DogOfHavoc
Future Tragedy
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Here's a short story I wrote for English. I thought I'd share it with you guys and see what you think. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit into the genre for the Short Story Contest. Oh well.
“Hah another one,” Jack thought triumphantly as he tossed the dented can into the quickly growing pile. Yes, it was possible to think triumphantly he decided, because if he had said it triumphantly people would have heard him. And if anyone heard him get excited over a dented can they would have packed him up in a nice white van and sent him to a padded room. Which of course, would have given him a great story to tell, but that’s little consolation when the only people to share your story with are the voices in your head. He decided the only voice in his head was his own, and went back to his work.
It was Jack’s job as Co-Managerial Stock Floor Assistant (which is just a fancy way of saying he got paid next to nothing to do less than nothing) to go through all the canned goods and make sure none were dented. If he found any dented cans it was his job to toss them in a pile, and then dispose of them all. He did this for hours straight, going up and down the aisles looking at thousands of cans of chicken noodle soup and those meatball cans with the creepy fat chef on the front.
That big goofy grin and lopsided chef hat mocked him. Why should the cook be happy? He was just a drawing on a piece of paper on a dented can. Jack was a living, thinking person. But that, of course, was little consolation.
Despite the boring nature of his job, the work did have a few distractions. Every so often he would find a dented can. What a wonderful break from the monotony that was. What a great thing to discover and reveal imperfections. He reveled in the glory of the dented can, breathing in the imperfection, the faulty physique. Sometimes he couldn’t even see the dent, but if he could feel it, or think that he could feel it, into the pile the can went.
It was during a particularly boring day that it happened. There he was, going through the canned aisles. He was having a terrible dry spell, having gone several aisles without finding any dents. Monotony saturated his very being, tugged at his droopy eyelids, sagged his legs. He looked up at the wall of canned goods wondering, “What if it all collapsed on top of me?”
He had a fair idea of what would happen. The janitor would find him crushed beneath a hundred tons of meatballs and dented soup cans. A look of annoyance would cross the janitor’s face as he set about the task of cleaning up the mess. Maybe he would even hum a little ditty to pass the time. Eventually he would free Jack; of course he would have to look at Jack’s nametag to identity him. There was very little chance the Janitor would know him. After fifteen years of servitude to HappyMart a grand total of two people even knew Jack Goldfield’s last name. One signed his paychecks, and wouldn’t recognize him if he saw him on the street. The other was his boss, who only knew his name so that she could yell at him when he failed to do his job properly (which was apparently a frequent occurrence). His macabre musings were rudely intruded upon.
“Clean up in aisle ten” the loudspeakers announced throughout the store. Jack looked up with disgust at the ceiling. His sneakers squeaked as he walked across the unnaturally shiny tile floors of the supermarket. Customers milled about in the aisles and Jack did his best to avoid them. Eyes locked to the floor, he turned a corner and bumped into a small balding man. Ugh. Not this guy again.
The little man squeaked with what could only be sadistic glee when he saw Jack. Clearing his throat, the little man straightened up to make himself seem taller. He wasn’t very successful. The little man fiddled with his glasses and leaned forward, pretending to read Jack’s nametag.
“Hello there Jack,” the man said with relish. His beady eyes glinted behind his spectacles as the word rolled off his tongue. “I need some assistance with a few things.”
“Yes sir,” Jack replied with little enthusiasm. The tiny man smirked even more with the word “sir”. He was a member of that fine breed of creature that goes to retail stores because all the employees have to address him as “sir”. These parasites flock to minimum wage establishments because the level of formal respect they receive there makes them feel better about their own slightly above minimum wage salary. They are the kind of people that subconsciously remark “O he makes $7.50? Poor dear. I make $7.75 and I get dental.” Wonderful people, those. But Jack wasn’t thinking about this, Jack rarely thought about anything.
Jack followed obsequiously, taking every necessary step to avoid a customer complaint. He followed the man to the “few things” he needed assistance with. The “few things” was really just one thing, one large oven stacked on the highest shelf in the store.
