Freeze

Horror brews in the dairy section of your local supermarket.

 

            It’s my f*****g birthday. There are three-hundred and sixty-four other days in the year to fall into an endless stream of bitter ash mornings, broken glass afternoons, putrescent evenings lit with lurid amber whiskey burn. Not today. For God’s sake, not on my f*****g birthday.

            There’s a sickening rasp as the textured nylon of my Sure-Grip gloves slide over the pock-marked plastic of the gallon milk jug with a practiced motion, born of countless repetition on more eight hour dead-end shifts than I cared to admit. I slide the jug in amongst its 2% brothers and sisters, giving it an extra tap to be sure that it seats properly at the front of the dairy-case.

I turn on the box, reaching into my apron for my safety cutter, drawing it like a gunfighter and neatly slashing my cardboard foe. Flattened, he take his place in the pile in the far corner of the diary cooler, a stack of sacrifices to satiate the pneumatic appetite of the baler in the receiving dock.

I sigh in time to the pressurized hiss of the opening dairy case. Another jug disappears, another anonymous gallon set out for an anonymous customer by an anonymous blue-aproned clerk. Not that they’ll ever see my apron…or my face. I reach for another box, acutely aware of the ache of four-hour old gooseflesh on my arms. The cooler is kept at a steady fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. I’m in short sleeves.

The company issues jackets to frozen-food workers. I freeze…or I lose my job.

I cut the tape with a clean incision, tear back the flaps, and slip my cutter into my apron, my fingers teasing forth a crinkle of crumpled paper as their nylon lengths slip from the pocket. I catch it, snatching the fluttering sheet before it can touch the floor, acting purely on some animal instinct. I turn the pink slip over in my hand a moment.

“Mr. Shepherd, we regret to inform you that your services, blah blah blah your locker by the end of the week, etc.”

My f*****g birthday.

            Trust those noose-necked pencil-pushers in Human Resources to drop the bomb on me on this day of all days. Their calendar of monthly events, company sack-races, corporate fund-raisers, family picnics, must have missed my birthday. How else could they justify sacking an employee of ten years, ten mindless dead-end years, on his birthday? How?

            I crumple the pink slip and let it reach the floor this time, feeling the old skin crackle as I grind it under my company-issue boot with the non-skid sole. They wouldn’t want me to hurt myself, now would they?

            I rip the carton of skim from the box and jam it into the wire rack, my breath coming in frosty puffs of crystal mist as my heart hammers in outrage. One week. One more week of cut shifts and reduced pay. What fault did they find?

            Did I not make quota? Was I supposed to threaten customers?

            “Hey, buddy,” I rasp to myself, “buy another carton or I’ll cut you.”

            I snort to myself. Bullshit.

            For a moment, I set the box of skim aside and massage an aching shoulder with a gloved hand. Tendons, cold-tempered from long hours in the dairy box, creak their protest underneath the too-thin sheath of my skin. What was I going to do now? Pushing thirty, no education, no marketable skills, no wife, no kids. Nothing.

            Another store? How long until they figured they could do without another faceless milk-slinger? How long until they thrust another slip of pink into my outstretched hand? A year? Another ten?

            My eyes drift over the palette of boxes, cardboard soldiers, ranked and filed. Or coffins, neatly piled. Wire baskets for the egg-cartons in the corner. Lunch meat in the very back along the far wall, stacked by Don, the deli-guy, in an inscrutable hodge-podge of borrowed shelving on borrowed real-estate. The guy has been working here four years longer than I had. He swaggers like he’s entitled.

            When would his pink slip come?

            He works the floor, weaving self-importantly among customers. I freeze in the frost-rimed vault. He might get a question every now and again. A “thank you” from a middle-aged housewife who wonders where the Pam can be found.

            I only hear the hiss of the refrigeration units, a cacophony of mouthless muttering.

            God, it’s cold. No matter how long I work here, I never get used to it. Every day I dread the walk across the wrinkled asphalt parking-lot, across the checkered faux-marble floors into the ninth layer of hell, a tortured landscape of icy concrete. I hate this room with all my soul. Maybe getting fired wasn’t such a bad thing.

            The tragedy would be going without leaving my mark. I never won employee of the month. No one ever saw me. I was a phantom, a revenant, some ghost in the machine which left the dairy-case perpetually filled. A mysterious phenomena that no one could rightly explain, but would raise hell about should it fail. I was the f*****g Aurora Borealis.

            I wonder if the Aurora is pissed off on its birthday. Does it ask itself if it should shine on its birthday? Does it hate us because we expect it to?

            No employee of the month. No birthday parties. Hell, without my name tag, I doubt anyone here would know my name. Maybe I should be flattered that the office-monkeys knew where to send the pink-slip.

            My eyes scan over my shoulder, focusing on the big, riveted steel door. A vault, to be sure. On the left side is a ponderous latch which separates me from the rest of the staff, the floor, humanity in general. No one comes in here except for Don.

            He’s off today.

