85% Lean Meat

Here is my first round story for the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge. We were divided into heats and given a genre, a setting and an object. From that point, you are given 48 hours to write 1,000 words or less. My prompts were horror, a supermarket and an earring.

85% Lean Meat

Tracy pulled her red Jeep Renegade into the parking lot of Save-a-Lot. The myriad of reasons to avoid shopping here was considerably longer than her grocery list, however convenience ruled.

“Mom,” whined Jocelyn from the back seat. “Why are we here? I wanna go home.”

After five hours at the baseball field watching her son, Tracy concurred with her daughter, however her husband invited the team over for a cookout, leaving Tracy to feed twenty-five people on short notice.

“I know, Peanut. We won’t be long. We need hot dogs, burgers, cheese, a watermelon and some chips. In and out,” Tracy apologized to her exhausted 6-year-old.

She grabbed the red handle of a rusty cart, the front wheel squeaking unbearably. She abandoned it for a second, but found it wasn’t much better.

This confirmed what Tracy already knew - this place was a shit hole. That was perhaps the least weighted reason she avoided shopping here: the heaviest being their odd and ominous neighbor, Rob, who worked as a butcher. Ever since he moved next door two years prior, he’d given Tracy an uneasy feeling. Her husband told her it was all in her head, but a woman’s intuition shouldn’t be ignored.

It was this gut feeling that led Tracy to call the police when another neighbor’s beagle had been found dead in an alley, sliced tail to throat, flies covering its exposed and bloody innards. As she lay in bed at night, Tracy could still hear her son’s screams upon finding the animal, still smell the bitter stench of rotting corpse and could still see the animal’s gray tongue, hanging to the side, its tip missing and a puddle of thick, crimson blood pooled on the pavement below.

The officers paid a visit to the house next door, but nothing came of it. Since that day six months ago, Rob had barked a sharp, short bark each time Tracy saw him. Despite her efforts to ignore him, it turned her stomach every time.

Tracy headed to the deli counter when she heard one of these canine calls. She looked over to see Rob grinning from behind the meat counter.

“Let’s go, Jocelyn,” Tracy commanded, ushering her daughter along.

The line at the deli counter was already five deep, and three more shoppers quickly fell into place behind the mother and daughter duo.

“Mom, I have to pee. I can’t hold it,” exclaimed Jocelyn, loud enough for the other shoppers to glare at Tracy, expectantly awaiting her reply.

Tracy looked nervously at her watch and then at the restroom door 35 yards away. The team should be pulling up to the house about now and her cart was still empty.

“That’s the door right there. Into the bathroom and right back to me.”

Tracy watched carefully with the eyes of a mother hawk. Jocelyn entered the bathroom and the green sign switched red, signaling occupied.

The line crept forward. Tracy glanced nervously around to see if a second employee was nearby to offer relief, but saw none. She shot her eyes quickly back to the bathroom door. Still occupied.

Her eyes wandered to the meat counter. Rob was no longer standing there, replaced by an Opie-looking young man.

Eyes back to the bathroom.

Eyes to her watch.

Eyes back to the bathroom.

Eyes to the man behind the deli counter.

Eyes back to the bathroom.

“Next! What can I get for you?”

Tracy looked startled, as if she hadn’t been standing here for seven minutes waiting for this exact question.

“One pound of yellow American, please.”

Tracy perused the display, her eyes landing on some pepper jack cheese.

“Also, a quarter pound of the pepper jack,” Tracy added.

She glanced back at the bathroom door. Still closed. Something in her brain flashed warning as she looked, but Tracy quickly dismissed it, distracted by the two plastic bundles being passed to her.

She threw the cheese in her cart and walked to the bathroom. As she approach she realized what was wrong. The sign was green. It showed vacant.

Tracy deserted the wheeled rust bucket and bolted for the door. Throwing it open, she stood frozen. The sounds of the store were drowned out by the deafening waves within her head; panic crashing along the barrier of a mother’s greatest fear.

Jocelyn was gone.

On the sink lay one of her daughter’s gold pineapple earrings. Two drops of blood had run down the side of the white porcelain basin, like two tears down the face of a mourning mother.

“Jocelyn! Tracy screamed repeatedly, darting up and down aisles, expecting to see her around each corner. Instead she ran into a man wearing a dirty dress shirt and unmatched tie.

“Ma’am, is there something wrong?” the manager asked, as though her shouts weren’t an obvious answer.

“My daughter. I can’t find my daughter. She was in the bathroom. Blood,” Tracy rambled before falling to her knees.

The front door was locked and a voice echoed from the P.A. system, announcing the missing child. Jean shorts. Red t-shirt. Blonde braids in her hair.

“Jocelyn, when you hear this, please make your way to the closest Save-a-Lot employee,” said the detached voice.

Despite an offer to sit in the back office, Tracy walked, dream-like, up and down the rows of macaroni and cheese, mandarin oranges and cereal. She weaved in and out of displays of picked over corn-on-the-cob, browned bananas and five-pound bags of potatoes.

The meat counter stood unmanned. From the darkness in the back room, another distinct bark rang followed by hysterical, uncontrolled laughing. Tracy turned her head toward the sound, only to catch a glimpse of something shiny from within the case.

There, exposed among the fresh, bloody, coarse ground meat, a single pineapple earring protruded - its match still clutched in Tracy’s hand. She fell to the ground as two evil eyes glared through the doorway.

The world went black.