The Woman In The Supermarket
by John Allen

I have a story to tell you.

I hope you're not feeling tired, or feeling lazy.

I hate lazy people. Lazinesss is the perfect way to waste your life, and idle time is the devil's play.

Mother always said that.

Maybe, if you listen intently enough, I can alleviate your boredom. The room I'm writing in is dark, lit by an electric lamp that goes out sometimes. I'm afraid of the dark.

Right now there's a woman in my basement, her cries muffled by the three layers of duck tape I put over her mouth. I hit her with a paperweight and dragged her to my house, where the grass is perfectly cut and the house is spic and span and all the locks work perfectly. I have one problem, though.

She's still alive!

The story I have to tell you is about why I have to kill this woman. I know it's not a very nice thing, to kill a person, but circumstances really necessitate it here, and I will tell you why. You see, this woman isn't a woman at all.

She's an alien.

That sounds crazy, I know. Maybe it is. But it's the God's honest truth. (I'm a Christian, and I think that if you don't believe in God, you shouldn't be considered an American.)

Getting back to what I was saying, there is a solid logic in what I am about to do.

For two years I've lived in the suburbs, where everything is nice and neat and orderly, and I have been nothing but an upstanding citizen my whole life. I fought for our country in Vietnam, and I have been a state worker for 20 years. My credentials as a normal, sane individual are impeccable. An autobiographical sidetrack. I'm sorry.

Anyway, this woman first began to spy on me at the local supermarket, a fine establishment where neighbors can purchase sanitary goods at reasonable prices.

She first passed me a year ago, December 17th, to be exact. I was in the shampoo aisle, (aisle 10, towards the end) and I was taken aback by her disorderly appearance. In fact, although I am far from a temperamental individual (I am, on the contrary, balanced, reasonable and without prejudice), I took an immediate dislike to her.

Sporting headphones (who in the world wears headphones in the supermarket?) and surly blonde hair, she was wearing a leather jacket and a black sweater. Glancing at me as I passed by the Johnson's Baby Oil, I immediately
realized that this woman was not human.

Why? How could a well balanced individual such as myself think such an absurd, fantastic thing?

Her eyes, dear reader.

Green, simian and unutterably sinister, it only took one look into those emerald abysses to realize that I was standing face to face with a malevolent being from another planet.

The rhythmic vibes from her headphones, giving the illusion of music, not really music at all. They were transmissions from space, perhaps Mars. I faltered, stopped moving my cart, bnearly keeling over from the pain that theses bizarre vibrations produced in my brain. She, and they! I must have stared at her for about two minutes (two minutes and forty
five seconds, to be exact,) and then I hurriedly left the aisle, wanting nothing but to be away from this horrid thing. Not a person, reader, a thing. Checking out my groceries as quickly as possible (the lettuce was expensive--I remember when prices were reasonable in this country), I could feel alien lice crawling all over my skull, and if it had not been for my uniform composure that I maintain at all times, I may have ripped my scalp off and removed the source of the problem right there in the checkout line. But I remained calm.

Hurrying out to the parking lot, I placed my groceries in the back of my shiny blue Ford, (I clean it exactly five times a week, every morning at 8:00 on the dot), and raced home to write down what had happened. I was soaked in sweat, my mind fevered and racing, and tried to make sense of the martian transmissions that assailed my psyche, as I once tried, in my youth, to make sense of bullets tearing through the faces of my friends when only minutes before we had been talking of hugging our mothers, kissing our girlfriends, and eating home cooked meals.

Perhaps even then, I knew what I had to do.

Scribbling these terrestrial communications, which I dare not repeat in their original language (for our fragile human minds can only handle so much), I took breaks to go to my bathroom and make small incisions, with a common razor, under my scalp. I did this to rid myself (although despite my best efforts, I could not completely eradicate them and can still feel them crawling about there even as I write this), of the extraterrestrial insects that gnawed (mostly at the base) of my skull.

The plan these repugnant beings have is both complex and difficult to describe. But, for the good of my fellow man, for God and country, I know I must.

It will start with the children, reader. Indeed, how else could it start?

Every infant that is conceived between 2-3 AM in the morning will bear a mark on it's left toe.

The mark will be angular, like a pyramid, only slightly smaller. It will be charcoal black, and parents will mistake for nothing more than an unusual birthmark.

Remember, reader:look at the left toe.

