“Wow,” a voice said from somewhere behind him. “You must really hate the Get’n’Gobble.”
Stanley made a slow pivot. His eyes followed a messy trail of boxes, bags, and jars that stretched back to the end of the aisle where a small crowd had gathered. At its front, a pimply-faced teen regarded Stanley with a look of reverent awe.
“I always want to trash this place too, but I need the money,” the teenager said. “Dude, you rock. There’s a huge toilet paper display at the end of aisle seven. You should totally knock it over. That’d be rad.”
Before Stanley could put together a response, another man shouldered his way to the front of the spectators.
Bellied his way, more like, Stanley decided as he watched the man swing his ample gut to force people aside. Tasty looking belly, too.
“That would not be ‘rad,’ Brandon. Get back to your register. Everyone, please move along. I apologize for this, but we’ll have the aisles cleaned up in no time, no time at all,” the heavyset man announced before turning back to Stanley. “Sir, we appreciate everyone’s patronage, but please be a bit more careful.”
Stanley gave a conciliatory wave and resumed his shopping. After crashing through two more aisles, he suddenly found himself at the meat case. His hunger looked down at the haphazard assortment of sundries in his cart, looked up at the meat case, looked down at his cart again, and shoved it to the side.
“Mmmaaaaahhhhtuh?” he asked the woman behind the case. She stared back wide-eyed and speechless.
Thinking she hadn’t heard him, Stanley tried again. “Mmmaaaahhhtuh,” he said and tapped a hand on the case’s glass front. “Fffoooooorrrr. Mmmaaahhh,” he added, thumping his chest with his wrist.
The woman continued to stare and added a quiet squeak. Stanley figured they were making progress, but before he had a chance to ask for some meat again, a new voice barked out from behind him.
“Turn around slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them!”
Since the meat case lady was the only other person around, Stanley decided the loud voice was talking to him. He wobbled from foot to foot and made a slow one-eighty. When he completed his turn, he saw a deputy from the sheriff’s department. As if that wasn’t surprising enough, one of the deputy’s hands hovered anxiously over the butt of his holstered pistol.
“These fine folks don’t want any trouble,” he said, “so you just move along. Now, sir,” he added when Stanley didn’t move.
Stanley was flummoxed. He’d been shopping at the Get’n’Gobble since he was old enough to get a few dollars from his dad, ride his bike to the store, and bring back a six pack of beer. Now everyone was acting like he was a stranger. And not just that. They were acting like he was a bad stranger. Unbidden thoughts of Dallas and Herb surfaced. No one had ever treated him this way when he’d been out and about with them. As he looked at the very serious deputy and the unkind eyes of the shoppers gathering around him, Stanley felt himself deflate. He just wanted to eat, but had somehow run afoul of the law. His head drooped and he contemplated the mud smudging his shirt and jeans and his dirty, soggy socks.
Ooooohhhhh, he thought with dawning realization. No shirt, no shoes, no service.
After a longing look back at the meat case, he waved an apology to the deputy and started a slow shuffle down the aisle toward the store’s exit. The crowd took cautious steps back and gave him a wide berth, except for the pimply-faced teen who gave him a subtle thumbs’ up. The sliding doors whooshed, and Stanley was back in the cold wintery air. The sun was still making its slow trek up through the morning sky. With a frustrated sigh, he pointed himself toward home and took slow, lurching steps across the snowy parking lot. The hunger complained loudly, but Stanley told it not to worry. He’d get some shoes, and then it’d be time for an all you can eat buffet.
Chapter 5
Little tendrils of snow blew off the hood and up the windshield as Stanley’s Cavalier motored down the two-lane highway. He kept the speedometer a safe three miles per hour below the speed limit. After a lifetime of driving on Wisconsin’s winter roads, he’d learned an ounce of caution was worth a pound of road salt.
Stanley turned onto Main Street and stomped on the brakes. Even at his safe speed, the car still slid a few feet and narrowly avoided hitting the unexpected jaywalker. Heart pounding, Stanley checked his rearview, both side views, and blind spots. When he returned his attention to the space in front of him, the man was gone. After whipping his head back and forth again, he discovered the man hadn’t vanished after all. He’d just shuffled around the far side of the car while Stanley had been checking everywhere else. Craning his neck, Stanley watched the man continue his slow trek down the road.
