Aisle 3 [Who's There?]

Aisle Three by Helisoa Randriamanana

Originally written August 2022

 

It is rounding two in the morning on a Wednesday when security finally throws me out. There is nowhere left to go on the block. I had lost less blood than I anticipated, but a trickle of red runs from one nostril onto my shirtfront. Uncomfortable warmth seeps from a welt on my cheek; maybe the result of a ring. I was sure I had broken my nose and it made me angry to think that the other guy didn’t get thrown out with me. Maybe they were scared I would continue fighting him on the street. In the dim bar light, his friends had pulled us apart and decked me until the one security guard could make his way in to put an end to everything.

 

Worse than my physical wounds is the murky memory of a ringing sensation between my eyes intermixed with manic laughter that accompanied every hit to my sternum. It was unclear who owned that sound. Maybe I am just bleeding internally and beginning to lose it. Afterwards, no one came outside to see how I was doing. My shirt feels too tight over my chest.

 

The only place still lit is the grocery on third avenue and ---. I almost kick the street cat on the way in. It just stands there, looking at me with gray eyes until I feel guilty enough to apologize. For what, I’m not so sure.

 

“Okay, fine! I did it on purpose, okay? I did it and I got my ass handed to me, you feel good now?”

 

The cat doesn’t move so I take a step back to move it with my boot. Instead I miss, and the animal hisses and swipes until I run inside for cover. When I look back it throws me the finger and I give it one back.

 

Framed in loose lottery tickets and forgotten paper advertisements, the man at the counter doesn’t look up when I step in. Instead he stares unmoving at the blue of his phone. The usual molded mentos sit behind the glass counter and I greet them with a nod. They have been sitting out for at least a year.

 

“Closing soon,” comes a voice in monotone. I have heard it every night I have come in. I am too busy looking at expired candy to pay the worker any more attention.

 

The only items worth coming into this store for are snacks, as everything else looked like it had been sitting untouched for months. It is a blessing that the fridge even works.

 

There’s pepsi, there’s cola, there’s sprite, and every other variation of the same drink lined up in

sparse rows when I open the cold glass door. At that moment, all my mind can think of is

 

what kind of drink is worth its price tag. Nothing weird about having a soft drink after a rough night. I stare at sweating plastic until the freezer chill seeps into my bones and with a start, I realize I left my sweatshirt and wallet at the bar. Luckily Apple Pay exists.

 

Following the drip of blood that leaks from my face to the tile, I choose an old fashioned lemonade. Over the hum of the fridge, Kate Bush’s voice echoes through the speakers that crackle like the cord needs to be adjusted. I would dance to it if it didn’t sound like she was trying to claw her way out of aisle 3.

 

“You should fix the radio, man!” I yell to the front.

 

The man behind the counter does not look up from his phone. “It would make me want to buy more stuff!” I add.

Silence.

 

I do my nightly wander over to the aisle of chips. The stock sits overfilled as though this is the one section that anyone shops in. I meander through advertisements of barbecue and the best flavors mankind has to offer! I don’t know how they are all allowed to make the same faulty claim. The flickering light above the salt and vinegar chips tells me that I need to get those to make the trip worth it.

 

Kate Bush is still rattling on, but this time she sounds unexplainably scared. Her voice emanates from the speaker above the next aisle over. It seems to be the only speaker in the store and it sounds like how tunnel vision feels.

 

Make a deal with god! She shouts.

 

I am making my way out of the aisle of chips when a tight grip against my shoulder stops me. It is a teenage girl of about fifteen with long hair the odd color of wolves. A familiar metallic tang hits the back of my throat and I sniffle down the dribble of blood tickling my lip. She eyes me for a long moment and neither of us say anything. If she should touch me, I expect her voice first.

 

“Hey-”

 

“What do-”

 

We both stop and stare again. The lemonade sweats in my hand. She finally bursts into a bright smile that drops my shoulders with strange relief.

 

“Sorry, dude. Can you get me something? I can’t reach.”

 

She looks apologetic enough that I cannot fault her so I shrug and she leads me into the Kate Bush aisle. It happens to be the aisle for cleaning products. Bopping her head and humming to the tune, she smiles back at me like I won’t follow her. The coppery smell accompanies us and tickles at my throat again. I blame it on the rusting shelves.

 

“Show me.” I say.

 

I’m tired. It is Wednesday morning and I work in less than six hours. I need to go home and clean the blood off of my face before I work the opening shift at Old Navy.

 

She points wordlessly to the top shelf where a tub of cleaning bleach sits in dust. As I reach for it she starts talking again.