“I’ll be right back sir, I’ll need the lift to get that down,” Jack said as he headed for the backroom. The little man rubbed his hands together, glowing from the most recent “sir”.
Jack trudged slowly through the store. There was no rush really. He passed through the furniture department, and then the clothing department and then finally into the warehouse in the back of the store. After a moment of searching he found the man he was looking for, Bryan.
Bryan was lounging on a stack of crushed cardboard boxes. His long matted hair clung about his shoulders in an unkempt mane. His uniform was dirty and untidy. Bryan was going nowhere fast, and was enjoying the ride. He didn’t bother to get up as Jack approached.
“What’s up my man?” Bryan greeted. Bryan was a member of the countless number of people who didn’t know Jack’s name. He had never bothered to learn it and never would.
“Same old, same old,” Jack responded. As he crossed the room to got closer to Bryan he had to duck to get past a large palette dangling from the roof. It was a large wooden slab held up a dangling rope net. Suspended upon it were numerous spoiled foodstuffs and defective merchandise.
“That thing has been there forever, when are you going to clean it out?” Jack asked.
Bryan shrugged. “It’s all discontinued and damaged goods. Really not worth keeping I guess, probably be better off without it. But you know, I just never bother to get rid of it. Useless junk, I know, but once I get rid of it I might find out I needed some of it. Plus, getting rid of it just seems like a bad idea. Been there so long, guess I’m just used to it.” Bryan had a terrible penchant for rambling.
Jack didn’t respond, he was rummaging through Bryan’s desk. He rustled through old cigarette butts and trashy magazines. Finally, he pulled out the keys for the lift. Without another word, he climbed into the lift, plugged in the key. The forklift’s engine rumbled to life and he drove back into the store, making sure not to knock down the palette as he passed it.
The little man stood waiting expectantly, his eyes grew wide as he saw the forklift approach. All that trouble, that big machine, just to help him? He was beyond elated.
Jack steered the fork carefully and hooked the prongs underneath the oven. It was a lot of work swinging the fork back and forth once the heavy oven was balanced on top, but he managed to safely lower it to the ground.
The little man scampered over to the oven and took one cursory look at it.
“O no,” he said gravely, “o no, this simply will not do.” Smirking, he thanked Jack for his help (as one might thank a dog for fetching a stick) and left the store.
Waves of apathy crashed over Jack. He lacked even the emotional liveliness to feel anger. That tiny man had just sent him on a wild goose chase, and Jack couldn’t even be bothered to care. He returned the lift to the backroom and shuffled back into the store.
Now let me make something perfectly clear here. I don’t like Jack. He was a pathetic creature, a ghost of a man. He doesn’t deserve my sympathy, and frankly, he doesn’t deserve yours. I’ll be honest with you. Jack was a loser.
Ignorant of, and yet drowning in, the truth of his pathetic existence he walked through the store. In a trance he finished clearing out all the dented cans. Even now, he found some joy in discovering dented cans. It was to be the last time.
Once the cans had been tossed onto the palette in the warehouse, Jack got changed out of his uniform and walked back into the store, headed for the exit. He trudged slowly through the store, painfully aware that a wonderful day of monotony awaited him the next day. He passed by all of his co-workers. Many of them asked him if he needed help with anything. None of them knew who he was.
Jack’s stupor was broken as gunshots rang out. With little thought for safety (little thought for anything actually) Jack headed towards the source of the disturbance.
He found it.
Two gunmen were robbing the cashiers. Masked and toting large hand guns they were yelling wildly. Every so often they fired a few shots into the air to rile everyone one up. One of them was stuffing money into a duffle bag, while the other went around wagging his gun in peoples’ faces. Jack snickered when the gunman got to the little man, laughed more when the little man fainted. Apparently, Jack laughed a little too loud.
The gunman came tearing towards him and ripped him out from behind the counter he had been watching from.