Nice shirt, Stanley observed. Those velour collars keep your neck real warm.
He briefly considered offering the stranger a ride. The guy was obviously more than a few beers into his morning, but Stanley wasn’t feeling too charitable. He’d had a rough start to his day and was really hungry.
Besides, at the rate he’s moving, I’ll bet I can catch up with him on the way back, he reasoned.
As he pulled away, the thought made him feel a smidge better. People always said be a Good Samaritan, but there was no need to be a Great Samaritan.
When Stanley walked into the Get’n’Gobble, he was greeted with a burst of warm air followed by an accusing, “Hey! You aren’t supposed to be in here.” A split-second later, a law enforcement officer roughly grabbed his arm and turned him back toward the door.
“I told you that you had to leave,” the deputy barked. “I thought you’d be smart enough to know that also meant you had to stay away.”
Stanley began to sputter and tried to ask why he was being detained. He’d never been in trouble with the law, not ever, and didn’t have a clue what he’d done.
“I st-stopped at all the stop signs. I was d-driving under the speed limits. I even looked both ways b-before I walked across the p-parking lot,” he pleaded with tears in his eyes. “I d-didn’t do nothing. I swear!”
“Save it,” the deputy growled. “You’re a vandal and a no-gooder. You already cause a boatload of trouble here, and you’re not doing it again. Not on my watch.”
The Get’n’Gobble’s doors whooshed open, and Stanley was about to be shoved forcibly out when another voice called out.
“Hold up, law dude!” a pimply-faced teenager hollered from behind the register on lane two. “That’s not the guy. C’mon. Look at him. The guy had glasses and was a whole lot. I dunno. Deader-lookin’.”
The deputy yanked Stanley back from the threshold and turned him roughly around. He peered at Stanley, suspicion oozing from every stich in his polyester uniform.
“Ned?” the deputy asked.
In response, the oversized store manager lumbered over. “No, that’s not him. That’s just Stanley Henkelmann. Sorry,” he offered to the shaken Stanley.
The deputy mumbled something that might’ve been an apology. He was about to turn away when Stanley grabbed his arm.
“S-sir, um. You said there was a no-gooder and a vandal. I had one’a those at my house. Somebody g-got in and made a real mess of my living room and k-kitchen. I called the station. I called, and that Corliss, she said a deputy would b-be coming over,” Stanley managed. When the deputy didn’t respond, Stanley pressed on. “Well, since you’re here, and I’m here, and you’re lookin’ for a vandal, and I had a vandal…” he managed before the deputy silenced him with a dark look.
“Listen up, fella. They might think you’re not the guy that messed up this store, but I’m not convinced. So do your shopping, but know this,” the deputy warned, chest puffing up. “If you so much as put a can of beans back with the label in instead of out, I’ll come down on you like the fist of God.”
Stanley cringed. He searched the gathered crowd of onlookers. Besides the teenage cashier, there wasn’t another pair of sympathetic eyes. Crestfallen, Stanley gave a brief nod of understanding. It was apparently enough
to satisfy the deputy, because he shouldered Stanley aside and stomped off through the sliding doors.
As the gathered crowed realized the spectacle was over, they dispersed and returned to tracking down their individual lists of sundries. Stanley followed suit and freed a cart from the waiting rows. It was one with a bad wheel that dragged and squeaked, the noise putting him squarely back in the spotlight. As a growing number of disapproving glares focused on him, he decided it just wasn’t worth it. Being passively ignored at Ronnie’s was better than being actively disliked at the Get’n’Gobble. Leaving the cart, he turned and walked dejectedly from the store and back into the cold, wintery world outside.
Chapter 6
Socks didn’t provide the best traction when walking on snowy sidewalks, so Stanley had veered into the main road that led away from the Get’n’Gobble. Bert “Two-shirt” Nesheim, the town’s snow plow operator and a regular in the men’s bowling league, had obviously passed through early in the morning, pushing snow aside and sprinkling a practical mix of salt and sand. The mid-morning sun was also warming the exposed asphalt and melting away the snowy remnants the plow had left behind. As Stanley trudged along, he welcomed the more stable footing the road provided. Not having to concentrate fully on keeping his balance freed up time to think about other things, namely his near-overwhelming hunger.
