The End of the Road | Pt 6

Start with Part 1 of The End of The Road here, or catch up on Part 5 here.

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The walk back to town was shorter than he remembered. Something about the way the sun was sitting and the slant of the hills, he guessed. His knees protested, but the rest of him was lighter now that he’d gotten a walk in him and some time to think of nothing at all. He’d all but forgotten about the girl by the time the first buildings came into view, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw a clap-trap building with a badly faded ‘OPEN’ sign hanging in the door’s window.

“Hullo,” said the sloth-like woman behind the till when he walked in. He grimaced at the meaty fat clouding the woman’s eyes, her chin, her arms, but put up a hand and waved, looking around.

“Y..you lookin’ for sun’thin?” the woman said, her voice thick, like it was caught in her own throat. It made him feel like he had something caught in his throat. He swallowed hard.

“Food. Beer.”

“We got all that.” He assumed she waved her arm around from the sounds coming off her. The shifting fabric. The skin on skin. He winced, grabbed a loaf of bread from the shelf, then realized he would need a basket. A bag. There would be no escaping her. She was the only one in there. He braced himself, and looked at her again—at her tiny eyes, her bulging lips, the crumbs on her sweat-stained t-shirt.

“A basket?” he asked.

“There.” The woman slowly nodded her head toward a pile of actual straw baskets by the door. It was any wonder she could get her head back up.

“No,” he said impatiently. “Like to carry my stuff in?”

“Ya, thas it. Use ‘em,” she looked at him like he was the idiot. Screwed up her little eyes, her pug-nose crinkling more than it was already, and said, “Ya not from here, huh. Was yer name?”

She sounded like every word was work. He didn’t want to know her any more than he did, but in places so small there’s no escaping it. So he told her; told her his name.

“Charlie,” he said shortly, walking through the store and grabbing this and that from the shelves without really looking, squishing the bread he’d put at the bottom. Finally, he saw an old walk-in fridge at the back. Cranked the ancient handle and poked his head inside. Meat and milk on one wall. Beer on the other. He walked right in and let the door close behind him. They have some good shit, he thought, surprised, scanning the boxes to his right. Threw a couple of steaks and some eggs in his basket then grabbed a 24-case of pilsner that looked interesting. Stayed standing another moment or two, working up the courage to go back out to where she was. Shivered from both the cold and the thought, then pushed the door to get back outside. Heard the handle clink on the outside. Scoffed. Unbelievable. He would have to wait until that whale came to let him out.

So he banged on the door and waited, the cold and irritation sinking further into his bones every second. He felt a rage in his belly, and banged on the door again. More time passed. Soon he doubted whether anyone could hear him at all. Began to panic. Enough that by the time the latch did click, he had rounded back to grateful. Grateful to be let out. Grateful for the hot warmth of the store. Grateful even for the short, fat woman who had let him free.

Now that she was standing beside him, he saw she stood barely to his shoulders. She looked up at him, her neck folds spilling out from the top of her t-shirt.

“There’s a foot pedal,” was all she said. He looked behind him down on the floor and saw that there was indeed a metal foot pedal that would have let him out. Stupid.

“Ya gon’ buy them?” she asked next, nodding toward the groceries in the basket. He shivered the last of the cold from him and nodded, walking back to the till where he waited for her to shuffle back as well.

She took her time settling into her deep chair, scratching her thin hair and then punching one thing in at a time with slow, methodical fingers. Then, to his dismay, she stopped and looked up at him.

“Ya nervous or sun’thin?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“Ya shiftin’. Like sun’thin’s after ya.”

He just looked at her, then at the groceries and beer. “You mind?”

She started punching numbers again, then stopped again.

“Ya live here now? Or jes travellin’?” He threw up his hands, but decided to get it over with. If he just told her now, maybe she wouldn’t ask him again.

“Live here now. Out at the house there, at the end of the road.” He gestured to where he’d come up from, and to his surprise the woman started to speed up, punching numbers more quickly than he’d thought she could possibly move.

“Bag?” she asked, mumbling her words and avoiding looking at him now.

“Yeah,” he said, confused. He watched her bag his things as if her arms weren’t 30 pounds each, and jumped to stop everything falling when she pushed his food toward him on the counter.

“Thas $68.50,” she said. He reached for his wallet and handed her the money. She took it, gave him change, then said ‘Kay, bye’ to the floor. Stunned, Charlie grabbed his bags and beer, and started walking toward the door. Then he stopped. Looked back at the woman.

“There something wrong with that house?” he asked.

But the woman still wouldn’t look at him. Just looked down at her knees, her head almost folded all the way into her chest. Her chair squeaked. He opened the door with a bagged hand and stepped out into the hot afternoon, an eerie uncomfortableness on him. The door closed behind him with a snap. What was her fucking problem? he thought to himself, holding the bags and standing there on the road.

He looked past the store toward the few brambling houses along the street, with reeds and unkempt grass all over them and giant overgrown gardens peeping through the frames of broken fences behind those. Beyond that was more of the road he came in on, which if you walked far enough, became paved instead of dirt.

He paused. There was really nothing else around there, and no people to be seen, neither. Not even the man who had told him about the place to begin with. At first that had seemed just fine, but now he felt that aloneness on him again. That strange empty feeling of wanting to be seen by someone normal. Who would tell him, Charlie, you’re getting crazy. Chill out.

Thinking that calmed his nerves a bit.

Still, he was left with the weird feeling that these people knew something he didn’t. That there was something to that house. He hoped it was just that the owners were shit. He could handle a yelling at if they came up on him and found him squatting. And as his arms were getting heavy, he decided it didn’t matter what it was, anyhow. Silly little towns have their silly superstitions. He wouldn’t be here long enough for any of it to matter. Besides, the longer he waited, the longer it would take him to get back there.

So he put as much from the bags as he could into his empty backpack, hung the rest on one arm with the case of beer, and used the other to crack one of those and drink it along the way back up the hill toward the house.    

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This story is currently a work in progress.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, or Part 5 of The End of the Road, or try reading a short comedy to shake the scaries here.