A Stephen King Kind of Day, makoness [ebook reader color screen txt] 📗

It's been one of those I'm-living-in-a-Stephen-King-novel days:

Feeling virtuous for stocking up on veggies and actually remembering all the items on my mental shopping list during my 20-minute grocery run, my productive state of mind is rudely interrupted. Ka-dung ka-dung SCREEEECH!

An elderly lady creeps behind me with a seriously defective shopping cart. After an initial jump and wince at the noise, I continue winding my way through and out of the produce section. Ka-dung-ka-dung SCREEEECH!

I manage to stop myself from trying to cover my ears with my hands, narrowly avoiding hitting my face with the shopping basket. I pick up my pace. Ka-dung-ka-dung SCREEEECH!

My dismissal of a minor annoyance turns into alarm as the sound continues to follow me around every turn, assaulting my senses every 5 seconds. Ka-dung-ka-dung SCREEEECH!

I feel the vibration of the sound echo painfully in my chest cavity, like a too loud bass booming in a car next to you at a stoplight. Ka-dung-kadung SCREEECH!

Something about this is not

normal. The hairs on the back of my neck shiver and I flinch in anticipation, hunching my shoulders as I feel the deafening screech before it comes again, this time just two feet behind me. What the hell is happening? What does it want? Why me?!

Time to be pro-active, remain calm and take control! I'll want a record if things go pear-shaped, but don't want to alert the old-lady-suit-wearing creature to my action. Fishing my phone out of my purse, I remember Swaggerlee describing her stealth photography to me, thinking I'll snap a shot of the offending cart and its driver who pollutes her vicinity with an oppressive, threatening aura; a presence breathing down my neck in a dark room. As I access the camera function I become aware of three large men in front of me, managers and security for the store, looking vaguely in the direction of the screeching crone, but as if the creature doesn't quite register. Even so, with my luck they couldn't help but hear the ch-chick

of the aperture. I turn my stab for the camera button into a fake text-check then slip the phone back into my purse and try not to break into a trot. “PHOTOGRAPHY NOT PERMITTED IN THIS STORE!” warns every customer through the door, in multilingual exclamations, visual cues and threats of legal action. As lovely as the plethora of offerings is, why anyone would want to photograph the store to steal staging ideas is beyond me, this particular chain being notorious for its very lack of aesthetic staging, but I am my usual law-abiding self and give up the notion of documenting this event to post it later on FB or failing that, to serve as a clue for the detectives. Ka-dung-ka-dung SCREEEECH!

It is a statistical certainty that if I am in a panicked flight an obstacle course will appear. Walking briskly to try to evade my stalker and weaving through aisles of foodstuffs I don't need, I am opposed at every turn: Here a young girl guides her elderly grandmother and shopping cart, blocking the 5 foot wide thoroughfare in their leisure as they examine shelves on each side of the aisle (It's a charming family picture, but can't they feel the threat approaching behind us?) There, a red blur filled with blue packets of sliced American cheese swings around the corner, narrowly missing my shins as the young man holding the basket forces me to stop and turn so he can squeeze by.
Ka-dung-ka-dung SCREEECH!

I scream silently, a vision of me grabbing and tearing at my hair blurs my eyesight. How can the others not want to run screaming out of the store? 10 more steps and I am darting down a long clear aisle toward the checkout stands. Hands shaking and foot tapping, I take deep breaths to calm down. I pay in cash, crushing change and receipt in hand and grab my bags, darting in and out of the slow as lava flow of exiting customers until I finally make it through the doors and stand at the edge of the parking lot, a welcoming, wide open space that the rows of cars cannot diminish. The sky is an innocent blue, no hint of the ominous presence, the deafening screech that hunted me inside. I shudder and shake my head to clear it and breathe in deeply, exhaling a gust of relief. It will not pursue me into the sunlight.

Publication Date: 03-03-2011

All Rights Reserved