by D. M. Guay
“That lady is a piece of work.” DeeDee then pinched my cheeks and started talking to me in an imitation mommy voice. “I didn't know you were special needs. Aw, my sweet little retard. Don't worry. I'll take care of you.”
I blushed. Hard. Partly from the humiliation of Caroline, partly because DeeDee was being super nice to me. Caroline's barbs were almost worth it. Almost. Or not. The moment didn't last. DeeDee and I couldn't help but watch Caroline's dyed-auburn hair bobbing up and down in the cleaner aisle, dreading the fresh insults she'd bring with her when she came back to the register.
Suddenly a bright green light flashed on the shelf by my foot. A tiny swirling green cloud appeared there. I jumped backward and shrieked. “Jesus, what is that?”
What manner of monster was gonna step through this swirling green hole?
“What's your problem?” DeeDee asked, legit unconcerned.
I watched a tiny black shape emerge from the lime cloud. Okay. Okay. At least it's small. Maybe I could squash it, step on it. Then again, a small monster might be worse. What if it crawled down my throat and ripped outta me like an alien chest-burster? Oh. Hell. No. I wasn't about to die here. I was gonna live to see another Thanksgiving.
A pair of thin long tentacles emerged from the vortex, then a flat, round head. Oh, Jesus. Please don't let it be a bug. I hate bugs! Two thin legs with little spiky hairs all up and down them poked out, then two more matching legs, then two more, all attached to a flat, long brown roach body. It was a roach. A roach from hell.
I practically parkour jumped over the counter. Bug spray. Bug spray. Where is the fucking bug spray? Oh yeah. Aisle five. Household cleaners and random hardware, because you totally need that when you're buying beer and lotto tickets. I sprinted to the end of aisle five. Thankfully Caroline Ford Vanderbilt had her back to me and didn't notice. I grabbed a can of Kill 'Em Dead off the shelf and ran back to the counter. The filthy hell roach was now casually perched on the microphone for the store-wide intercom system. I popped the cap off the bug spray and aimed. The roach looked me right in the eyes and lifted its front two legs like it was...surrendering? Wait. Roaches aren't capable of surrender. They're insects. They don't have higher brain function. They're too stupid.
My index finger was in position, ready to press down on the nozzle when I heard a tiny, high-pitched voice. “Really, dude? Who are you calling stupid?”
“What the hell do you think you're doing?” DeeDee asked. “Put the can down right now.”
“Roach...” was all I could squeak out. Roach out of yet another vortex to the other world. Just like the beer cave, just like the Michael Bolton CD. What, could these portals just open up anywhere? Doesn't matter now, okay it does, but the takeaway was “devil roach,” I said. “From hell.”
DeeDee and the roach laughed. Laughed! But when I fixed my Kill 'Em Dead on the roach again, DeeDee ninja hurdled the counter and kicked the bug spray out of my hand all in one smooth move, crouching fucking tiger style. Jesus. “What did you do that for?” I squealed. “He's a hell roach. He's gotta go!”
“He is not a hell roach. That's Kevin. He works here,” she said. “He's the night manager, remember? He's in charge.”
I looked at Kevin. Kevin looked at me. Shit. He had a tiny white name tag on his little bug chest. Thorax? Chest. Whatever, I don't know. Then it dawned on me. He was the roach on the slushy machine the night that green tentacle dude thwapped out of the beer cave. The roach who flipped me the bird. Oh shit. I hated bugs, and now I had one for a manager.
Kevin the roach pressed one leg down on the button that turned on the intercom and stretched his tiny mouth up to the microphone. The speakers crackled, as his tiny, high-pitched voice announced. “May I have your attention, DeeDee and mentally-challenged new guy. There's a Grade Two Possession in aisle five.”
Chapter 7
Grade two possession? I didn't know what that meant, but I did know it couldn't be good.
DeeDee and I looked at each other, eyes wide, then slowly turned toward aisle five. Naturally, I was scared shitless, and it didn't help that DeeDee looked nervous, too. Ms. Calm, Cool, and Cazh in the face of a halo of tentacles and a bundle of snakes in a fedora looked rattled, so yeah. If something could actually ruffle her feathers, I had a God-given right to be terrified.
She grabbed my shirt and pulled me close to her. “Here's the plan.” She whispered in my ear. Her breath was hot, and it tickled all my sensitive ear bits. I won't lie. Even in the face of death by grisly hell beast, my reptile brain sent a signal straight downstairs. Half chub pending. Crap. Cut it out, Lloyd! Pay attention. This is life or death here!
