Courteous Clerk Part 1 (18+)
August 30, 2007
Courteous Clerk Part 1
Usually after the automatic door beep the clerk would shift gears. He’d put down his tool and climb the wooden folding stairs from the basement to the convenience store. He would put a smile on, pop a tic-tac and adjust his cornflower blue tie. This clerk loved being around people, he loved his job, he thought if nothing else before he died he helped humanity, even if humanity just wanted a pack of cigarettes. The clerk would chuckle to himself as he took those 14 steps in stride up to his family owned store, he’d keep retelling that joke in his head that always got customers to laugh. He knew in his subconscious that this day would end just like every other day and he would fall asleep next to his loving wife that night beneath their 99 cents store glow in the dark ceiling stars. But today was different.
Jack Nine was a faceless man. Not in the general sense of the word faceless but in what it implies about a personality. No one knew Jack. Not that anyone had bothered to ask, caught up in their own self-images and roundabouts of daily life and such. Jack Nine was an unemployed man who had reached an all time high of self apatheticism. He got all of his clothes from various thrift stores. None in particular and he didn’t have a favorite. Jack Nine pictured the corporate world as mass media prostitution. Whoever was the cheapest and whoever undercut the rest, whoever could make your wallet cum. That’s who got your money. Jack Nine decided thrift stores were simply there, not for your business, but more of a bargain bin that you contribute to and they give back.
Upon parking his dirty old white diesel engine car, Jack Nine reclined in his sheep skin seat and stared up through the sun roof at the moon. That night was an eclipse. The first in twenty four years for Ashton, Arizona. He gazed at the now orange moon shadowed by the earth and let out a great sigh of happiness. And as if things could not have gotten better for Jack Nine at that moment, Strawberry Fields Forever came on the radio which happened to be his favorite song of all time. He smiled, looking up at the keychain that dangled along with his car keys still in the ignition “Strawberry Fields”.
Jack felt something in his right pocket as his outer thigh brushed against the car door. Completely forgetting the piece of glass he had picked up at the beach to make his natural wind chimes, he reached in only to retreat his hand quickly into his mouth. Blood poured down the sleeves of his 70’s beige collared shirt, $4.00 at the Child Molestation Thrift Store. He kicked the door closed behind him and ran inside the nearby corner liquor store.
The clerk was not an odd man by any standards. He was a devout Christian who attended church every Sunday for the past fifty six years of his life. He liked an occasional lite imported beer, watching a hockey game now and again. And his favorite thing in the world was the feel of a new sweater vest. His second favorite thing? His blood fetish.
The clerk loved blood. After his wife would fall asleep next to him he would sneak out of bed and into his computer room. He would squirt some of the sensitive skin all natural lemon scented lotion into his hand and lock the door behind him. In the middle of the night, searching the depths of the internet, he loved absolutely everything. Gore, vore, cutting, masochism, torture, sadism, organ fucking, snuff (if he could find it), genital mutilation, algolagnia, nexus books, S & M, and scarification. In the past few months he had taken it to a whole new level and begun making small incisions in his inner thigh with a paper clip. The endorphins in his brain gave him the best feelings he had ever received in his dull life of convenience retail.
Jack Nine pushed the glass door open with his back, taking big breaths and trying not to pass out from looking at the cut. As the clerk closed the basement door behind him, still smiling from the joke he had been going over in his head, he looked up at Jack and his smile faded.
“Do you sell bandages?” Jack asked in gasps.
The clerk said nothing, he just stared at Jack’s hand.
“Do you speak English?” Jack said applying pressure to the wound.
The clerk took a box of Cheerios from the counter and covered his erection.
“Had an accident?” the clerk asked, half smiling.
“Yes. Do you sell bandages?!”
The clerk pulled his stool out from behind the counter and set it in front of him. He took off his apron and handed it to Jack.
“Wrap it in this and have a seat. I’ll get some gauss from the basement.”
Jack did. “Thank you.”
It felt like hours since the clerk left him. Jack’s vision got blurry and the lights started to fade, he squinted his eyes at the clock on the wall. It had been at least thirty minutes and the clerk was nowhere to be found. The apron was now soaked and dripping on the white linoleum floor.
“Fuck this,” he said.
And with that he started descending the basement stairs.
Courteous Clerk Part 2 (18+)
September 4, 2007
Courteous Clerk Part 2
Jeremy was a modern day superhero. Ever since childhood as he was sprawled out on the Flash Gordon rug at age five reading Captain America until he had to brush his teeth and go to bed, Jeremy had always wanted to be something more.
He was forty five as of three weeks ago and celebrated his birthday at Chuck E. Cheese. Not because Jeremy particularly liked Chuck E. Cheese, but because he had two three year old daughters who wouldn’t have enjoyed anyone’s birthday at the Olive Garden.
