It’s funny to think that just a year or so ago, going to the grocery store was comparable in enjoyment to going to a bookstore. Hell, it was almost as exciting as going to a waterpark some weeks because it was just being out. Now I’d give just about anything to lock myself in my apartment and never leave again
After walking for what felt like hours, which was in reality was probably around 30 to 45 minutes, I found myself among shelves with strange boxes on them. And some of the ugliest shoes I had ever seen.
They were all different colors and sizes, like if someone had just hit the randomize button on a shoe generator and hoped for the best. To make matters stranger, the ones on display had chains on them. I slowly approached a large Pepto Bismol pink stiletto. It stood about a bookshelf tall and had a whole, very alive flamingo for a heel.
“Uhhh…”
The flamingo looked at me but didn’t move. This is… really weird. The one beside it had a large, ugly sign that had “Hike Storm: Bring the Thunder ‘’ and the shoe sat floating on its pedestal. It looked like your typical running shoe. All except for the fact the midsole and outsole consisted of a storm cloud that was raining and letting off little veins of lightning. I had to admit, I would probably wear those. I found myself wondering who or what could’ve designed these. Someone would have had to. But I suppose things just appearing out of the ether wouldn’t be the strangest thing to happen here.
I continued to browse the strange Shoe-Zoo. Some shoes were just cardboard cutouts, some were 5th dimensional, and some were viscous puddles of gunk somehow holding itself into shoe-shape. It wasn’t until I heard a low growl and the rattle of metal did I realize what the chains were really for.
“Apex Collection” said the sign posted by a pair of Pumas that were not only the size of literal pumas but behaved like pumas too. The giant shoes were attached to predatory cat legs and attached to those were very large claws. They swiped and hissed at me as I quickly made my way past. The ruckus they were making must have woken up the other shoes. As I began to quicken my pace down the aisle, I started to hear barking. The boxes on the shelves began to rattle and some lost their lids. The shoes were peering out of them while snarling and yapping at me like tons of angry little leather dogs. Some even started chasing me, little sharp teeth bared. I broke into a sprint once I was able to move past how perplexed I was with the situation. The little beasts were fast, almost too fast for me to outrun and they began nipping at my heels. One even managed to bite my leg and I couldn’t help but wonder if that meant I’d turn into a were-shoe too at some point. Thankfully that wasn’t the case.
Once I could see the edge of the shoe department and the start of the womens’ apparel, I dove and slid. Aiming for an a-rack, I slipped across the linoleum like a baseball player.
When I came out the other side I was somewhere else entirely…
It was dark here, and cold. I almost preferred the shoe section more.
I had no idea what department I was in now, if I was in one at all. Something about this place took my anxiety and cranked it up to a 15, as if it weren’t already bad enough. It was so quiet, I couldn’t even hear the music that played over speakers anymore.
ThetaMart is a massive store. There’s only one map of this place and it’s by the entrance. This entrance is something I’ve only seen twice since I’ve been here. According to the map, the store stretches miles upon miles in every direction which also means God forbid someone loses something or someone in here. It’d be like looking for a straw of hay in a needle-stack. Wherever I had just appeared had no familiar landmarks, which meant I was very, very lost.
The shelves here stretched high past the light beams and climbed up into the inky darkness that hung overhead. The store started to look slightly warped. The tiles weren’t as square, and the floor felt like it was slanted at an upward angle in some places or downward in others. The shelves, as well as gargantuan also housing boxes labeled with no language known to man, began to lean and curve. I tried my best to keep walking— to not peek over my shoulder every few steps. If there was something behind me, I’d prefer to just not know.
“F-Fred?”
My voice, barely over a whisper, only met with silence. It was a heavy, oppressive, silence. The kind of silence that leaves your ears ringing. The kind of silence humans spent hundreds of years trying to forget about and fill with the sounds of electricity. A primal silence.
If I had my phone I would have put in my earbuds and put on some music or an audiobook. Hell, I’d even settle for white noise, and until now I thought it was creepier than the quiet. Wherever I was, even the tap of my sneakers against the tile was being drowned out somehow.