“We're gonna tiptoe over there as quietly as we can and check it out. Okay?” Her voice was so low I suspected pods of whales a thousand miles away in the Atlantic could hear it. “All right. Let's go.”
We inched across the walkway, closer and closer, stepping so lightly and so quietly the linoleum floor could have been made of cotton balls. We made it to the end cap, hidden from the view of the aisle five peril by a rack of first-world survival necessities such as unicorn-shaped cell phone chargers and Hammer All Night boner pills. DeeDee held tight to my arm. My heart rate was, oh, about zillion beats per minute at this point.
“Okay. On three.” DeeDee whispered.
“What on three?” I squealed.
“Shhh. Jesus. Quiet! On three, we take a peek to see what's there. Then we come up with a plan.”
“Don't you already have a plan? You always have a plan. You're in charge of the plan. You've worked here longer. You're supposed to know what to do!” Okay. Seriously freaking out here.
“Dude. Relax,” she said. “Step one: See what we're dealing with. Step two: Make a plan. Got it? Now let's do this. Three. Two. One.”
We ever so slowly stuck our heads out around the end cap and looked straight down aisle five.
Huh. Caroline Ford Vanderbilt had her back to us. She swayed ever so slightly. Which wouldn't have been weird on its own, but her bare, spray-tanned legs had turned gray-blue and the veins were bulging and black. She was also hunched over like Quasimodo, leaning to one side, and her knees were knocking together. Thing was, she usually stood up stick straight. Perfect posture. She and Mean Girl Madison would never be caught dead hunching. Neither one of them would sit or stand in any way that could give off even the faintest hint, however fleeting, of a muffin top. Plus, the higher their noses were, the easier it was to look down them at other people.
A bottle of dish soap lay on the floor, open and leaking peachy pink fluid across the aisle, puddling around one of Caroline's shiny gold designer tennis shoes.
“Um...Does this seem off to you?” DeeDee asked.
Before I could answer, Caroline Ford Vanderbilt jumped three feet straight up in the air and did a one-eighty turn. She thudded down, designer shoes shoulder-width apart, squatting like a NFL linebacker getting ready to plow down a quarterback.
Caroline Ford Vanderbilt smiled. Her bright white veneers had turned into crooked, rotten yellow-black corn kernel teeth like she had suddenly acquired the worst case of hillbilly trench mouth on the planet. Like, a test case in the dental school textbook level bad. Her cheekbones were extra bony, poking out of her face, pulling her skin in odd, painful angles. Frankly, I didn't know a face could move that much after so much Botox, possessed or not, but what did I know? She had deep purple bruises around her eyes, and those eyes were completely covered in an opaque milky white film. Staring at us. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, she then levitated four feet off the floor, dangling in mid-air like she was on wires filming a B-grade Kung Fu movie.
“Yep,” DeeDee said. “That's off.”
Kevin's tiny roach voice sounded via intercom again. “Correction. Grade THREE possession in aisle five. Grade three, people. Grade three. Hold on to your butts.”
The possessed Caroline stared at us with her milky white eyes and cackled. “Hee hee hee hee hee.”
Oh, great. Demon Caroline had
a villain laugh. It sounded like a high-pitched toddler squeal combined with an Andre the Giant baritone, both at the same time. You know, just to add more octaves of creepy.
“Hey. Look. I've got tits.” Demon Caroline put her hands on her breasts and squeezed. “This is awesome.”
Green liquid leaked out of the corners of her mouth as she spoke.
“This conversation's starting off a little weird,” DeeDee whispered. “Okay then. Rules: No head injuries. Whatever you do, DO NOT get knocked out, you hear me? And, just to be safe, see that gross green drool? Don't get any of that or any other goo or fluids that thing might emit inside you, like through a cut or in your eyes or mouth. You got that?”
Demon Caroline, hovering in the air, had pulled up her own tennis skirt to look at the panties underneath. “I'm gonna take this for a test drive later,” she said.
Well, this possession was getting a little awkward. “You're sure about all this?” I asked DeeDee.
“Well, no, but I've seen Evil Dead 2, like, seventy times so those seem like solid guidelines. I'm just gonna roll with that until I figure out something better.”
“What?” My heart was in my throat at this point, and I was so tense I probably wouldn't be able to poop for at least a month. “You based your plan off a fucking movie?”
