ReTales

Garth was on till midnight. The Store was dead. He'd snuck one of the romance novels off the shelves and was reading it rather hungrily. It was past 11, so it was only the manager now. It was supposed to be only head cashiers who stayed this late, but both Kevin and Tavvy had had to deal with Mrs. Richards this week. She'd come twice, suggesting that she wasn't a ghost like some thought she was. Ghosts were supposed to stick to patterned hauntings, as if they were bound to schedules just as the cashiers were. Management had been forgiving to them because they were heads and gave them an hour off their week. Consequently, Garth had to fill in. But he'd gladly done it because he'd cashiered for Richards once and she had nearly killed him. Metaphorically, of course. No one had tried anything physical yet. It was strange. He felt as if they only had him in early in the morning or late at night, when the majority of his shift was spent without any other cashiers ...

Eleanor was staying on late one night when she heard the first suggestions. The first intimations that it was worms wriggling underneath the skin—that she labored in the corpse of a dead ghoul-thing. Pained cries, in the night. At first it seemed to be nothing more than a part of the shaggy dreamworld that flickered around her. She was used to imagining screams—the sounds of children turned to simple background obnoxiousness, though once she'd let it shake her. Every so often though there were screamed that seemed genuine—beyond the world of kids' play. They were back-alley screams, deep-metropolis screams. Sometimes she though they came from below—and there was a strange aquatic echo to them, as if there was a pond or pool buried under the store. She thought of far reaches of the store laden with the scent of rotting bodies. Then she straightened up and reminded herself that that smell, too, was the customers. And nothing but. Or so she hoped. Even if that opened ...

Don't think I didn't see you. It was like this: two old folks come down my line, husband and wife. The wife leads, because this is The Store, and the men always hang back and do nothing, save for stare at other women. (They handle the "challenge" of running the credit card. Which I do for them.) I saw her unload your cart, and I saw her take care of smiling for you. You were the same as all the others, so maybe I didn't see you at first. But I think it was that lack of smile that betrayed you. You idiot, the smile keeps me pacified! It keeps the cloak up! It makes me think you've maybe got something ticking in that chest of yours! But now the deception was down, and I saw you. Is that why you did it? Because you thought I was disrespecting you, with this unspoken stream of thoughts? Then you should not have done what you did. "Why don't you go ahead and bag?" A fair recommendation. She asked nicely . She was a very nice woman. "Mrn...