“They’re here”

There was desperation and panic in the manager's voice as she blurted this out with a heavy breath. This matched the cashier’s face, which changed from neutral and tired to dreadful and painfully awake. Another employee who was waiting behind the counter quickly got up and walked to somewhere in the back of the store.

For context, It was a little past 9:30 at night. It had been a busy day for me. I had a test and multiple quizzes in my various classes, and I had just gotten done with a hard gym session before returning to my apartment to find that I was fresh out of milk. I decided to run down to the convenience store located right under my apartment building. I knew they closed at 10, so I had plenty of time to pick up milk and browse their snacks. After finding nothing else of interest, I took the jug of milk to the counter to check out, me being the only customer in the store at this point, the only other people being three employees.

Who were “they”? Maybe some sort of cleaning or maintenance crew for the store? But it wasn’t closed yet. I picked up the milk jug and walked to the door. The manager stepped right in front of me.

“We can’t let you leave right now. It’s not safe. You’re just going to have to wait, with us, for them to pass through”.

“Who are ‘they’?!”

I replied, frustrated but even more confused. Why the hell was she blocking me from leaving? I would have imagined the store employees would want me to get out of the store now that closing time was coming up.

The manager thought about my question for a moment before shaking her head and sighing, like she was too stressed to give me an explanation at the moment. She turned around to pull down the metal blinds along the storefront, ignoring my question. As I said, they weren’t supposed to close quite yet. It wasn’t time.

I decided I wasn’t sticking around for whatever game they were playing. I walked to the door but stopped myself before going outside. On the other side of the door was a man dressed in an old yet expensive and fancy-looking suit with a big top hat. It looked as if a stock trader from the 1920s was ripped through space and time and placed on the other side of the glass.

Only seconds passed before I heard a disembodied scream come from behind me. I looked back to see the cashier with her hands over her mouth, looking at me with tears rolling down her face. The manager returned to the front of the store. When she saw me standing in front of the door, and the man on the other side, she directed a loud and firm command at me.

“Get away from the door. Now”.

I did as she said, walking back to her but before I could ask or say anything, she squawked another command.

“Go hide behind an aisle. Wait for me to tell you to come out. If you don’t do as I tell you, you’re going to die tonight. Now go”.

I had a mix of emotions and thoughts, but something told me that listening to her was my best bet. Still, I hadn’t thought of a reason right then as to why my, or anyone else’s lives would be in danger. Maybe this man was a frequent problem for the store and harassed employees, or what have you. Anyway, I did as I was told. I set the milk on the checkout counter and went to hide between some aisles in the corner of the store.

I just stood there for a moment, feeling awkward and a little afraid of whatever was going on. I took out my phone, but it wouldn’t turn on. I could have sworn it wasn’t dead when I left my apartment. Unfortunate. I guess I just had to sit it out for now. I heard the manager talking to the cashier, who seemed quite afraid of the man or whatever was going on.

About two minutes later I heard the automatic doors open and someone walked in. The echoing footsteps broke the silence as they approached the counter. They stopped and silence filled the store once again, but only for a few seconds. A man with a friendly tone broke the silence.

“Good evening”.

“H-h-hello”.

I heard the timid cashier squeeze out, barely able to form coherent words.

“Would you be so kind as to point me in the direction of your store’s meats?”

I tiptoed to the edge of the aisle and looked toward the counter. The man I saw outside was now standing in front of the cashier. He stood with perfect posture. He was much taller than I expected. He must have been around 6’5 or 6’6 and his stature towered even higher over the short cashier with his tall top hat. The cashier replied to him, very timidly

“We...we have some…packages of lunchmeat…turkey, ham they’re…they’re in that section, right over there you see- “.

The man in the suit interrupted.

“Oh, I am sorry dear. I do not believe we are talking about the same thing. I was told there would be a fair stock of freshly harvested meats, available for purchase”.

“I…I don’t know what you mean sir”.

“Oh, I think you do”.

The man didn’t move. He stayed standing in front of the counter, staring the silent cashier down. She looked down in despair, I could hear her breathing and whimpers as the man remained. It was as if he were programmed, like a non-player character in a game, waiting for input before he could deliver another line of dialogue or make any move. I saw the manager walk up from behind. She must have been waiting in the back of the store. Standing behind the man, albeit a good distance away, she addressed him herself.

“How can we help you, sir?”

She said, rather calm. The man slowly turned around. He was, to put it bluntly, extraordinarily handsome and well-kept. Clean shaven, with no bags under his eyes, no blemishes or imperfections in his skin, and pearly white teeth that glared from across the room as his eyes met the manager.