“Something funny? Huh? What’s the big joke tough guy?” the gunman asked. Jack stopped laughing. He decided there wasn’t anything worth laughing about. He was, of course, wrong; the gunman himself was something to laugh about. The stocking he was wearing over his head had contorted his face into a pig like mask, stretching his face in unnatural directions. But as I have already said, Jack was a loser, and this humor was lost on him.
“I’m going to kill you. I want you to know that. I’m going to kill you,” the gunman said menacingly. Jack began to cry. Tears streamed down his face, down the familiar rivulets that had been worn into his face night after night. Just that morning he had fantasized about being crushed beneath a mountain of canned goods, now he was crying because he was afraid he was going to die.
“1…2…3…” the gunman counted down. Jack began to sob louder. The blubbering was pathetic. But as we already know, Jack was pathetic.
“Don’t shoot me please,” Jack implored. The gunman stopped counting.
“Yeah, why shouldn’t I?” the gunman asked.
“Because…b-because…well because I haven’t earned it,” Jack stuttered. Then, a distant glow in his eyes, “because you c-c-can’t kill a man that hasn’t lived yet.”
The gunman paused, tilted his head. And fired.
When Jake died, he left countless things undone. A million novels unwritten, a million songs unsung, a million lovers untouched, a million wonders unseen, and a million lives unlived. Of course, it is unfair to say Jake died at all. Something that isn’t alive can’t die can it? Even if it could, why should we care? Anyway, the world moved on.
A man that had been shot in the HappyMart robbery awoke several weeks later in the intensive care unit at Holy Mountain Hospital. He didn’t remember his name or even where he was from but decided to move to Los Angeles and pursue a career in acting. He wasn’t successful in this pursuit, but ended up working happily as an independent film director, which he still does today. His movies are horrendous, but he doesn’t know that. Yes, he is completely happy and completely normal, except for one thing. For some strange reason that he can’t quite put his finger on, he is deathly afraid of the canned goods aisle in the grocery store.
Maybe it’s just the creepy chef on the meatball cans.
Too Cheap to Buy, Too Expensive to Sell
“Hah another one,” Jack thought triumphantly as he tossed the dented can into the quickly growing pile. Yes, it was possible to think triumphantly he decided, because if he had said it triumphantly people would have heard him. And if anyone heard him get excited over a dented can they would have packed him up in a nice white van and sent him to a padded room. Which of course, would have given him a great story to tell, but that’s little consolation when the only people to share your story with are the voices in your head. He decided the only voice in his head was his own, and went back to his work.
It was Jack’s job as Co-Managerial Stock Floor Assistant (which is just a fancy way of saying he got paid next to nothing to do less than nothing) to go through all the canned goods and make sure none were dented. If he found any dented cans it was his job to toss them in a pile, and then dispose of them all. He did this for hours straight, going up and down the aisles looking at thousands of cans of chicken noodle soup and those meatball cans with the creepy fat chef on the front.
That big goofy grin and lopsided chef hat mocked him. Why should the cook be happy? He was just a drawing on a piece of paper on a dented can. Jack was a living, thinking person. But that, of course, was little consolation.
Despite the boring nature of his job, the work did have a few distractions. Every so often he would find a dented can. What a wonderful break from the monotony that was. What a great thing to discover and reveal imperfections. He reveled in the glory of the dented can, breathing in the imperfection, the faulty physique. Sometimes he couldn’t even see the dent, but if he could feel it, or think that he could feel it, into the pile the can went.
It was during a particularly boring day that it happened. There he was, going through the canned aisles. He was having a terrible dry spell, having gone several aisles without finding any dents. Monotony saturated his very being, tugged at his droopy eyelids, sagged his legs. He looked up at the wall of canned goods wondering, “What if it all collapsed on top of me?”