Shoes, he reminded himself, his thoughts keeping time with his shuffling steps. Get some shoes. Get some food. Shoes, food. Shoes, food. Shoes, meat. Meat. Meat.
That last thought caused him to stumble. He managed to catch himself a second before a rusted blue Cavalier skidded to a stop mere inches in front of him.
Nice car, he observed. Those Cavaliers sure got the good brakes.
Angling to the side, he made his way around the car and continued on his journey. A distant part of his brain noticed the sounds of crunching tires and a fading engine, but he didn’t pay it much attention. He’d already settled back into his slow, plodding pace.
Shoes. Meat. Meat. Meat. Meat. Meat.
The hunger was becoming unbearable. Each slogging step ratcheted it up from a persistent grumbling to an ear-splitting wail. It was even coloring his vision, sending angry flashes of searing blue and blood red before his eyes. He was so overwhelmed with the demands of his hunger that he walked directly into a parked car.
“You! I warned you,” an angry voice yelled over the screaming sirens. “First you’re vandalizing private property. Now you’re jaywalking, and you just hit an official sheriff’s department vehicle. And don’t you even think about running, or I’ll get you for a hit and run to boot.”
The sirens abruptly silenced, but Stanley’s vision was still full of reds and blues. Squinting, he made out the shape of the car he’d just walked into. Standing beside it was the deputy from the Get’n’Gobble. The mean deputy that had yelled at him. At least, Stanley thought it was the same deputy. When he tried to peer more closely at the man’s face, his mind conjured up some strange amalgam of all of the people that’d been treating him so awfully. It wasn’t fair. He hadn’t hurt anyone. He just wanted something to eat. It wasn’t his fault he broke all his plates and dropped his hotdog. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t drive. Sure, he forgot to put on shoes, but that shouldn’t be cause for all this fuss.
The hunger in his belly bucked and kicked and changed its shape, becoming a wholly new emotion. The newborn anger boiled and churned. It twisted Stanley’s back and craned his neck. It clawed his fingers and stretched his jaw. When the deputy moved to grab his wrist, the anger shoved his head forward and clamped his teeth down on the deputy’s cheek.
Blood sprayed like the physical expression of the man’s surprised scream as Stanley brought all one hundred and fifty pounds of his hungry body to bear down on his victim. Unfortunately, Stanley’s buck-fifty of hungry anger was no match for the deputy’s two-hundred and twenty pounds of adrenaline-fueled reaction. Stanley felt himself sailing backward as the deputy lifted and tossed him like a bean bag. He felt the ground rush up to meet him and heard the audible whack of the back of his skull connecting solidly with the asphalt. As he lay on his back, arms and legs jutting up at odd angles, he didn’t feel pain or even indignation. He felt a strange satisfaction. A feeling of accomplishing something important. Something right. Stanley licked his lips and felt the slickness of blood, tasted its warm coppery flavor. He worked his jaw and throat and swallowed little bits of flesh that had torn free from the deputy’s face. The hunger that had been driving him absorbed the flesh, and while it wasn’t satiated, not by any stretch of the imagination, it approved of Stanley’s efforts.
Another emotion sat alongside the satisfaction and darkened its warmth with a cold shadow. Stanley tried to classify this other emotion, give it a shape to make it recognizable, edges he could hold. It felt like loneliness, like rejection. The realization that no matter what you did or how hard you tried, people just didn’t get you, just didn’t like you. It also felt about how someone would expect to feel if they just wanted to eat and were instead thrown bodily to the cold, hard ground.
Emotions are funny things. Some blend together perfectly like strawberries and bananas in a milkshake. Others mix worse than oil and water. Stanley considered the strange blending of his emotions as he slowly worked his way back to his feet. The hunger, anger, and loneliness were mixing their way into a strawberry-banana rage. His friends had abandoned him. Everyone else he tried to connect with at best ignored him, and at worst accused him of being a no-good no-gooder and threw him to the ground.
