THE CONVENIENCE STORE

We all got there the same. Waking up in the back of our cars parked along the road in front of the convenience store. We looked at each other over the racks and shelves we grabbed snacks off of. It was 3:30am. Some stood in line wondering if what happened was real.

I stood by a rack of chips reaching down for the Funyuns when a man hit my hand from the other side of the rack. We locked eyes above the packages, I had seen him before, but with a baseball cap. We stared at each other wondering if we should ask each other what happened or pretend that this was all normal.

The store was silent outside of the constant bell of the door and the beep of the scanner. “Am I in a dream right now?” a man in line murmured under his breath.

Everyone’s eyes in the store shifted to look at him, knowing they were thinking the same thing.

The clerks eyes darted across the room with the never ending flow of incoming customers; scanning the items upon our arrival. Did everyone come from the 110 I thought. Did other people experience this tonight somewhere else or was it just those of us filling the convenience store?

It all started this evening. It was a Friday and I had just gotten off of work. The long drive home was a never-ending line of bumper to bumper cars. Dusk had already settled. My phone was overheated so I couldn’t connect my podcast to the car. I sat there in silence staring at the alternating break lights. Red streaks of light blurred across my dry eyes. It was then I heard a honk. A man in front of me started yelling out his open window. Honking as if it would change the flow of traffic. His anger spread across the cars in unison horns honked, tires rolled forward, and engines revved. I watched the man as he grew more anxious from being held captive on the freeway. My attention was drawn away from the angry man. When the woman in the car to the left of me was holding her horn down without reprieve.

It was then I heard a scream coming from across the barricade that separated those coming from going. I looked around, no one seemed to be aware of this intense shrill coming from the sea of cars. Surely the angry man I had been watching could hear the commotion with his window rolled down. It was then when I realized it was him screaming. He was now hovering in his car on the other side of the freeway, a beam of light guiding his way into the sky. I looked left and right to see the other drivers response to the un-mistakable scene but they just stared forward as if they heard nothing, saw nothing and had seemingly no awareness of the event occurring to the left of us. I rolled down my window, putting my car in park pulling my body slightly out to get a better view. Like a blip on a tv screen when it’s turned off; I blinked and the man in the sky was gone along with his car. A flash of light he left behind was burned into my retinas. I turned my attention back to where his car originally sat. The car that had been behind him moved forward as if there was never a car there to begin with. I started looking from window to window in the rear view mirrors to find someone else who had witnessed the scene. There was only one man parked behind and diagonal to me. He had a baseball cap on and looked white as a ghost. I sat there in the car not knowing what to do.

(Illustrated by Felicia Cantu)

I began to panic. Honking my horn so I could get over to the lane with the exit ramp when I felt the car suddenly shift to park. The engine was cut, I leaned down to look at the key in the ignition to see if I had hit it accidentally. But the key was gone. Lifting my head back up over the dash I only saw the night sky and a bright light starting to flood the car. I stuck my head out the window, the 110 was below me, I was on the wrong side of the freeway hovering above the traffic like the man I had seen moments before.

Suddenly I felt the blip flash through me, I blinked and that's when I had found myself in the back of my car. Parked in front of the convenience store I was now in.

Beep, Beep..

“That’ll be $7.99” the cashier said to the woman standing in front of me.

She handed him a wad of crumpled up ones, pulled her stuff off the counter and walked towards the door like she was asleep. I stepped up to the counter.

“Will this be all?” the cashier said.

“Yes, umm can you tell me where we are?”

The cashier’s eyes that had been watching the constant flow of new customers turned to me.

“I can’t but thank you for coming.”

“Thanks.” I said grabbing my stuff off the counter when I saw a mark on my wrist.

I walked out of the store looking down at my arm to see what the new marking was. It looked like a fresh tattoo made up of a series of dots. I looked up hearing the store doors swing open. The man who had hit my hand at the rack walked out.

“Do you have one of these?!” I yelled, raising my wrist up into the air.

“One of what?” he asked walking closer to me.

“One of these.” I lifted my sleeve revealing the new tattoo.

“No, see.” He rolled his wrist over. A different configuration of dots wrapped around his wrist.

“I’ve never seen that before in my life.” He said.

He ran his fingers across the dots, each one disappearing as his finger traced over them.

He blinked and stared at me.

“What did you just ask me?”

“I asked if you had these dots on your wrist”

“I don’t have dots on my wrist, see..” He held out his wrist, the dots were gone and with them his memory of our interaction.

 “I better get going, I think I’m late to something.” He said while running off to a car parked down the road.

A woman appeared from the store doors, “Ma’am can I ask you a question? Do you have markings on your wrist?”

"No, I don't; are you sure yours are really there Ryan?" She asked.

“I ran my fingers across the marking on my wrist. How did you know my… did you need something?” I asked.

A woman was standing in front of me.

“Why am I here?

The woman squinted her eyes at me. I think it's best if you head home now Ryan.

"Yeah, I think I'm late to something. I'm sorry, but I have to get going.” I said, before heading back to my car.

The woman stood there in front of an empty field that was marked for construction. She stayed there watching me as I walked away. I got in the car looking back at the woman in the rear view mirror. Behind her was now a convenience store. I stepped on the breaks to look back. The woman and the store were gone.

“Jimmy. Come out here for a second”

“Ya, boss.”

“Lets try and get the rest of these people out of here, another deposit is set to pop in shortly; and can you restock the Funyuns the scary ones love those.”

“You got it boss!”