Storymania - Clean Up At Register 6 by Rob Wildey

Clean Up At Register 6
Rob Wildey

"Clean up at register 6"
by Rob Wildey
7/06

The police were baffled. In the small towns eighty year history, there had never been a multiple homicide, and certainly none in this fashion. No suspect, no murder weapon, no lead. Just four bodies, varying in degree of mutilation and disfigurement.

I'm leaving in five minutes, fuck it. It's Friday, and if I don't leave soon, I'll be drooling on my register. I should pick up a bottle tonight. "Great..." Andy thought, as he looked up from his popular men's magazine. There hadn't been a customer through his register in over two hours, which was normal these days. He wouldn't be surprised to see a tumble weed float by right about now.
A bulky man, in his mid-thirties wobbled over, saying something so quietly that Andy couldn't quite make it out. It wasn't unusual to see a portly man like his manager Sal sweating, all red in the cheeks, but out of the hundred times he'd seen it, this was different. The closer Sal got, the more evident it became that Sal had a problem, and it was serious. Sal was walking over in a way that almost made Andy crack up out loud. He was normally a pretty nimble man for his size, ambling through the maze like store at a pace that would shame Pac-man, so when Andy saw him walking in this fashion, he thought it was a joke. A moment later he realized this was not a joke, from the look of Sal�s face, which was frighteningly white almost instantaneously. There must have been an injury resulting in massive blood loss....
There was always a piece of gum in Sal's mouth, but at 5:02 on Friday, June 17th, at register 6, he chewed no gum. Instead, he horrified the shit out of Andy.
"Sal, you look like shit man, no offense of course." Andy said casually. Sal continued staggering over, and didn't respond to Andy's criticism, but just looked at him. He never lost eye contact while he shuffled over in a zombie like motion. This sent a shock of fright right up Andy's spine, raising his arm hairs on end. He was confused, as his reality had now changed in front of his eyes, revealing things he had never conceived. Sal�s eyeballs were completely red, like the contacts you see on some grotesque demon child on Halloween night, lugging a ten pound pillow case full of candy. These, Andy quickly noticed, were not contacts. These were running down Sal's cheeks, glistening, and Andy could do nothing but stare, hypnotized. Sal, or whatever it was, was now standing about a foot away from Andy, both at roughly six foot, Sal seventy pounds the heavier, wallet empty.
Andy put his arms up by his chest weakly, as if it were some kind of half-assed sub- conscious defense, as he awkwardly tried to break the trance. A minute ago, Andy thought, he was checking out some blondes rack in his magazine, and now he was in a situation he might see in the x-files. He forced out a question, "Sssall, Saal mman,(he had an uncontrollable urge to giggle, and couldn't help but let it slip a bit while he tried to negotiate with Sal)..wwhwwats hahhappenning??"
Sal's voice suddenly broke from an inaudible whisper to a sound Andy had never heard. It was a cacophony, and to hear it gave the listener a disgusted and cold feeling deep in the gut. His stomach seemed to be palpitating, tightening a little more on each pulse. His stomach was now churning whatever food was in there so violently, and without notice, that it shocked him, forcing some kind of yelp from him. Andy felt this unnatural feeling so strongly he jumped out of the register booth, almost cracking his head on his way down. "What the fuck are you doing you dick!?" Andy squealed, with a tearful and pathetic undertone. "Holy fucking shit..." Is what Andy's first thought was as he pulled himself up from the scummy linoleum. He had sustained a pretty good bruise on his left thigh, and it sent bursts of sharp pain deep through his leg. It almost felt as though the bone itself was damaged, but he'd have to deal with that a little later, as he quickly re-gained realization of the situation at hand.
Unexpectedly, but as Andy thought, somehow unsurprisingly at this point, the voice was clear and spoke in a chillingly calm manner. The voice was coming from Sal's open mouth, which was unmoving and puppet like, but sounded as if coming from a far away, and unearthly place, where the laws of sound did not apply. Andy realized these sounds were more than just sounds. He felt these sounds, and the feelings that rushed into him were unfamiliar.
As the waves hit him, Andy's head rocked back slightly under the force. His senses were being overloaded and attacked by an alien force, and he could do nothing but stare. Right into those gleaming, unblinking death cherries.
Andy managed to force out a sloppy and nearly indecipherable series of words, which was directed at no one in particular. The words were in vain. At this point, Andy was in a vegetable like state, in complete control of whatever entity had decided to end Sal, and use his corpse as a jacket of meat. Andy was drooling onto a register.
The sounds continued to project from the unknown place, and images began to appear in Andy's mind with them. The feeling that was being rushed through Andy, which he could feel in a somehow new and astoundingly acute way, was sadness. The most horrifying and gruesome images raced through his mind, also unblinking. Each one became more shocking and incredible than the last, while the feeling of despair and emptiness continued to intensify, and somehow, deepen inside him.
