Strange Shorts

Shopping List

The story starts with Mary, a woman in her forties, sitting at the table, trying to figure out what to put on the shopping list. Mary lives alone, has never been married, and never will be. You may think Mary has had a bad life, but those assumptions are wrong to begin with. She has never been rich, nor has her family seen a large sum of money. Her childhood was indeed rough; she had never been able to play like the other children. She worked all of her life from the young age of twelve. Despite all of this, Mary looks back at her past as "good times". Now she sits patiently, waiting to figure out what to write on her shopping list. A moment of silence is everything. The place where she works is loud, and there is no time to think, but today she sits in silence with a cheap ballpoint pen in her left hand and a small notebook lying on her table. As she sits there, the first thing comes to her head.

"Eggs, I may need those."

She knew she could get eggs pretty cheaply at the Grab n' Go mart. There are only thirty cents per dozen. As she marked eggs down, she noticed a chip next to her on the table; it looked old and dried up, but it didn't stop Mary from picking it up to eat it.

"Mmm... lightly salted."

She gasped after eating the old chip.

"Chips!"

It was like she had a stroke of genius. She wrote chips down under eggs. They were cheap and inexpensive-only 50 cents a bag. But she had a problem. What was going to happen next? Mary leaned back in her chair and pondered, maybe reflecting a little. She remembered the last time she went shopping; it felt so long ago to her. She remembered the nicely air-conditioned store and the fluorescent lights radiating like the sun. Oh, the joys of pushing that small metal basket around like it's your last. Mary snaps back into the present, and tears fill her eyes.

"If I can't write this list, I will never see it again."

The sense of urgency started to take over Mary; she so desperately wanted to get this list done, but all she did was sit and wait and reminisce about the past and its luxuries.

"I can do this."

Things get more serious. While her stomach starts to rumble, she picks up her pen and begins to write. Milk is the cold white liquid that everyone knows and loves. Mary puts that down as she wipes the sweat from her brow.

"I can't believe I did it."

She kisses her pen as she laughs in what seems like joy. However, there were only three things on that list, and she still had some money to spare to put on that list. If the eggs were 30 cents and the bag of chips were 50 cents, how much would milk be? Oh no, Mary forgot the price. She shrugged it off.

"Milk should be cheap enough."

Mary has three items, but these items really aren't a meal. What could Mary do to kick it up a notch? She had to remember what a meal looked like or tasted like. What could it be? She thought back for a moment and remembered a time. It was a late evening after receiving terrible news. She remembered when she had been sitting on the couch watching breaking news; all she could remember at that moment was that it seemed to be like an emergency and suddenly a knock at the door. Mary opened it and received the terrible news that it was her father.

"Mary? It's your father... He's dead."

Mary remembered the sad news; much of that night was a blur; however, she did remember that she opened the freezer door to grab a TV diner.

"Thats it!"

She says as she jots down TV dinners on the list that's the meal she was looking for. The list is almost complete. The TV dinners would probably take up a lot of money, but they were totally worth it. Now she just needs dessert, and the list is complete. Mary indeed has a sweet tooth; she does remember her favorite dessert, red velvet cake. Unfortunately, Mary doesn't think she'll have enough, so cake mix will have to do.

"Hopefully the oven still works."

She says as her stomec rublebs once again, even as she writes the final item on the list, shaking her hand as nervous as ever, sweat dripping from her face, she picks up the list and kisses it.

"Its finished!"

She places her pen down and picks up the notebook. Mary must carefully tear the list out of the notebook. Slowly, she begins from the left side as it makes that tiny ripping noise. Mary's eyes are fixed on the notebook; she's almost there, almost done. just a little more and the papers out of the notebook. As it nearly reaches the end, the almost torn list gets caught in the metal rings that bind all the paper together and tares the list in half right in front of Mary.

"No, No, No, No, No,"

She continuously says this with the torn list. Mary lifted the table, threw it across the room, and took the notebook and ripped it in half. Her eyes slowly turned red as she was about to cry.

"I was so close."

In all of her despair, she curls up and cries in the rubble of what once was her home. Mary, unfortunately, in her delusions, still thinks there's still a Grab n' Go mart in her town. The town she lives in is just a distant memory of the past, as Mary and her memories are all that's left for miles and miles.

THE END