 

“What’s wrong with your face?” “I got into a fight.”

“How?”

 

I eye her again and hand her the tub. “Mind your business.” “Mind your business,” she mocks my tone.

We stare each other down and I take in her posture. There’s a bottle of drano accompanied by a roll of duct tape in one arm. Another bottle bulges under her armpit. In the other she grips pliers with rust tipped fingers.

 

“You fixin’ the bathroom tonight or somethin’?”

 

“Mmmhmm,” she smiles and rocks onto her toes, “Big, big mess back home.” “What happened?”

“None of your business.” She parrots.

 

Her voice sounds somewhat different, more pitchy; as though she is trying something out.

Her eyes sparkle with mischief when they meet mine. I notice how black they are.

 

I just roll my own eyes. Teenaged unruliness edges me into rudeness. Maybe it is that they have yet to experience that the real world is working 8 hour shifts every day at Old Navy to pay overpriced rent before getting into bar fights on weeknights to feel some semblance of routine. Maybe stopping into this grocery on third avenue and ---- to get a nonalcoholic drink

from time to time to shake it up.

 

“Put some arnica gel on that,” she points to where my eye throbs. “Fine. Whatever. Thanks.”

I’m gearing up to leave when she speaks again. Her voice pitches even higher, but the

undertone drops lower. Familiarity rings through it but it must be a fluke because I don’t know her.

 

“You’re supposed to say something like, ‘oh, you shoulda seen the other guy - har-har!’”

When I don’t answer, she's smiling again. “Oh! I love this song!”

 

Whitney Houston’s Dance with Somebody, comes crackling through the speaker and she bounces around to the tune, arms laden with supplies. She cocks her head and gives me an encouraging smile in an attempt to get me onto the imaginary dance floor. I shake my head.

 

“Can’t you wait five hours for bleach?”

 

“Big, big mess.” She repeats. She’s still swaying along to the boosted bass on the broken speaker, “Couldn’t wait, no sir!” She singsongs.

 

Down the aisle, the same voice comes distant and bored when it calls, “Five minutes!”

At the sound of it, her movement stops abruptly. It reminds me of a talking barbie killing its batteries. She turns away in a rush, heading towards the front. When I go to follow something clatters to the ground and rolls to my feet.

 

“Hey,” I squat to pick it up, “You dropped your-” It’s a miniature bottle of ammonia.

 

“You dropped your noxious gas.” I joke. She stills and doesn’t laugh.

 

Her lack of movement is so sudden that it gives me vertigo and I lurch to the side without meaning to. The bottle of lemonade slips and clatters loudly with the ammonia.

 

“Bed bugs.” She says after a beat of silence. “We are getting rid of bed bugs.” “Thought we agreed you’re fixin’ the bathroom?”

“Bed bugs in the bathroom,” she seems to decide, “so much roach blood in the bathroom.”

 

“So is it bed bugs or roaches?”

 

She stops to consider me for a second, “Yes. Both.”

 

I can’t help myself, “What, you gonna chloramine them to death? Don’t mix that bleach with ammonia or you’ll die.” I mean it as a joke.

 

“3 minutes!” The cashier’s voice calls from over the shelves. There is no way that two minutes have passed.

 

That same coppery smell hits me in the face when her arm snaps out and snatches the bottle out of my hand. It happens so fast I fail to react but find myself feeling sick at the brush of cold skin. Underneath the copper dank is something earthy and rotten that I can’t name. Behind my eyelids comes the memory of vomiting nothing but bile in sickness and I gag. My eyes flit to the drano in her hand.

 

“Drano decomposes organic waste.” She says to me as though she is reading off the label. I recognize her voice as mine.

“Hurry up, back there!” The cashier shouts. He sounds mad.

 

Shivering, I attempt to maneuver around her but find myself backed against the wall of liquid cleaners and blockage removers. I shoulder check something and then there is blue gunk spilling over my shoulder and onto my bag of chips. Trying to catch the fallen bottle sets off a chain of events as untouched containers of household cleaners tip forward from their high shelves and splatter across my face. My attempt to spit the acidic burning from my tongue is near

 

useless and I make a grab for the girl - for help or anything - but I can’t hear her from where I stand with my eyes shut tight. I know that something is very wrong when I squint them open and she merely stands beside me, nearly inches from touching my wet shoulder, watching the whole thing unfold.

 

I don’t know how, but I know that the mess is her fault.

 

My shrieking should be loud enough for the cashier to hear me. Distantly, I wonder where he is. When I lean too close to the teen, I taste copper again and it starts to feel sauna warm around me.

