Frozen Produce Aisle

In the mini-market across the road from the pub, the staff are about to realise they may not make it home.

Chapter 2

 

“Bugger it!”  Kath cursed aloud, slapping her palms down on the counter.  She’d been two minutes away from finishing the 9pm cash up and the power had gone out. 

Of course.  Why would life give me anything other than s**t and sultanas?  Heaven forbid the world ever gave Katherine Clark a break.

               “Pete!”  She hollered into the darkness.  “Can you check the fuse box back there?”

               A muffled voice from the supermarket’s modest warehouse led her to believe her order had been received.  She sighed and waited for her sight to adjust to the dark, wondering where she could find a torch or some candles.  The Fire Exit signs over the front doors gave off a small degree of light, but still not enough to see her hand in front of her face.  She had her other senses though and her ears picked up footsteps coming down the bread aisle toward her.

               “Who’s that?” she called out.

               When the person replied, they were close enough that the unexpected volume of their voice made Kath flinch.

               “It’s me, Jess.”

               Kath huffed.  “Jessica, you silly girl!  You gave me a fright.”

               “Sorry, Kathy, didn’t mean to.  You know why the lights are out?”

               “No I don’t, but I’ve told Pete to check the fuse box.”

               “Good idea.  You reckon it’s just us, or the whole area?”

               “How am I supposed to know,” Kath snapped.  “Why don’t you go walk out the front and see?”

               “OK,” said Jess, wondering off in her gleeful daze that Kath hated so much.  Sometimes she was sure the girl was out to annoy her on purpose.

               Kath listened to the girl’s footsteps pad off in the direction of the glass fire-doors.  When she reached them the glow of the Fire Exit sign illuminated her in an eerie green hue, her blond hair changing to a putrid lime and her eyes to shimmering emeralds.

               Kath cleared her throat.  “Well?”

               Jess pushed open one of the doors that led out into the night and poked her head through.  A chill immediately entered the building.  Kath watched while Jess looked left and right before turning back inside.

               “The snow out here is crazy,” she said.  “God knows how I’m gonna get home.”

               Kath sighed.  “And the lights?  Are anybody else’s on?  What about The Trumpet’s?”

               “No,” said Jess.  “I can’t even see the pub.  It’s too dark.  I can just about make out Blue Rays Rentals on the corner.  Their lights are out too.”

               “Wonderful!”  Kath shook her head.  If it was the whole area that was out then she would be forced to sit and wait for the electricity company to sort it out.

…and God only knew how long that would be.  Two minutes.  Two hours?  Either way, until she could cash up, she couldn’t set the alarms, and she couldn’t go home.  Not that she had any plans other than catching up on the episodes of Ghost Whisperer she had recorded, but staying here at a dingy, council-estate mini-mart any longer than she had to wasn’t her idea of fun. 

               “It’ll be back on in a jiffy, Kathy,” Jess said in her usual chirpy tone.  “It never takes long.  I’ll take a little walk over to the pub and see if anyone knows anything.”

               Kath didn’t reply, just leant back onto the cashier’s stool at the desk and rubbed her forehead.  A shiver ran up her spine and led to her thinking about the building’s heating.  With the power off, so too would be the boiler.  It was Britain’s worst winter in history and she was stuck in a building with no central heating. 

It just gets better.  Maybe that’s why the power went out in the first place.  All those lucky people cosy at home with their fan-heaters on are over-taxing the grid while people like me, who have shown some commitment to work, suffer.

                 Well screw this, Kath decided.  She’d give her Area Manager, Tony, a call.  See if there was any chance he would allow her to cash up in the morning and lock up without having to set the alarm.  She smoothed her fingertips along the surface of the counter, searching for the phone, but at first finding only biros and a stapler.  Eventually, the side of her hand found what she was looking for, knocking the receiver from the cradle and off of the desk.  It swung on its elasticated cord and sprung up again like a bungee.  After a couple of swipes at knee level, Kath caught the handset and pulled it up to her ear.  She tapped at the buttons on the phone’s cradle, waited, and then tapped them some more.  No dial tone.  Perturbed, she placed the handset down onto its cradle again, before picking it up and trying to ring out once more.  Nothing.

