Missing Children - Harold County
Craig was out of paintballs.
His friends were coming over to his parent's place in a couple of hours for a tournament in their sprawling backyard and he was out of ammunition. It would not do.
"Mom, I'm gonna head to Worldmart, need anything?" Craig called out from the kitchen, grabbing the keys to the pickup.
Craig's mom spoke over the sound from the TV. "Milk and eggs. Careful, roads are still slick."
"Yep." Craig walked into the garage, opened the door manually with a heavy pull, and hopped into the old red Chevy. The engine didn't do much purring anymore, but it started, and fifteen minutes later Craig was pulling off Route 46 at the Jannisville exit.
The Worldmart waited there, one of the smaller stores, though still giant by any reasonable standard. It had ran most of the retailers in Jannisville out of business years ago.
Craig parked the car and as he walked into the store a homeless looking man stopped him in the parking lot.
"Don't go in." The man looked panicked, like he'd seen a ghost. He was old, incredibly old from the looks of it. He had a scar under his right eye that hadn't healed correctly. He reached out to physically stop Craig. "Don't go in there."
Craig recoiled in surprise, backing away quickly from the old lunatic, and racing into the store. Craig moved so quickly that he didn't hear the old man say Craig's name.
At the entrance to the Worldmart, Craig stopped by the greeter and pointed towards the old man in the parking lot. "Hey, that old dude just tried to grab me. Someone should call the police or something."
The greeter, an old woman with a permanent, icy smile, looked out the window and shook her head. "We know the man - don't you worry about him. Just head on inside and security will take care of him."
The woman had bright blue eyes and an upturned nose that let Craig see right up her nostrils. He nodded thanks and headed inside, walking over towards the paintballs.
In the paintball section Craig was looking for the brand he liked when a middle aged male employee with an untreated cleft palate approached. "Can I help you find anything sir?"
Craig tried not to focus on the cleft palate, which proved absolutely impossible. "Uh, sure, do you have Proshot paintballs? They're the purple ones."
The employee looked around unhelpfully for awhile, and then Craig saw the brand he wanted and picked up two bags. "Nevermind, I got 'em."
With an awkward look, the employee nodded and walked away without another word. Craig walked over toward the produce section, his mind still focusing on the man's deformity.
As he was looking for milk, Craig saw a large woman stocking the shelves. She was in her thirties and very heavyset, with curly jet black hair and vitiligo. She had a blotch of pigmentless skin on her right cheek. As Craig looked at her she seemed to notice and turned towards him pointedly. Craig looked away, picked up the milk and eggs, and bee-lined for the cashier.
There wasn't a line in the express lane. Craig placed his things on the conveyor and got out his wallet. The cashier was a very old man missing a slice of his right ear.
"You find everything OK?" The cashier asked, very slowly scanning the paintballs.
Craig nodded, suddenly eager to leave, that old homeless man in the parking lot lingering on his mind.
"You alright son? You look a little ansy." The cashier gave Craig a suspicious glance.
Craig nodded again. His hands were sweating now, and he felt a growing sense of anxiety, although he could not pinpoint why.
The cashier finished scanning, Craig paid and bagged, and then hastily made to leave. He felt light headed all of a sudden and just quickly took a sip of water from the water fountain.
When Craig raised his head up from his drink he saw a poster above the fountain. It read "Missing Children - Harold County" in big letters and then had a bunch of pictures of kids gone missing within the last year, along with their ages and names. Not one of them was over 17 years old, and Craig didn't recognize any of their names.
But their faces looked familiar somehow. A young girl with bright blue eyes and distinctly upturned nostrils. A small boy, not even 5, with an untreated cleft palate. A large young girl, maybe 14, with jet black curly hair and a patch of lighter skin on her right cheek. An otherwise handsome young man missing a portion of his right ear.
Craig felt like he was going to be sick. He ran into the bathroom, dropping his bags on the ground thoughtlessly. In the bathroom he splashed cold water onto his face and looked at himself in the mirror. The cut under his right eye, suffered during a fall in the snowstorm a couple of weeks ago, was still an angry red color.
As Craig stared at himself, trying to calm down, the old man at the register appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, holding a DVD. A large security guard with a vacant look stood behind him. "Young man, we found this in your bags. You didn't pay for it."
