Writing Request: The Supermarket

[beccatoria]

As you may be aware - in the post below this one, I started accepting writing prompts. I can't say how quickly but it's my intention to get through all the comments in order. If the piece is short enough (a few paragraphs or so), as I imagine many of them will be, they'll just go in response to the comment - so it might be worth checking back if you're waiting on something.

But if it gets a little longer, like this one, (approx 1100 words) I'll post in a separate entry.

So: for spiralsheep, here is The Supermarket, for I suck at titles.


I volunteered to climb onto the shopfloor after the shelling stopped. I had a little paper list with things like "bread", "powdered milk", "spuds", and "tomato soup," written on it. I was supposed to pick up some toothpaste, some toilet roll, some extra clothes from the junior sale section because Marty had spend the last four days shivering, and it was winter, and we had no heating; he had a fever that kept breaking and rolling back in. At night his breathing was as tinny as a wave in a conch shell, and as distant. Whenever the roiling wave of an explosion shook the building, I wondered if it had drowned him; if it was tinnitus, or death, or a child's fearfully held lungful of air that suddenly silenced the store room.

I volunteered to climb onto the shopfloor after the shelling stopped. I wanted the space. Four days ago, I stopped off for cigarettes I never got to smoke. The sirens kicked in. And even though I knew what that meant; had seen the government warnings as many times as anyone, which is to say every goddamned commercial break for the last month, I still had this impossible urge to run straight through the sliding metal doors of the lockdown as they fell down across the the exits and the windows. The sound; it wasn't something I heard. It was a vibration that reached my brain directly through my skull and my response was as primitive. I ran too late. The corrugated curves of the shutters were cool and comforting against my back as I slid down, sat down, closed my eyes.

I don't remember who it was that took me by the arm and pointed me in the direction of the other shoppers, heading down to the basement store room. I think maybe it was Vince, the assistant manager. Vince was kind, and stupid, and tried to kiss me during the second day in the basement. I think because he was scared. He was wearing his name tag. "Hi," it said. "My name is Vince. How can I improve your shopping experience?"

A little less death from above would be great, Vince.

A little less spending the apocalypse with strangers, and a dying kid, and some guy I think was drunk and homeless judging by the smell, that'd be just super, Vince.

On the little white piece of paper, there was a list of medicines to take from the pharmacy, for Marty. I planned to go there first, but instead I reached into my pocket, slid out my pack of Marlboro's and my lighter and blew smoke up towards the defunct smoke alarm.

Into my lungs, out through my mouth, through my nose and back out. The heat felt reassuring; calming. Like the one itch I could scratch now that I wasn't trapped in a powder-keg of shell-pinned fear. I felt the world stabilising as the ash fell to the floor.

Also, the smell of the smoke helped kill the stench of the unfrozen freezer section.

Right before I left for the store all those days ago, Jen told me I was nuts, cutting it so close to curfew. I'd get caught out too late for no reason other than a pack of smokes. "That habit'll kill you," she said. A cliche to undercut her worry.

For the first day and a half, in the store room, there were still radio broadcasts. Not official ones; ham radio, anyone with a walkie-talkie and some technological know-how trying to find anyone else. Everyone wanting to know, "What's raining down on us? Will it kill us all today, or will it kill us slowly, for years." The fact our electronic equipment was even working suggested nothing nuclear had hit. Of course, all that cut out at the same time on the second day.

But the first conversation we overheard, I'll always remember: an ex-cop and some guy who was still a cop, trawling through the wreckage of Treeno Plaza. My neighbourhood.

I hollowed my cheeks and reduced the last of my cigarette ash and wished, just for a second, just for a second, that this was the habit that would kill me.

I sat down in the cereal aisle, closed my eyes to the weak daylight creeping past the shutters, and pretended it wasn't water staining my cheeks.

When I opened my eyes, the light was weaker, greyer, and my left arm was numb because - I checked my watch - I'd spent the last two hours leaning against a shelf of Muesli, and the two-for-one special offer tag was digging into my bicep. I never worked out if I fell asleep or voluntarily lost consciousness. It wouldn't have been the first time in those four days I wished I could just black-out, and it was probably the best sleep I'd had since I gunned my Ford towards the only curfew-chasing store in town.

I sat there for maybe five minutes before I realised I could hear a sound from the other end of the shop. A regular creaking, and probably the reason I woke in the first place. As I rose, a little shakily, the creaking became one very large creak; a ripping, wrenching sound that I suddenly recognised. The shutters. And then, the cymbal-crash sound of broken glass.

"Oh god," I said, running.

At the front of the store, a corner of the corrugated metal had been ripped open using an ironing board from the home-supplies section for leverage. Behind the shutter was a huge, floor-to-ceiling window, with the ironing board lying, dead, across the base, surrounded by slices and slices of icy glass. The rounded end aimed at me; the end with the metal-iron holder ditched in the cold, winter ground, outside.

Also outside, was Vince. Back to me. Orange work-shirt still on. Telling the whole, ruined world he'd like to improve its goddamned shopping experience.

Slowly, lightly, ash was raining down.

"Oh god," I said.

Vince turned. He smiled at me, and for a second, the smile was so incongruous I could not recognise it as one of pure joy.

Clearly, I thought, he had gone insane.

"Vince," I started to say. "It'll kill you..."

Eventually, it would kill us all.

But Vince shook his head. Squatted and balled up a fist full of ash. It hit me square in the face. Square and clean in the face.

Square, and clean, and snowy.

"The radio turned back on," he said. He tilted his head back, stuck out his tongue, and let the flakes settle on it.

"Snow?" I asked; it was almost a whisper.

Vince let himself fall backwards, began stretching his arms and legs and to form an angel.

"Snow!" I shouted; laughing.



...ta-da! ;)

It's a little...White-Wolfish (i.e. self-consciously post-noir) in its first person style, but nonetheless I'm reasonably happy with it and think it fills the criteria in an interesting way.

The original prompt was - a woman is in a supermarket crying. Two hours later she's looking through a window laughing. How does she get form A to B.

Which, for the record, was an awesome prompt as it really left me stymied for a long time. I didn't want to go the boring route of, "she was upset so someone cheered her up with humour." Partly because that doesn't necessarily lend itself to an interesting story unless the reasons she's upset are interesting and then the way someone cheers her up is organic to the reason she's upset. Otherwise it's just two unrelated incidents. "My boyfriend left me!" "Oh, here, best friend, let me tell you a joke to cheer you up!" Partly because I don't like trying to write something funny; I hate having to write one person telling another person a joke. Partly because that would be two easy?

And I didn't trust myself to write a series of plotty events either. So...in the end, yeah. I'm happy with this.

And thanks again for the prompt!