He shuffled forward with the sole intention of letting this newfound rage pour out on the deputy, but the rage petered out as he drew closer to the other man. After throwing Stanley, the deputy had collapsed to the ground, moaning in agony and clawing at his face. He twitched and rolled and convulsed while Stanley watched, perplexed.
Geez, what a wimp, he thought. I just bit his cheek.
Remembering that delicious bite, Stanley angled closer and wondered if he could get a second nip in, but stopped when the deputy’s convulsing abruptly ceased. He watched as the color drained from the man’s face, leaving it an unhealthy yellow-grey. He continued to watch as the man’s eyes fixed on an impossibly distant horizon and slowly clouded over. Stanley nudged his glasses and squinted as he tried to discern some sign of life, but no such signs were apparent.
Oh crappers...
All of the emotions Stanley had been feeling dissolved. He wasn’t hungry for a dead guy, and it didn’t make much sense to be angry at a dead guy. He was still lonely, but dead guys weren’t capable of being good company, and Stanley didn’t think it’d be fair to hold a dead guy to unattainable standards. Suddenly empty, he slipped dejectedly back into the waiting lassitude and stared at nothing in particular.
“Aaaaaahhhhhhhh.”
The moan caught Stanley’s absent attention and reeled it back in. The deputy that had been quite dead apparently wasn’t. He was waving an arm and making an effort to sit up. Stanley felt a weird déjà vu and stepped back to give him some space. After a few long moments, the man gained his feet and stared at nothing in particular.
Stanley contemplated the deputy. The angry, aggressive, derisive man was gone. In his place was a much more subdued man with grey skin, red eyes, and a flap of bloody cheek hanging from one side of his face. Stanley waited for the deputy to accost him again, threaten him again, or even grab and throw him again. When none of those things happened, he raised a hand and offered a tentative, “Haaaaaalllooooo.”
The deputy’s chin lifted, and his blood-shot eyes focused on Stanley.
“Haaaaaaahhhhh,” he responded as he lifted his own hand in an awkward wave.
“Ssstaaaaaannnn. Lllleeeee.”
A moment passed, and the deputy responded, “Fffaaah. Fffaaaaarrrr. Mmmmaaaaaaannn.”
Stanley’s heart wasn’t capable of jumping, but he definitely felt something in his chest. Deputy Farman was talking to him. Was being nice to him. Emboldened, Stanley
asked the next question that came to mind.
“Huuunnngaaahreee?”
“Yaaaaaahhhhh,” Farman responded with a slow nod.
Stanley looked at his wet, dirty socks. He knew that there was no way he’d be allowed back into the Get’n’Gobble. He craned his neck and considered the sun shining weakly through the wintery clouds above. There were other places they could go, places that didn’t have the same high standards as the local grocery store. Steinknockers came to mind. The bar had a modest kitchen that basically took stuff and deep fried it. Even better, Old Stein would let pretty much anyone in, provided they behaved themselves.
“Ssstuh,” Stanley tried, the word surprisingly hard to say. “Sssteeeeinnnns,” he managed and waved an arm in the general direction of the local watering hole.
“Yaaahhhh,” Farman agreed and turned toward the still-open door of the squad car.
Stanley watched with no small measure of admiration as the deputy managed to get inside the cruiser and even slam the door. It took a few minutes, but it was still more than Stanley had been able to do with his Cavalier. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to get a bite with his friend, Stanley forced the passenger door open, shoved himself inside, and flashed his new buddy a bloody grin. The grin faltered when Farman dropped the car in reverse and stomped heavily on the gas, but returned in full force when the deputy found a gear that would allow them to go forward and sent them racing in a better direction. The car lurched and swerved like a two-ton version of Stanley’s shopping cart. It careened from curb to curb, throwing the men first left then right as buildings, parked cars, and streetlights flashed by on either side. Stanley supposed it was only a matter of time before they collided with something. After they did, Stanley was rather impressed they’d made it as far as they had before the crash.
The other car was a sporty red Mazda Miata. A real looker of a car with a black convertible roof, shiny chrome rims, and a trim little spoiler off the back. The woman that got out was equally attractive and understandably upset. She’d been stopped at a stop sign when Farman drove straight into her rear bumper.
Undead Cheesehead (Monsters in the Midwest Book 3) Page 5
