Voices float through the air, caught by some unfelt breeze and swirling around him like a twister. At times they are loud. Others, they are so soft he wonders if he is hearing anything at all. The ceiling over him is dirty, stained with some orangish brown pattern that defies all attempts to assign it a shape. His brain plods along sluggishly, but eventually he decides it's not his bedroom ceiling. That makes sense, muddled brain surmises. The floor is too cold and hard to be his bed.
The light is bright, searing his retinas, and he squeezes his eyes shut to block it out. The voices fade when he does so, as though without his conscience effort they cease to exist. He opens his lids and they resume. Everything flows around him, a gentle breeze tugging at his mind but leaving his physical body untouched. It's disconcerting, but somehow he can’t find the energy to care enough to wonder what is happening to him.
The voices get louder, and the lights change. Overhead he can see two rectangular fixtures set into the ceiling. Tube lights, fluorescents, his brain supplies. It happens again. The light changes and the rectangles go dark. The voices get louder, and clearer, as though fueled by the strange orange light that makes him think of sunset over the creek. It's a fanciful comparison, but it feels right. Still light out, but darkness is coming. The rectangles light again, and the voices become muffled once more. Something is wrong. He should find out what it is.
Muscles in his back and arms apologize when he tries to sit up. It isn’t time yet, so sorry, you should just lay still for a while. He relaxes into the thought. If his muscles aren’t ready to move, then he sees no reason to push them.
A single voice stabs through the fog, and his forehead furrows at the tone. Izzie is always so quiet around others, why is she yelling? Uh oh, someone has pissed her off. He pulls on a memory as it drifts by. She yelled at him like that once. He can’t remember why, but he knows he deserved it, just as he deserved the bucket of mud she dumped on his head. They were kids, there was always a bucket of mud nearby. That was years ago. She is always willing to look the other way when people make mistakes. Why is she yelling?
Logan tries to get up again, but the air is still too heavy. His fingers, though, respond to his insisted movement. They curl around a padded surface, something rough and slightly curved with a slight give. A handle. His mind supplies the image. A shovel? Why does he have a shovel? Ah, yeah, he has to dig up those bushes. He must tell Stacy and Izzie he found what he was looking for. He wonders if they are done looking at the baby chicks yet.
Something tickles in his head, something he should know, but it's hiding. Stacy can help. She is good at helping him remember things when he forgets. His eyes try to focus. From his supine position, he looks around a little room, or at the things that he can see from his angle. Faceless people are sitting or standing around. A loud, grating noise fills his ears, and the floor vibrates below him. He blinks rapidly. Why are they moving the table again?
The table. His muscles agree it is time to move, and he sits upright. Something happened. There was screaming, and running, and a table being moved to block a door. He gets to his feet as the noise stops. Stacy is still outside waiting for him. That must be why they're moving the table. They realized she was stuck out there. Gripping the handle to the shovel tightly, he strides to the door. Something is in his way, shiny, metal maybe? But it is soft and light when he shoves it out of his path. He steps through the gap in the door and into the main body of the store.
Everything is quiet. Not behind him, no, there are voices coming from the room he just left but he ignores them. It's bright out and the voices are far away. Out in the store, it's quiet. The fluorescent lighting looks wrong, and he blinks rapidly, trying to clear his mind. There is no movement, no shoppers carrying baskets filled with supplies they would need for whatever big Thanksgiving weekend tasks they had planned. He can’t imagine many people work on big To-Do lists on their holidays. But the store seems too empty. He walks back toward the pen holding the baby chicks. He remembers. That’s why Stacy wanted to come, to look at the baby chicks.
His foot sticks. Someone must have spilled something. Where are the employees? Maybe he should tell Joseph when he goes back into that room. Why had he been in that room? Did he fall and hit his head? A picture pops into his mind, Stacy running toward the door. Then, it's gone. He pauses and turns toward the front of the store. The doors are fuzzy in the distance, but halfway down the aisle, he can see someone lying on the ground. Golden hair catches his attention. Stacy fell there. She must have hurt herself and stayed there until someone could help. He breaks into a jog, dodging the hands that reach out for him from the door on the side. Joseph is there, he remembers. Joseph and Izzie stopped him from helping Stacy into the room before. They don’t follow him, and he keeps going until he arrives at the junction where one of the cross-store aisles meets the one he is in.
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Stacy is lying still, her head turned toward the front of the store. He drops to his knees next to her. She always could fall asleep in the strangest places. The floor doesn’t seem to bother her at all.
“Time to get up, Sleeping Beauty.” He nudges her arm, but she doesn't stir. The lights flicker. Logan looks up. The light cuts out, a warm orange glow replacing the stark white. He blinks, and the normal lights return. A headache is forming as he looks back down. “Come on Stace, I'll help you up, okay? Wake up, baby.”