“Well, yeah. Look at her. She screams Deadite to me.” DeeDee shrugged. Shrugged! “Don't give me that look. Do you have a better idea?”
“But... You...You're the expert. You're supposed to be training me!”
“Uh, okay Mr. Demanding. We've never had a possession before, so we're gonna have to wing it,” she said.
Wing it? Aw, hell no!
“Oh, and by the way, we can't go full Ash Williams and kill her. We have to remove the entity possessing her without killing Caroline. Store policy. DE-possession, not dismemberment, you feel me?”
Store policy? We had a fucking store policy for this?
“What do you mean, DE-possess?” My courage, barely there to begin with, was getting spindlier by the second.
“Look. This thing is using your pal Caroline Fancy-Pants Rockefeller like a big meat puppet. We have to get it out without killing her,” DeeDee said. “That means no shots to the head. No strangling. No breaking its neck with a baseball bat or cutting it to bits with a chainsaw. Just don't kill it, or else Caroline will die too, like dead dead, got it? We can't kill the real Caroline, even though she sucks and kind of deserves it.”
Grade three Caroline floated there, smiling and hee heeing at us. Listening. Honestly, her real smile was just as menacing as her demon smile. Suddenly, Demon Caroline's arms reached out. Her hands were curled up, veiny and blue, and now bearing three-inch, curved brown claws on every swollen-knuckled finger. Small consolation: Real Caroline would be horrified by the state of her manicure.
“The Angels of Divine Eventuality shall rise again. We shall take what we are owed. We shall have our revenge!” Demon Caroline announced in her multiple-layers of creepy voice. “We shall ravage the most beautiful of women and lounge on piles of gold. The world is ours!”
“Oh great,” DeeDee said. “This one's got a fucking speech.”
Demon Caroline pointed at me. “You. Basement-dwelling fat man. You are one of us. Join me. Bow to your master. Open the gate. The Angels of Divine Eventuality must be freed.”
“What do we do?” I was legit shaking in my socks right now.
“Well, no matter what, don't give her what she wants. Keep her inside the store and away from the gate. Got it?” DeeDee patted me on the shoulder. “Distract her. I'll be right back.”
With that, DeeDee pushed me into aisle five and...ran away. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
I stumbled right into the puddle of peach dish soap, slipped and then fell flat on my ass in front of the floating Demon Caroline, who watched me with ghoulish milky eyes. A noxious green cloud floated around her. I looked up at her, she looked down at me, and I would like to say I was a hero and totally knocked that demon right outta Caroline with one punch like a boss. But I didn't. I froze, like the chicken shit I really am deep down inside.
She dropped on top of me in a split second. Her clammy monster hands went right around my throat. Her rotten smile pulled back tighter than her facelift. “Recognize that I am your leader, and obey, you lowly worm. Obey! Or I will roast you on a spit like the fat pig you are! Open the gate, and I will reward you with a buffet of lustful women!”
“No?” I said, maybe not as firmly as I should have.
She cackled like an evil clown at a haunted carnival, then pounded my head against the linoleum. Again. Then another couple of times. And again. Again, while she screamed “Obey!” over and over. “Embrace your destiny!”
Ow. Ow. Ow! Please stop! But nope. She didn't stop. Did I mention she was choking me, and I could barely breathe? Oh, and now she was talking about which of my internal organs she was gonna eat first if I didn't open the gate. Liver fricassee anyone? Yeah. This was so awesome. Dammit, Mom. Why ice cream cake?
“Open the gate, worm,” Demon Caroline demanded again. “You cannot deny your destiny. You cannot deny who you are!”
“No.” I had to push the word through a currently-being-crushed-by-creepy-bone-hands windpipe.
Stop. Don't even go there. Of course, I tried to peel her gnarly claws off of my throat, but you and I both know that shit never works, not even in the movies. So she kept on pounding my head against the floor as I lingered on the cusp of asphyxiation. Terrified. Yep. This was it. I was gonna die here. I'm looking at you, Mom. Ice cream cake? Really?
DeeDee was nowhere around. She'd hung me out to dry. My skull-cracking headache was nearly eclipsed by my hurt feelings. Nearly.
Ow. Ow. Ow. Demon Caroline didn't let up. Choke. Choke. Pound. Pound. Choke. Pound. Pound. Choke. She mixed up the routine, loving every second of it, cackling and laughing and calling me a worm. “Join me,” she bellowed, “And we will claim what is rightfully ours! We will purge the earth in blood and fire.”
