u/LostintheITcrowd

The grocery store I work at got a shipment of fresh produce tonight, and one of the fruits wasn't quite right...

So I work at a local grocery store called the Stop'n'Shop. We are your typical run-of-the mill all purpose general store. Think of Wal-something-or-another. The floors are a monotonous, neutral gray. The atmosphere is overbearing with the unnatural white of incandescent light bulbs.

It's boring, really.

That is, except when it's not.

To give you an example of what not-boring looks like at the Stop’n’Shop, I wrote the other day about an encounter I had with a cosmic Elder God inside the Aisle 7 frozen goods section. Weird stuff.

That's life here: boring, and then weird.

Tonight we had a shipment of fresh produce come in from our distributor. Typically, unloading trucks of freight is my coworker Luis's job. But we hadn't seen a real human face in over two hours, and I was worried the solitude would drive me to incomprehensible madness. So I offered to help him.

Once the pallets of fruit were taken off the truck, we started wheeling boxes of it down from the loading dock to the produce backroom. Luis took vegetables, leaving me with fruit.

The job was monotonous, bordering on mind-numbing, but at least I wasn't standing alone at the front of the store, staring into the void of my mind. The mundanity of moving fruit from Point A to Point B was a welcome feeling, actually.

If only it had stayed that way.

When I got to the kiwis, there were three boxes on the pallet. I picked up each box and moved it to my cart for transport. When I got to the third box, I heard what almost sounded like a muffled cry coming from inside the box.

I took pause at the sound, waited hesitantly, trying to see if it would happen again, if I could get a better listen to whatever that noise was. But no, nothing.

Must've been my imagination.

I wheeled the cart down the back hall, when halfway through the trip, I heard it again, alongside the sound of items moving inside the box.

'Is there something in here?' I thought to myself.

I stopped the cart, lifted the lid of the box open, and peeked inside.

"What the fu-" I started to say.

There were kiwis inside the box, seemingly rolling around all by themselves. This can't be right.

I started digging through the box in the spot the movement centered around.

"Ow!" Yelped a tiny, mouse-like voice from inside the box.

"WHAT THE FUCK!?" I yelled, much more loudly than before.

"Can you hear me!?" The voice screamed. "Please! Help me!"

I gently dug around in the box this time, until I felt a tiny hand grab ahold of my pointer finger.

I jumped back, startled at the contact with whatever the hell was inside the produce box. As I moved back, I lifted the entity with me. It clung to my finger, rising into the air as I moved.

This thing, this being that was somehow speaking to me, in English no less, was a kiwi. A regular sized kiwi, brown, furry. Except this kiwi, on its tiny body, had a small face. Attached at the sides were two small arms, and two small legs at the bottom.

I stared in disbelief at the fruit man that hung from my finger like its life depended on it.

"Don't drop me! Don't drop me!" It yelled.

Oh! I moved my other hand to scoop the fruit up, catching it by its miniature feet.

"Please!" The fruit pleaded at me, "You have to help me! Where am I? What are you? How are you so big?!"

I was unsure what to respond, part of me couldn't even get a grip on the fact that this was really happening.

"I'm not big. You're small.." I said to the fruit. "You're a kiwi. A kiwi in the produce section of a grocery store."

"What are you talking about!? You're talking gibberish, I'm not a fucking kiwi, I'm a person! I have a name. My name is David, I have a wife, where am I? I have to see her, does she know I'm gone? I don't understand what's happening..."

The fruit began to hyperventilate between sobs of terror.

"David, you said your name was?" I asked, trying to reason with the kiwi. "Look, let's go find a mirror, I want you to see yourself."

I took David the Kiwi into the employee bathroom, and held my hand up to the mirror. There, David was able to look at himself.

"What is that!" He screamed at his reflection. "That can't be me! I'm a fucking person! I'm a person!" He was screaming uncontrollably now.

I set David down in the sink and kneeled down to his eye level.

"Hey, hey. Deep breaths, we'll try to figure this out. Tell me your wife's name."