Craig had no idea what the man was talking about. "That isn't mine."
The old man did not relent. "I'm afraid we are going to need to check the video footage sir, but in the meantime you'll have to wait in the management office."
The security guard stepped forward, and Craig took a step back. "That isn't my DVD. I...I don't...feel well. I need to leave." Craig made for the exit but the security guard stopped him.
"Now sir, there's no need to make a scene. You're accused of shoplifting. It is a serious allegation." The old man was insistent. "Don't make us call the police."
Craig started yelling. "Do that! Call the police!" The security guard grabbed Craig by the waste and bodily picked him up, dragging him out of the bathroom and toward the management office. Craig made a futile effort to break free and yelled as he was carried away. "Call the police. I didn't steal anything. Let me go!"
The other customers in the store watched the fiasco raptly and did nothing to intercede.
Serves the kid right for stealing, they all assumed, as the security guard carrying Craig disappeared into the manager's office, kicking and yelling, the door swinging shut heavily behind them.
Photo Credit
By Evan-Amos [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons
![By Evan-Amos [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Ikea-Brooklyn-Warehouse-Aisles.jpg){kind=link}
The posts on this blog are mostly the results of my r/writingprompts responses. To view my other stories check out @Dberstories or my subreddit r/LFTM
I very much liked the feeling and progression of this. Kinda like the bartender scenes in the Shining. Mystery + eeriness.
But the ending disappointed me! It feels like a cliffhanger. Or maybe I just didn't exactly get what happened. Like who was the old man outside and why did he know Craig's name? I'd think he was Craig himself. But there don't seem to be other indications to that. And what exactly is happening to the children? What's the force that's keeping them there? It seems more fitting to make it something supernatural rather than logical.
That was the idea - that it was him and the store is some kind of supernatural slave mill/time capsule - taking in children, holding them for a lifetime, and then spitting them out.
I guess it was a cliff hanger insofar as we dont know exactly what tortures happen to the kid once he's taken, but it's not a cliff hanger insofar as the beginning and end are both known - the kid will be abducted, suffer, and then be released or escape as a crazy old man living in the parking lot. :)
In terms of elaborating on the nature of tje evil holding them, I could come up with something, but a revealed evil is almost always less imposing. I feel like its scarier just to imagine there is an evil store stealing children for inexplicable reasons.
Sidenote - thanks for reading these all Alex - you're so consistent and I so rarely have time to reciprocate. That's a big part of why I delegate to steemstem of course, so that I can support awesome authors like yourself through their vote, but I wish I had more time to engage directly.
Anyway, thanks!
Oh I wish I had more time too! For you and other good authors here. You're one of a group I picked to read consistently that's true. Other examples are mountainwashere and effofex. It saddens me that I can't read everything! But then again I haven't even read every work by Shakespeare so...!
The story is good but there's just something about the ending that needs improving or reworking but I can't put my finger on it. The store's security taking him in for questioning almost sounds too realistic, so it's like it doesn't positively incline the story toward the supernatural. It needs a more absurd ending, like having him thrown in a dungeon, something quite unfitting and not rationally justifiable. Something relating to the old man/version would also be appropriate.
Just a few hours ago I finally watched the movie Get Out by Jordan Peele, had it on my watchlist for some time. I feel your story is trying to portray a feeling similar to the one it elicits. And it's interesting that the feeling is maintained even though everything that happens is explained by the end. Leaving it inexplicable is very okay too, obviously, but for example I think I would prefer for Craig to notice that for some strange reason he's starting to age fast, and as he tries to leave the store he finds that for some strange reason he keeps ending up back inside, and the only way to stall his aging is to work behind the counter...something strange like that. So perhaps introducing the evil power as a visible entity in the form of the security guards and store owners made it too tangible and rational for me.
Anyway just brainstorming at 3 in the morning :D
Ohhh I like that too - perhaps it worth a revisiting in the future - that's the thing with writing these for writingprompts initially is that they don't usually have much of a life outside the initial post, and you're absolutrly right that they are often very imperfect, even in the context of simple flash fiction. Sometimes I go back and rework things - this was turned into a first person, creepypasta type thing for r/nosleep for instance, but other times, most times, they just linger in their particular state of imperfect unfinishedness.
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