The only other person witnessing this unreal event was Betty, a forty five year old cashier who worked nights. She had wavy brown hair that was always pulled back. At one time she had been quite attractive, but life had gotten the better of her, and it showed in the deep sacs under her eyes. It always does.
The few people who still came to that outdated grocery store had already ran screaming at the sight of such an atrocity. One little girl laughed all the way out as her mom tugged her by her sleeve.
Betty was at the time clock punching in when Sal started "speaking", and could do nothing but watch as Andy�s soul was being viciously raped. Finally, she got the good sense to run, unfortunately for Andy, it was out of the store. He was fucked, and he knew it. His body was no longer his, but he remained conscious, his senses more vivid than ever.
Sal's eyes continued to stare into Andy's, holding Andy up with them. The usually animated and once friendly face of Sal, was now a placid and disheveled corpse-like mask, sickingly droopy. Sal's juicy fruit was smeared in his hair, making him look foolish, and as a result, even more nightmarish than before.
A new, and equally alien sound came from the mouth and forced its way into and through Andy's body. This sound was much higher pitched in tone, and Andy felt the heat. "Oh, my god!!! , Ohhhh!!! Noooohhhhoooo! ", Shrieked Andy. Still in a staring contest, unblinking eyes locked to the disgusting red eyes in Sal's face. The tears kept Andy's eyes plenty moist to withstand the dryness of the store. The image that popped into Andy's mind, the one that made him piss his pants as he cried like a baby was something his imagination had no possibility of creating. The human mind can stretch the imagination pretty far, as it's got an elastic quality to it, and for the most part it'll shrink itself back to normal when you let it go. This image took Andy's imagination and tore it in half, violently. He couldn't handle what he saw, and he died, in a glorious burst of brain matter. The popping sound filled the empty store like an auditorium, echoing. The decapitated body tumbled to the floor in an unnatural fashion, twisting limbs, sounding like a bag of wet meat.
As it turned out, old Betty had gone straight to a pay phone to call the cops. Sheriff John Mcadams, fifteen year veteran of the force, someone the citizens of this community could trust, and look up to, showed up just in time to see someone�s headless body collapse. He also noticed Sal Scarpelli looking straight at him, a foot away from the body, no one else in sight.
Sal and John went to school together, both growing up in this very town. They weren't friends, but in a small town like theirs, it's hard not to develop a relationship of some kind with almost everyone. This also happened to be John�s favorite grocer, and he saw Sal quite a bit, usually trying not to. John decided quickly what to do next, like always, and moved steadily towards the store entrance.
Sal saw this, and scraped his way slowly towards John, and the entrance. John, who was much quicker than Sal under normal circumstances, was through the door before Sal got halfway, and took grasp of the situation.
He yelled to Sal, gun drawn and pointed between Sal's eyes, "Stop right there Sal." Sal must have understood, because he did stop, raising his head slowly, revealing the mask to John. "Sal, why are there pieces of skull by the Coinstar?" John asked. Sal had no answer, not yet, so John advanced. That's when he noticed the eyes. It gave him a scare, and he leaped back a couple of feet, and turned his safety off. "What is wrong with you Sal?" Sal again didn't respond, but only stared. "Sal, put your hands behind your back, and get on your knees, now!" John yelled, hesitantly. When Sal ignored him, it scared John, making him lash out more violently. "Put your fucking hands behind your back, and get on your knees!" He repeated, only much more authoritative. Sal opened his mouth to speak, but impatiently, John yelled again, "I will shoot you if you do not cooperate, now get to the ground with your hands behind your back!"
John was finding this situation to be quite unbelievable, despite the fact he was living it. Sal was normally such a convivial, and sometimes suffocatingly jolly soul, and here he was pointing a gun at his twisted face, screaming at him. "In my fifteen years on the job..." John was thinking. There had been one murder, and two suicides in his years on the force, and he had only been witness to one of the morbid displays. A teen suicide a few years back, a girl named Emily Adams. She was found with her wrists carved in her room. It was quite a contrast on the white carpet. John found it very depressing, and thought about her face for weeks afterwards. After that, he decided not to become involved in crime scenes like that. He had a weak stomach at the site of blood, and Andy's neck had poured the remainder of the blood in his body out onto the tiled linoleum. It gleamed in the bright fluorescent light coming from humming tubes above. This made John want to vomit, but this was no time for that he concluded.
Boom. A 16mm round came bursting from his gun and found it's home in Sal's shoulder, sending a fine mist of red on the window behind him. Sal didn't fall. He turned to John, and started toward him. "Stop right there!" John exclaimed. Boom. Another bullet, and another hole, this one in Sal's chest. The force caused Sal to stumble backward, but he was back at John as if nothing had happened. John ended up unloading all twelve rounds, nine of which ended up lodged in Sal somewhere. But here he came, at a slow speed, but no slower than before he was porous. John didn't want to stick around any longer, and darted for the entrance.