"Her name is Marie, God, how am I supposed to get back to her like this? What even am I?" He started crying again.

"David," I whispered, soothingly. "Do you have her phone number? We can try contacting her. Maybe she has some clue what happened to you."

"Yeah... yeah I know it..." he said, exasperated from the crying.

He told me her phone number. I typed it into my cell phone, and gave her a call. After 4 rings, the call went through.

"Hello?" asked a groggy male voice.

Wait, male?

"Uh... can I speak with Marie?" I asked into the phone.

"Marie isn't available right now, but who are you? And why are you calling my wife at 2 in the morning? What is this?"

"Your wife? No, no that can't be right. I'm here with David, there's been... an accident... of sorts, I need to speak with her."

"What is this, some kind of sick prank call?" The man on the other line said, his voice rising with anger. "You couldn't even get your facts straight, you're speaking with David right now."

I shot the kiwi a confused look, could he hear the phone?

I put the call on speaker.

"Come again? You said that you're David?"

"Yes, you asshole. You think you can call my wife and tell her that I've been in some kind of accident? Fuck you!" The call ended abruptly.

"That... that was my voice... how was that my voice...?" Said the kiwi, visibly disturbed from the call.

"I don't know, I don't understand what's happening. Do you have someone else I can call?"

The kiwi collapsed into a sitting position in the sink, his hands cupping his face. He sobbed a gut wrenching wail.

"David...?" I spoke softly, trying to nudge him out of his despair.

Without warning, the kiwi shot up into a standing position and climbed up the side of the sink. Once he was out of the bowl, he sprinted down the side of the sink, towards the edge.

By the time I registered what was happening, I lunged down to try to catch him, but I was too late.

The kiwi jumped off the edge of the sink. His body plummeted, crashing onto the floor with a soft thud.

"David..." I cried out. I kneeled down to him, a nudged him as gently as I could with my fingertip. As I moved him, I noticed a small trickle of blood on the floor where he collided.

David was dead. I was sure of it.

Part of my wanted to cry, part of me wanted to run out of the store and never look back. I was at a loss, how did this happen to him?

After 10 minutes of sitting on the bathroom floor, occasionally crying, occasionally hyperventilating from fear and confusion, I finally got the courage to lift David's kiwi body up.

It was limp, his face was expressionless. A small tear on the top of his kiwi body was stained red from blood flow.

He was gone.

There would never be answers for what happened to him, how he got to be that way, if the David that answered the phone was the real David. His wife, she probably wouldn't even notice.

That's the thought that stuck with me for a while. If I don't remember him, no one will. I'll never understand the events that happened tonight. But I sure have a strong desire to call my loved ones and tell them that I care about them.

I'm sure I'll have more stories to post in the future, but this one really fucked me up emotionally, so I'm going to go home and try to sleep off the existential crisis of knowing I might wake up as a fruit in a box, with someone else in my place.

I work at a grocery store, the Stop'n'Shop, and I think God lives on Aisle 7

Hi, reader. Is that an okay thing to call you? Sorry, I’ve never been in a narrator/audience relationship before, so I’m not really sure what does and doesn’t count as a faux pas. I’m not much of a blogger, nor am I much of a writer in general. In fact, if you asked me, gun to my head, what on this god forsaken Earth I *actually* am, all I could say is that I’m an overnight cashier at a grocery store. And I’d be lying if I said I was a good one at that. 

It’s the kind of job that no one *plans* on making their career, it just kind of happens. You get the job, and tell yourself that it’s just to pay for college. But then life happens, you drop out, you get in an accident and total your car, your default on your student loans, (they don’t go away when you declare bankruptcy, did you know that? I know that.) and your part time job to hold you off until bigger and better things come along becomes the full time career that makes you want to jump in front of an eighteen-wheeler. At least that’s what happens if you’re me. 