He had a fair idea of what would happen. The janitor would find him crushed beneath a hundred tons of meatballs and dented soup cans. A look of annoyance would cross the janitor’s face as he set about the task of cleaning up the mess. Maybe he would even hum a little ditty to pass the time. Eventually he would free Jack; of course he would have to look at Jack’s nametag to identity him. There was very little chance the Janitor would know him. After fifteen years of servitude to HappyMart a grand total of two people even knew Jack Goldfield’s last name. One signed his paychecks, and wouldn’t recognize him if he saw him on the street. The other was his boss, who only knew his name so that she could yell at him when he failed to do his job properly (which was apparently a frequent occurrence). His macabre musings were rudely intruded upon.
“Clean up in aisle ten” the loudspeakers announced throughout the store. Jack looked up with disgust at the ceiling. His sneakers squeaked as he walked across the unnaturally shiny tile floors of the supermarket. Customers milled about in the aisles and Jack did his best to avoid them. Eyes locked to the floor, he turned a corner and bumped into a small balding man. Ugh. Not this guy again.
The little man squeaked with what could only be sadistic glee when he saw Jack. Clearing his throat, the little man straightened up to make himself seem taller. He wasn’t very successful. The little man fiddled with his glasses and leaned forward, pretending to read Jack’s nametag.
“Hello there Jack,” the man said with relish. His beady eyes glinted behind his spectacles as the word rolled off his tongue. “I need some assistance with a few things.”
“Yes sir,” Jack replied with little enthusiasm. The tiny man smirked even more with the word “sir”. He was a member of that fine breed of creature that goes to retail stores because all the employees have to address him as “sir”. These parasites flock to minimum wage establishments because the level of formal respect they receive there makes them feel better about their own slightly above minimum wage salary. They are the kind of people that subconsciously remark “O he makes $7.50? Poor dear. I make $7.75 and I get dental.” Wonderful people, those. But Jack wasn’t thinking about this, Jack rarely thought about anything.
Jack followed obsequiously, taking every necessary step to avoid a customer complaint. He followed the man to the “few things” he needed assistance with. The “few things” was really just one thing, one large oven stacked on the highest shelf in the store.
“I’ll be right back sir, I’ll need the lift to get that down,” Jack said as he headed for the backroom. The little man rubbed his hands together, glowing from the most recent “sir”.
Jack trudged slowly through the store. There was no rush really. He passed through the furniture department, and then the clothing department and then finally into the warehouse in the back of the store. After a moment of searching he found the man he was looking for, Bryan.
Bryan was lounging on a stack of crushed cardboard boxes. His long matted hair clung about his shoulders in an unkempt mane. His uniform was dirty and untidy. Bryan was going nowhere fast, and was enjoying the ride. He didn’t bother to get up as Jack approached.
“What’s up my man?” Bryan greeted. Bryan was a member of the countless number of people who didn’t know Jack’s name. He had never bothered to learn it and never would.
“Same old, same old,” Jack responded. As he crossed the room to got closer to Bryan he had to duck to get past a large palette dangling from the roof. It was a large wooden slab held up a dangling rope net. Suspended upon it were numerous spoiled foodstuffs and defective merchandise.
“That thing has been there forever, when are you going to clean it out?” Jack asked.
Bryan shrugged. “It’s all discontinued and damaged goods. Really not worth keeping I guess, probably be better off without it. But you know, I just never bother to get rid of it. Useless junk, I know, but once I get rid of it I might find out I needed some of it. Plus, getting rid of it just seems like a bad idea. Been there so long, guess I’m just used to it.” Bryan had a terrible penchant for rambling.
Jack didn’t respond, he was rummaging through Bryan’s desk. He rustled through old cigarette butts and trashy magazines. Finally, he pulled out the keys for the lift. Without another word, he climbed into the lift, plugged in the key. The forklift’s engine rumbled to life and he drove back into the store, making sure not to knock down the palette as he passed it.
The little man stood waiting expectantly, his eyes grew wide as he saw the forklift approach. All that trouble, that big machine, just to help him? He was beyond elated.
