The Mask

Janet placed the bag of pork rinds into the paper bag, on top of the honey bun, frozen dinners, and a six-pack. This man was going to have a good time and a massive case of heartburn, she mused. She pulled the receipt from the cash register, and asked, “In the bag?

“Sure”, the man said, not really noticing her as he was looking at his phone the entire time.

She remembered the movie The Matrix, which seemed far fetched to her, never was a fan of

sci-fi, but the way everyone was always on their phone made her think they weren’t far off from being “jacked-in” all the time.

“Thanks for shopping at Piggly Wiggly,” Janet called out as the man ignored her. She wiped down the conveyor belt prepping for the next customer. Jim, the Manager, was closing out the register across from her. It was only 8:00pm but business had been waning recently. With the trade wars and uncertainty, people weren’t buying. This small town of Goose Creek (A name you can’t say without sounding like you’re mocking it.) was filled with what she called support staff. They were located outside Charleston, South Carolina. That was where all the action was located. Closer to Charleston you had the sexy manufacturing jobs. Boeing making planes. Mercedes-Benz making Sprinter vans. Volvo making electric cars. But here in Goose Creek, they were building the parts that built the parts. If Charleston was the Rolling Stones, Goose Creek was the roadie.

With the economy down, there was really no need to have more than one register open. It may be an Express line but tonight she was taking all-comers. She smiled as she looked at Jim. She had thought about making a move on him when she first started working at the Piggly Wiggly ten years ago. He was an attractive assistant manager with potential. He was married but she figured he’d go for it. He was a man. He had a penis. But at that time, she was a young mother herself (soon to be thirty-eight-year-old grandmother of two) and figured she didn’t need the headache or the drama for what would end up being only a half-decent night of sex, followed by uncomfortable glances at work for several years.

Her phone buzzed. “Time to Jack in” she smiled to herself. It was her daughter. Please bring home more formula, the text said. Janet had not planned on being a 3rd generation by thirty- eight, but sometimes teen moms beget teen moms. And now she was just doing everything in her power to make sure she didn’t become a great-grandmother before sixty.

I’m going to the back to count the till”, Jim told Janet as he crossed around the counter carrying the cash drawer. “After the last customer, bring back your drawer and we will finish what we started”, he added. He always liked to say that. Finish what we started. He had probably read it in a leadership book somewhere. But watching him go, she did appreciate that he still looked good coming and going. Jim walked by the row of magazines, chips, candy and small toys that led the customer towards the register. A final tease of commercialism, to make small children and gullible adults throw just one or two more things into their basket. Jim crossed in front of a customer coming to check out. The man appeared as if out of nowhere. In fact, Janet couldn’t recall him coming in, but there had been a small rush earlier and maybe this guy had taken a while to shop.

He was tall, over six feet. Gaunt. He shuffled more than walked. He wore a Widespread Panic shirt and Bohemian pants with marijuana leaves on them. She expected to smell patchouli any second but all she smelled was the ocean. Not the pleasant smell most people think of, salt and clean air. In Goose Creek, you got the marsh smell of the ocean: sulfur, rotting fish and old water (must be low tide). The masked man’s granola ensemble was completed with overly warm socks and clogs. Or what they called potato shoes when she was in high school. And he wore a mask.

Everyone in that area (all areas) remembered the pandemic. She had been lucky to keep her job. Essential personnel they said. But the headache of distance and masks were sometimes a bit much. And this town had not responded well to the restrictions of the time. People not wearing masks were forced out and often not willingly. Those who did wear masks were bitching the whole time they were in the store. Taking out their anger at the Governors’ mandate on the “essential” personnel. She felt essentially fucked being forced to deal with all of it. But as her mother told her, nothing is more dangerous than a white man inconvenienced. And the backlash since had been worse. The misremembering of facts and details was astounding to her. At the time she had an immuno-compromised pregnant daughter, so she didn’t mind the precautions. Also, her mother had gotten her into K-Drama’s, and she had seen how the Asian culture had used masks for centuries to prevent the spread of disease. It made sense to her.