That’s actually what I wanted to tell you about, my job. Because my job is fucking strange. If it wasn’t enough for me to stay up all night making small talk with the kinds of people who grocery shop at 3:22 in the morning, some of them *aren’t right.* 

And not in the “they have this look in their eyes like their soul packed up and left a decade ago and their body just hasn’t gotten the memo” kind of way. All of them have that look, even the normal ones. I’m talking “one of my customers the other night didn’t have a reflection in the mirror” not right. Was that guy a vampire? Maybe! There wasn’t any garlic in his shopping cart, isn’t that suspicious!?!? What kind of monster buys two pounds of chicken thighs and not a drop of minced garlic in sight? A vampire! That’s who! 

Okay, okay. Sure. Maybe that one is just me being dramatic. You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve been drinking. I’m trying to black out the memory of when God zapped a beam of Infinite Knowing(Copyright?) directly into my brain, so I’ve had quite a few shots of whiskey tonight. Sue me. Or don’t, I don’t have any money.

I guess let’s start there. Maybe if I put that story pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?), it’ll help make the maddening knowledge of mankind’s impending destruction easier to bear. Let Reddit carry that burden, so I don’t have to anymore. 

This story starts, like all too many of my stories do, with me talking to a clown at 1 in the morning. Not a proverbial clown, a literal one. Cartoonishly large shoes, honky nose, the whole nine yards. Would it make you happy to know that he was buying a boxed pie and a bag of balloons? Because he was. And I just wanted you to know that. 

There I am, minding my business, trying to pass the minutes at the register of my store, when I hear it. 

*Flip.*

*Flop.*

*Flip.*

*Flop.*

*Flip.*

I looked down the aisle of the checkout queue, and there he was, walking to my register, the sound of his oversized shoes slapping against the concrete floors echoing through the barren walls of the nearly empty brick and mortar store. He was dressed in bright colors, mainly red and yellow. What little skin was visible beyond his carnival jumpsuit was painted white with red outlining his physical features, his lips and eyes. 

He flip-flopped up to the counter, staring at me with a blank expression, the kind of sad, hollow eyes that you only ever see in clowns that are off-duty, when the performance has been thoroughly wrung out of them. He set his two items, the pie and the plastic bag of balloons, onto the conveyer belt, and stared at me, not uttering a word. 

I am thoroughly desensitized to seeing a menagerie of strange folks and critters walk through my doors at 1am, so I did what any equally lifeless cashier would do, and I rung up his items, returning the silence. If BingBong the Clown doesn’t want small talk, I am all too happy to not engage. (Side note: that wasn’t derogatory, the name BingBong the Clown was embroiled into the back of his clown costume).

I tell this lifeless husk of a clown his total, and he responds by reaching into his clown pocket, and retrieving what might be the smallest wallet I have ever seen in my entire life. Really, I mean that. This thing wasn’t big enough to fit even a single credit card into it. Leather, black, fit snugly into the palm of his gloved hand.  He unfolds it, reaches into the miniature slit in the center, and pulls out a tiny piece of folded green paper, which he hands to me. 

“What… Really?” I ask him, unsure of what to do in this bizarre situation. 

He nods slightly, still not uttering a word. 

“I - Okay…” I mutter, and attempt to unfold what I really hope is legal tender, to avoid making the encounter even worse than it already is. 

I wrestle with the folded paper just long enough to ensure that I really look like an idiot in front of this man dressed in clown attire, and finally discover that the man had given me a twenty dollar bill. Thank *Christ*. 

I give the clown man his change, and watch as he rapidly folds the paper bills into origami figures, faster than I’ve ever seen hands move before. One second he is holding three dollar bills, then his hands become a blur, and next thing I know, he’s holding three green origami stick people. He hands one of the stick people to me, and traces a smile over his painted-on exaggerated grin.

I’m frankly blown away. I mean, wow. I’ve never been much a fan of street magic but sometimes the showmanship gets to you. I have no idea how he did what he did, as fast as he did. I couldn’t help but clap. 

The clown man did a curtsey, and turned away from me, walking towards the exit of the store. After he disappeared from my sight, I had no choice but to reflect on what just happened. Maybe I was too harsh to judge him the way I did. Here I was, thinking about how miserable he looked, and all he wanted was to put a smile on *my* face. I started to kick myself for being an asshole, but my self deprecation was interrupted by the noise of the front entrance sliding open again. 