Jack steered the fork carefully and hooked the prongs underneath the oven. It was a lot of work swinging the fork back and forth once the heavy oven was balanced on top, but he managed to safely lower it to the ground.
The little man scampered over to the oven and took one cursory look at it.
“O no,” he said gravely, “o no, this simply will not do.” Smirking, he thanked Jack for his help (as one might thank a dog for fetching a stick) and left the store.
Waves of apathy crashed over Jack. He lacked even the emotional liveliness to feel anger. That tiny man had just sent him on a wild goose chase, and Jack couldn’t even be bothered to care. He returned the lift to the backroom and shuffled back into the store.
Now let me make something perfectly clear here. I don’t like Jack. He was a pathetic creature, a ghost of a man. He doesn’t deserve my sympathy, and frankly, he doesn’t deserve yours. I’ll be honest with you. Jack was a loser.
Ignorant of, and yet drowning in, the truth of his pathetic existence he walked through the store. In a trance he finished clearing out all the dented cans. Even now, he found some joy in discovering dented cans. It was to be the last time.
Once the cans had been tossed onto the palette in the warehouse, Jack got changed out of his uniform and walked back into the store, headed for the exit. He trudged slowly through the store, painfully aware that a wonderful day of monotony awaited him the next day. He passed by all of his co-workers. Many of them asked him if he needed help with anything. None of them knew who he was.
Jack’s stupor was broken as gunshots rang out. With little thought for safety (little thought for anything actually) Jack headed towards the source of the disturbance.
He found it.
Two gunmen were robbing the cashiers. Masked and toting large hand guns they were yelling wildly. Every so often they fired a few shots into the air to rile everyone one up. One of them was stuffing money into a duffle bag, while the other went around wagging his gun in peoples’ faces. Jack snickered when the gunman got to the little man, laughed more when the little man fainted. Apparently, Jack laughed a little too loud.
The gunman came tearing towards him and ripped him out from behind the counter he had been watching from.
“Something funny? Huh? What’s the big joke tough guy?” the gunman asked. Jack stopped laughing. He decided there wasn’t anything worth laughing about. He was, of course, wrong; the gunman himself was something to laugh about. The stocking he was wearing over his head had contorted his face into a pig like mask, stretching his face in unnatural directions. But as I have already said, Jack was a loser, and this humor was lost on him.
“I’m going to kill you. I want you to know that. I’m going to kill you,” the gunman said menacingly. Jack began to cry. Tears streamed down his face, down the familiar rivulets that had been worn into his face night after night. Just that morning he had fantasized about being crushed beneath a mountain of canned goods, now he was crying because he was afraid he was going to die.
“1…2…3…” the gunman counted down. Jack began to sob louder. The blubbering was pathetic. But as we already know, Jack was pathetic.
“Don’t shoot me please,” Jack implored. The gunman stopped counting.
“Yeah, why shouldn’t I?” the gunman asked.
“Because…b-because…well because I haven’t earned it,” Jack stuttered. Then, a distant glow in his eyes, “because you c-c-can’t kill a man that hasn’t lived yet.”
The gunman paused, tilted his head. And fired.
When Jake died, he left countless things undone. A million novels unwritten, a million songs unsung, a million lovers untouched, a million wonders unseen, and a million lives unlived. Of course, it is unfair to say Jake died at all. Something that isn’t alive can’t die can it? Even if it could, why should we care? Anyway, the world moved on.
A man that had been shot in the HappyMart robbery awoke several weeks later in the intensive care unit at Holy Mountain Hospital. He didn’t remember his name or even where he was from but decided to move to Los Angeles and pursue a career in acting. He wasn’t successful in this pursuit, but ended up working happily as an independent film director, which he still does today. His movies are horrendous, but he doesn’t know that. Yes, he is completely happy and completely normal, except for one thing. For some strange reason that he can’t quite put his finger on, he is deathly afraid of the canned goods aisle in the grocery store.
Maybe it’s just the creepy chef on the meatball cans.