I wanted to start yelling, but I was so afraid of what could be lurking in the spaces where the lights couldn’t touch. My voice didn’t peak over a choked whisper, that fear response you get as a child the first time you get lost in a grocery store was setting in. The fear that you will never see your family again, you’ll be trapped here, forever. I wanna go home. I wanna go home and hide in my room where it’s familiar. Where it’s safe. The loudest thing here was very, very quickly becoming my intrusive thoughts. It’s funny, in a fucked up sort of way, how the human brain will just pick some of the greatest hits from your childhood when there are no real distractions. But I guess this one was appropriate. It fell into place like a cylinder built to fall seamlessly into a slot.
I had only been lost in a store once in my life, but it’s easily one of my most vivid memories. My dad had actually forgotten me there. An old mom and pop store called “The Farmer’s Stand.”
I was stuck wandering around for almost three and a half hours until the old woman who owned the place brought me to the police station when she saw me eating a loaf of bread right off the shelf. I wouldn’t see him again until I was standing beside his casket. The sight of him being lowered into the ground. It had become a stain on my mind since the moment my all-too-young eye watched as it was lowered into…
A deep, dark hole.
A void in the floor. I don’t want to say it appeared, because that implies it was created. It was a space of nothingness in the floor, inches from my feet.
“The fu—”
The powerful BANG of a shotgun barrel going off rolled like thunder from the spontaneously-appearing floor void. My heart leapt into my throat and I fell backward ass first, forcing myself to move and crab-crawl away from whatever it was. The silence had been preparing my ears to take the brunt of the truly deafening sound.
I sat for a moment, frozen like frightened livestock. My breath hitching in my throat, heart pounding so hard it made it almost painful to breathe.
“Mahs…”
A gargled voice spoke from the void.
“Mahsy where…ah you…I’m tho…thawy.”
The voice sounded strange, like it was struggling to speak but didn’t have the tools to craft annunciated words.
A bloodied hand slapped against the lip of the hole. The hand clasped onto the floor so hard it shook. The hand was purple, with nails practically shredded and raised from scratching against something. Around the third finger, a familiar golden band. I began to see spots in the corners of my vision.
No. no, no, no. That’s not possible, this isn’t happening. I’m losing my mind–
A human form rose from the hole. It wore a black fitted tux and had dark brown hair caked in blood. Brains and bone fragments shook loose as it pulled itself from the void.
“M–…Maahs…I am…”
The shotgun gripped in their right hand hit the tile with a loud clack. What was barely a man rose from the void, heaving wet and ragged gasps. All I could do was sit and watch in horror as my father stood before me. His face blown to pieces and dripping onto his shoes like a mask made of chewed gum.
“I…am tho…thawy…”
The malformed words echoed out from the only discernible hole left in his head. It was full of broken teeth and a mangled tongue. His jaw swung like a tattered flag at the lower half of the head-shaped crater where not even eyes or sockets were left.
The sound of my father’s voice, his decimated face, and broken stride as he now slowly limped toward me was too much. Something about the image in front of me pulled a loose thread in the back of my mind, pulling me back into that moment of pain and confusion when my aunt and uncle sat me down and told me “your father ate the barrel, Max. That’s how he died.” He had given up on me.
The all too real Phantasm took his gun and clumsily raised it toward me, aiming it so my eyes pointed right down its double barrel. He choked again. Repeating the same disjointed drivel he had been sputtering.
“I…am tho…tho thawy…tho thawy…”
“Dad, please don’t–” was all I could say. I heard a click followed by a metallic chi-chack. I didn’t know what on the gun made those sounds, but I knew what would come next. I closed my eyes, and I waited.
“Max there is a call waiting for you on —“
A brilliant pain erupted in my head with the sound of the page. The sound was so loud, I could feel it in the floor beneath me and rattled in my skull. The base of the horrible sound shook me down to the marrow. I could feel a hot gush on either side of my head followed by a trickling warmth down my neck and collarbone. I couldn’t even have the comfort of hearing myself scream.
Passing out was a mercy.
The last thought I remember having before I blacked out still stands out to me. Clearer than the memory itself.
“Was I not worth fighting harder for?”
It’s still a question I find myself asking, even after all this time.