An Abstract Story of Nonsensical Nature

Chapter Two

Chapter 2

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Roy came in as usual for his shift on Monday morning. Shouldering his mop on his left shoulder, as if a beloved rifle. 

Every day, for thirty years, he’d welcomed the same sight as he unlocked the doors to the Wal-Mart, revealing shelves upon shelves, aisles upon aisles, of desirables.

He supposed for most people, this supermarket was like every other, a chore. Screaming kids, queues, out of stock signs, pushing a trolley with a broken wheel slowly around the shop as it fought and squealed in disgust, trying its utmost to take you in the wrong direction.

But to him it was a safe haven. The endless products lined up on the shelves told stories of factories, machinery, processes beyond his imagination. 

He’d watched a program once, ‘How It’s Made’, if he remembered rightly. It had shown him step by step, how a mundane item, such as a sock, was a triumph of man’s design and creativity. He guessed some people would call him sad, but it was his passion.

“Each to his own.”

He muttered happily as he wandered down aisles, straightening jars and adjusting stickers.

A noise, skittering glass, pierced Roy’s blissful bubble of serenity. Roy stopped. This wasn’t right, he should be alone for hours, preparing for the customers entrance, awaiting their faces as they grabbed what they needed then escaped back to something far more interesting, in their eyes anyway.

Roy wandered down the aisles, searching for the source of the noise, still hearing tins clattering and rolling around on the squeaky linoleum floor. Treading down the centre aisle, he spotted one of the tins rolling down 2 aisles in front of him. Roy shuffled, lent down, clutching his back, snatching the tin from the ground and following his path. 

The mess! Vandals! He was gonna bloomin’ kill ‘em!

In front of him lay chaos, the scattered remains of his life work.Before him lay the twisted metal and wreckage of shelves, piles of plastic, packaged food, tins, fruit spread in all directions as if they themselves had sprinted from the chaos. 

“That was one mean vandal.”

Roy wondered out loud.

From behind him, Roy heard a sound, clothes being dragged along the floor. He spun. No one. Roy stood stock still. His heart slammed against his ear drums, the only noise in the entire building. 

A single jar, the contents slopping around inside.. (hot dogs maybe?), rolled towards the floor towards him. It came to a sudden stop as it hit the toe of his shoe. Thud.

Roy’s heart constricted. Something was very wrong. 

His breathing became shallower as the very air around him seemed to vibrate with a strange presence. Out of his peripheral vision he caught small circular shapes drifting upwards, but he wouldn’t take his eye of the jar and where it had come from. He daren’t.

***

Peering closely at the fuzzy black and white images moving double time across the screen, the chief inspector twirled the end of his greying moustache between his fingers. Grainy, jumping images of the local Wal-Mart jumped across the screen, describing a seemingly peaceful night, just like any other.

“Stop!”

The other man in the room, Martin, wound back the tape, his expression perking up.

“False alarm.”

He muttered it, annoyed. He shouldn’t be here, one of his lackeys should be doing this while he was still tucked up in bed, snoring away with the wife. Pfft, 5am. He didn’t care if the whole town had witnessed ‘disturbances’. He had a hangover. He was knackered. His newborn son had kept him up. All night. And now he sat in the police station, while the world outside slept on, silent, dark. 

The station’s CCTV room sat at the back of the station, a dank, poorly equipped room with a rusty coffee machine and a vending machine that had been long forgotten. A Kitkat still sat lonely on a centre rail, bent double as if it too had given up.

Two mugs sat on the desk stone cold, half empty. Neither officer was awake enough to function properly, Martin would probably dribble it down himself the incompetent fool, the chief inspector mused.

The very mug C.I Harris had been staring unseeingly at now lay on the floor, contents splattered over the musty carpet and running lazily down the fading wallpaper. Instead, of leaping up before his senior could lay into him more, Martin stood, remote in hand, pointing at the screen.

“Sir! I’ve found it.”

Martin’s general puppy dog expression was replaced with a strange emotion; a mix of shock, horror, confusion and sheer curiosity.

He played back to a line of ordinary looking shelves, sat perfectly innocently. Then, instantaneously, the items burst off the shelf as one, cascading like a tidal wave into the surrounding shelves, displays and tumbling onto the floor. The metal of the shelves twisted inward, warping, almost melting into itself, shrinking away from a seemingly invisible force.

C.I Harris gasped,

“Surely that’s not even possible.. There must be some sort of.. Urrr.. Martin?”

“I really have no clue, sir. Some sort of fire? Explosion?”

They stared at each other's faces. Both were a mask of sheer confusion. For Martin, fear. Harris, Weariness. 

“This just got a hell of a lot more complicated, Martin.”

“It’s going to get worse, Chief, Roger just called in. Old Roy was found dead.”

“The cleaner?”

“Yup, coroner’s report isn’t in yet, but they say its pretty damn clear what happened. Crushed, sir.”

They both glanced at the screen as a second movement took place. No cause. Tins scattered over the floor, displays sailed through the air, tables sent flying over onto their sides. The camera switched, a new angle on the event, this time from the opposite site. An old man stood clearly, centre of the nearest aisle, simply staring at the ground, as the tornado came closer, spewing products in its wake. The man stood, mop clutched helplessly in his hands unaware as it came speeding towards him, nearer and nearer. A shelf teetered, falling clean and fast. 

“Poor bugger didn’t stand a chance.”

C.I Harris shook his head, looking away in disgust.

On the screen, the man’s fingertips could be made out, moving only slightly as he struggled against the enormous weight.