Haunted Organic (2014 Watty Award Winner)

One: Ghost Baby

ONE - Ghost Baby

All he wanted was the chicken nuggets.

Josie Brown had it all planned out. He was going to run into the Organic Food Store next to his house, get his dinner, and eat it while laying on his bed, listening to Los Campesinos! blaring through his ear buds.

It was going to be a perfectly, uneventful night.

Except it wasn't.

When he got to the Organic Food Store, he could see the problem immediately. There were great tubs of rutabagas, potatoes, and aisles of star fruit, passion fruit, and rock melons, but there was scarcely any meat, even though they advertised their great butcher shop, finest cuts of meat, and fresh-from-the-sea fish counter.

Josie didn't see any chicken breasts, or lamb chops, or chunky stew beef, nor any whole monk fish, barramundi, or lobsters squirming in the big tank. There were rows of empty meat fridges and there were heaps of ice on the fish counter, but nothing sitting on top, not a single clam or mussel.

And certainly, no chicken nuggets at the deli counter.

He hated this store. Nothing about it felt right. But it was next door to his house, and as usual, his parents weren't home, and he was hungry.

"Excuse me," Josie said to the back of a tall, thin woman, with a weirdly short bob of jet black hair.

"Yes," she said, pivoting sharply around to look at him.

She was nearly transparently pale, had a long thin nose, on which sat little, round wire-rimmed glasses. Everything about her was crisp. And tight. When she spoke, the slight smell of fish wafted just a bit in the air, as if she had just eaten pickled herring.

She looked at him, deep into his face which was hiding inside his black hoodie.

"Uh, chicken nuggets. You have any chicken nuggets?"

"No." she said, tight like a wire, and pivoted back around. She went on adjusting the cheeses in a refrigerator case.

"Um, anything like chicken nuggets?...Fish sticks, chicken fingers, turkey even? Anything like that?"

The woman pivoted around again, peeved this time, and looked at him over her glasses.

"No. And I'm quite sure of it, Mr. Brown," she said, rather annoyed.

He hadn't realized she knew his name. This freaked him out.

"....But if you must persist in this chicken nugget compulsion, you can check the freezer compartments," she said, her long, thin bone of an arm, pointing toward the freezer cases along the far wall of the store.

"There might be something left over from the feeding..." she said, her voice dropping, as if she might've said the wrong thing.

"The what?

"The sale...Um, there might be something left over from the sale," Ludivine said quickly.

Josie was about to ask her a clarifying question, when Ludivine Dorkely, manager of the Organic Food Store, decided the chicken nugget conversation had ended.

She pivoted around sharply once again, and went back to her cheddar and manchego.

"Sure, got it," Josie muttered, and turned to go to the other side of the store. He put his ear buds in his ears, the band, Doot, was next on his playlist.

Josie walked through the heirloom tomato aisle, past the freshly baked breads, past the pastries, and then turned left into the battery and hardware supply aisle. He was approaching the freezer and refrigerator cases, when he felt a rush of wind blast past his ear, knocking him into a display case of tinned beets.