It turned out that I was in for more than one surprise when I made it back into the Dollar General Beyond.
Celene took me from the store where we had met to another store that I supposed would’ve been her staging area.
It was not a store that I had been to before, and it almost seemed like these pocket stores were off the beaten path somehow. It made me question why I had never run into Gale’s store before he took me there. Why had I never run into another person before the hermit? These things made me wonder how many people were somehow tucked away, and how many Dollar Generals were outside of my path and would never be encountered until I realized they existed at all.
As expected, the damage to my clothes and my body was fixed, but it was something beyond that too. I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to use the bathroom, and my stomach felt full in a way that it hadn’t since I left. I had never really stopped to think about it before, since I have been swapping stores so often, but I was never hungry when I came to a new store. I had eaten an hour before leaving work on the night I had stepped into the bathroom. What if it was more than just my clothes and my health that were regenerated? What if each new step set me back to the way I was the second that I stepped through?
It was definitely something I would have to think about later, but the idea was put out of my mind at that moment as a cold nose hit me in the hand.
I reached down without thinking about it, scratching the fluffy fella on the head, and that’s when I realized Celene wasn’t the only lost soul that I had stumbled upon. The panting border collie was black and white with a big brown spot on his chest. He must be the dog from the posters in the break room, the one that somebody was looking for, the one that Celene had talked about in her journal, the one that had traveled the multiple stores as readily as we had. The dog seemed happy to see a new face, and as it woofed and danced around happily, I was just glad for the comfort that came from petting a dog again. It was strange what you missed while you were traversing the infinite sphere of Dollar Generals, and this was certainly one of those things.
“Give him a minute to breathe, Buddy,” Celene said as she good-naturedly pushed the dog back a little, “Sorry about that. He doesn’t meet many new people.”
“It’s OK,” I responded, “ I haven’t seen many new people myself lately, especially of the four-legged variety.”
She invited me to sit by her makeshift campfire, which turned out to be a gas burner with some cooking equipment on top of it, and as Buddy put his head in my lap, she seemed to dissect me with her eyes.
“This isn’t your first time traveling is it”
“Not even close,” I told her.
“I didn’t think it was. You don’t seem particularly freaked out by the fact that your wound healed or that you’re inside a Dollar General store. How long have you been traveling?”
“I don’t know,” I answered her honestly, “ I got here less than a year ago, I think, and after a while, I just started moving through the stores. It’s been a wild ride, but I’ve seen some pretty outrageous things while I’ve been trying to figure out how to get out.”
Celene put some stew in a pot over the fire, flipping the burner on as she stirred it around, “ I’m not convinced there is an out. I’ve seen people go out the front door, and I’ve seen people go into the ceiling, but I’ve never heard of anybody making it to the end of the loop, at least they never came back to talk about it if they did.”
“Yeah, I know. I read your journal, and that made it pretty clear that,”
Celene looked up, the dripping wooden spoon in her hand looking more like a weapon than a utensil, and I was worried for a minute that she might attack me.
“You read my journal? And how exactly do you know that it’s my journal?”
As if an answer, I reached into my bag and pulled out her battered old journal, opening it to the place where her name tag was.
“I feel pretty certain that there’s probably only one Celene trapped inside of here. I found this on an old guy in a derelict store just before Gale and I were forced to kill him. I got the feeling you hadn’t just handed it to him, so I figured I’d hang onto it. I felt pretty confident I’d run into you at some point or another, or you would run into my corpse at some point or another.”
Celene looked like she wanted to reach out and take the journal, but she seemed unable with her hands shaking the way they were.
“You’ve met Gale?”
“Yeah, we were traveling together until he decided to go into the ceiling.”
Celene looked gobsmacked, “Why would he do that?”
“I think he felt guilty about killing the old hermit. He seemed to be taking it very hard before he left for good, and now I’m wondering if I’ll ever see him again?”
Celene poked at the food and seemed to think about what she was going to say next. Buddy whined, poking his nose against my hand as if trying to draw my attention away from Celene. He was an intuitive creature, Buddy, and it likely came from being with Celene for so long. He wanted to give her a chance to mull over the myriad of feelings she likely had banging around in there. I already suspected she had some connection to the hermit as well as Gale, and I couldn’t imagine how she was feeling now that she knew they were likely both dead.
“I wouldn’t count on it.” she finally said, “Nothing ever comes out of the ceiling except the miasma. I’ve never seen anything else come out at least.”
She took the journal, setting it beside her chair and she stirred the soup.
“Of course, I’d never seen anything come from the outside either, so my information might not be as reliable as I thought.”
She ladled some of the stew into a bowl and handed it to me, picking up a second and spooning some up for herself.
“So, what happens now?” I asked, taking a hesitant bit of the hot slop.
“Now, we eat some dinner. The soup is definitely the kind you want to eat hot so you,”
“No, I mean like in general. What do we do now?”
Celine laughed, “I have no clue, kid. Like I said, no one‘s ever come out of the outside before, just like they’ve never come out of the ceiling before. You’re a first for me.”
I laughed a little, her candor breaking the tension, and we proceeded from there.
