Stop, Shop, and Roll

People’ve always been disappointed whenever I tell them travelling is overrated and boring. ‘But Ollie, you travel so much, you must’ve done something interesting!’ Yeah, sorry to have to break this to you, but everywhere is broadly the same.

Everywhere you go they’ll all have identical hotels with copied mass produced wall art and repeating patterned carpets to hide the grime. Every ‘must-see’ landmark is merely a variation on going up higher for a high altitude view of the cookie-cutter skyline, or if you’re lucky its a statue. They’ll have the same restaurants trying to be different with food cooked using fancy speciality ingredients that taste anything but special and don’t forget the equally quirky cocktails.

At the Wallflower Lounge a fair distance from the Calgary international airport one such cocktail was the ‘Rusty Razor’, which added ‘genuine’ ginger syrup to a rusty nail. The first two were sadly mediocre but the next three were each better than the last. Funny how bartenders the world over can drastically improve over the course of a single evening.

Of course, the cops would find this fact far less amusing.

I’d been hunkered down at the Wallflower until the place closed, hoping the rain would let up. It didn’t. But it would help excuse the overly suspicious over-cautious driving I was prone to do when driving a rental over the legal limit.

My evening would’ve been a lot better had I dropped myself into one of the many copy-pasted inns littering the area, but for some reason I stubbornly refused to accept the delay of morning rush hour. I had a job selling medical equipment to various clinics across North America, and apparently I was willing to risk my life or worse — prison and a DUI — to get the job done.

Whether the goods I was selling were worth the risk I can scarcely say. I never bothered to look into it. Either they were the best darn medical stents on the market, in which case I’d know every failed sale would be a stain on my pride, or they weren’t, and the cynical-facade I constructed around my conscience would slowly crumble with my continued success.

Better to sell’em all and let the invisible hand sort it out, I say.

The plan was to take a huge detour out and around Calgary itself, hopefully avoiding further attention.

Since most are probably unfamiliar with Calgary, and don’t trust me when I say everywhere is the same, just picture the city of Indianapolis, Indiana. They both have the same sprawling suburbs and downtown core, except instead of the annual tradition of pretending to care about cars going in circle, they pretend to care about a rodeo.

Actually, it’s probably more like Dallas Texas. Whatever.

Anyway, the single lane road I took around Denver Alberta cut through a hilly forested area. You know the type, long and winding with night blackened pine trees flanking your headlights. The few other times I’d taken this road it was moderately well-travelled. This night, however, the road was almost completely abandoned, perhaps owing to the post-midnight hour and inclement weather.

I wasn’t completely alone on this road, but I’ll get to that later.

By this point in my journey, the Rusty Razors were filling up my bladder and both to my relief and surprise, the Shell gas station along the road was still open. It’s not that surprising to see 24 hour gas stations, but normally they are on main highways, not side roads like this one.

But I certainly wasn’t complaining.

This station was stationed at the far end of a stripmall, adjacent to a shuttered diner. The station had a fake log cabin style overhang to complement the plastic and Fiberglass franchise accents. Indoors, I was greeted by the bright passive aggressive hum of fluorescent retail lights. That impatient buzz subtly insisting you either buy your soda pop or candy bar, or you buzz off.

Without spotting the attendant behind the white counter, I wandered the white aisles through the bags of corn chips and motor oil. I had a hankering for jerky, I thought. Teriyaki flavour maybe. An iced coffee would be good too. Keep me awake. Although I had a hankering for something sweet too. Anything gummy would satify the craving. They had what appeared to be a local chocolate drink that might hit the spot. My after hours standards would consider it delicious even if it probably tasted like chalky watered down swill, like every other amateur hour concoction. They had a mini-pharmacy section too though, and I was already starting to develop a hangover headache. But I was actually staring at bottled lemonade when my bathroom needs overpowered my consumer distraction.

Right. Bathroom. I reminded myself of my real priorities.

