Scribb's

I knew if i didn't stop now, i'd be thirsty in thirty miles, with no place to get anything to drink. I had a long way to go, so i might as well stock up. I stopped at a truckstop strip mall and got out of my car, casting my glance around at the various services and goods stores aimed at making a travelling man's life a little bit more comfortable. I just needed a convenience store.

I walked along the strip mall, glancing into some of the windows. There was a barber shop, with a man reclining in a chair while a man in a white apron smeared a white creamy foam on his neck. The knife he was about to be shaved with looked sinisterly unsuited to the task, and i glanced ahead at the next window. It was a dentist's office. The secretary looked up from her magazine at me and smiled prettily, as though she didn't hear the screams coming from the room behind her. She's probably used to it.

Finally, i came up on a door with a clown's picture on it. Under the clown's picture, the name Scribb's was spelled out in bold red lettering, and gave no indication as to what may be inside. I opened the door and peeked in. A man in a wheelchair with an IV peeked back at me from across a small room. Behind him, i could see a drink refrigerator-cooler like you see in a convenience store, and so i pushed open the door thinking i'd come to the right place. The store was tiny, i realized after coming through the entryway corridor. Only one of the flourescent lights worked, and another one blinked infrequently, casting a dingy smattering of dull light in the dirty little store. The man in the wheelchair smiled up at me and asked if he could help me. I looked around at his wares and saw stacks of beer crates in the middle of the floor, creating a narrow walk way that i could barely squeeze myself around to peer into the coolers. The ones on the far wall were completely empty, and the ones on the wall next to it had a few old two-liters of soda, but no diet Coke.

"Got anything caffeinated?" i asked him.

He smiled knowingly at me and opened the door to one of the empty coolers. I looked inside, and was surprised to see it was a doorway into another store. This store was brightly lit, clean and the shelves well-stocked. I looked back at him, about to ask why he'd hide all his stuff, but something about him gave me pause. He noticed my hesitation, and said to me, "Go on in! Find what you want, and i'll be waiting out here to ring you up. If i survive that long." He patted the pole of his IV drip grudgingly as he said this last bit.

Aside from being in the chair and having the drip, the man looked perfectly healthy. In fact, the more i looked at him, the more vital he seemed to become. I started noticing small things about him: his bright, intelligent eyes; the way his pulse beat steadily in his neck; the involutnary way he licked lips; the well-toned muscles in his legs. There was nothing at all wrong with this man, but something greedy and feral. Like a man who's been up to the buffet four or five times, a man who's no longer hungry, but still eats and is unsatisfied. At this point, i decided against pointing out the fact that there was no cash register at which he could ring me up, and i stepped through the door he was holding open for me.

This store looked like a convenience store SHOULD look. There was a soda fountain in one corner, gleaming like it had never been used before. The coolers appeared to be stocked with anything you could possibly want to drink, and the shelves looked like they held anything you might want. My first glance reported snacks, dog food, rugs, and hygiene supplies. I walked over to the cooler and started looking for some diet Coke. I saw every soda imaginable, except diet Coke. I frowned a little, and decided to look for a snack. I walked around the aisles, looking for Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies, finding every other snack under the sun except those. My eyes came to rest on a neatly stacked row of Twinkies. I decided i wanted Twinkies instead, and they disappeared. I blinked a couple of times, and saw Ho-Ho's sitting in their place.

Frustrated, i started to make my way back towards the door, when i saw a middle-aged black woman sitting on a brown leather couch knitting. She looked up at me and smiled smugly at me. "Can't find what you're looking for?" she asked me.

"Not quite. . ." i started, not wanting to be rude, but wanting to share my frustration.

She nodded knowingly. "There's another level to the store," she said and gestured down at the floor. I looked down, and i saw a little black eye painted there. In the center of the eye was a flashing lens. "Focus on it, and you'll be taken there," she said. I looked back up at her, and saw the man from the entry room sitting next to the woman staring hungrily at me. Instead of focusing on the lens, i came and sat down next to the woman and the man and began to speak of mundane things, anything inconsequential that popped into my head. They looked confused, but responded to my small talk. I could almost hear them thinking to one another. But she's young, and oh-so pretty, i thought i heard him think. He obviously knew nothing of what i was concealing. I casually asked them, after a few minutes, how i was to get out of the next level of the store once i got there. They pretended they didn't hear the question and continued talking about the weather. I smiled at them and got up.

I walked back to the eye, and they kept up the facade of small conversation while watching me intently. I smiled at them, and noticed the man's IV bag was almost empty. His vitality was waning with the liquid in the bag, and i knew my looking at the eye was vital to his survival. Well, then, i thought to myself and focused on the eye. I felt myself being drawn in towards it. Let him drink me up, i won't last long. I was dying of liver cancer anyway.