He rests his hand on her cheek, turning her head toward him. The lights flicker again, and he jerks backward. Her head flops to the side, eyes open and staring at him, but not blinking. For just a second, she looked…
“This is wrong,” he whispers. There is dirt or something on her face, but the ground can't be that dirty. Small flecks of something dark are on his palm. He wipes them off on his pants.
Straight ahead, something is moving by the front door. White light switches to orange and the headache that is coming in quickly flares, a blinding pain erupting in his head. A memory, something dark crashing into Stacy. Screaming. And then silence.
“No.” He shakes his head, but the dark shape is moving slowly toward him, closer now. The orange light is back, and ahead there is light outside the door, silhouetting the nightmare that is stalking forward. “No no no. Stac-”
A scream chokes him when it lodges itself in his throat. It isn’t Stacy in front of him. It can’t be.
The hair draped across the forehead still shows patches of what must be blonde coloring, but it looks an odd shade of pumpkin in the light. The rest of the hair is dark, and he can’t tell why. His eyes don’t want to move, but he forces them to look lower. Darkness, like paint spilled from an improperly sealed can, is spattered across a face frozen in anguish.
Logan shoves himself up, his hand sinking as he pushes against what remains of the body laid out in front of him. Bile rises, and before he can stop it, spews out across the gaping hole that his hand slid into. Something hard scrapes his wrist, and he fights not to vomit again when he realizes it is bone, shattered and sticking outward as though marking a trail. Danger ahead, turn away.
Feet finally underneath him, Logan stumbles backward, his gaze finally moving from what remains of his girlfriend to the shape coming up the aisle. Through the pain in his head, his brain is beginning to waken, and he recognizes the shape he saw for only seconds before being pulled into the break room before. But it's moving much slower now, as though stalking him. So quiet, no growls or snarls, just silent menace. Logan knows he must be inside a nightmare, but the shapes beneath the orange emergency lights seem too real. More real than anything he saw after his eyes opened.
Turning, he sprints toward the door of the break room. It still stands open a crack, opening wider as he approaches. He bursts through, registering the sound of yelling as he clears the doorway, followed by screams. He leaps across the body he sees at the last second, hitting a waist-high counter and twisting to face the door as he bounces off. Before the door can close, it's forced open. Joseph cries out in pain, his hand crushed between the door and the table keeping it from opening further, but he shoves the door as hard as he can with his other hand, slamming the heavy door into the side of an enormous black creature.
For a moment, time stands still. Logan’s body screams at him to run, help to push the door, make the thing retreat. Then, it's too late.
A sleek form squeezes through the rest of the way, the door slamming shut behind it. Without pausing, it pounces on a figure lying on the ground. Claws emerge, rending fabric and flesh to the tune of screams and yells. Cloth, cabinets, floor, everything around it is painted red. Teeth join claws in the creation of a terrifying, sanguine work laid out on a linoleum canvas. Still, Logan is frozen.
Joseph rips the shovel from his hand. Hadn’t he dropped it? His brain is trying to restart but he can’t look away from the carnage happening right in front of him. All he can think is, ‘Is that what happened to Stacy?’
The screaming continues, one less voice as the life on the floor slips away.
Joseph runs the few steps between Logan and the body and swings the shovel as hard as possible. It hits the creature, and he stumbles as it bounces off. Turning the blade to the side, he tries again. The razor-sharp edge, meant to cut through the toughest of roots, slides through flesh and lodges into muscle and bone, where it sticks. Joseph jerks, but he can’t pull it free, and he nearly falls when the creature writhes and slashes out with claws that look to be longer than Logan’s hand.
In that moment, finally, Logan wakes up.
He dashes forward and grabs his friend around the waist, pulling him back as hard as he can. The claws miss by inches, and the creature bats at the thing sticking out of its side instead, trying to dislodge it. The two boys tumble backward, landing in a painful heap. Throughout the struggle, the creature doesn't make a sound beyond heavy gasps of air. Logan shakes his head, trying to clear the stars in his vision. Joseph does the same, trying to wiggle free as he does so. They push apart and climb to their feet, with no idea of what to do next, their only weapon still stuck where it sliced into monstrous flesh.
With a booming cry that silences all other voices, a small figure leaps over the flailing thing, landing solidly on the opposite, unwounded side. Izzie raises her hands high above her head and stabs down into the creature, driving something into it over and over, her battle cry ringing in their ears. The creature squirms, its movements getting weaker with each impalement. Claws retract and emerge again, flashing in and out. With one final yell, Izzie drives her weapon through its head, throwing her somewhat negligible weight behind the movement until the spike passes through both the skull and the dead body below, hitting the ground with a muted thump.