By the time my next shift was supposed to start, the sun had already
set.
Those first few hours were boring and slow, just the way I like them.
It wasn't until around nine or ten that things started to get interesting. I was
sitting behind the counter, making notes in my journal for later, when I
looked up and noticed for the first time ever that there was a door at the
edge of the hallway past the walk-in cooler. I searched my memory and
came up blank.
How is it possible that I'm only just now noticing that door?
What does that door lead to?
Has it always been there?
Did somebody install a door while I wasn't paying attention?
As far as doors go, it looked pretty ordinary. I got up and tried the
handle because it's not every day that a mysterious door appears out of
nowhere. Unfortunately, it was locked, so I went back to my counter,
cracked open the journal, and started an entry about the mystery door.
"Hey, Jack."
I was so into the journal that I didn't even notice Antonio standing on
the other side of the counter until he said my name.
"Hey Tony, did you know there's a door at the edge of that hallway?"
That's when I realized something else was going on. He didn't look
so good. He was sweating bullets, sickly pale, and appeared to be on the
verge of passing out. He kept glancing back at the man in the poorly fitted
suit. The one who had wandered into the store and was now standing next
to the frozen drink machine.
"Yeah, no. I don't know. Look, we need to talk. Now."
"Okay. Go ahead."
"No, not here. In the beer cooler."
As a general rule, I don't like to leave the front of the store
unwatched for longer than it takes to walk to the dumpster and back. We
have the occasional shoplifter. Plus, there was that one time Rocco got in
and made off with two cartons of cigarettes. But Tony sounded serious, so I
made an exception for him.
Within the frigid confines of the walk-in cooler, surrounded by the
safety of beer inventory overflow and six-inch-thick walls, Tony opened up
and asked if I had seen the guy in the suit. I said yes, I saw him. He asked if
I knew the guy. I said yes, I'd seen the guy around town. His name was
Kieffer, an older guy with a bad comb-over and a permanent look of
bewilderment on his mustachioed face. He was running for some kind of
office (I don't remember which one. Mayor, maybe?) and stopped by the
gas station every now and then to top off his old black SUV with premium
unleaded. I didn't know him much from outside of work, but he was
definitely a local. His picture was framed in my high school's trophy case
for some reason or other, and I had to walk past his vacant stare every
school day for four years.
I knew Kieffer, or at least I knew of Kieffer, but we weren't exactly
acquaintances. I told all this to Tony, who shook his head and insisted, "No.
That's not Kieffer. That can't be Kieffer."
I said, "Why not?"
Tony looked at me with tears welling up in his eyes and said,
"Because Kieffer has been dead for two days. His body is in the trunk of my
car right now."
***
Wow, what a shitty place to take a break from Antonio's story, right? I
know. And I apologize. But before I can go any further, I have to tell you
about a kid who went to my high school.
His name was Spencer Middleton.
Spencer was just a year ahead of me, but he always looked much
older. One of the rumors was that he had been held back for "developmental
problems."
We're from a small town, and small towns get bored. For
entertainment, some turn to gossip; some turn to more sinister pastimes.
The latter often fueled the former, and there was no shortage of rumors
surrounding Spencer. Some people said that he liked to torture and kill
animals. That Spencer's parents and siblings always locked their bedroom
doors when they went to sleep at night. That he was the one who killed our
rival high school's mascot "Buddy the bulldog" with a dollar-store pocket
knife. The rumors didn't slow down any after the fire at Spencer's house,
where Spencer was the only one to escape unscathed.
Look, we're not that stupid. Back then, we all pretty much knew that
Spencer was a certifiable psychopath (once, back in elementary school, I
saw Spencer gleefully stomp on a lizard, throw his head back, and laugh),
but growing up in a small, boring, podunk town, we didn't have the societal
framework to process this sort of thing. Finding him the help he needed was
simply not a feasible option. Most people would say a prayer for him and
call it done. At one point, the principal delegated the responsibility to the
school counselor slash gym coach, who tried talking to Spencer about his
feelings. But all of that was about as effective as putting a band-aid on a
grease fire.
A few days after his house almost burned down for the second time,
Spencer left town. The story went that he had gone off and joined the army.
I didn't give it much thought at the time. And I would have been perfectly
content to go the rest of my life never thinking about him at all, but after all
these years, I was forced to do exactly that. Because when I left the cooler
and got back to the front of the gas station, I found Spencer Middleton
standing there, wearing a bespoke charcoal suit and wine-red tie, waiting
for me to sell him a cup of coffee.
He acted like he didn't remember me, gave me a fiver, and told me to
keep the change. Then he took a seat in one of the booths by the window,
right across from Kieffer. They were too far away for me to make out what
they were saying even if I wanted to.