Now she wasn’t a liberal. Live your life however you want but leave her out of it. She didn’t care about rainbow flags and pronouns and alphabet identifiers for your sexuality. Even though she had had that one threesome she didn’t consider herself bi. She just had a good time one night when things got a little out of control after some beers and good tunes. But it also wasn’t her identity, it was a party. And publicly she had always identified as Christian Conservative. But that was the badge you wore in Goose Creek if you wanted to function. The supposed Christians of the community were the most judgmental clan of hatred she had ever seen. Bold enough to call her a jezebel and whore, you know as Jesus would. But to her face mostly, they smiled and blessed her heart and complemented her squash casserole at church functions. And the worst was the patriotic masturbation at every damn sporting event in town. Can we not have full colors, God Bless America, the National Anthem and a prayer before a sixth-grade baseball game? How about getting Tradd out there on second base and let’s Play Ball!

But here was this white man (Was he white? Maybe ashen? Is that a race?) wearing a mask and bringing four large containers of bone broth to the register. He placed them at the end of the conveyor belt, farthest away from her, and stood in front of his purchase. She clicked the button to turn on the belt, a sound that seemed to echo throughout the mostly empty store. As the broth moved down the belt towards her, the man moved along side of it. Always keeping himself just in front of his purchase. Once again, she felt as if he wasn’t really walking. It was as if he was shifting to the next void in space and leaving behind where his body once was. Damn, I need to watch the Matrix again, she thought.

The man was now in front of her and as she finally got a good look at his face (or what she could see of it behind the mask) she was even more confused. She couldn’t tell if the man was fifty or thirty. His eyes were as grey as his skin. His arms hung lifelessly by his side. Falling out of his Widespread shirt like he was a human stick figure. Seeing the broth, she knew the man was probably not feeling well, but he looked as if he was the human incarnation of the plague and was here to take out all of mankind.

She was going to ask if he wanted a bag or not, but she decided to just ring him up quickly and get him out of there. She grabbed the first container of broth, and it didn’t scan. She rescanned the container and it didn’t scan again.

“Darn machines, struggle to read the bar code sometimes”, were the first words she said to him. The man seemed to cough as a reply. But she froze when she heard it. It was not a cough. It was a gurgling. It sounded not just thick with phlegm and mucus but as if it was holding back a tidal wave of excrement she did not want to see.

She scanned the container again. And again. And again. She was beginning to panic a little when she saw that the bar code was covered by their price sticker. Dammit, Greg, how many times have I told you not to do that, she thought. She grabbed another container, and she heard the reassuring beep of a proper scan. A sound she never thought she would long to hear. She scanned it four times and placed all four into the bag. She was about to total the sale when she heard “Snap into a Slim Jim,” and Randy put his beer down on the conveyor belt.

Randy worked at Bosch making car parts. Simple as that. Simple man, simple life. Always made a stop by the Piggly Wiggly on the way home. Grab some tall boys and go home to watch the Braves game. And beer was what he drank. Not some hazy IPA or imperial stout. Beer. Good, clean, American beer. He had switched to Miller High-Life, trying to avoid the beer that the liberal tranny was pushing, but he always had an affinity for the Champagne of Beers anyway. (Of course, he didn’t know they were the same company and his protest was moot). He didn’t go into Charleston if he didn’t have to. He enjoyed the quiet of his acreage. Taking his small boat out onto the river, high enough up the river for fresh water of course, and trying to catch some Crappie or Bream. Recently divorced, he now tried to find love by attempting to pick up the same five women that showed up and played video poker at The Creek, his go-to bar. Well, that and a very expensive Pornhub account. Lifetime member. All the “bells” and “whistles”.

As he pulled his beer out of the cooler, he saw Jim the Manager, heading up his aisle. Randy had bullied Jim in middle school. A lot. Called him Jimmy Snot-Rags, because Jimmy had allergies and was always snotting all over the place. But Randy knew that Jim was over it. In fact, Randy was pretty sure Jim was appreciative. Bullying builds character and here he is the Manager or the Piggly Wiggly. Or is he the Assistant Manager? Nah he’s got to be the manager now, right?