While ambling to the back where I saw the conspicuous Man/Woman bathroom symbol hanging above a door, I found a fizzy unopened 2L of coke lying discarded in the middle of the refrigerated row. The sight of the large bottle just sitting there on the floor, a jug of disorder among the tidy columns of assorted goods, bothered me, far more than it should’ve. I looked again for the convenience store employee with little luck. “H~ello?”

Only the dull static of the store responded.

I shook my head and continued on to the back, past the yellowed walls and clicking speckled tiles.

I grabbed the metal handle and received a small static shock on my finger. “Sonova—” I yanked my hand and waved off the pain. Grabbing the door handle again I swung wide the door.

I yanked myself back mid-stride.

There, in the brightly lit bathroom was a bulbous mound of blistering flesh. It was so clear. Translucent in parts, the human sized tower of red blisters the size of my head were swollen with clear liquid.

My reaction was late, delayed. No emotion. Just a calm clinical study of the biological monstrosity splayed on display between the toilet and sink.

It reacted fist. At my presence an angry wave rippled across its surface with a burbling growl and I caught my face reflected in the rounded sheen of a hundred veined skin bubbles. “Oh shit—!” I slammed the door and braced my arms against the frame for the thing’s weight to slam against it.

Waiting, no opposing force came.

“Can I help you?”

My skin nearly jumped off my body as I let out a series of abortive confused screams. I clutched my chest as I turned to the orange-vested scrawny guy giving me the side eye from over a rack of condoms. “Geezus! You scared the crap out of me!”

One of his thin eyebrows curled over his brow, “Sorry man.” He moved to go back to whatever it was he was doing.

“No wait,” I called after him, “there’s a-a-a thing. There’s this hideous thing in the bathroom!” I struggled to put my words into words while my heart thundered in my chest and thunder thundered outside in the pouring rain.

“Yeah…” he cocked his head, “people are disgusting animals, man. They make a mess outta everything.”

“N-no, that’s not—” with the attendant’s casual demeanour, and no escape attempt forthcoming from the thing in the bathroom, my fear faded and my headache returned.

“Look,” he started, “my friend’s gonna be here soon. Somebody else can clean up the mess.”

His calm attitude was frustrating, but calming. I let my hands go of the door. “T-uhhh… It’s not a mess. There’s something not natural going on. Can you just call somebody, or something?”

He walked away to the counter like he hadn’t heard me. “Hey, you wouldn’t happened to have seen my friend out there? They’re driving a lime green Prius. Can’t miss’em.”

“What? No,” I bolted after him, periodically glancing back at the bathroom door, “listen, I don’t know what that thing in there is, but we can’t just ignor-”

“Pump three?” He interrupted.

“No. I mean, yes, I’m at pump three but that’s not…” I rubbed my throbbing temples in circles while the conversation spun in circles.

The skinny guy behind the counter grinned, completely unconcerned with my concern. “O-kay, pump three. Can I get you anything else? Some smokes maybe? You smoke, right? You look like a smoker.”

“Y-yeah I smoke. I don’t really want one now though.” In fact, I really did want a smoke right then. Nicotine exacerbates my headaches.

“Y’sure?” He thumbed at the covered wall behind him, right as a wave of pain made the wall appear to shake, “We even got some pretty darn good cigars back here too. Well, pretty good for a convenience store.”

“Yes, I-I don’t… don’t need cigars.” My two eyes were beginning to sting from the needling hum of the sharp high contrast lighting. I struggled keeping both open at once. The orange vested man seemed to vanish by half whenever I switched eyes, allowing me to see him and the wall behind him clearly, like he was a pencil held in front of one eye but not the other.

“Suit yourself. My friend — you know, the one in the lime-green prius — they like to smoke. Maybe I’ll get a cigar out for them when they get here.

My head felt hot, burning even, scalded by the nausea of pain. Water. My body demanded water. Nice, ice cold water. Either to drink or dunk my head into. “W-where’s- where? The bathroom—?” there was a blistered monster in the bathroom, “No— hold on.” I turned backwards and my vision spun all the way back forwards before coming back again. The bathroom door was still shut. Good, I thought. “Bottles,” I said. By which I meant water bottles.

