Creeps, true stories from Reddit (Second book)

Milk and Cookies

I worked in a relatively quiet part of the city, out on the edge, and we had little to fear from crime. The job didn't pay well, but what little I got helped to pay some of the bills for college and the nightly customers were few and far between – giving me more than enough time to do some reading or languish on the internet.

Now, you think that we don't notice people when we're behind the till. We do. We just don't give a shit, mostly. We can tell when we should card someone; or that desperate, almost slimy, look of lust on the face of a young man buying condoms at eleven in the evening. Then there was the old man. He showed up, every Friday, like clockwork. He wore a flannel shirt with the rolled up sleeves that had seen one wash too many and he counted out his change with the reluctance of one used to thrift.

He was polite, that man, always a warm hello and thank you after he left with his purchase. He was stooped with age, but there was steel in that spine, I could tell. And he always bought the same thing. A small packet of milk, and a little paper bag of cookies. A strange thing, for an old man to buy. A doting grandparent, perhaps, but I never saw him enter the shop with another soul.

This piqued my curiosity. Boredom has a way of amplifying novelty. Through the long evenings, I counted cracks on the ceiling, arranged merchandise in strange geometric shapes, saw patterns in the repeating squares of the linoleum on the floor. This strange man vexed me. Milk and cookies, a treat for a young child, yet purchased late in the night. Was he, perhaps, reliving some long forgotten time in his youth whilst partaking of these goodies?

Dark paranoia raised its head, perhaps the old man was one of those psychotic perverts that kidnapped young girls and raised them in his basement. Week after week, we swapped perfunctory greetings, exchanged merchandise for cash. I couldn't unravel the mystery. I couldn't read it in his rheumy eyes, his shaking hands or his slow gait. I couldn't take it, this strangeness.

I decided to follow him.

It took me a few weeks to plan. I'd pop my head out to track him down the street, until the first turn. Then I'd lock the front door and trail him to the next turn. And so on. One day, soon after he'd made his regular purchase, I made my move. Quickly locking up, I followed him at a distance, never too close, never more than a block away. There was a feeling of the forbidden in what I was doing, a little like being a child again and doing something naughty. He never suspected a thing. The streetlights gave us both long twisted shadows as I chased him through the dark streets.

He found his destination in an old junkyard, practically a landfill. The rusty chain clanged to the floor after he gave it a gentle tug. Nothing worth stealing here, it seemed. The old man walked in confidently and I had to hurry to catch up. I quickly lost him in that maze, wandering amidst the piles of society's detritus. The light and sounds of the city faded into the distance, the half moon in the sky giving everything an unearthly silvery sheen. The panic was there, only a heartbeat away, in that strange alien landscape. I had nearly given up hope when I finally chanced upon a small clearing, my erstwhile quarry sitting there on the dirt, showing his yellowing teeth in a wry smile.

"It took you long enough to catch up," he said.

I stopped short. I had nothing to say.

"Come here, kid. There's nothing to fear here. I reckon something's got your interest all fired up. That's why you followed me here. You'll get in no trouble for this?"

"The owner trusts me. She knows I don't steal, and I'm ok to close the shop early if business is slow."

"Slow enough that you'd spend half the night playing spy to hunt down an old codger like me." He laughed, a dry wheezing series of exhalations that broke into coughs.