had the old FM Radio. It was then that I realized three things.
It held Lucas’s still bloodied heart in its wire-y ”hand”.
It Wasn’t playing random Gibberish broken appart by static, it was trying to “communicate”.
Whatever it did to them, It was gonna do it to me.
“Break…my…heart” It “said” if you could even call it speaking. In a moments notice I ran for the door, running for my life. As I glanced behind me, I saw it only moved when there was static between words. “Was…alone.” I heard it say, through Dua Lippa’s broken up voice. I flew down the stairs and saw it closing in with jerking movement. I did not know how it could move so fast, considering it was made out of bits of server, wire and casing, but its movement kind off reminded me of one of those slinkies kids let “walk” of the stairs. A big horrific slinky that is. I bolted out the back door, which immediately fell into its lock. I have never been religious but believe me when I prayed it did not know how to open doors. I rushed to my bike and fumbled with the lock a little, threw it to the ground and cycled across the little parking lot in front of our store. Only when I reached a streetlight on the other side, I stopped to rethink whatever I had just seen.
I looked back at the store and my heart stopped. I could see a light still being on in the office, which perfectly lit up a shattered glass pane. As I stood in fear, I saw out of the corner of my eye a dark shape moving towards me as I heard ”All ways…say…goodbye”. I started peddling as if my life depended on it, which it did at that moment. I rode the whole five-minute ride from the store to my home in under two minutes. Once home, I threw my bike to the floor, rushed inside, made sure to lock everything and jumped into my bed, grabbed my phone, and started writing this down. Tomorrow I am going to leave town for a couple days, maybe even weeks. I’ll send this to a couple of news stations and maybe even the military, definitely the police. But first I should get some rest, it is one AM after all.
Edit: It is three AM currently and I don’t think I am going anywhere tomorrow. I hear weird noises on my roof, and hear banging against my window. Between the bangs I hear broken words. I will upload this here, if you don’t see anything on the news, I haven’t made it. And also, it can relocate words now. “Break..BANG..Your..BANG..Heart…”