               “Oh please, for the love of God!”

               Irritated to the verge of being irate, Kath patted down her pockets.  When she found her mobile phone, she pulled it out and slid up the screen so that she could tap in some numbers on the keypad.  From memory she entered Tony’s number and pressed SEND.  The display informed her that it was DIALLING.  She put the phone to her ear and waited. 

               After almost ten seconds anticipating the sound of ringing, Kathy pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at the display.  She could barely contain her frustration when she saw NO NETWORK COVERAGE scrolling across the top of the phone.

               What is going on here?

               Before she could begin putting her thoughts in order, Kath was interrupted by a voice in the darkness.  It wasn’t Jess’s but that of a male.

               “Ms Hollister?”

               “Yes,” Kath replied, more calmly than she felt.  The voice had a Polish twang and there was only one person at the supermarket that ever called her by her surname.  “Yes, Pete.  What is it?  Have you checked the fuses?”

               “Yes, Ms Hollister.  This is what I want to talk about.  Come with me.  I have something to show.”

               Could this night get any worse?  Kath followed after the warehouse boy.

               “So what is it that’s so important, Pete?”

               “Just give me one second, Ms Hollister.  I show you.”

               Pete turned a corner in the warehouse and Kath followed.  They were lighting the way with their cell phones.  It didn’t work particularly well but at least it showed them things they were about to bump into.

               “Come on now, I’ve got to find a way to call the Area Manager so that we can all go home.”

               Pete stopped at the far wall and pointed upwards, just above the height of his shoulder.  “Look!”

               Kath looked up at an area a few inches away from the boy’s outstretched finger.  She didn’t understand.  “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

               Pete rolled his eyeballs.  Kath saw the gesture in the faint glow of his phone display and it irritated her.  She watched impatiently as the warehouse boy moved the light source toward the area he was trying to highlight.

               “The fuse box?  Yes, very impressive.”

               Pete rolled his eyes once more and she was just about to give him a stern warning when she realised what he wanted her to see.  It was the fuse box alright; at least it had been in a former life.  Now it was a black, melted decay of wires and plastic.  The green metal box that surrounded the circuits was untouched but the area within looked as though it had been subjected to a blaze.  The smell of burning rubber was present, but not as strong as one would expect after an electrical fire.

               “I don’t understand,” said Kath.  “What could cause this?”

               Pete shrugged in the darkness.  “I am no sure.  Fire perhaps?”

               “Well obviously not, Peter.  There hasn’t been a fire because the alarms would have gone off.  Not to mention it would have spread.  This place is full of cardboard and paper.”

“Maybe blowtorch?”

Kath thought about the boy’s wild suggestion for a moment and started to worry.  Had someone taken a welder’s torch to the fuses on purpose?  Was someone lurking in the darkness intending to have their way with her in the dark?  Had some hairy beast of a man been watching her for months, planning something like this?  It was certainly the opportune time with all the snow causing the emergency services to fall apart.  The Police would never make it here in time if she even managed to call.  It seemed ridiculous but for a moment so so plausible in her anxious mind that someone was intending to murder her. It was like something straight out of one of her Richard Laymon novels that sat in a pile beside her bed at home.   It wasn’t until her next thought that she felt herself stupid for letting her imagination run away with her.

“Well, if it was someone with a blowtorch then how on Earth did they manage to do it to the pub’s fuse box at the same time?  They have no power across the street either.”

Pete shrugged again.  “Maybe there is two of them.”

Kath’s imagination ran away again.

Author's Note

All advice welcome.

Reviews

[Political Punk ~~ CBD]

I would again recommend just going through and looking for anything that might have been added or not in there just as a letter or an extra mark.

other than that it seems fine to me