*Huh*, I thought to myself. *Maybe he realized he forgot something.*

I watched the front entrance, and to my surprise, *another clown walked in*. Like, a totally different clown. That can’t be a coincidence right? Surely they know each other. Or maybe this is one of those YouTube social experiments that are really just an excuse to fuck with strangers and escape consequences. 

“Hey man!” I called out to the new clown, “You just missed your friend BingBong, he actually just left, but he showed me a really cool trick with a dollar, give that guy props for me!” 

My mood was lightened already. 

The clown turned to look at me, and he too didn’t speak, just turned to me and stared. 

As he watched, I once again heard the sound of the front entrance sliding open. And once again, in walked another, *third* clown. 

This was starting to get a little awkward for me,.so I turned back towards my register and went back to staring at the screen, maybe hoping to eavesdrop on whatever clown business the two would discuss. 

As I stared at the screen of my POS system (that means point-of-sale, for those lucky enough to be born not poor), my ignoring the clowns was once again interrupted by the sliding *whir* of the front entrance. 

*No*, I thought to myself, *There’s no way.* 

A third clown walked into the store, the fourth one tonight. 

“Hey…” I called out weakly to the group of clowns (is a group of clowns called a guffaw?), “I’m gonna go check on something in the back, but don’t hesitate to holler when you’re ready to check out!”

Without waiting for a response, I turned towards the back of the store and walked briskly away from the guffaw. Whatever the hell was happening up there, I would rather not be involved in. That first guy was funny, but this is outright weird. 

As I walked through the double doors separating the front of the store from the back, I called out “Luis!”

Luis was the overnight stocker, occasional janitor, that frequently worked with me on my overnight shifts. He was an older man, probably in his mid 60s, the gray in his hair was starting to outnumber the brown. For his age, Luis was more physically fit than I would expect. Maybe he does cross fit? I don’t know. 

Anyway, I called out to Luis, hoping he was within ear shot. I heard the sound of movement down the hall of the stock room, and followed. As I turned a corner, I saw him, stacking boxes of paper goods onto a cart to wheel off into the paper aisle (Aisle 16, if you were wondering. You probably weren’t).

“Luis, do you know if there’s a circus in town? Or maybe some kind of carnival related business conference?”

Typing it out, I realize how stupid the question sounds. 

Luis turned to me, and gave me a puzzled look. 

"Evan, what the hell are you talking about?”

“I feel like you’re not gonna believe this, but there is a gaggle of clowns in the store right now. A guffaw, if you will.”

“*What?*” Luis yelled, a look of alarm on his face. “How many?”

“It was four when I came back here. Why? Is something wrong?”

"Fuck!” he gasped, “Four!? You let four clowns in here before coming to get me? Kid, you have no idea what you’ve done, we are fucked.”

"Luis… They’re clowns. Like, animal balloons, pie to the face clowns. What are you talking about?”

“Shit,” he muttered software, rushing down the hall. He gestured to me to follow him. 

“I know that’s what they look like, but those are not typical clowns. How do you not know this already? You’ved worked here for how many years? Two?”

We approached the double doors back into the sales floor, and he peeked through the window into the clothing section. 

“Oh no..” he muttered, “We’re too late.”

He nudged my shoulder to move me into position to peek out the window as well.

*Jesus Christ.*

What was once a guffaw of merely three, four clowns at once, had rapidly expanded to an army of sixty or more. They crawled, galloped, skipped, and leaped through the store, engaging in exaggerated movements, almost cartoonish in nature. At a glance, it almost seemed as if they were… looking for something. Maybe someone.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked Luis in a sharp tone, trying to keep my voice down, to avoid being the center of attention of the clown army. 

Luis grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the door. 

“There’s typically an emergency protocol for things like this, but that won’t work since there’s only two of us in the store. Damn corporate cutting corners and slashing overnight hours, so of course we’re understaffed during a Code 1854 Emergency.”

