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A Glitch's Groceries - Full Story

Having a job involving a home office with primarily online obligations, paired with the fact most services could be delivered to his door, Lewis "Dawko" Dawkins rarely had a reason to leave his home. This could sometimes result in feelings of loneliness that couldn't always be solved by his friends, for they too lived similarly busy lives as content creators. Furthermore, he lived quite far away from any of his family. At least when he walked his dog, Mabel, he would often go out to parks or other communal spaces.

This week, instead of ordering a delivery service for his groceries like normal, the young Englishman had decided to drive to his local superstore, which happened to be Tesco. However, upon pulling into a parking space within the car park, the dark-haired man was beginning to regret his choice.

Throughout the drive, Lewis had felt an oncoming headache, one that had become progressively worse. Ultimately, it developed into a throbbing migraine almost forcing him to turn around and go home. The only reason he hadn't was due to the fact he desperately wanted a break; he wanted to sit in his air-conditioned car and close his eyes for a little while in an attempt to ease the pounding pain in his head. By the time he pulled into a parking space at the superstore, splotches of bright colours and dark shadows were fuzzing about the edges of his vision, and it was taking everything in his power to not cry whenever a small flash of sunlight hit his retinas.

Gritting his teeth together to prevent himself making any sounds of pain, the young man looked into his rearview mirror, taking note for the first time that day of how awful he looked. His hair was awry, his skin was blotchy, and his eyes were so bloodshot and red-rimmed that he appeared to be intoxicated. There was no way in hell he was going to cope with walking around a brightly lit, noisy, bustling store in this condition. With a hefty groan of discomfort, the Englishman partially lowered his chair back and rested his splitting skull against the headrest of the car seat, lowering his cap over his eyes to block out the light streaming through his windows.

"Ten minutes," he thought to himself. "Ten minutes rest, and then I'm going home."

Thus, with colours and shadows progressively filling his view even with his eyes closed, Lewis let himself relax to the best of his ability, inadvertently falling asleep. Perhaps that wasn't quite the correct phrasing... he didn't fall asleep. He fell into the back of his own mind.

Soon after closing them, the Englishman opened his eyes which had undergone a noticeable colour change characteristic of a certain someone coming into control of his body. Rolling his shoulders and stretching out his arms to the best of his ability within the confines of the car, a conniving smile slipped over Dawktrap's face. "Sweet dreams," he murmured, knowing that his voice was inaudible to Lewis. With a look of disdain as he tossed Lewis' cap away, the glitch glanced into the rearview mirror to briefly sort out his hair, attempting to return it to a somewhat presentable side-sweep compared to the current style that Lewis had inexplicably chosen – curtains. Why did everyone nowadays have curtains? Putting that thought aside, Dawktrap smoothed out his clothing and adorned a pair of sunglasses before stepping out into the car park, sights set on the red, white and blue themed store. It wasn't incredibly busy, but that could work in the glitch's favour, for there would be less witnesses to his malicious machinations.

The plan was simple – he wanted thralls. It had become apparent over the years that enthralling Lewis' friends caused far too many issues, because out of everyone, they were the most likely to notice if there was something awry. Moreover, they knew precisely how to pull on Lewis' heartstrings, allowing the young Englishman to break free from the glitch's own strings. Thus, Dawktrap had determined that it would perhaps be easier to have strangers as his thralls. For now, it didn't matter who they were or what they could do, as the aim was to progressively build up a force that could one day be reckoned with.