That first night, we mostly made small talk and ate stew. It was pretty clear that Celene hadn’t had anyone to talk to but Buddy for quite some time. She seemed almost shy around me like she thought if she spoke her mind I might disappear. It made our conversation stilted at first, but not for very long. Being stuck outside for several weeks, coupled with the almost magical way I had just healed the damage to my back, meant that after I had a belly full of soup and a warm place to crash I fell asleep in pretty short order.
One minute I was drinking soup and laughing at something she was saying, and the next minute I was waking up with Buddy snuggled up beside me and an empty chair across from me.
I was worried that I had been abandoned again, but it didn’t last long.
I heard a noise and looked up to see her securing something against the bathroom door, Celene looking up as she noticed I was awake.
She had been out getting supplies, and she had several plastic bags full of soups meat, and other amenities. Buddy, who had also been asleep, wiggled around to look at her and barked as he got up and danced around his mistress. Celene smiled, reaching into the bag as she tossed him a beggin strip from the depths of the plastic pack. Buddy took it to the dog bed that sat beside our sitting area and began crunching on it viciously.
“Sorry,” she said, clearly seeing something on my face “ I should’ve left a note or something. It’s been a while since I’ve had anyone here but myself and buddy, and leaving communication on when I’ll be back isn’t something I’m used to doing.”
I told her it was fine, and I went to go help with the bags as she restocked her coolers. It appeared, like Gale, she believed in keeping a stocked larder for whatever might come, and she would get no complaints out of me in that regard. Buddy panted happily as he tried his best to help, and we ended up scratching his head as the two of us finished up and moved back to the cook stove.
“So where did you find him?” I asked, scratching the dog as he leaned into my pets.
“I found him again a few months ago when I was traveling. You read my journal so you know I’ve been pretty far into the stores. Buddy here was lying in a store that looked like a meadow and I was afraid he was dead at first. He was so still that when he lifted his head and whined at me, it startled me. He was hungry and I doubt he had eaten anything in a while. I fed him, and after some coaxing, he let me pick him up and came back here with me. He’s a good fella, but I’ve had to go looking for him more than once since I brought him here to my base camp. I finally started propping the bathroom door closed, but after the last time, when he found himself in the cave store, I don’t think he’s in a big hurry to leave again.”
I nodded, realizing I was in the presence of two talented explorers.
“Something I wondered about when I found it was how the hermit got your journal?” I asked, accepting another bowl of stew from my hostess, “Did he steal it?”
Celene looked into the butane flames for a long moment before answering and she looked a little sad, “No, Jasper didn’t need to steal it. I was taking care of him until very recently, helping him get his mind right so he could come back here, or so I thought.”
“Were you the one who taught him to travel?” I asked, trying not to sound accusatory.
“I did,” she said, taping a bite of her stew, “But when I found him he was in no shape to travel at all. He had been stuck in that store for a while, his mental health deteriorating as his mind eroded. I found the pill bottle while exploring his filthy little home, and guessed that being back on his medication might help him get his mind right. So I went to a store I knew of and found a refill of his prescription. He didn’t want to take them at first, he didn’t trust me and thought I might be trying to poison him, but as I brought him food and supplies, he began to figure out that I wanted to help him. Eventually, I convinced him that the pills would make him feel better, and as he took them, he became more like his old self. We talked and he told me about his grandson, what he could remember at least, and asked me to help him look for him. His mind was still a mess and he wouldn’t go near the bathroom for anything. He was scared, terrified by what he had seen at the end of his travels, and asked me if I would search for Jacob and bring him back.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t find him.”
“Nope, and I’ve spent quite a while looking. I never found a trace of him anywhere. It’s like the poor kid just evaporated, or maybe got taken by the miasma. Hell, maybe he went outside for all I know, but I came back after some time and Jasper was completely gone. The pills weren’t helping anymore, the traveling wasn’t helping anymore, and when I came back with a stronger dose of his medication, he attacked me. I lost my bag in the scuffle, but I considered it an even trade for making it away. I never went back, never went to check on him again, and I avoided his store at all costs.”
That was about the time I decided to change the subject and we spent to rest of the evening talking about different stores. Celene had been keeping a journal as well about different types of Dollar General stores, and she was fascinated by all the ones I had seen. She had seen many of the same stores, but some were a mystery to her. She looked over my journal, making some notes in a small pad she kept on her, and I did the same with hers, making notes on the “later” stores. I still believed that these would be the stores I would encounter before I made it out, and I wanted to be prepared.
“This is extremely well done,” she said after a while, “you’ve got a real talent for this.”
“Thank you,” I said, glad to have found someone who appreciated my work, “It’s not as extensive as yours, though. I’d really like to see some of these other stores you talk about.”
“You will,” she said, “Everyone sees them eventually. You can only stay still in this place for a certain amount of time before you feel like you have to travel, to move, and sometimes I wonder if that’s what made Jasper so crazy. Maybe he let his fear keep him in that store for too long and it drove him even crazier than he already was.”
I had no clue, but as Buddy snored happily against my leg, I felt a yawn creep up my throat as my own exhaustion threatened me again.
Celene smiled, “Get some sleep, kid. There will be plenty of time for studying and talking and a lot of other stuff tomorrow. You’re safe now, you made it out of the outside, and that’s something I don’t think anyone else has ever managed to do.”
I drifted off not long after that, but my dreams were far from placid.
That was the night I dreamed about Gale, and it was a dream that would ultimately pull me into a place more dangerous than the Outside.