Code 1854? They have a numbering system? Has this happened before? I couldn’t stop and ponder questions like this, whatever was on the other side of the wall to my left was clearly *fucking horrifying*, so I needed to clear my head and get with the program. 

“Luis, you’re the authority on whatever the fuck this is, so please, tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” I said. 

Again, typing that out, I realize that I sound like a wimp. This was my first pseudo-clown invasion, I’ll try to be more prepared next time. 

Luis pointed down the hall of the stock room, “I’m going to run to the far end of the store and pull the fire alarm. Hopefully the noise will put the clowns on high alert, and I can lead them away from the cold foods section. You need to run from the back left corner up to the front entrance, stick as close to the fridge walls as you can. Once you’re outside the front door, call the police, and tell them that there’s a Code 1854 here. They’ll be able to help us from there.”

My mind was reeling, what the fuck was happening? Was this real? What are these things? I tried my hardest to focus on Luis’s words but my head was spinning with all the possibilities of what might happen if one of the clowns finds me.

I turned to look at Luis again, but he was already off, running down the hall like his life depended on it. Did it…? 

I slapped myself across the face, my cheek burning from the sting of the strike, my ear starting to ring.

*Snap the FUCK out of it!* 

I willed myself forward, first one step, then another. Beyond the walls, maybe just five feet away from me, an army of things *pretending* to be clowns was waiting out there, and from what Luis said, it sounded like they were looking for us. Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK! 

One foot in front of the other, left foot, right foot, left foot, I willed myself to walk where Luis had told me to go. 

As I walked, I was suddenly bombarded by an overwhelming wave of darkness as the lights in the store all shut off at once. Cast away into nothingness, I stuck my arms out in front of me, trying hard to navigate in the pitch black. My senses ripped away with the force of a tornado, I tripped on the railing of a storage shelf, sprawling onto the cold concrete floor. My jaw bounced from the impact, and my tongue exploded with the taste of copper. Fuck!

Thankfully, reprieve from the dark was quick, in the illuminating of emergency lights that snapped on with a *buzz*. My chin was busted open, blood falling down the curve of my neck. I didn’t have time to dwell on the pain, I had to move, and I had to move *now.*

As if commanding me, the walls of the back room echoed with a loud siren, reverberating off the walls and through my skull. The fire alarm. Luis had made it to his location. It was up to me to save us now. He did his part, and what the hell is he even going to do once those things start looking for him? I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I can’t think of the possibility of something happening to him. No. This is on me now. I have to get outside, and I have to save him. 

I pushed out the double doors on the far corner of the stock area, and sprinted as fast as I could. As I burst into the dairy section of the store, I was shocked by the complete and utter absence of clowns. Just a moment ago, the room was sprawling with them, but now? Not even a peep of noise beyond the sound of my shoes tapping into the ground as I ran. I beelined for the front door, passing dimly lit milk shelves and completely blacked out freezers. 

I mentally calculated, and I thought to myself that I might make it. The front door was maybe 75 feet away; I was halfway through the store and I hadn’t even seen a single clown. Was this the home stretch? 

I picked up pace, sprinting as fast as my legs could allow. I passed aisle 11. Aisle 10. Aisle 9.

But then it hit me. A strange, almost imperceptible change in the atmosphere of the store. As I ran past the side entrance of aisle 8, the feeling grew stronger. A buzzing, a subtle vibrating in the base of my skull. I tried to ignore the sensation, but every movement forward felt like it added 10 pounds to my body. My ears filled with a soft humming as my sprint involuntarily slowed to a jog, then a walk. And then I stood motionless at the base of Aisle 7.

I turned to gaze down the aisle, frozen goods. As I looked, I saw it. One singular freezer, the door ajar. Emitting from the otherwise dark corridor was a soft purple glow. 

I willed myself to move onward, to shove the glowing freezer into the subconscious recesses of my mind. This wasn’t important! Luis’s life was on the line if I didn’t make it outside! I screamed at my body to move my legs forward, but they remained in place, motionless. 