            I move to a box of coffee-creamer, Irish Crème flavored stuff. Not my thing. I take it black at 4:00 a.m., as dark as the corners of my junior apartment as I sip in silence. My hand drives into the pocket of my apron and tightens on the molded plastic grip of my cutter.

            A devious smile, tugs at the corners of my lips. A wicked plan traces through my mind, teasing with vicious pleasure. With a flick of my thumb I extend the brutally sharp edge of the cutter’s blade. I know with the barest pressure it will carve through double-corrugated cardboard like butter.

            I’d leave a mark.

            Flesh would be no problem. No resistance. How many would I be able to drag back into this little icy prison with me before anyone caught on? Security cameras dotted the ceiling, but I knew that our one security guard was almost always on duty at the customer service area…the area where checks are cashed, bills are paid, and Coinstar receipts are processed. No one would be watching the dairy-cases. No one stole milk.

            I would stay faceless.

            The bodies would stay hidden. Neat incisions, innocuously placed as I led them into the back. Errant splashes of blood deftly left in front of the butcher’s locker. None would be the wiser.

            How many? Three, four? No surely, I could do better.

            Why hadn’t the butcher thought of this before? Surely no one would question the blotches of crimson against his white apron.

            Ten perhaps. Don would be in for a surprise tomorrow when he came in to check on the deli-meat. His tight-lipped mouth would spring open in alarm under the graying caterpillar mustache. Oh, how delicious.

            With a smile, I tug the box of creamer from the palette and walk with a spring in my step to the wire racks, visions of blood and terror dancing in my head. What a mark I would leave. No longer faceless.

            As I sit the last bottle of creamer into its place, sliding it label forward into its proper position with practiced precision, I hear the tell-tale pneumatic hiss of an opening case. Customer. The word boils in my mind like a curse.

            “The green bottle, sweetheart.” A man’s voice, softened for the ears of a child.

            The bottle of creamer disappears from under my finger-tips, and I am face to face with the corn-flower blue eyes of a girl of perhaps five. Her cherubic features are framed by a halo of golden curls. For a moment, we regard each other, angel and devil.

            She smiles a lopsided little smile, her nose crinkling in delight. “Daddy! There’s a man in--!” Her joyous little squeal is cut short by the hiss-bang of the closing cooler door.

            For the span of several heartbeats, I crouch at the base of the wire-racks, peering out through the hole in the creamer bottles, watching the angel as she catches her father’s hand and skips away. I’m grinning like an idiot, but I don’t care. For now, it’s enough to know that I am not unknown to the universe. For now, the knowledge of a five-year-old girl is all the renown I could ever crave.

            Blood and death are far from my thoughts as I flatten the box of creamer and consider the walls of my icy prison. One more week. I sigh, watching my breath coalesce in front of my face like cigarette smoke. No murders today, I decide.

            There’s always tomorrow.

           

 

Reviews

[Kaitlyn M.]

This idea is even more fantastic, now that I can read it. When you told me about it, I thought it was brilliant. You've captured the identity and feeling of the faceless tool beautifully--even those of us who see people every day at work can feel like this. We're all cogs in a machine we don't even care about.

Amazing. Simply. Knutsen will love it, and I definitely think you should send it in...somewhere.

BUT: before you turn it in, in your third paragraph, the "he take his place in the pile" should probably be "takes" right? Otherwise, it's pretty much flawless.

You, Sir, get to win at life today. Would you like the internet as a consolation prize tomorrow?

[Amanda Knotts]

Wow I felt like I was in the ice box in Winco done this a few times? I wasn't until the end that realized he hadn't killed anyone...creepy I actually felt the goosebumps and I felt cold through a lot of it.
nice work sir!

[hhoosh]

This story really, really grasped just whom I am. Dropped-out, subjected to grocery stores, and an all-too willing desire to murder any of my bosses, or customers, who f**k with me on the job.
I'm glad I read this, not so much as it makes me accept my job and the possibilities and friendliness of a little girl, but because I really felt your character because it was so similar. Don't get me wrong, it was written fantastically, but it really reached me as more of a hand on my shoulder. I'm sure there are plenty of other dairy-inmates on WC who can relate too.

Great job, really enjoyed it.

[Mark D. Chevalier]

I really dig this story. It brought me back to my high-school days working in a grocery store. What makes this story so entertaining is its link to a potential true-to-life scenario. How many unsung folks with the carpet pulled out from under them would dane to have the dark thoughts of the pink-slipped protagonist?

Excellent story, and I really enjoyed the tale. Thanks for sharing it.
M

[James Melzer]

Loved it! I think you captured the emotions of the working-stiff beautifully, playing on what every 'unknown worker' would like to do. You have great descriptive elements that kept me engrossed from beginning to end. I honestly can't think of anything wrong with this story or any ways to offer constructive criticism. You should seriously consider submitting this for publication...somewhere.

Good luck and keep writing!

[Creepy Swine Guy]

Oh what a wicked tease you are. I saw mayhem in the offing from the very beginning. I thought you were going to feed my evil alligators. Now the alligators are going to be restless.