Gathering together in the kitchen the next morning, they found that the snow had waned a little, and after some preparation, they set out towards the Store.
A small bell rang above them as the door slid open, and Rust looked up at it in confusion. "That wasn't there before."
"It's big!" exclaimed Quilt, as she stomped in, dusting off the snow, "You never said it was this big! I would have insisted we come sooner!"
She shot Shim a grin, and he stuck out a foot as if to trip her.
Rust shrugged. "I hoped we could find somewhere else for food, but that's by-the-by. We're here now, and I think there was a clothing section off on the left side last time I was here."
They had gone through her stores at home, but the cupboards had been strangely empty, and what little was left was far too large for Quilt.
The two women nodded to each other and then set off with gusto, leaving Shim alone by the entrance.
"Hope they didn't forget me proper already," he murmured to himself, walking towards the checkout desk.
He ran a hand over the cheap wood, before sticking his head under the desk. It was empty, with only a couple of shelves and space for his legs, not even any strange chocolate bars.
"It's like, going back to where I was born or something. Weird."
He shuddered and pulled himself back, staring around the shop. The aisles stretched off into the distance, labelled as if by a lunatic. Even the numbers were all mixed up.
With a huff, he grabbed a strange trolley, which seemed to be a sort of pushchair for baskets, and headed off towards the first aisle, helpfully labelled 'í6 - FRIGHT AND TABLES.'
-
It did not contain, as he had hoped, Fruit and Vegetables, but there were a lot of large ceramic pumpkins, garden ornaments and, unexpectedly, tables. End tables, coffee tables, kitchen and dining, everything you could ask for in flat surfaces.
One or two of them looked antique, but most looked like they had come straight out of a factory, and he ran a hand over each as he walked along, enjoying their varying textures.
He paused at one, which had deep, pockmarked cup rings all over it, and wondered about the origins of all this stuff.
As he traced the scars with his finger, he thought about the weather, and how everything was going to shake out.
There was something about snow which inspired melancholy, he felt. The other two seemed invigorated by it, the old woman Rust and the younger one Quilt both reacting like children. They had gone out the back last night and built a snow chicken, for pities sake!
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
Ok, yes he had joined in, but only because they were already out there, mocking him for staying indoors. He liked to think he was far too old for that sort of thing, but Rust was rapidly proving him wrong.
Instead, he always felt sad when it snowed, like the dampening of sound also dampened his emotions, blanketing him in white haze. He had never understood the excitement that the other kids felt at those first drifting flakes of ice. He had always just felt cold, and a little sad.
Shim turned into the next aisle, this one labelled '24 - SHEETS'.
As he gazed upon the rows and rows of sweets, he smiled. Now this was more like it!
-
Some time and a lot of sugar later, he found the two women laying out outfits in the clothing section. Rust hadn't changed, apart from acquiring a more rugged pair of boots, but Quilt was now wearing a much more sensible pair of jeans and a fancy, ruffled shirt. It suited her, he thought, much more than the salmon pink nightdress.
"How're you two doing over here?" he brandished his haul and the two came over to inspect, Quilt much more enthusiastic than Rust, whom he suspected might have been a health nut in her previous life.
"Pretty good!" Quilt twisted open one of the glass jars, sniffing the contents. "Oo, ginger candies I think? Smells spicy."
Shim gave the jar a sniff, before pulling out one of the lozenges, popping it into his mouth.
He grimaced, before perking up. "Yep, not bad though!"
Rust rummaged through the basket, rejecting an offered ginger sweet and instead settling on some kind of gumdrops. "I remember these from when I was a kid," she said, selecting one. She popped it into her mouth, and then puckered up her face, "I don't remember them tasting quite so much like toilet cleaner though."
She spat it out, reaching back into the basket for something else. "Then again, now that I think about it, they might have always tasted like that. The things you eat as a kid..."
"We found clothes," Quilt said, cutting her off and doing a little spin. "Not perfect, but good enough to get home in."
She gestured downwards, "and there's so many shoes! Boxes and boxes and boxes of shoes."
Shim looked around, taking in the area. There were indeed boxes and boxes of shoes, crates and crates, piles and piles and piles of them. All mixed up into a huge, chaotic jumble.
Upon closer inspection, some of the shoes were tied together at the laces, but they didn't match even then. It must have taken the two of them ages to find a pair, never mind ones that fitted.
"Man," he gazed out over the chaos, "I had a friend who worked in a shop like this, who had to clean up the shoe section. She'd have had a fit if she saw this mess."
He stopped. He didn't know where that had come from, examining the memory, or the lack of one. He didn't remember having any friends, didn't remember who she might have been or even where she would have worked.
"I think my mouth said that without any input from my brain."
Quilt stared at him, and then shrugged, smiling, "proves you're real then, ain't it. My mouth does that shit all the time. But hey, that means whatever you've lost, it's still in there somewhere."
He attempted to smile at her, and took another ginger candy.
-
Shim thought about that as they wandered around the shop together, sniffing packages and loading the ones which looked most like edible food into the basket. He had made it this far without disappearing, but the true test would be when they went to leave, when they passed where he had begun to exist.
He held his breath as they approached, and then passed, the checkout, not looking at it, not even daring to look.
He kept his breath held until all three of them were outside, only releasing it as the doors fell shut behind them, the jingling of the bell his signal that he was ok, panting with the effort.
Rust laid a hand on his shoulder, the other still holding her basket of goods, and Quilt looked at him with sympathy.
"You still with us, Shim?"
He nodded, and adjusting his burden in his arms, walked away from the building.
"I think so."