Hell's Heir

Chapter Four

The Missing flyers were taken off of the powerline poles and removed from store windows by the time I was on my way to the entrance doors of the Landsdown building the following morning. The sky overhead was smothered in dark clouds, the moisture in the July air promising rain. I passed by an elderly woman who was selling some metal jewelry from a booth on the side of the outside entrance path of the building, but as I walked past her to the doors, I was sure that her eyes--or someone's--were following me. I hesitated, feeling the temptation to look back, but I couldn't afford to be late. So I moved along, the sense of me being watched following me until I reached the escalators.

"And she's alive!" a voice chuckled the moment I stepped into the pharmacy. My manager was standing by register 1, originally talking to the cashier, but he was now grinning at me teasingly. "How'd it go?"

"Oh it was a ball," I mocked, as I sashayed past him. "It was all sunshine and rainbows and we laughed and drank until we passed out drunk on the couch.

"Man, now I wish I had came. There's a shopping cart full of cosmetics over near the body care section of the store." He pointed in the direction of the back left corner of the store.

Colourful cosmetic posters with unnaturally sexy female models hung over the small, six foot shelves from the ceiling. I hated the Photoshopped bodies of the girls on the posters. I never went for skinny; I went for healthy, and only weighed a hundred and twenty pounds with a twenty nine inch waist. Most of my weight came from muscle mass, not so much of fat. I'm one of those people who like to move.

"You do know I was being an ass right?" I called over my shoulder as I headed over to the cosmetics. "I wasn't being serious about it being a good time."

"Naturally."

The body care section of the pharmacy had six, six foot tall, ten foot long shelves spaced apart eight feet from each other, and I found the shopping cart in the aisle closest to the store's side wall. I dragged the cart along as I replenished shampoo, body lotion, mascara, rouge, onto their designated shelves, the speakers in the ceiling playing radio music.

Forty five minutes passed by the time I emptied the cart, the store getting busier by the second. No surprise since it was a Friday. One of my coworkers at the registers called me to the front, and I went and switched out with the cashier at checkout 3. I always say the cash registers as giant calculators, and I always enjoyed the little bloop sound they made when I swiped an items barcode over the scanner.

A woman that had the body of a balloon and a lion's mane of frizzy red hair waddled over and started to take her items out of her cart and place them on the conveyor belt, all while wearing a loud, ill-fitting flower-print sundress whose collar was cut so low I thought I was either going to be sick or break out in hysterical laughter. I picked up a container of some concoction that claimed to removed wrinkles from the belt and swiped it before putting it in a bag. I repeated the action about fifty seven times--it was a freaking huge load of stuff--and then punched a few keys on the register for the total price while trying to ignore the sour expression she wore, and the glances the man behind her was making as he waited, his attention getting pulled to the purposely exposed chest.

"That will be a hundred thirty two ninety five," I stated, reading the total off the register's screen. The woman's face sank into an ill-humored frown before flashing me her debit card. I forced a smile as she made her payment, and once all was paid she began to grab her plastic bags.

"Have a good day and we hope to see you again," I said calmly. She scowled at me and ambled out of the store, disappearing among the crowds of people. "When I'm not here," I muttered, a scowl settling on my own face.