Five minutes went by before John regained consciousness. He opened his eyes, and instantly felt his head throbbing. He put his hand to his head and face to rub the pain away, and noticed a warm and wet feeling. Upon inspection, he was lying in a pool of blood. This sent panic through him, and he tried to jump up, too fast, slipping and sliding in the blood. He fell on his ass twice before getting a stable hold onto the register. After checking to make sure it wasn't his own blood, he looked around and saw that the store had been deserted.
Why had he left me alive? I shot him a dozen times, and not only is he not dead, but he's not even holding it against me?! Thoughts were buzzing through his head at a furious pace, but before he could continue this introspection, he saw it.
Out in the parking lot, Sal was standing by a red Toyota coupe, and John's highly waxed police cruiser, blankly staring back into the store. "If I only had better vision...I bet I'd see that dirtbag staring straight into my eyes." John thought to himself. And on that thought, he moved towards the entrance.
The sun was beating down, and the temperature was ninety-seven degrees. Sweat trickled down Johns cheek, tickling him. His heart was pounding in his chest.
As he walked towards his cruiser(shotgun), he wasn't surprised to see Betty's mangled corpse on the pavement. From the neck down, her body had been pounded, or mashed into a pulpy substance, sharp fragments of bone sticking out like thorns. Her face however was nearly undamaged, which wasn't a good thing considering the extreme look of terror on her face, in her eyes, which were open wide. Her mouth was open as well, teeth exposed. She died screaming, and if you took one look at her face, you didn't take a second.
Sal had been standing by, watching John walk over to him, patiently waiting. John was now digging into his pocket for his keys while he walked, pulling out every pocket, getting frustrated, and a little more scared by the pocket. He double checked his pockets, and yelled an obscenity. "Where the fuck could they be..." he thought. He decided since he could easily outrun, and outmaneuver this thing, he should check where he fell on his ass, in the store, in Andy's blood. "I could run in there, get the keys, come back and blow this thing fulla lead before the son of a bitch knew what hit em", he thought. He needed that shotgun...
He didn't hesitate and darted for the store, making it there without a problem. He spotted his keys almost instantly, painted red under the corner of a candy rack. He bent down to pick them up and saw Andy's body up close and personal, slumped in a very uncomfortable (even for a dead man) pose. He almost felt like reaching out and untwisting this absurdity, but was getting that sick feeling he always got, and decided against it. He did notice his tolerance had improved slightly, but this was too much. He had never seen the delicate cartilage in between the vertebrate of a human spine, and after this, didn�t believe he�s ever want to again. Yesterday, he would have vomited.
He was up and out the exit, a man with a mission. His eyes looked for Sal, still slouched by the Toyota, and then fixed on his cruiser. The keys jingled in his hand, and John seemed to notice they were unusually loud, but was too focused on his car he didn't give it a second thought.
He got to his trunk and Sal was now walking over. He was still the speed of a snail on speed, but the distance between them was not comfortable. John�s hands suddenly felt too big and clumsy to handle the task he'd performed countless times before. Getting frustrated, he foolishly dropped the keys in a fit of anger, but picked them up hurriedly.
He had found the trunk key, and was about to slip into the hole, when an excruciating pain shot up his leg, causing him to drop them once more. "Fuck!" John yelled and looked down to investigate.
It was Betty. She had bit Johns leg, and was still attached, teeth sunk deep in the flesh. Blood was oozing from the wound down his shoe. "You fucking Bitch, get offa me!!� , screamed John, but Betty wasn't listening. The grip tightened causing another pulsating shot of pain through his leg, and another obscenity or two from John.
He couldn't take the pain and began punching at Betty�s head, in a primal rage. He gouged at her with his keys and his nails, even pulling at her hair, but she wouldn't loosen her grip. John was now sitting on the concrete, while he attacked, and pleaded with the head to stop. Finally, the head rolled off. He kicked it and it rolled a few yards away.
It wasn't that the head was tired, John now saw, but Betty had bitten so hard she had chewed right through his calf muscle, and had it hanging out of her mouth. He looked at her face and laughed, a psychotics laugh. Betty was smiling.
Many liters of blood had been lost through his leg, and John felt weak. He looked at the keys by his side, and considered getting up to the trunk for his shotgun, when his decision had been made for him. Sal loomed over John, casting a large shadow over him, cooling him.
A few blocks over, twelve year olds Danny Manlin, and Jeff Lambert were tossing a baseball in the yard when they heard a popping sound echoing in the distance. "You hear that?" Danny asked. "Yeah, maybe it was a gun or something." replied Jeff. "Yea, maybe" said Danny.