Woah boy. Whirlybirds. Getting dizzy. I clawed at her, trying to push her away. Don't get knocked unconscious. Don't get knocked unconscious. Do something. You can do this. You've played, like, a hundred hours of Street Fighter. You've got moves. Save yourself, dumbass. Fight! Fight!
It was clear DeeDee wasn't coming back anytime soon, so I did something I hadn't done since I was eleven. I rocked back and forth a couple of times to gain some leverage. Demon Caroline rocked right along on top of me. Come on, abs. You can do it. Yes! Awkwardly, and with a bit of struggle, I somersaulted. Now she was on the floor, and I was on top of her. Ha. Take that!
I punched her in the nose. She looked confused by the sudden turn of events. So I kept on punching her, my fists flying, Dee Jay Air Slasher style (at least in my head), landing one hit after another on her distorted, disgusting face, cutting my knuckles on her cheekbones.
Ha! This is what you get for calling me “special needs!” I found this incredibly satisfying until I realized the noises she was making were chuckles, not ouches. She thought this whole thing was hilarious.
“Ha. ha. Hee. Hee. Hee. Ha ha ha haha Ha ha ha haha.” She never once stopped cackling. She still had a chokehold on me, but my medium fatness—the pudge real life Caroline had so graciously pointed out—was keeping her contained, in the store, away from the beer cave, as per DeeDee's instructions. Sure, Demon Caroline wiggled and bucked under me like a mechanical bull at a seedy cowboy bar, but I was just chubby enough that she couldn't throw me off.
“Guys. A...little...help...here.” I gasped, not quite as loudly or elaborately as I'd hoped, but you try getting a word in edgewise while a demon's strangling you and hell cackling.
I punched Demon Caroline again and heard a disgusting, deep crack. Crack. Pop. Crack. Slllp. Jesus. It sounded like raw meat getting pulled off a bone. Woah boy. Had I accidentally killed real Caroline? Like, punched out an eyeball or something? I looked at her face. She flashed a fetid smile, and then something hit
me hard on the back of the head. Ow. Really? I fell to the floor. Then, I made the mistake of looking back to see what hit me.
Oh God. So. Gross. I clenched my teeth and held back the hot vomit lapping at my tonsils. Caroline's femur was poking out through the skin, bleeding. Her leg was full on out of her hip socket, and her shin was bent in half right in the middle. Her leg looked like a bloody meat “C.” She'd busted and dislocated her own leg so she could hit me with it, cackling like it was hilarious the whole time. So. Gross. Gonna barf.
But I didn't. Nope. Not this time. I ran instead. Demon Caroline had a gimpy leg, so how fast could she go? Probably not very. This was my chance. I turned tail and...nope. I wasn't even out of aisle five before Demon Caroline jumped on my back and wrapped her crusty arms around me. My legs moved, running, but I wasn't going forward because the floor was a Slip 'N Slide of spilled dish soap. I fell forehead first into a shelf. Yeouch. That hurt. So bad. Half-sized bottles of Drano and bleach plink plunked down on her back and my head. I saw a couple of stars but willed myself to stay awake. Don't get knocked out. Don't get knocked out!
“Hee. Hee. Hee. Hee. Hee. Hee.” Cackling. So much cackling. Shut up already! “Open the gate, slave! Or I'll fuck your mother. Just as soon as I'm finished with your hot coworker.”
Oh. Hell. No. This bitch did not just bring my Mom into this. Or DeeDee. It didn't matter that Demon Caroline didn't actually have a penis with which to fuck my Mom or DeeDee. There were some lines you absolutely did not cross, and that was one of them. My fight instinct recharged. I swatted at Demon Caroline but had trouble landing any hits. She was square on my back, and my arms just didn't bend like that. She pulled my hair. At one point, I'm pretty sure she ate some of it. She clawed at my face and tried to choke me out with her clammy elbow.
“Open the gate!” she demanded. “Free the Angels of Divine Eventuality.”
“No!” I squeaked.
DeeDee jumped in front of us and started shooting something out of a yellow, marked-down-to-two-dollars Super Soaker water gun I swear she'd filched out of the summer clearance bucket in the candy aisle. She squirted Demon Caroline right in the face while yelling, “Take that, bitch! Hiya!”
