Checkout Line

                The checkout line at the supermarket seemed to stretch for miles. Calvin couldn’t understand why there were fifteen checkout aisles, but only two of them were open. He wondered if high school kids even worked at supermarkets anymore. He remembered when he was a teen it seemed like everyone he knew was a cashier or bagger or a shopping cart jockey. There was always plenty of check-out lines to go through and they were always pretty fast; even in the old days of the price check announcements. It seemed like no one wanted to work at the supermarkets anymore. The current cashier in this impossibly long line looked to be about 87 years old and severely arthritic. The cashier in the second line appeared to be missing a hand. Calvin sighed and looked at the items in his shopping cart.

                Calvin’s shopping cart was filled with frozen dinners, burritos, breakfast sandwiches, pizzas, mini-sliders, all of it microwave-able and extremely unhealthy. It made Calvin feel self-conscious and a little bad about his eating habits. He would cook something good every once in a while, but the mundane day to day living didn’t exactly invite a repast of edible delights. Frozen burritos would have to suffice. It was enough to get him through a little more than a week, although he might eat out once or twice if the desire struck. He looked up from his cart and the line he was in had barely inched forward. It never failed that there was someone way up at the front trying to use an expired coupon or had to ask deeply personal questions of the cashier that required some long explanation. Calvin sighed.

                He looked at the impulse buy magazines shoved in to their holders next to the gum and candy and various spicy beef flavor sticks. There were your typical entertainment rag magazines espousing the latest dirt on the latest hot celebrity. A magazine for the dieters, one for the outdoorsman, one for the overweight, one for the skinny, one for the curious, all jammed into their metal holders. Calvin rapped his fingers on the shopping cart handle as he slowly stepped forward. He saw something flicker along the bottom edge of the magazine rack.  A different magazine caught his eye. There was a shimmer to the cover he hadn’t noticed mixed in with the headlines about losing 110 pounds by eating muffins or how to be better at sex by not having sex. The shimmering seemed out of place.

                The magazine was whispering to Calvin. He could hear it mixed in with the out of patience shoppers around him and the too loud overhead music. It was telling him something but he couldn’t quite make it out. It seemed muffled. Calvin bent down and plucked the shimmering magazine from its holder. It was the only copy of its kind on the rack. Calvin felt a small static shock in his fingers when he touched the cover. He almost dropped the magazine to the ground, like you would if you touched a hot pot off the stove. Yet he held on to the magazine. It was telling him something and an image was starting to form on the shimmering cover. Calvin hadn’t noticed that the cover was blank until now, until an image started to form.

                A title formed along the cover in bold and distinct lettering, lettering that embodied charisma, charm and sophistication. The title came into view, Person of the Year: Calvin Vargas, read the title. Below the title a portrait emerged from softening shimmer, a portrait of Calvin in a lush red smoking jacket, he was sitting in a high-backed brown leather chair in some well-appointed study with a roaring fireplace behind him. He had a snifter of brandy in one hand and a large cigar in the other. He looked thinner, healthy and even muscular. His black hair was carefully slicked back into a tasteful wave and his eyes looked serious yet mirthful.

                Calvin looked up from the magazine and saw the checkout line had moved a bit in front of him. He could hear the out of patience “tsk-tsk” of the other customers behind him as they seemed not to have noticed the magical magazine. Calvin stepped forward in the long line and again focused on the magazine cover. More words started to form just above his portrait, over his tastefully crossed left knee, and Calvin squinted as the words came into view.  Kill Them. Kill Them All, page 25.

                The portrait of Calvin on the cover seemed to start grinning, almost nodding as the words, Kill Them. Kill Them All, page 25, appeared across the bottom edge of the mildly shimmering page. The portrait Calvin seemed to raise his snifter and toast the Calvin waiting in the endless checkout line. Calvin found himself sort of nodding back to this cover image of himself.  

                “Can you move it up please,” said an irritated voice from behind Calvin. Calvin looked up and saw that he had again let too much space emerge between himself and the person in front of him. He quickly stepped forward with his cart. He was now the third person in line.  He heard something else in his mind, something coming from the shimmering magazine in his hand, that low whisper he’d heard before he picked the magazine up. It was repeating something. Calvin held the magazine up closer to his ear. “Kill Them. Kill Them All. Page Twenty-Five, leave none Alive,” said the whisper in a tempting female rasp.

                Calvin shuddered and snapped the magazine down away from his ear. He looked around at the other customers, they seemed blurry and out of focus. Calvin felt sweaty and hot. He felt the supermarket’s fluorescent lights flickering and bludgeoning him. He rubbed his face and eyes.  He looked back down at the magazine, shimmering ever more brightly. He had to look at page twenty-five. He had to see what was on page twenty-five. Calvin on the cover smiled as Calvin in the checkout line feverously flipped the hot magazine open; to page twenty-five.

                Bold letters, bloody across the pages, “Kill Them. Kill Them All”, were splattered across pages twenty-five and twenty-six. Calvin reached with his fingertips and felt the words were slippery and slick, as if written in blood. He could smell the coppery, metallic scent of blood in the air, he could taste the sweat of his upper lip. He wanted to reach into the magazine’s pages and pull out the giant meat cleaver it was showing him and start hacking and slicing at the people around him. It seemed right. It seemed like if he did that then all the success he dreamed off would be his. The world would be his to conquer and all his desires would come true. He only had to reach into the shimmering magazine and start.

                “C’mon man, move up,” said an impatient voice from behind Calvin. Calvin looked up and he was now the next person in line. He shook his head and stepped forward. He held the magazine in his left hand as he started reaching down into his shopping cart to start placing items on the conveyor belt. Images of hacked up body parts slowly gliding along that same conveyor belt flooded his mind. Calvin looked at the magazine in his left hand, he looked at the back cover.

                “Forty Dollars? For a magazine? No thanks,” said Calvin. He leaned back and shoved the shimmering magazine back into the metal magazine holder. The elderly cashier looked up at him and smiled. Calvin smiled back.