July 12th, 2018

  12:34 PM

  Michelle Bublé's Sway cascades over the aisles, a dramatically slow song compared to the buzz of foot traffic. Sneaker's squeaking on linoleum, impatient taps of cheap Bruno Ares dress shoes. The occasional chirp of a notification blaring from someone's phone. Poorly maintained carts weakly whine in protest, their dirty gray wheels pushed without a care. There were bigger fish to fry.

  For Saffron, it was the red snapper. Good fish like this rarely show up at the dingy supermarket near her apartment. And at a discounted price? She had a good head on her shoulders, but this was essentially a steal she couldn't pass up. $3.35 for two fresh red snappers, five pounds each. In a time of desperation, she was managing to grin ear to ear, wearing baggy blue pajama pants and a wife beater stained red on her abdomen. She bagged the fish with a few scoops of ice for the walk home, occasionally pressing herself to the waist high freezers to let other frantic shoppers past. They weren't focused on the fresh fish. A good many were running for the bottled water that had been cleaned out hours ago. The eggs and the bread likewise were gone, empty racks greeting exasperated shoppers with a steely Cheshire cat grin. This was the Happy Place Supermarket. Smiles were everywhere, plastered on every fucking surface. It was pure irony, manufactured kindness staring back at them in their time of need. Or maybe that was the intention.

  Blood Moon's coming out tonight. Before 2001, That just meant Selene's Perch would turn red. Now? When a Blood Moon happens, time warps across all places experiencing night. In just one night anywhere else on earth, turns into a week of darkness illuminated only by a blood red moon. Anomalies, striders and other ne'er-do-wells come out of the woodwork. They prowl the streets, anything from gangs of skin sharks to literal city wide Vantaa Wasp swarms. Even CDAM is gonna bunker down in the old E. Lee Stadium instead of continuing their normal patrols. Obviously, people are gonna come out in droves, buying up necessities for their friends and families.

  Saffron was ahead of the curve. She had a stockpile of the necessities her parents thrust upon her as a parting gift. They opposed her moving out on her own, and wouldn’t let her leave without giving her something. So she was simply wandering the store, wading though the throng of worry with ease. She was browsing, taking her time and looking for something to pair with her haul. Potatoes were out, same with the sweet variety. Lemons were a classic pairing, but they were basic. As Saffron deliberated on her dinner, the last of the denizens began to cut their losses, lining up with their meager pickings.

  Saff eventually gave up on her search, opting to just figure something out at her place. She sauntered into the only checkout line and stopped behind an older woman, who was already at the register. The crowd had already checked out, buying up most of the canned goods they could get. Since power outages spontaneous rotting are fairly common during Blood Moons, perishables weren't exactly desirable, hence the sale on the fish.

  Clearly in her golden years with salt and pepper hair in a bun, the lady was fidgeting, swaying anxiously. Blue jeans, a white blouse, and once white sneakers now marred with the signature orange red dust of Alabama clay. She was loudly biting at her nails. Chip. Chip. Clip. The her teeth went to war with her digits, in a feeble attempt to calm her nerves. It wasn't just the imminent disaster coming through that made her uneasy. The cashier was an strider, eight feet tall and pale and smiling.

  The Center for Dangerous and Anomalous Maladies doesn't just exterminate all anomalies and striders. Some are rather passive. Some are just humans who got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And others yet are simply too powerful to piss off on a whim. So they are issued permits. Hanging from the anomaly's neck was a long lanyard coming to rest just below her chest. A CDAM black and yellow permit gleamed, dangling in the store’s florescent lights. She was officially categorized as a "Hachishakusama". Saffron was familiar with the tall anomaly. But the poor lady in front of her? Different story.

  She loomed over the register, long arms picking and swiping at items, in a brisk and controlled motion. Her face was bone white, reminiscent of an East Asian woman who fell face first in flour. Her jet black hair was straight, and flat upon her head. The dark strands sitting like blackout curtains about her form, stopping at her stomach. She was smiling, but it wasn't the typical customer service dead inside smile Happy Place Supermarket staff were forced to wear. It was a full ear to ear grin, running across her large face like piano keys. Her eyes were closed, with an almost sincere look on her face, the kind of expression you only make at docile dogs, or a sleeping kitten. She was looking down on her, The same way you'd look down at something cute. Something innately inferior.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  She was in tune with the gaudy yellowed name tag on her chest, the name ANISE leering down with it's owner. One blue veined and pale fleshed hand wider than a ruler easily palms a watermelon, scanning and bagging the fruit with inhuman efficiency. She was trying to make conversation with the shorter, older lady, that huge mouth opening up, and a hollow voice spilling out.

  "I don't prefer canned tuna, I'm more of a sardines gal myself." Without so much as a glance downward towards the conveyor, her large hands stack the ten or so tins of tuna like playing cards, quickly scanning each one individually. Anise never opened her eyes, but you could tell she was looking at the older lady. She never looked away, not even once.

  "A-Ah yes!" The bewildered woman replied hastily, "I-It's not my favorite either, b-but you have to take what you can g-get in times like these..."

  The hollow voice responded, in what you could interoperate as a laugh. It was more like a cork getting pulled out of a bottle, or a plunger in an empty sink. Hollow, almost gulp like laughs came from the Hachishakusama, pale digits covering her face. Pock, Pock, Pock. It's unnerving, the kind of thing you'd expect to hear in a back alley late at night coming from a cat hocking up a hairball.

  The tall woman continued to do her job, swiping up items and bagging them. But her gaze never left the poor soul in front of her, staunch white eyelids peering into straining hazel. The shorter, older lady practically threw her money at Anise, scrambling out of the store before she could even get her change. Now there were only two in the store. One looking down, and the other smiling up.

  12:41 PM

  “You both look and smell like you lost a fight with a box of wine.” Anise said, her smile slimmed down to a more genuine grin. Her eyes opened, revealing jet black irises. Saffron’s smile in turn faded to an exasperated look.

  “I almost died, I heard my boss die, and I lost my job in the same day...” Saffron said in a tired tone. She sits the fish on the discolored conveyor belt. “Forgive me if I don’t look like a runway model.”

  Anise swipes up the fish, ringing them up with a practiced ease. “You can’t just say that and leave me hanging! Tell me about it!” Her large body moves toward the front door, long legs eating up the distance in the now empty supermarket. She swiftly put up the ‘CLOSED’ sign and speed walked back over to Saffron.

  “...Some shape shifting strider got into the bathroom at work. It… It took the face of a coworker, and tricked my boss into getting too close. And it got bitching cold for some reason. But CDAM came in and shot it to death.”

  “That sounds about right. You’re a fucking trouble magnet. I’m surprised the boys in black didn’t shoot you.”

  “They did. I just got roughed up a bit, nothing I can’t walk off.”

  “…”

  The smarmy tone of Anise dissolved like cotton candy in water. For a moment, she looked down at Saff with genuine concern. “You’re fucking with me. There’s no way you…”

  Saffron lifts her wife beater, revealing the bloodstained bandages tied at her bronze abs. There were three particularly dark splotches, each one liberally packed with gauze. “Officers always have a hair trigger these days. Along with a tense situation, and an unarmed black woman... It was a recipe for disaste-.”

  “Why the fuck aren’t you at a hospital?”

  “… I’m pretty hearty. I’ve had worse.”