*How is this happening?* I thought to myself. *Why isn’t my body listening to me?*

I thrashed against the invisible strings holding me in place, I exerted my throat as hard as I could, begging the universe to let me scream, but my muscles betrayed me, siding with the invisible monster holding me in place.. 

*My friend is going to die!*

Suddenly, my left leg lifted my left foot into the air, and without warning, I took a step into Aisle 7.

*No! No no no no no no! Let go of me!* 

My right foot followed suit.

*You’re fucking killing him! Let me go! Let me fucking go so I can save his life!*

Step after agonizing step, my body walked towards the glowing freezer. I was merely a puppet, and whomever was pulling the strings would have blood on their hands. 

*Please… please…* Tears welled up in my eyes, this isn’t what I wanted.

As my body approached the purple glowing freezer, my neck turned to gaze into it, and then I saw infinity. 

My mind melted away from me, a flood of memories flashing past my eyes at light speed. All at once I was a 23 year old failure, a 17 year old slacker in high school, a 12 year old from a broken home, a kid playing with toy dinosaurs while my parents screamed at each other that they hated one another in the next room, a baby looking up at the world for the first time, full of hope and curiosity. 

And then I was nothing. 

I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the dim light that surrounded me. 

I looked around, and saw a stunning, beautiful universe. Planets orbiting baby stars, cosmic rays and nebulae as far as the eye can see; I floated, weightless in the cosmos, gazing into a young universe with infinite possibility and felt for the first time… certainty. Certainty that everything would be okay. I was a spec amid the unquantifiable universe, and one day my life would end, my body would rot, and I would return to the cosmos, a child once again ready to take a physical form and live another life on a planet beyond distance. And I would be free.

As I cried tears of joy at the understanding that my eventual nothingness would be the greatest moment of my entire existence, a voice called out, not through the space around me, but directly into my soul. 

“Evan!” it boomed, louder than should be physically possible. 

As the name registered in my mind, I was snatched forcefully out of my bliss. I looked around me at the stars and the planets of the universe, and the joy was gone. One day I would die and everything I accomplished in my life would be gone and I am meaningless, everything I do is meaningless. The memory of my brief clarity persisted, but the understanding, the intuitive acceptance of the freedom that awaits me was gone. All that remained was dread and fear. 

“Evan!” the disembodied voice bellowed again.

I looked in every direction, and all I saw was space.

And then it hit me for the first time, I was floating through space. I hadn’t taken a single breath since I was in the grocery store. The reality of my situation sank into my mind and I flailed through the void around me, panicking.

*Where am I? How did I get here? Am I dead? Is this death? Where’s Luis?*

And then the memories flooded back into me, in chronological order. Birth, fear, parent’s divorce, high school, drop out, car crash, vampire guy(?), clowns, Luis is probably dead. 

“You killed my friend!” I screamed into the void, “Where are you?”

“Evan, what are you talking about?” the voice spoke directly into my brain, bypassing my ear and my senses altogether. 

“Show yourself you fucking coward!” I shrieked at the entity that somehow burrowed itself into my conscious mind. “My friend was going to die unless I saved him and you wouldn’t let me!”

“Oh.” the voice spoke. It almost sounded like it understood. There was no natural human inflection in the voice. It merely spoke words as if they came straight from the dictionary. No tone, no emotion, no indication of how this invisible monster actually felt about what it did to me, and to Luis. 

“Would you like me to show myself to you?” it pushed the question into the forefront of my mind. 

“Yes!” I yelled, angrily. 

*Flash.*

All at once, my entire field of vision was captured by the *monstrosity* that spoke to me. It was large, the size of an entire solar system. I tried to look at it, but my mind was incapable of concentrating on just one part of it. 

It appeared to be made of flesh, in a way. 

Tendrils of a deep red flesh-like material spread out across the horizon, connecting large, planet-size bodies that appeared to be made of bone. Across the tendrils, bolts of electricity fired, zapping at the speed of light from one bone planet to another. It reminded me of a brain. A brain the size of the entire solar system.