Jeremy’s wife had left a year ago from today, completely forgetting it was his birthday. Jeremy spent that night in the basement with some rags and rubbing alcohol but couldn’t make himself pass out.
Wandering the loud open commons of Chuck E. Cheese, his daughters off playing in the ball pit, Jeremy sipped his medium cherry Coke. There was all sorts of games, hungry hungry hippo, Dino Balls, Captain America… The saliva saturated Jeremy’s tongue as his eyes spotted this game. He rummaged in his pockets for tokens and shoved one in. And there he was, on the big screen, a blazing pixelated Captain America standing on the top of some monstrous building, his toned chest reflecting in the afternoon glare, his cape blowing neatly behind him in the wind.
For the first time in forty years Jeremy smiled. Not just a grimace but a real smile. He must have played for hours. He played until his daughters fell asleep behind him against the hungry hungry hippo game. He played until he had spent every dollar of his last paycheck. He played until two Chuck E. Cheese employees had to drag him out by the arms and lock the front door behind him. He screamed and cursed and kicked the tinted glass door. When the police showed up he finally left.
That night his dinner tasted more delicious than any Lunchables he had ever eaten. His life now had meaning. Jeremy Graham Stacker was no longer a mild-mannered health consultant of the Redux Air Fresheners Sect. 8 of Ashton, Arizona. He was a life saver, a fighter of what was evil, a superhero.
The next morning Jeremy dropped his two daughters off at the city daycare center just like every day and started his drive towards the factory. Back, right, turn left, left, straight straight straight, Wilmecone Plaza, right, straight. He played the directions back in his head like they were a Saturday morning cartoon song. Right, right, right, can’t be wrong, left, left, left, singin’ this song!
And when he got to his turn off, his left blinker flashing to all of the company’s employees behind him, he turned off his blinker and made an illegal right towards the city. Jeremy figured the only natural habitat he saw superheros in was the city, NOT places of work, NOT factories, NOT cramped desks. If he was to start fighting crime he would start with the basics.
The darker side of the city, known as Tirk, was a place Jeremy had never gone to. He had lived here for ten years and realized he’d never even been to the city during the daytime. This made him giggle profusely as he adjusted his air freshener.
Tirk had an odd aura to it, the streetlights were red, the street was darker than the rest of the city, and women stood on either side of the street.
A slim woman, around twenty, brown hair, faded makeup, ran up to Jeremy’s car and tapped on the window with a Chinese fan.
“Park your car” she said sternly.
He did.
Walking over to his car asked him, “How much time do you need?”
Jeremy shrugged.
She adjusted her bra, “A first timer? Ok, come with me.”
Holding onto his hand, she pulled him through a door that said “Abandoned” and up two flights of neon lit stairs. The room was hot and humid, the smell of perfume made Jeremy gasp for air and make him have to breathe through his collared shirt.
The woman started to get undressed and looked up at him like she expected something. His eyes widened and he started taking off his pants.
With her up against the wall in the corner, a Lenny Kravitz poster behind them, he was fucking her harder than he thought possible. The first sex for him in a year. He gritted his teeth and went further. She fake moaned but he didn’t care. He was going to save her.
Fifteen minutes passed and he was ready to be a hero.
“Not inside” she said, all too uncaring.
Jeremy didn’t listen and with one last push came inside her.
“What the fuck did I say?!” she screamed, “Not inside you piece of shit!”
Still inside her, he pushed her up against the wall and grabbed on to her neck. He smiled intently, still thrusting, squeezing harder and harder, her hand was reaching for something on the table. Wrapped around him, her hand now wielding a knife stabbed towards him.
“Not today evil doer!” he said with the strongest tone he could.
Grabbing the knife from her without a second thought he stabbed her over and over in the sternum, still thrusting inside her, the blood covered the wooden floor. She gagged on her own tongue as he stuck it in her mouth and thrust her head against the wall behind them. And just as she was about to give her dying scream to the world that had treated her so poorly, he took her head and smashed it against the bedpost with a crack crack crack.
Still smiling, Jeremy got his clothes on, his Kelmer “Dad style” hiking boots and finished her broken skull with a few stomps. He had never had to clean white brain off of his shoes before but he figured this was all part of the adventure.
Driving on his way home, still smiling, he figured he’d treat himself to a cherry Coke for his day of crime fighting. He stopped his car next to a shabby looking white car and went inside the corner market. As he walked over to the soda section he noticed something on the ground, a pool of blood, dried now, leading in drips to a closed door.
He placed both hands on his hips, held his chest outwards and was off to fight another crime.