“Good evening. I was told there would be a fair stock of freshly harvested meat, available for purchase”.

He repeated to the manager while still sporting his gentle smile. The manager took a deep breath before she looked back up, making eye contact and saying.

“Sir, unfortunately, we have run out of fresh meat. If you come back again, we will have a fresh shipment available for purchase, but we do not have any at the moment. Thank you for shopping with us”.

The man’s smile faded as he stared down at the manager for what must have been a good half minute. The complete absence of even the slightest movement made him look more like a statue than a person. He seemingly broke whatever trance he was in, and his smile returned.

“I understand. I will return. I wish you, ladies, a wonderful night”.

And with that, he calmly walked out of the automatic doors, leaving the store.

The cashier behind the counter broke down in tears. The manager walked behind the counter, put an arm around her, and escorted her to the back of the store. I followed. The manager got to the opposite back corner of the store I had been hiding and opened some sort of janitor closet. Inside was the third employee whom I saw retreat to the back of the store earlier. He was on a phone, not a cellphone, some sort of wireless home phone that I assumed to be the phone for the store.

“Were you able to get in touch with them?”

The manager asked after gently helping the hysterical cashier to the floor of the closet.

“They’re still trying to figure out how to get here. It might take them a while. Can you hold it down by yourself out there?”

The manager nodded her head as she let out another sigh, closing the door and turning around to me.

“We might be here for a while. I need one of my employees on the phone so we can get help and the other seems to be incapable of helping so I need you to do as I say so we can all survive this. You don’t have a choice, if you try to leave, if you mess up, if you don’t do exactly as I say, we all die. Understand?”

“I…Yeah, I understand”.

I assured, complimented by a nod of the head. Though, I was far from assured in my ability, and even more so, that any of this was real. I still had no clue what was going on and who “they” were, either regarding the odd man in the suit or whomever the employee in the closet was on the phone with. The manager walked behind the counter, next to the first register. I thought about running, about booking it out that door and getting back to my apartment where I wouldn’t have to deal with this circus of a prank they were running.

I didn’t have time to formulate a plan to run. The automatic doors opened again, and I heard quieter, yet frantic footsteps enter. I looked at the manager and she waved her hand and silently mouthed what I assumed to be “hide” before ducking under the counter herself. I shuffled back to my original spot, behind the aisles.

The sickly sound of heavy breathing, like that of an old, asthmatic man joined the quick steps. They ran from the entrance to the counter. They stopped for a moment, but the breathing was incessant. It began running again. It seemed to get close, then far, then closer, then far, and closer again. I quickly put the pieces together, realizing it was moving up and down the aisles, sweeping all of them in order and it would eventually run down mine.

I panicked for a few seconds, trying to piece together an idea of how not to be spotted. I hoped that whoever it was, wasn’t perceptive enough to notice me move over an aisle. When it got to the aisle before mine, I waited for it to walk a distance down, away from me. I turned around the edge of my aisle and took a peek around the corner. I finally saw. It wasn’t a person.

It stood about four or five feet above the ground. It was completely naked and had pale, white skin, too white to be any living human. Its back was massively hunched, its spine protruding so far it looked as if it would tear through the flesh any moment. The legs were thin and small, they didn’t look like they could support the weight of the creature they carried. The feet and toes were like that of a lizard.

When it turned the corner, I could see its short arms with human-like hands that were far too large for proportionality with dirty, long, black nails. Its chest was defined by tight skin over a large ribcage, and the rest of its torso looked tightly wrapped to its skeleton as if it was starving to death. The face was the worst. Its jaw was much, much longer than that of any person and came to a point on the bottom, looking almost cartoonish. Its mouth was left open, leaving the teeth and gums exposed. The teeth looked pristine like they were made perfectly and couldn’t possibly have any blemishes, but they were long, very long. Impossibly long. The gums were black, they seemed to be rotting away. The nose and eyes were like that of a man, but the whites were some sort of shade of green like an illness had been contracted and turned them that color. It had only a few stands of wiry, white hair.

I moved as quietly as I could to the next aisle. When the creature had finally finished searching the whole of the store, it made its way out of the aisles and through the automatic doors of the store, incessantly breathing all the way, like it was about to drop dead any minute.

Only seconds later, the doors opened again. The manager yelled for me to come to the front. I hesitantly got out from behind my aisle and walked up, cautiously, eyeing up the door to see who was about to come through but it just seemed to stay open.