“Drinks are all in the fridges my man.”

I stumbled and staggered to the see-through refrigerated shelves of the coolers, steadying myself with magazine racks and a sunglasses carosel. Pulling the handle the refrigerator door wouldn’t open. I pulled a few more times before effortlessly sliding the door open instead. No water here, but Gatorade. Clawing open the bottle I must’ve chugged the entire 20 ounces of Frost Glacier Freeze in under ten seconds, half down my throat and the other half down my shirt.

This gave me the briefest relief. Letting out a small belch, I let the door slide shut. Reverberating thrumming of bulbs, coolers, and my own heartbeat still echoed in my skull but for the moment it didn’t feel like it was going to explode.

“Awww, yes. That’s the good shit, isn’t it?”

“It’s… fine, honestly it’s all the same sh—” My pain faded and my fear returned. My vision was still seeing double but in the partial reflection of the cooler glass I saw twice what I expected and half of what should’ve been. The skinny guy was standing behind the counter like normal. But his shadow was standing upside down on the roof. And the two of them shared the same head and the same glowing eyes —

all three eyes.

“Y’know, my friend’s favourite flavour is lemon-lime. A bit ironic considering they drive a lime-green prius.”

I forced a word out past the ball of terror in my throat. “O-oh, y~eah?”

“Yup. Boring taste if you ask me. But different strokes for different folks.”

Again I forced myself to turn back around again. There were no trace of the shadow or the menacing eyes. Although he was even blurrier than before. Commanding my legs to move, they instead revolted and buckled. Crawling back to my feet I shuffled toward the door.

“Hey man, you gotta pay for that.” He didn’t even look mad, just blurry, no defined edges, an orange smear where once there was a person. “And you still haven’t paid for the gas.”

My vertigo and confusion was getting worse, like a dental drill drilling my inner ear. I left my wallet in my car, is what I tried to say. “Wallet’s gu~ugh in d’car.” Is what I actually said.

He — or whatever he was — didn’t physically stop me. My uncoordinated limbs offered more resistance than the weight of the door which yielded to the damp chill of pouring night air. I scrambled into the driver’s seat and sped out of the parking lot, vaulting my rented Ford Explorer over a low concrete divider.

Beyond the roar of the engine as I peeled down the road, the patter of raindrops on the windshield finally soothed the swelling agony of my head.

Later, I’d find red welts dotting my scalp. Like gross little pimples. They stung painfully the next morning when I went for a shower. I immediately freaked out, remembering the blistered thing in the gas station bathroom. The local doctor I went to see assured me it was just folliclitis, and prescribed me an ointment. Sure enough, the tiny lump went away after about a week.

With my business done, and back on my way out of Calgary, I decided to drive past the gas station again. In the day of course. The road was much busier, with cars everywhere. They hadn’t closed down due to any horrible events. And the convenience store certainly looked as if customers briskly entered and left, no worse for wear. I didn’t bother going inside to be extra sure though.

There is one more thing that happened that awful night which I believe needs to be mentioned. With every tip and tap of the rain on my windshield, the pressure in my skull eased.

But as it did a different pressure was building. It was my bladder. The reason I stopped in the first place and, oddly enough, might paradoxically be what saved my life. Had I not needed to check the washroom, I might not have left safely. My dashboard clock informed me I had been in there for close to an hour. An impossible amount of time, only explicable if I had been wandering the aisles in a daze before nature insisted action.

But no, that isn’t what I wanted to mention.

See, while I was pulled over onto the shoulder and got soaked as I was pissing out into the dark. I finally saw the only other car that was out there with me that entire night.

It was a lime-green prius, driving the opposite direction, back to where I came from.

Back to hideous hum of the store and the three eyes within.

Submitted October 02, 2019 at 05:29PM by CrimsonClubs https://ift.tt/2nFIHuc