Kieffer and Spencer stayed in that booth, pounding cup after cup of
coffee and talking in whispers for over an hour. At one point, the cultist
came back into the gas station to ask if he could talk to me about his bogus
church (they hate it when I call it a bogus church). He tried desperately to
appeal to my logical side, but I told him politely--but firmly--that I was
taking a break from logic, and that if he wasn't going to purchase anything,
he had to leave. He bought another pack of Marlboros before storming out.
***
After that, I got lost in the ocean of moments. Swept off, adrift inside
my mind, I didn't even notice when Spencer and Kieffer finally left, but it
was probably close to two in the morning when I washed ashore on another
island.
A strange man came into the store, rolling a large white ice chest
behind him. He had sunken brown eyes, wiry hair coming from his nose
and ears, long boney fingers, and paper-thin skin revealing a roadmap of
every blue and green vein. He wore a bowler cap and smelled of milk. He
asked if we might be interested in partnering up with him and explained that
he was starting up a new business, selling ground meat at discount prices. I
told him that our store had never done particularly well with items in the
"fresh foods" category. He seemed saddened by this news, so I
recommended he try his hand at making jerky, which seemed to perk him
up.
Before he left, he scooped about a pound or so of raw ground meat
from the ice chest onto a piece of parchment paper and gave it to me as a
"sample." Once he had left, I took the meat into the cooler, where I found
Antonio wrapped in a packing blanket and shivering his ass off.
"What took you so long?"
Oh.
I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to come and tell him
as soon as Kieffer left the store.
"He just left," I blurted out. "Just now."
"Seriously? It's been like four hours!"
"I know, right? That guy is a loitering fool."
I
went to place the meat sample on a shelf and found another
untagged lawn gnome standing there at eye level.
***
We sat in the same booth that Spencer and Kieffer had used a few
hours earlier. I made us a fresh batch of coffee and let him do all of the
talking.
"This was a couple days ago, after my late shift ended. When I left
work, I noticed Kieffer's SUV pulled over in a ditch at the bottom of the
hill. I figured, a rich guy like that probably doesn't know the first thing
about car problems. So, I pulled up behind him to offer some help."
As Antonio spoke, I took a look outside the window and noticed the
man in the raincoat standing there, next to one of the fuel pumps. There
weren't any vehicles around. Just him. Staring at me. I couldn't really get a
good look, but I could tell that something wasn't right. His proportions were
a little off. His arms were too long. And he was tall. Unnaturally tall. I
didn't have to see his face to know he was smiling...
"Dude, are you listening?"
I turned back to Tony and said, "Sorry, yeah, you went to help him
with his car before you killed him."
"Well, shit man. Technically yeah. But there were some serious
extenuating circumstances that I'm trying to explain."
"I'm not here to judge."
"So, I get out of the car to see if he needed some help, right? But he
wasn't in his vehicle. He wasn't anywhere. That's when I hear it. Coming
from the woods. Like, a loud crunching kind of sound. Sorta like-"
He tried to imitate the noise for me, something akin to an angry dog
eating croutons.
"Please don't say you went to check it out."
"So I went to check it out."
"How are you even alive right now?"
"Look man, I'm not superstitious. I grew up in a superstitious family.
My grammy would always try to scare me, saying the boogeyman eats the
naughty kids. But if that was true, then how come we got so many bullies
around here? If monsters and ghosts are real, how come nobody's ever
gotten a picture? I don't buy in to all those urban legends about these woods
being haunted. How could I know what I was going to see out there?"
"What did you see out there?"
He took a deep breath, looked me dead in the eyes and started
speaking Spanish at a million miles per hour. It went on for a couple
minutes or so, with a few short breaks here and there to take a sip of coffee
or make the sign of the cross. I don't speak Spanish, but I nodded along
empathetically the whole time.
When he had finally run out of steam, there were beads of sweat all
over his face. I grabbed a couple napkins and offered them, which he
accepted with a confused "Thanks," before putting them in his pocket.
"That's crazy, man," I said in my most comforting tone. "But what
about Kieffer?"
"Well," he answered, "I had to get away from there as quick as I
could."
"Obviously."
"So I jumped into my car, kicked it into reverse, and hit the gas.
That's when I slammed into Kieffer. He was just hanging out there in the
middle of the road like some kind of dumbass. You ask me, he deserved to
get run over."
"Yeah, I'm not a lawyer, but I probably wouldn't go with that as my
primary defense."
Tony deflated and put his head against the table with a pathetic sigh
before saying, "Oh man, what am I going to do? I'm still on parole! I can't
go back to prison. Not for this."
I got up and refreshed our coffee while he silently panic-sobbed on
the table. After a few minutes, I asked the question that was really bugging
me.
"So, why is he in the trunk of your car?"
"I couldn't just leave him there, you know?"
I nodded.
"But this was a couple days ago. So why is he still in the back of your
car?"
"I needed some time to figure out what to do."
I nodded again.