“Jimmy Snot-Rags. How goes it?”

“Fine. How are things with you Randy?” Jim replied.

“Good. Bosch just got a new contract. Building power converters for those EV’s. Not my thing but if those fucktard liberals want to buy those crappy cars, well, I’ll take their money”, Randy laughed at a joke that was only for him.

“How’s Claire?” Jim asked.

Randy’s face straightened quickly. “We’re divorced”, Randy replied curtly.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Well let me get back, I have to finish the count.’ Jim said while walking. “See ya”, Randy called out as he headed to the front.

“Snot-Rag”, he said to himself.

As he walked up to the counter, he saw Janet was there. He liked Janet. She was just behind him in high school, and he was very interested in hooking up with her back then during Junior/Senior. But he never found her that weekend and when she got pregnant just after that he felt he had dodged a bullet. An eighteen-year prison sentence of child support and headache. She still looked good though and he wouldn’t kick her out of bed unless she wanted to do it on the floor.

Randy felt a pang of hunger and saw the beef jerky. He grabbed several sticks and slammed them down onto the conveyor belt with his tall boy. “Snap into a Slim Jim” he joked, trying to flirt just a little with Janet. That’s when he noticed the man. Randy was confused about what he was looking at. He felt the bile rising in his belly. His heart was racing quickly. His fists were clenching. All this happened in a split second as he was struggling to comprehend why he was feeling all of this. Then it hit him. The man was wearing a mask.

Jim had been the manager of Piggly Wiggly for five years. He worked his way up like ninety- five percent of all grocery store managers. (The other five percent get the job from their dads.) He had had all the titles. Bag Boy. Stocker. Cashier. Butcher (for a little while but gave it up after one horrific Thanksgiving Day). Produce Cutter. Produce Manager. Beer and Wine sale for a bit. (Easy in this town. Don’t exactly have to be a sommelier). Assistant Manager. Then Manager when Richard left to open a craft beer bar in Charleston.

He enjoyed his work. He enjoyed Goose Creek. He was generally a happy man. He didn’t bother with politics or religion, even though he could probably have been the mayor, people just gravitated to him. He worked sixty to eighty hours a week. When he wasn’t at the store, he was helping his wife with the kids. Family came first. Whether it was playing the National Anthem at his son’s baseball game or picking up his daughter from ballet. Which he could not forget to do tonight, he thought to himself as he grabbed the cash drawer and headed to the back.

“I’m going back to count the till”, Jim checked in. “After the last customer, bring back your drawer and we will finish what we started”, he added. He always liked to say that. Finish what we started. He had read it in a leadership book somewhere.

Janet was a great employee. He knew she had a little thing for him, but it would never happen. His father had slept around a good bit, and he knew he would never do that to his wife or his kids. He didn’t even notice the gaunt man he passed in front of who was heading towards the cash register. Jim did recognize a smell that wafted in on him like a breeze of putrid air. He grew his own earthworms. Used them for composting and as bait for fishing. He once left a worm farm, filled with thousands of worms out in the hot sun all weekend. Needless to say, they were all dead by the time he found it. Cleaning out the trays was one of the worst smells he had ever sensed. Until now.

Shaking it off, he headed down the beer aisle and sees Randy pulling a Miller High-Life tall- boy out of the refrigerated section. Oh Shit, he thought to himself. Randy Chestnut. Jim tried very hard not to say or even think bad thoughts about people. He was not religious but if he were, he liked to think he’d have been a Buddhist. He assumes. There weren’t a lot of Buddhists in Goose Creek to find out. But Randy Chestnut was a waste of flesh. He was a garbage human being. And Jim was still angry. What was the saying: “I wouldn’t piss down your mouth if your neck was on fire”?

As a child Jim had bad allergies. The medicines he took didn’t help, so he got called Jimmy Snot Rags. But it wasn’t just that. Randy one time, beat him up on the bus because as Randy said, “he looked weird”. Getting a bloody nose, on top of an already runny nose meant he ruined his Mumford and Sons shirt.