 

I wanna feel the heat with somebody! Whitney Houston jives. The music comes warbled with too much bass. The soul in her voice is robotic and close enough to feel pulsing against my skin. The smell coming off the teenager becomes repulsively overbearing and dense like fog; I can’t help it when I double over to vomit.

 

“What the hell-” comes a voice from around the corner.

 

I try to call out to it, but the girl beats me to it. I can only watch in hazy horror when her legs run past me to join the figure at the end of the aisle. The man dons the same grocery uniform as the cashier upfront and I wait for him to demand to know what happened. Instead, our eyes meet and he looks at me long and hard from where I remain hunched over the ground. I don’t know why I do it, but I stop making a sound.

 

Maybe it is because of the look on his face: bored. He stands stiff and uninterested, eyes going from the teenager looking up at him to me. There is no wide eyed confusion about the state I am left in or why this teenager is with me. He looks unamused. On his shirt is a dull splatter of rust; like blood that has been washed over many times.

 

In one brick tinted hand he holds pliers, identical to the ones that the girl carries. Only, the tip of his piers is tinged in browning red. A flash of pulling teeth.

 

Rather than say anything more, he cocks his head in the direction of the register and gathers the cleaning supplies out of the teenager’s arms. Together, the two of them head to the front without a glance back.

 

It takes me longer than it ever has to stand fully upright. Even then I am wobbling and clutching at the shelves, careful not to spill anything else. When I focus my eyes, there is no longer any evidence of the mess of cleaner save for the pool of vomit in the middle of the floor. I look up and all of the shelves remain intact, and yet I am covered in blue tinted slime. The burn

 

is gone, but left behind is the acidic smell of chemical cleaner. I slip a few times on the mess dripping from my clothes and finally make it to the end of the aisle. The overhead speaker has died and in the place of music is a dull humming.

 

I stumble out of aisle 3 clutching my bag of chips and lemonade. The man at the register doesn’t look up even as I bulldoze through the sunglass display on my way over. The noise of metal hitting tile scares me and I scream. He sighs behind the counter.

 

“Hey, man! What the hell is going on in here?” I yell at him.

 

As if I had been screaming for hours, my voice is raw and the chemical taste of cleaner will not leave. I know I look like a spooked animal. Gunk continues dripping off of me and my eyes can barely open, afraid that the chemicals will blind me.

 

“Toilet paper in aisle 4.” He says.

 

“I don’t want fucking tissues, man! Some girl just poured drano on me in your store!” He finally looks up from his screen to give me a once over.

“Ma’am, I will call police if you keep making messes here.”

 

I splutter, taken aback by his presumptions and snatch whatever loose receipt lies on the counter to wipe my eyes clear.

 

“The hell is wrong with you? There was a kid in the cleaning aisle fucking with me! I could’ve died!”

 

“If you want to file a claim with the manager,” he drones, “he will be here for the next shift in an hour.”

 

I stop cold, “You’re not closing?”

 

“This is a 24 hour business, lady.” I cannot find it in me to care of his transgression.

 

A zip jolts through me and I shiver from the sudden feeling of the AC on my wet skin. I look around. I am the only person in the store. The crackle of music has died down from aisle 3 and the light no longer flickers as though standing on its last legs. From where I am, I do not see any blue drano on the tile. I drop my forgotten snacks on the counter and step back.

“You see a man and his daughter walk through here?” I already know the answer. “No.” The cashier goes back to the blue glow of his phone. He says nothing else.

In my haste to leave, the glass door nearly swings into the same stray cat from earlier. It startles but my knee catches the weight of the door before it can hit the animal. Like the rest of me, my knee will be bruised tomorrow. After everything, I want to curse and scream and cry on my own but something compels me to stop and squat beside it in my sludge soaked glory. I apologize quietly, attempting to make peace with anything I have hurt while blinded by internalized rage. Despite the rain, the cat’s gray fur remains dry and soft to the touch when I pat its head. I hear a purr but the cat does not take its eyes off of me. Through the air wafts the putrid odor of cleaning agent and beneath it, the promise of a copper tang. I finally recognize its scent: drying blood.

 

Brother, I see you, the cat's gray eyes blink.

 

Whoever I had seen tonight, their troubles remain none of my business as long as they leave me alone. I push the image of gargling on drano after having been put to sleep with chloramine from my mind; the victim is not me and I want to leave it at that. I am too scared to dream of what the pliers must have been used for but my teeth ache for the poor person left to discover its use.

 

The glass warps the image of the cashier in the 24 hour grocery but I can still feel his eternal indifference.

He looks on at his phone.