“Get behind the counter. Do not say anything. Smile when they do”.

“Smile when who- “.

“Shhh”.

A child ran through the door. A child? Out in this city? At this hour? Why? Where were its parents? Six more followed. They all seemed very young, around 5 or 6 would be my guess. They started running all over the store, between the aisles, and around the front. I think they were playing some game like tag or hide and seek for a while, laughing and acting as you would expect kids this age to act.

“Just let them be and do as I said. When they smile, smile back”.

The manager reminded me. They kept on playing for five minutes or so before they collectively stopped running around and came to the front. They quickly formed a single-file line in front of the counter before each one grabbed a bar of chocolate from the shelves next to the counter, the type that stores use to display small items like snacks and magazines that people are inclined to buy on impulse. The first kid walked up to the manager at the register and pulled out a dollar and some change. It happened to be the exact price of the bar. Though, in this situation, I don’t think anyone would have protested if it weren’t.

After the first kid placed his change on the counter, he turned and looked at me. He just maintained eye contact while not displaying any particular emotion, very much like how normal children stare at strangers in public for no particular reason. But, I found out soon enough that these weren’t normal children.

The kid smiled at me and I, doing as I was instructed, smiled back. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bare to maintain my smile when the kid’s smile grew, revealing that his mouth opened from one end of his head to another, practically touching ear to ear. He revealed his long row of jagged teeth. He must have noticed a change in mood from my facial expression and luckily for me, so did the manager. She turned her head slightly in my direction.

“Smile. Back”.

She said quietly, yet very firm. I forced myself to smile, staring at this monster, not a child, that had locked its gaze with mine. It giggled, breaking focus from me before grabbing the candy bar and running out of the store. I endured the same treatment for the next five. All of them did the exact same thing. It felt as though I were an assembly line worker whose function was simply to be exposed to the unnatural image of those monsters while I tried my hardest to hold a smile. Luckily, it wasn’t long and I was relieved for it to be over. I turned and started to walk away from the counter before the manager grasped my arm and yanked me back.

“There’s still one here. We don’t move until it leaves”.

I nodded my head and said nothing. I could hear it running around in the back aisles of the store. I guess this one was the troublemaker of the group.

“I’m gonna find youuu”.

It said in its squeaky voice as it ran. A few minutes passed before it stopped, right in front of the janitor's closet. It looked up at it like it knew something before gripping the handle and pulling it down. The cashier was holding the door and tried to resist it from opening but she was nowhere near strong enough. The child monster let out a scream before yanking the door with incredible force, breaking it off its hinges and sending the cashier across the floor. It looked back and forth from the cashier to the other employee on the phone before, in a playful voice, telling them

“I’m gonna tell on youuu!”

Before proceeding to run out of the store giggling the entire time, not bothering to buy a candy bar like the others.

The cashier seemed to be knocked unconscious. The other employee peeked out of the closet, with the door now gone. He looked at the manager

“What do we do now? We have no idea which one the fucking kid is going to wake up, it could be one of the thousands. Our friends haven’t found their way here yet either. I think we need to make a run for it”.

“No. No! You and I both know that won’t play out well for us. We need to stay here until it passes or until the team gets here. Take the phone and go hide behind the aisles. We need to keep in touch. If we don’t…Shit! Hide. Hide!”

The manager quickly ducked under the counter. Me and the employee with the phone ran to the back corner of the store. As the automatic doors opened once again, I looked back to see we had forgotten something. The cashier was still on the floor, knocked out, and unresponsive. I tried to get to her but I was caught by the employee next to me. With the phone still in one hand, shaking his head, he whispered to me

“Don’t, it’s too late”.

My heart sank in my chest but I believed him to be right. I sat down with weak legs. Again, the store was quiet, quiet enough for us to hear the hooves clanking against the hard floor as they entered. Sadistic laughter joined them. This one sounded like an adult voice, and likely a man. The steps were loud enough that it was obvious whatever was walking had some weight to it. It was walking next to the aisles opposite of us, where the cashier was still laying. We moved to the edge of our aisle but stayed long enough to see it.

Coming into view from behind the aisle opposite of us were the legs of a deer supporting the upper body of a man, or at least it looked to be the case, I couldn’t be sure because it was clothed in a red and blue clown outfit. The jester-style hat matched the colors. It stood around 6’ or so but the body underneath stretched the arms and shoulders of the outfit from its massive build. The hands were black and each finger had a jagged, long, and sharp nail. The face was pale but shiny as if it had been painted. The lips and around the eyes were painted as well, though they were black. The nose was a round red ball.

