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oh, the horror!

It's 6 p.m., a busy time at the grocery.  Everyone's getting off work, picking up last minute ingredients for dinner, prolonging those last, precious few minutes before they have to go home and suffer the company of their families.  It's the best time to do what I do. 

If you watch closely people reveal their secrets at the grocery store.  Take the guy in the frozen foods aisle - his wife just left him.  They were perimeter shoppers - fresh, unprocessed foods only - until last month.  He started coming in alone and heading straight for the TV dinners.  Or the elderly couple in aisle 3 - their basket full of canned soup and bargain bin pasta means they've been cleaned out by their oldest son again.  He's a real piece of work; comes in with old woman from time to time, always selling her on his latest 'big break'.  Asshole.  And then there's the olive chick in the cereal aisle, the one who's having the affair, another regular.  The regulars. They're tempting, but too dangerous. 

Then I see him.  The kid in the alcohol aisle.  He doesn't belong.  He's not from around here - underage by the nervous way he's eyeing that bottle of tequila.  Like that girl who stopped in last week, she just made the papers.  "Last seen at Morton's Grocery, her mutilated body was found just outside town."  The papers never capture the art of it all, how the items she put in her basket inspired the details of her last moments.  How her death was matched to her unique tastes, an impromptu mockery of life in death.  It's a tribute, it's poetry.

People.  They make it so easy.  Everyone so absorbed in their own lives, their own lists, that they never see me here.  Week after week, in and out.  Doesn't matter, works out better for me.  Invisibility is the best alibi.  Well, second best alibi; no one ever suspects the security guard. 
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Comments

  1. AlisonApril 21, 2012 at 7:32 PM

    A couple disclaimers. It's Saturday, I know. But as some have been kind enough to point out, my Fiction Fridays have been dismally absent, and I promised.

    Second. I found out tonight that I don't like writing horror, especially not in 30 minutes (which was more like an hour, full disclosure). I'm no good at it. Sorry about that.

    Third, I have to credit my sister with this idea, if she still wants to be attached to it. She thought I could pick a different fiction genre each week and rewrite the same base story (black out). It's a lot more promising than this entry may lead you to believe.

    ReplyDelete
  2. SarahApril 23, 2012 at 11:53 AM

    this IS good-- and i love the idea of keeping the same base story, especially in one of my favorite places, the grocery store. can't wait for the next installment =)

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousApril 24, 2012 at 9:08 AM

    I like the concept of rewriting the same base story in different genres. I'm inclined to steal this idea except I'm pretty sure I'm no good at writing other genres.

    ReplyDelete

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