"And you're sure he's still there?"
***
He was definitely still there. Tony took me to the side of the building
where his Toyota was parked and showed me the three-day dead body. I can
confirm, one hundred percent, that it was Kieffer in there. Not just because
of his unmistakable mustachioed face or signature comb-over, but also
because he still had his wallet and cell phone in his pockets.
Tony watched anxiously as I inspected the driver's license. I think he
just needed to hear somebody else tell him he wasn't crazy.
"Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say it. This is pretty weird."
"What am I supposed to do?" he asked, as if I would have the answer
to a question like that.
"Hey!" yelled someone from the front of the building. Tony slammed
the trunk closed and sat on it in the most suspicious way humanly possible.
I turned to see the Marlboro cultist standing there, looking at us.
"What!?" I asked defensively.
"What are you guys doing?"
Tony and I locked eyes. I waited for him to answer, but when it
became obvious that he wasn't going to, I looked back at the cultist and
explained, "My friend Antonio here was just showing me the body of the
guy he killed and put into the trunk of his car."
A second passed, and the cultist said, "Right on. I'm going inside,"
before walking back towards the front of the building.
I gave Tony an I can't believe that worked look, and he finally let out
the breath he'd been holding the whole time. "Dude, I'm really freaking
out. None of this makes any sense. That guy who came in the store earlier
looked exactly like Kieffer. But then who is in the car?"
I hated to watch him go to pieces like this. I could see where he was
coming from, and never mind the criminal record; I knew Tony was a good
guy.
"Look," I said, "He's not getting any deader. Why don't you go home
and get some sleep or something and we can figure this out in the
morning?"
He agreed that a little more time to think might be a good idea. Then
he asked if he could borrow my car for the night.
***
The Marlboro man was standing next to the counter when I got back
inside. Turns out, he wasn't there to buy anything. Rather, he had come in to
demand an audience with me, insisting that if I would just listen to him I
would see that his philosophical reasoning was superb and flawless, and
that I would be a fool not to join him in the perfection of logic and nirvana
that is his belief structure (his words, not mine).
I was about to kick him out again when I noticed the man in the blue
raincoat. He was still there, only now he had moved back to the edge of the
parking lot near the start of the tree line. This time, he waved at me.
I agreed to hear Marlboro's pitch under the condition that afterwards,
he would go outside and talk to the man in the raincoat and ask him to
leave. Our hasty verbal contract in place, I steeled myself to listen.
Honestly, he did make a few good points, but I suppose that's to be
expected from a viral thought experiment strong enough to convince
perfectly normal people to abandon their real lives and go live in a
commune in the woods past the shitty gas station on the edge of town.
They called themselves "Mathmetists," like adding the word "Math"
to the name would somehow lend them legitimacy. According to Marlboro,
they believed that humankind exists to fulfill two moral imperatives: to
decrease suffering, and to increase happiness. A "successful" life increases
happiness more than suffering. How "good" or "bad" a person is can be
determined by the spread between the happiness increased and the suffering
decreased. Obviously, if the individual has a negative spread—that is, if
they've increased happiness less than they've increased suffering, or if
they've decreased suffering less than they've decreased happiness—then
that means, very simply, that the individual is bad. Therefore, if an
individual causes a tremendous amount of happiness and suffering, one can
simply determine which was higher, and use this perfect rubric to determine
whether that individual was good or bad. Simple, right?
A Mathmetist believes that the world has been going about good and
bad in the wrong way. For eons, we've been attempting to increase
happiness, when instead we should have been focusing on decreasing
suffering. Happiness is an ever-changing concept, and the more happiness
you create, the harder it is to sustain. Whereas suffering is consistent.
Suffering is pure, and eternal. For a Mathmetist to be supremely good, they
must simply end all suffering.
He began the last part of his well-rehearsed speech with a big dumb
smile, saying "...and that is why the Mathmetists are working on a bomb to
destroy the entire planet."
I honestly didn't see that coming. Maybe I should have read the
pamphlet.
"By ending all life on Earth, we end an infinity of suffering into the
future. With every life averted, an entire lineage of people will no longer be
born into a world of boundless suffering potential. Every death is a
preemptive mercy-killing. Every happy moment that will no longer occur
pales in the face of all the sad moments that are likewise prevented."
And so, as Marlboro explained, their cult believes that killing is a
kindness.
"You guys are a murder cult?" I asked, just for clarification.
"Hey, whoa, come on. That's such a nasty word." he said, holding up his
hands defensively, "Try to think of us more as a murder religion, or maybe
a murder ideology. Murderology, if you will."
I told him that his ideas were stupid, and he was stupid, and now he
had to go and tell the man in the raincoat to go away.
***
The next few hours passed in silence, and I quickly forgot all about
Tony and what was rotting in the trunk of his car. I started another pot of
coffee for the morning rush and opened up a new book, but before I could
settle in I heard the sound of a cell phone ringing. This was weird for three
reasons:
First, the gas station is a cellular dead zone and always has been.