It stopped walking and laughing when it got to that aisle, right in front of the broken door and the unconscious cashier that lay in front of it. The clown bent down and effortlessly picked up the cashier by her neck, and held her up in front of him. It stared at her, tilting its head in curiosity as if it had found some type of rare specimen as if it weren’t one itself. The employee next to me was whispering a rushed description through the phone. I could hear a voice on the other end though it was much too quiet to make out any words.

The cashier opened her eyes, finally waking up before her eyes grew even wider as she realized what she was looking at. She screamed at the clown holding her up by the neck. It seemed to be repulsed by the scream and pulled her in, clenching its jaw around her neck and taking a bite. Her mouth hung open as she was instantly silenced. The clown took another bite before reaching its other hand up to grab her head as well. In a swift motion, it ripped the head from the body and tossed it in our direction.

Spreading blood around the back aisle like a sprinkler, the head landed only feet from where we were standing. I didn’t dare to take another peak but it didn’t matter anyways. Another round of hysterical laughter broke out from the clown.

“I know you’re over there. Want me to come to show you a trick?”

Came a surprising and offsetting high-pitched voice. The employee next to me dropped the phone and tried to make a run for it. He made it to the open space in front of the counter before the clown ran in front of him. The employee’s full-speed sprint was easily broken and he tumbled back. The clown wasn’t phased by being run into one bit.

It picked the employee up by the wrists and lifted him to its level. It violently pulled on both arms and ripped them from their sockets. The employee, still left alive, let out his own blood-curdling screams as he bled out helplessly on the floor. The clown laughed for a moment before lunging out with a kick from its hoof, crushing his skull.

I looked down at the phone, hearing some sort of feedback from whoever was on the other end. I picked it up and held it to my ear.

“Hello?”

I whispered in a raspy and frightened voice.

“Listen, you need to blind it. Check our phone. I know it wouldn’t work before but it will now. You need to turn the flashlight on and point it in its eyes. Are you hearing me?”

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. It was on, and more than that, it was somehow fully charged. I hadn’t charged it. This made no sense. The clown spoke from the middle of the store.

“Don’t you go thinking I forgot about you now. I’ve got a different trick for you. I know you’ll like it”

I dropped the store phone and, like the employee, I tried to run. I dashed down the last aisle before realizing I had no clue where the hell I planned on going. I panicked, reaching for my cell phone again. It fell from my pocket, onto the floor. I quickly recovered it, trying to turn the flashlight on as running hooves approached from behind me. As I was grabbed and forcefully turned over, but I had the luck of turning on the phone's flashlight just in time.

The clown screamed in pain and anger as it ran past me and into the other aisles. It ripped and threw everything off the shelves it possibly could, trashing the store and tearing it apart. I recovered and kept pointing my phone’s flashlight in its direction. It tripped over a shelf it had torn in half and fell flat on its face. Jumping back to its feet, the clown turned around and swatted at me but covered its eyes and resumed its wretched screams when the light met its eyes once again.

It ran, tripping and screaming, through the doors of the store and left. It was silent once again.

The manager, who had been taking cover behind the counter this whole time, stood up and got a look at the carnage herself. I could tell by her face that something inside her had died when she saw the dismembered bodies of her coworkers but she said nothing about it. Instead, she turned to me and asked

“Where is the phone?”

I turned off my cell phone flashlight and put it back into my pocket before walking over the mess of merchandise and blood to the back of the store. I picked up the store phone and walked it to the front, handing it to the manager who hadn’t moved, still staring in horrid disbelief at the bodies in front of her. She took it and began conversing with someone on the other end. I stayed where I was, not having the guts to look behind me and see it again.

After about thirty seconds of a conversation from which I could understand nothing and one I wasn’t paying much attention to in the first place, the manager let out another sigh, this one of relief, and muttered

“Oh, thank god. How long?”

More talking from the other end.

“Ok…Ok, I can do that. There is still one other alive. I’ll have him watch out for your arrival”.

With that, the manager set down the phone and looked at me with drained and tired eyes.

“I need you to stand by the door and watch for black SUVs to pull up. Let me know when they get here. Yell to me and I’ll tell you if they’re the team we are expecting. If they’re not, hide. I need to do something in the back”

She picked back up the phone and headed to the back of the store. I didn’t feel like asking any more questions. I figured that whoever this team was, they must be our way out of this nightmare. I walked over and stood in front of the automatic doors, looking outside. I couldn’t see anything but the typical street I knew, but with no one on it. All the time I waited, I could hear the manager tinkering with something in the back.