Deep in the center of the mass of flesh and bone was a pit of seemingly infinite blackness. I tried to look at it, but the mere sight made tears stream down my cheeks. 

“Are you ready to talk now?”

I stared into the void of neurological monstrosity, unable to form complete thoughts. 

“Uh…..” was all I managed to peep out. 

Just as suddenly, the incomprehensible mess of tendrils and planets vanished, and was replaced again by the view of a typical, peaceful cosmos. 

“I knew you wouldn’t like that, why did you ask me to do that if you weren’t going to engage with me?” 

Did I *offend* this thing?

“I’m sorry…” I muttered, wiping tears away from my face. “I thought I was ready to see you… How could I have known….” I started to say, before trailing off into nothingness.

"You humans always do this.”

You… humans?

"You’ve met other people?” I asked the disembodied voice. 

"Of course I’ve met other people. I’m God, it’s one of the things I’m known for.”

"You? You’re God?” The question felt ridiculous leaving my astonished lips. Why wouldn’t this thing be God? I’ve never seen anything so fucking horrifying in my life! Whatever that *thing* was, it wasn’t natural, and it certainly wasn’t Earthly. Why couldn’t it be God?

“Yes, I am,” it stated, matter-of-factly. 

"You have emotions now.” It was more an observation than a question. 

“I always have emotions, I’m not an unfeeling monster. I just waited to reveal my full self to you until I knew you were ready. And judging by your reaction to my body, I think it was the right call.”

I apparently hurt God’s feelings. Did this mean I was going to Hell?

“I’m sorry,” I said into the void of space. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. Let’s start over. You know my name, obviously. Do you have a name? Besides God?”

“Thank you for asking, that’s the first considerate thing you’ve done since you got here,” it stated. “My name is -” 

My ears filled with the screams of a trillion tortured souls, an endlessly crescendoing cacophony of death and decay, I became filled with the unbearable desire to rip the eardrums from my ears to stop the perception of this miserable noise. 

Just as suddenly, it stopped.

“But I don’t think that translates to your language very well, so you can call me Bob.”

I sobbed into my hands, trying to force away the memory of that awful sound.

“Evan, I’ll give you a moment to compose yourself, but it’s of the utmost importance that we talk.”

I cried and hugged myself, swaying back and forth through the endless void, trying to find some modicum of self soothing amidst the demonic thoughts that clawed at my mind as a result of hearing Bob’s name. 

Several minutes passed before I was able to speak. Or maybe it was several hours. 

“Why am I here?” I peeped, quietly, softly.

“Finally,” Bob muttered, sounding exasperated from having to deal with me. “I have brought you to my domain because your world, and *all* worlds, are in danger. An eldritch being of immense power has set its sights on our universe, it aims to siphon off the life force of all living beings, the warmth of every star, the very vibration in every atom. It is coming here, and when it’s done with us, our universe, MY UNIVERSE, will be an empty, cold, dead husk. I have spent millennia shaping life and the cosmos into a bearable image, and I will not let my work be destroyed by some inter-multiversal brat!”

“What…” I struggled for words, “What does that have to do with me? Why me? Why am I here?”

“Because you, Evan, are going to stop it. You will work with me, and we will acquire the necessary artifacts for us to banish this hell-being from our Universe.”

"No, no no no. I work at a Stop’n’Shop. I sell chicken to vampires, and make awkward small talk with the late night queer people. I don’t do *whatever the fuck* you’re talking about, that’s not me. I didn’t even graduate college, you know. I dropped out, two semesters in. Didn’t even pay them back for the tuition loans. Don’t you need some sort of archeology or anthropology degree to be running around the globe finding ancient cosmic artifacts? In the movies, he has a professor! Surely I’m not qualified!” The words spewed out of me uncontrollably. Anything to get myself away from this *thing*, away from this burden, away from the fight he mistakenly thought that I was capable of fighting. 

“***SILENCE!!!”*** Bob commanded. “I will hear no more of this. You are going to fight Azaton the indestructible, and you will like it!” He sounded like my dad when I told him I didn’t want to join the baseball team in Middle School. 