Bullying led to depression, which led to more medication, more runny noses, plus all the side effects, and it wasn’t until after high school that Jim felt he had moved on from all of it. But every night, this man showed his sickening face in Jim’s store and brought with him an avalanche of nostalgic dismay. Jim could usually avoid him but there he was. And Jim felt 13 all over again.

“Jimmy Snot-Rags. How goes it?”, Jim heard

He tightened his jaw and replied, “Fine. How are things with you Randy?”

“Good. Bosch just got a new contract. Building power converters for those EV’s. Not my thing but if those fucktard liberals want to buy those crappy cars, well, I’ll take their money”, Randy laughed, at a joke that was only for him. Jim was over this. He needed to end it. Now. And then he remembered that Randy’s wife had left him for the UPS driver. What can Brown do for you indeed, he thought.

“How’s Claire?” Jim asked.

Randy’s face straightened quickly. “We’re divorced”, Randy replied curtly.

Jim conjured his best “Bless your heart” expression and replied, “I’m sorry to hear that. Well

let me get back, I have to finish the count.’

“See ya”, Randy called out as he headed to the front.

Jim walked with a new stride towards the back office. He had just enough time to count the till, get Janet to bring back the last one for counting and close up the store. In his office, he pulls all the bills out of the till and places them into deposit bags. He writes down his numbers on his ledger. He opens the safe and puts the deposits inside and closes it. His phone buzzes. It’s his wife.

“Hey honey.....No I got it, I should be able to get her no problem.....Sure I can bring a dozen home. Anything else??

He doesn’t notice that the security camera screen showing the front of the store was alive with movement. It’s out of sight-out of mind as a catastrophe is unfolding.

Then Jim hears the scream.

Randy’s mother officially died of Covid, but you’d never convince Randy of that. She went into the hospital with a simple cold as far as he was concerned and then they let her die. Alone.

She was an overweight diabetic with several health issues, but he knew Covid was just an excuse for doctors to cover up their own malpractice. Easy to hide when you don’t let anyone into the hospital. Ignoring his pleas for them to try any of the efforts he had seen online. He personally took the horse dewormer and he was just fine. But Big Pharma was so far up big government’s ass, they wouldn’t listen to reason. He even went so far as to break into the hospital to see his mother. When he walked into his mother’s hospital room, what he saw chilled him to his core. She was strapped to ventilators in a hospital bed. It looked like a gigantic techno-octopus out of a sci-fi movie was attacking her. She had tubes going into her mouth, nose, and arms. And a tent around her, like she was that bubble boy from the seventies. Alone. When the doctor walked into the room and discovered him there, Randy only had one thought. Someone needed to pay. He punched the doctor square in the nose. Well, where his nose was but it was behind a large face shield. Which did nothing to blunt the force of the punch. Or the ones that followed.

Randy rode the doctor to the ground like a sheep being wrangled at a rodeo. He continued to rain blows down onto the doctor. The face shield eventually became a horrific smear of spittle, mucus and blood. Randy even heard the clinking noise of a tooth skittering across the sterile vinyl flooring. A gruesome image for the nurse to discover as she made her rounds.

Randy never heard the nurse scream. Nor the security guard enter the room. He didn’t remember the beating he took from several security guards. His next three months were a blur of arrest, trial, and jail time. He spent six weeks in jail. His mother died while he was in there. Alone.

So, as he put down his beer and Slim Jim on that Tuesday night, just wanting to let go of the stress of a shitty workday, he was not prepared for the flashback of pain that roared over him when he saw the man in front of him. Wearing a mask.

Masks were the perfect representation of the nanny state of the world. And the people who let his mother die. These Libtards had no reason to be in this Piggly Wiggly. Take your hippie ass back to Charleston, you’re not welcome here in the Creek. Randy’s favorite movie was Tombstone. He could quote the entire film. And now as he looked at this gray skeleton of a man wearing a mask, he thought back to Wyatt Earp telling the Cowboys, “From now on I see a red sash, I kill the man wearing it. So run you cur. And tell the other curs the law is coming. You tell 'em I'm coming! And Hell's coming with me you hear! Hell's coming with me!” And Randy was about to bring Hell with him.