It was here that I began to process everything I had just been through. It was too much. My thoughts and emotions ran wild in my head, but above all, I wanted to know what this was. For the next few minutes, I weighed the possibilities in my head and contemplated the merit of each of them, of any of them. None of them gave a clear explanation. I still don’t have one.

Eventually, the black SUVs pulled up and a mix of men in tactical gear with rifles and others in formal suits poured out. There were four or five cars and around six people emptied from each. I turned to the back of the store and yelled

“Hey! Is this them? They’re here”

I received no response.

“Hey!”

I yelled again as I walked to the back of the store.

At the end of the backmost aisle, The phone lay on the ground. I walked up to it in confusion and kneeled to pick it up but I was close enough to make out the yells on the other end before I did.

“We’re here. Do you copy? Hello? Our team is entering now. Are you still with us? Hello?”

Before I could pick up the phone, I stood back up and walked around the corner, into the last aisle. The manager was on the ground, laying face up and in her own pool of blood. Her body was cut open at the belly and on top of her crouched a man. It was the man from earlier, the first one who walked in. The tall man with a fancy old suit and hat but this time he was without the hat and coat for his suit. He held a large knife which he was carving into the manager’s body.

Organs surrounded the two, he must have ripped them out. He looked up from what he was doing and smiled at me before looking back down and continuing. In a matter-of-fact voice, he spoke to me.

“I did say I would be back for the meat. I don’t have any problem harvesting it myself”.

With that, he pulled her heart out and held it up like it was a piece of art he was proud of before putting it in a suitcase on the floor next to him and closing it. He stood up, looking at me and then at his knife.

“I’m sure you’ll give me fine cuts too”

Returning his glare to me and smiling again. He let out an angry grunt before charging at me. I turned back around the corner and ran for the door. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the men approaching from outside.

“Well, aren’t you the lucky one tonight”

He returned his knife to a sheath in his vest before calmly turning around and heading back into the last aisle. He came back with his suitcase in hand and the manager’s body over his shoulder, carrying her like she was weightless. He approached the janitor’s closet and opened the door I swore was ripped off its hinges not minutes before. When he opened it, cold air poured out and in the small angle available to me, I saw a body hanging from a meathook. The man walked in, throwing the manager’s body somewhere inside before turning around and gabbing the door handle. He looked at me one last time before closing it. In a friendly tone again, he spoke one last time.

“Good day”.

The automatic doors opened behind me and the swarm of men rushed in. Immediately, half a dozen or so walked to the closet door and pointed their weapons at it. When it opened, they were met with the inside of a closet and nothing more.

“Fuck!”

I heard one scream before kicking some bread off of a shelf.

“We’ve been after that son of a bitch for months. How does he get away every time?”

Another commented. The rest swept around the remainder of the store. Some brought in weird-looking equipment. Too much was happening for me to account for all of it but I did take note of some of what they were doing. Some collected hairs that had fallen on the floor. Others used a blacklight to show the footprints from the previous hunched-back monster. They collected all the change and one-dollar bills the children had payed with. Eventually, two large boxes were brought in that they used to collect the bodies of the other workers.

I was left unaccounted for it seemed. A few minutes passed before one man in a suit approached me. He didn’t have any interest in asking me anything, it was clear he wanted to make a statement.

“I know this is a lot to take in, and I know that not much of it makes any sense. There's no way we can explain it to you that will. I am sorry for whatever you had to see or experience tonight but there's nothing we can do about it. These…these things are doing this to people all around the world for reasons we have yet to discover. This is the 7th time this store, in particular, has been targeted. We are doing what we can. We are one of the only ones out there trying to stop them. We need you to stay silent about this, if people know about us, if they find out, we’ll be shut down and none of this will ever be fixed. People will die and it will only get worse. If you want to save anyone else, keep your mouth shut”

He breathed and looked at me in pity. He pointed towards the entrance.

“You can walk out of those doors whenever you’re ready”.

I don’t know what he meant but I never planned on keeping it silent. What happened to those convenience store workers needs to be told. People need to be aware of this. Though, I didn’t let my intentions be known there. I said nothing and walked through the automatic doors and outside, in front of the street packed with their vehicles.

I looked back at the store. The lights were on and it was empty. I turned back to the street. The SUVs were all gone. People were back, walking about like they would on any other night. I heard the metro train approaching again.

It was done.