“I will contact you again when it’s time for us to begin preparations. BEGONE!” 

I immediately threw up, disoriented and weak from being transported back into the Stop’n’Shop. 

The first thing I noticed was that the lights were now on. 

The second thing I noticed was the unthinkable number of dead clowns that were littered across the store. Dozens of corpses, mutilated, ripped apart, all spewing bright green fluids. I walked through the store, trying to piece together what happened while I was gone. 

When I reached the front of the store, I saw that the front sliding door had been blown out of the wall, shattered glass thrown everywhere, as if a grenade had ripped the wall straight from the foundation. It was early morning out, just around dawn.

I stepped into the parking lot, and found Luis. He was laying on the asphalt of the parking lot, his skin tinted green, clown blood?

Next to him was what first appeared to be a mountain of white, red, and yellow flesh.

As I stepped closer, I could make out details. 

Hundreds of individual clown body parts, all seemingly connected to one another. One solid mountain of clown flesh. It was limp, unmoving. But I could make out ‘parts’, if you will. Dozens of clown limbs melted and twisted together to form the shape of a giant leg, the size of a tree trunk. Gloved fingers from clown hands woven together into the shape of a face. 

It was like a clown Kaiju. And thank fucking God that it seemed to be dead. How the hell would I have fought that thing? I don’t think I’d be sitting here writing this story if I had wound up fighting this thing instead of arguing with Bob. 

“Luis?” I called out to him.

His eyes shot open and he sat up from the spot he was laying. 

“Evan?” He shouted, “You’re alive? I thought you died! The clowns kept multiplying and the police never came, I was so scared they got to you. Where the hell were you?” 

I took his hand and helped him to a stand. 

“That’s kind of a long story. You know a lot about the weird stuff that happens here, right? I mean, you knew about the clowns.”

He gave me a puzzled look. “Yeah, what about it? What happened?”

“Do you recognize the name Azaton the indestructible?”

"No, should I?” he inquired. 

"No, nevermind, don’t worry about it.” I guess I’m in this one alone. 

Luis looked at the pile of melted clown entrails, and looked at the destroyed door of the grocery store. 

“We should probably call the police now, maybe we can get them to clean this up for us.”

-

There it is. That’s the memory I’m trying to drink out of my head. Crazy shit, isn’t it? Who the fuck is Bob? Did I actually meet God? Who is Azaton? Am I really going to have to *fistfight* a multiversal demon that even God is scared of? What the hell was the deal with those clowns? Does not eating garlic constitute evidence that you are a vampire?

Too many questions. I don’t have the mental capacity to answer them right now. Today is my day off, and hopefully my next shift at the Stop’n’Shop will be significantly less carnival-y, and hopefully not contain any more religious experiences. 

Until next time. 

I am a sucker for really tragic horror stories. In fact, I think the presence of tragedy is what separates good horror from the best of the best horror.

Haunting of Hill House (it's a tv show but this is just to prove a point) was good, but Haunting of Bly Manor has stayed with me for years, it's truly one of the best ghost shows I've ever seen.

For recommendations, they can be anything from horror stories that drive apart an otherwise beautiful love story to sympathetic monsters that are evil not by choice but through forces outside their control.

Just looking for stories that are both scary and will make me cry like a baby afterwards.

I probably read this in 2015, 2017 at the ***Absolute latest***.

I believe the book is from the girl's perspective.

It's two high school students who discover that when they're physically near each other, they unlock abilities in each other. But the whole premise of the book is that they have drastically different personalities, which cause them to clash a lot, and can't stand to be around each other.

I don't know when this book was written but I think I got it from my school library around 2015.​

I probably read this in 2015, 2017 at the ***Absolute latest***.

I believe the book is from the girl's perspective.

It's two high school students who discover that when they're physically near each other, they unlock abilities in each other. But the whole premise of the book is that they have drastically different personalities, which cause them to clash a lot, and can't stand to be around each other.

I don't know when this book was written but I think I got it from my school library around 2015.​