“Hey fella, why you wearing a mask?”

Skeletor, as Randy was now calling him in his head, didn’t respond. Not in the sense that he ignored him, but the man didn’t acknowledge Randy even existed. Just stood there.

The mask he wore covered not just his mouth but went up the side of his face covering his jawline as well. And Randy for a split second thought he saw movement underneath the mask.

“Hey Dave Matthews, I’m talking to you”, Randy snorted. “Shouldn’t you be at Whole Foods listening to your podcast.”

“Leave him alone Randy,” Janet chimed in. Randy didn’t want to give Janet any problems, but Randy needed some liberal tears before he would be satisfied.

“I’m talking to you, man. Why you wearing a mask? You don’t have to do that anymore.

Didn’t you hear, Trump won. Or are you one of those Kamala fellas.” Randy of course pronounced her name incorrectly. He knew how you said it but fuck her. Getting frustrated, Randy reached out and grabbed the man’s arm to bow up on him. But as he grabbed the frail stick of an arm falling out of the shirt, he realized two things at once. One, he couldn’t budge the man. It was like he was grabbing a steel rod; stronger than any arm he had ever felt. And second, it was cold as ice. Literally.

“Come on Randy we don’t want any trouble in here, okay?” Janet interjected. That’s when the masked man turned towards Randy. When Randy came to the counter, Janet was relieved to have someone else break the tension. The masked man hadn’t said a word, and it was getting very creepy. But sometimes you shouldn’t get what you want. Because of course Randy had to take a bad situation and make it worse. If Goose Creek had a mascot, it was Randy. She could feel the temperature begin to get colder as Randy berated the man. And when he grabbed the man, she knew she had to stop this immediately.

When she said, Come on Randy, we don’t want any trouble in here, okay? she saw the man shift towards Randy. Once again, the movements were not human. It was as if his body turned inside of his own skin and now, he was facing Randy.

“What you going to do now, little man?! You think you want some of this?!” Randy was getting worked up now. The masked man reached up with his left hand and removed the mask. What he revealed chilled Janet to her soul and froze Randy in his tracks.

Janet loved the ocean as a child. Goose Creek was far enough away from the coast that they only went down to the beach occasionally. But when they went, they would go early so they could find what had washed up from the night before. Sand Dollars, Jelly fish, Shark’steeth. A treasure of oceanic treasure. But her favorite find was a chambered nautilus shell. In science class, her favorite chapter was on the cephalopods. The class of animals included octopus, squid and nautilus. There was something about a creature in the ocean with all of those tentacles that was just so creepy and cool. The way they enveloped their prey with an attack of arms, drawing the struggling fish or shrimp or crab towards a terrifying maw. They would then use a tongue filled with razor sharp teeth to rip the flesh from the animal that could only lie there and take it, because every bit of their body was held by tentacles.

Janet was horrifyingly reminded of that nautilus at this moment. When the mask came off, the man revealed an open maw, large enough she could have put her fist into it, but so dark and cavernous, she would never do it.

“What the fuck man!” was all Randy could get out, before a tentacle, at least six feet in length burst out of the jaws and wrapped around Randy’s neck, shutting up the redneck for the first time ever. A tool many in Goose Creek wished they had had over the years. A second tentacle immediately followed, wrapping around his forehead and chin. Holding his mouth open as if in a scream. Blood was seeping from under the tentacles where the teeth were ripping into Randy’s face. He tried to scream but all that came out was a wheeze and a whimper.

More tentacles came. And more. And more. 'Til Randy’s body was covered in them. His body was now pulsating, and Janet noticed Randy was now being drawn towards the open “mouth” of the masked man.

It was no mouth though. Nor was it a head. From the neck down the man looked human. But his head had now opened like a tulip. Within the mass of arms, she thought she saw two eyes, but it was as if they were on top of an antenna, like a crab. The eyes turned towards her. Janet finally broke from her trance and screamed. Then the first tentacle went in her mouth.

