You are not supposed to be here

Submitted into Contest #27 in response to: Write a short story that ends with a twist.... view prompt

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Mystery

You are not supposed to be here

The world is too cosy when you don’t leave your house for about a week and spending your time by playing videogames and watching reality shows all day. My parents were out and they will not return until next weekend. I ordered food almost daily. Pizzas, hot dogs, tacos started to make me chubby. So I decided to make salad. A healthy food that will make fit my tuxedo, otherwise I have to go in Hoodies at the prom. It looks like an easy food. Or I suppose it to be easy as it not appears to be delicious. For making this it looks like I need some stuff. I started to search my Kitchen, this things I found were a lot of pizza boxes which were unfortunately empty, some cereal boxes and ice. Even my crippling common sense was suggesting that we cannot make salad from these. About cereals with ice, I’ve tried it before, it tastes mostly cereals, in fact lumpy cereal, which is a bad idea right now. I should call my mom, she would tell me what do I need for making a sweet and healthy salad. She did not pick up. The whole universe is stopping me from staying healthy. Maybe I should contact my god parent, the internet. I searched “how to make the healthiest salad”, by seeing the first website I came to know that there is a fault in my search. I retyped “how to make the easiest salad”. Okay here is they recipe. There are hundreds of them. I chose the first one. Spicy Carrot Salad: Microwave grated carrots and minced garlic in 1/4 cup water until crisp-tender. Drain; toss with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, red pepper flakes and parsley. So what I need from the store is just carrot, garlic, lemon juice, parsley and other useless stuff I know I will buy just to condemn my trip to the store. So I dressed up as a decent civilised citizen, legal to appear in the world full of people and picked up the keys of my bike. I headed straight to the mart nearby, it was nearly 5 min of bicycle ride from my house.

           There is this place called Agantha-Mart where we buy mostly everything we need for the house. Last time I came here was three weeks ago when I needed some popcorn. This place is nice and easy. I have been living for quite a while here so I know everything, what is placed where and how the better items are hidden behind the soon to be expired items etc etc. It was the 6 in the evening. The city was quiet, I had never seen such kind of silence at this time of the day. Being an introvert I like the silence. Because in my past days of this week the only person I have been talking to is the online players of that multiplayer combat games. I ignore my friends texts and calls while appearing to be sick so they don’t drag me out of the house, and I don’t have much friends.

           As I was out for a minute I found that the city was too silent. There was no sound of people chanting evening prayers, not even swifting cars. Last car I have seen on road was like a minute ago. This city at this time, people usually return at this time from their works and they create a bustle by road rage and traffic jams. But this was suspiciously silent. I saw a person, maybe a homeless man, standing at a distance near a pole. I needed to talk to him, why is the city so silent. The road was empty so I straight went to him. But suddenly a came straight to me, it was not stopping, neither was I. When it was nearly a metre away I jumped from my bike. It hurt my leg, I landed on my knee. I stood up. Looked back, there was no car. I looked at the front there was no man. The city was silent again. But my bike was there where I fell from it. There was a scratch because of the fall. I was afraid about what just happened but I thought it was a paranoid as I didn’t leave my house for a week.

                       As I came near to my store, I found the store was shining different from other surrounding. Every building near the store was shut. It was like a power outage happened for every place in this block other than that building. The board spelling “ AGANTHA MART” was lit up like its Christmas. It was the only building that looked alive. It felt like a zombie apocalypse happened. But I really don’t care.

                                   I entered the parking lot. There were so much cars that it looked like the store was full. I parked my bicycle. There was that dude again whom I saw before near the pole. He was standing near pole again, straight below the street light. I thought that the world has gone mad and I am the only normal man alive. I headed toward the push door of the store. The store was full of people. The people looked alive, I think. It was the first time in the last 15 minutes in which I saw some fine people. I gestured the cashier hello while entering. Yes, they are alive. I started to look for the thing I wrote down in my page, CARROTS, GARLIC AND PARSLEY. “ Hey where I can find some parsley” I asked a worker named Jared on his badge. He gestured me and screamed “ the last aisle in the section of herbs”. I said okay and headed there. As I crossed the third aisle I noticed there is a bustle at the gate of the store. I ignored it. The last aisle numbered 20, was empty, no one was there. It was just me in the whole lane. I don’t exactly knew how parsley looked like so I called another employee, named Yennifer. She came near me. And with a very humble but rough voice she asked me “ how can I help you”. I said “ I need some parsley, you know… I saw this cool salad on internet……”

As I was picking the item to ask her if this was parsley, she gripped my hand by holding my wrist.

“ hey what the hell” I was shocked

“ You’re not supposed to be here” Her voice was shrieky.

I pushed my hand backwards in effort to get her grip loose. But her grip was tight. I was so scared. I started sweating. I thumped my hand with her’s at the shelf. The whole shelf broke, like it was made out of thermocol. My leg slipped and I fell down. I stood up in an instant and saw no one was there. The woman just disappeared.

I ran back to the cashier counter. I screamed “ what the hell is going on there, who is that woman”

“ what happened, what woman?” the man at the counter asked.

“ your employee, Yenniffer, she hit me” I was gasping.

“who yenniffer, no one named yenniffer works here” he was confused.

“ you tell us what happened ?” he asked me

“ I was there in aisle 20…”

He interrupted me “ what boy, there is no aisle 20, do you take some type of drugs or what”

I ran back to the aisle, but there was nothing after aisle 18, just a wall.

I was really confused this time. I didn’t know what was happening. First the car accident and  then this.

I just ran back outside, grabbed my bicycle and ran as fast as I could.

I came near to my house. My neighbour Jeremy saw me and as I was sweating and breathing so hard, he asked about what happened.

I said “I needed some vegetables so I……”

He interrupted me “ yeah man, I know about that mart, it was shocking, It was a good place.”

“What?” I was confused

“That short circuit that burned down the whole store yesterday. Fifteen people couldn’t make it out, poor souls! You didn't knew?”

As his words fell into my ears my ears, my legs became weak and I fell down unconsciously.

I woke up in my room, it was the 7 in the morning. I was in the dress I was wearing before going to the store. Oh! That was just a dream. I had really bad nightmare. I was thanking God that it wasn’t real. I think it happens because I never go out of my house. So I took a shower and got ready to go out and have a nice breakfast. I locked my house and went to take my bike.

My legs again felt weak, because the scratch in the bicycle was still there. I ran to Jeremy’s house, he was standing in his front yard, before I could say anything, he said in a shrieky voice “YOU WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THERE!”

February 07, 2020 09:21

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2 comments

Matt Strempel
22:36 Feb 12, 2020

Well done! I could see the whole episode playing out in my head vividly. I’m going to assume that English is not your first language, so please accept this feedback as kind advice, not criticism. I think this story would benefit enormously by having you write it in your native language, then having it accurately translated. Then you’d be able to see where the slips in grammar and syntax are happening. It’s obvious you have a great sense of humour also. There are plenty of funny lines. Keep up the writing and I look forward to reading more o...

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Tigmanshu Joshi
07:10 Mar 31, 2020

Your assumption is absolutely correct, it is not my native language. It was my first attempt of writing a story on any platform. I am working on the precision of grammar and vocabulary. Thank you, your comment means a lot to me.

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