Second, the ring tone was one I'd never heard before. And third, I was alone
in the store when the ringing started, so where the hell was it coming from?
It slowly dawned on me that the noise was actually coming from my
own front pocket.
I pulled out the source of the ringing--the phone that I had taken off
of Kieffer's body and completely forgotten about until this moment. The
caller ID showed the name "Answer Now!" in large, easy-to-read font.
I'll admit, I was stuck in a bit of a moral quandary ever since Tony
confided in me. On the one hand, Tony had killed someone. On the other, it
was an accident and Tony's parole officer might not see it that way. I
thought I would have a little more time to figure this out, but standing there
with the cell phone ringing in my hand, I knew I had to make a decision.
I answered it.
I
didn't speak first. I was going to, but the "Hello" got caught
somewhere in my throat. Probably for the best.
The voice on the other end of the line was incredibly calm.
"You have something that belongs to my boss."
It was Spencer Middleton.
After a few seconds, my voice returned, and I answered, "His cell
phone and his wallet?"
Emotion crept into his words.
"What? No! We don't care about that shit! We have money. We can
buy more phones. We can get more wallets. You know what we want."
He was right. I did.
"It was an accident," I explained.
"We know." His voice was terrifyingly calm now. "We want to make
a deal. You give it back, and we pretend this whole thing didn't happen."
"Can we do that?" I asked.
There was a pause, almost like he was covering the mouthpiece and
laughing to himself. Then he came back on the line and said one word.
"Absolutely."
Tony came back to the store for the start of his morning shift, looking
a few hours short of well-rested. I waited until the building was empty, then
asked how he was feeling.
"Not great, homie. I'll be honest, there's a huge part of me that wants
to hit the interstate and head south until I'm sipping margaritas on a beach
somewhere. I didn't sleep for shit last night. Been having a lot of bad
dreams, you know? Like, worse than nightmares. Keep hoping that's all this
is, and I'm going to wake up and all of it will go away."
"Well, I do have a solution," I said.
His face perked up, but as I explained the plan I could see the
optimism slowly drain out of him. He did not like this plan. But I calmly
explained to him that he didn't really have any choice.
***
We waited for sundown. Then Tony parked his Camry behind the gas
station next to the growth of handplants. We waited nearby, making a point
to stand far enough away to not get our ankles grabbed.
Fortunately, we didn't have to wait long. Kieffer's SUV pulled up a
minute or two later, and for an instant I wondered if he was going to stop
and follow the plan or simply run us over. But the vehicle did stop, and
Spencer stepped out from the driver's seat. He sized us both up, then he
looked into the car and gave a nod. The door on the opposite side opened,
and Kieffer stepped out.
Spencer took off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, then opened
the back of the vehicle, where a tarp and blanket were waiting.
Tony took the cue and popped his trunk.
Kieffer and I stared at each other, keeping eye contact the whole time
while Tony and Spencer transferred the body from one vehicle to the other.
Under his enormous blonde moustache, Kieffer held a strange partial smile,
never breaking or blinking until the whole thing was over. It was unnerving.
Once it was done, Spencer got back behind the wheel, never saying a single
word. But before he joined his partner, Kieffer approached me, put a hand
on my shoulder, and whispered into my ear, "You done good."
Then they left.
We stood there in relative silence save for the humming of the wind in
the trees and the gentle scratching of the hand plants somewhere behind us.
For a moment, neither of us dared break the calm.
Finally, I patted Tony on the back and said, "Looks like you dodged a
bullet, huh?"
He dropped to the ground and sat there, staring off into the woods.
"I don't want you to think I'm not real appreciative about what you
did, homie, because I am. But, you know, would you mind if I have a
minute here?"
"Sure thing."
I turned and went back inside the store, preparing myself for another
long and hopefully boring shift. But before I took my usual spot behind the
counter, I needed to make a quick pit stop.
***
There was a man standing inside the bathroom wearing nothing but
red and white checkered boxers, blue jeans down around his ankles, a
cowboy hat, and a smile. By the time I realized I wasn't alone in there, the
door had already shut behind me.
I tried to think of what to say, but all I could come up with was, "Oh.
Hey."
He leaned his head back and said in a somewhat sing-song voice,
"Come on man. Come onnn with it."
I took the opportunity to ask him something that had been itching at
the back of my mind.
"Hey. I was wondering. Do you think everything is going to be ok?"
The bathroom cowboy took a second to think, then he pulled up his
pants, fastened his enormous belt buckle, and walked past me, spurs
clinking against the bathroom tile. He stopped for a second when he was
right next to me and with eyes looking straight forward, he said plainly, "I
appreciate it."
Then he left.
I have absolutely no idea what that was supposed to mean.