What Jim saw on that camera chilled him to his soul. The image would haunt him for the rest of his life. And be the last thing he saw when he slipped from this mortal coil. There was a creature that looked human but its head had opened up and there were what seemed like a hundred tentacles flailing around. Randy’s body was writhing, enveloped by most of them. And was he being eaten?

There were several of the arms that were holding Janet as well. Her body was hanging in the air, and it looked like one tentacle had entered her mouth. Jim grabbed the shotgun and ran to the front.

Janet felt the tentacle enter her mouth. It reminded her of a bad shot of tequila, because she could feel it go all the way down her throat and into her belly. There was very little pain, but she couldn’t breathe. She felt others wrap around her and lift her aloft like a rag doll. Floating above, she could now look down and see that Randy was in fact being eaten. The razor teeth on the tongue (It’s called a radula, flitted through her mind. How could she remember that their tongue was called a radula?) had ripped the flesh from Randy’s arms. They were working on his chest now. As she scanned up his body she saw his eyes. They blinked. He was still alive.

In those eyes she saw horror that dissolved to resolution that this was his fate. She felt more and more tentacles wrapped around her and she could swear she felt the tentacle in her stomach moving around. It was as if it was exploring her. She was beginning to lose consciousness when she heard the gunshot. A loud explosion of sound.

Jim rounded the corner and saw the beast had eaten most of Randy and had a large tentacle down Janet’s throat. He only had one thought on his mind. Save Janet. It was obvious Randy was gone. Jim had always been an excellent shot, from years of quail hunting. But he had never shot a man before. Thankfully this didn’t look like any man he had ever seen. So, he aimed at the maw of the creature and fired. Several tentacles were ripped from the creature and the loudest noise Jim ever heard erupted from the bowels of the beast.

The entire front glass of the Piggly Wiggly exploded with the screeching howl. With glass showering down on everyone, Jim pumped another into the chamber and shot the creature again. This time in the “chest”. Black and yellow seeped out from the abdomen and the creature immediately released Janet. The remaining tentacles fell forward, flipping the appearance of the creature, so now the masked man’s legs were now on top. It wrapped its remaining tentacles around the remnants of Randy’s body and slid towards the now blown-out doors of the store. It moved with grace and speed that surprised Jim. After a breath, he followed it out in the parking lot.

At first, he couldn’t see it. Then to his left he saw movement at the end of the plaza. He ran down and saw the amorphous blob, sliding into the saltwater creek just off their parking lot. As it sunk below the surface, he saw two eyes on top of antenna, looking back at him from the water, then dip under the surface. Jim could hear sirens in the distance.

It had been a week since the events at the Piggly Wiggly. The store had been fixed up and they were going to have a grand reopening. Jim was excited to get back. Jim’s wife was not happy he was headed back so soon but he felt like he needed some normalcy. This was Goose Creek; you didn’t go for therapy; you just rubbed some dirt on it and got back in the game.

Janet thankfully had survived. She spent overnight in the hospital but was released the next day. Jim had tried calling her, but she hadn’t answered any of her calls. She had been through so much he didn’t think anything of it. The day before the reopening Jim got an email from Janet:

Jim, Can’t wait to get back to work tomorrow.
Finish what we started.

Janet.

Jim pulled up in front of the store and he saw several familiar vehicles. He hopped out of his car and the first thing he smelled was the ocean. He glanced over at the creek next to the shopping plaza and a slight hesitation came to him. But he shook it off and headed past the shopping carts that were still left in their corral in the lot towards the entrance.

As the front doors swished open, he smelt baking bread from the bakery, heard the music of the store, the sound of the employees and the day felt perfect. He saw Janet was already over at Express one, looking at the cigarette case behind her. He wanted his early morning fix, so he grabbed a Diet Mountain Dew from the front cooler and took it to her register to pay. Employee discount of course.

“So glad to have you back Janet. Diet Mountain Dew please.” Jim said as he stepped up to her counter. Janet turned. Actually, she shifted more than she turned. And she was wearing a mask.

Finish what we started.

The End