They will form an alliance, probably in one of those European countries where everything is crazy. (You know what I mean.) They will then wait for The Coming. There will be widespread massacres, children killing parents, husbands killing wives, animals ripping each other to shreds. Chaos. And then, reader, when the planet beomces a harvest of the blood of the innocent, these wicked children will gather and pave the way for The Coming, the arrival of their masters--these otherworldly beings who I have seen in anguished, sweaty dreams!

Were I to describe them, you, reader, would also have dreams akin to mine. And then all sense would slowly leave your life, as it has my life. That thing, that creature in the basement won't stop squealing! I'm sorry. I got sidetracked again.

For all I've been able to discover about these entities, I do not know when The Coming will take place. Believe, me reader, this cosmic ignorance makes me suffer. I am constantly looking out the window, staring at the masses
in the malls and on television to see if I can spot another one of them. Sometimes the feaer reaches such a pitch that I am tempted to tear my clothes off from sheer nervous energy.

But I don't. That would be strange.

To continue with my story (getting sidetracked, in any situation of life, is the surest road to failure--it says that in a self improvement book I own), I saw the woman (no, no the woman, the thing), for the second time in late January (January 23rd, to be exact), while I was taking my morning job. (A healthy body leads to a healthy mind, as mother always said), and I was completing my 4th mile, I saw her walking on the right side of the road on the pavement.

She was reading a book. (Who reads a book while they walk, anyway?) Also, she was mumbling something to herself.

She was wearing the same outfit she had been wearing in the supermarket, on Dec 10th, when I first encountered her.
But this time something was different.

She was floating above the pavement and chanting.

I stood, paralyzed, frozen in horror, my nerves frayed and going insane, every tendon of every muscle in my body in revolt. Her indescribable, soul eating eyes glowed with a deep green abscess of the deepest night, and the chanting was a cacophony of horror and ungodly summonings such as I had never heard the like of before or since. My walkman, pulsating with the "Rocky" soundtrack, fell from my ears. As I stooped frantically to retrieve it from the gravel road (people don't take proper care of their property these days--I'm a firm believer in that), I could feel those unspeakable eyes studying me. Marking me.

You see, reader, during moist and angst ridden nights of the most tireless and valiant effort, I have gleaned something else of their vicious plan to destroy our earth and colonize our precious country.

Listening to one of those weirdo lefty stations on the radio (personally, I think such flagrant disrespect for our country and American values is not fit to be aired and should be banned), for a moment I listened intently, very intently, and I began to pick up subliminal messages. From them. Apparently, it is their plan that, in the event of a human somehow
discovering anything, and I mean anything--even the slightest tidbit or intimation of The Coming--they will be marked, observed, and annihilated at the first opportunity that presents itself. It will not be anything conventional, it won't be a murder, it won't be a disapperance--nothing like that. The individual will simply be erased.

Erased from the memory of loved ones, erased from all customary identifications and birth certificates provided by the state. Simpy erased. I know in my gut, my heart of hearts, that this will happen to me. I, William Peckford, a 59 year old war veteran, above average state worker, recognized by all his equally respectable peers as having a great deal
of personal merit and the most impeccable morals, will be erased. And all because I have (quite accidentally) stumbled upon a sinister truth unknown to others, probably to everyone. And I can already feel it happening.

Crushing moods of the most profound insignificance and doom haunt me day and night, unbeknownst to my co-workers and few friends. Although I keep it well concealed, as I am an orderly, rational man, I sometimes go on late
night walks in which the shadowy evanescence of my being becomes so apparent that I can hardly keep moving. I see visions of my absence, my non-being, while standing in the dark shelves of local libraries and empty churches. I can
feel, reader, almost touch, my own non existence. I know it's coming soon.

To get back to my story. I saw the thing three more times, following her in my shiny blue Ford (did I mention that I clean it five days a week at 8:00?), I followed it to several disreputable bars, and, once, a male strip club. Luckily, she never saw me once during my investigations of her activities. Two things struck me:she was always talking on payphones, and I could never make out what she was saying, even when I was close. She lived, to my horror, very close to me, in fact two blocks away.

Earlier this night I prayed. Oh, how I prayed that God would help me to combat this mutant in disguise and to forgive me for taking my own life after I did what I knew had to be done.

Her house was painted green. A light green, but green nonetheless. Under cover of darkness, I could see that it was the perfect launching pad for an alien attack--innocent, innocuous, not sinister at all.

Hands trembling, I knocked on the door gently. It was about 11:00AM. I said I needed to change a tire, and that I was stranded unless she could help me. For a moment, reader, I felt her eyes study me and she knew. She knew that I had come to destroy her and save the earth. She screamed, the most piercing and otherworldly scream I have ever heard. It nearly made my ears bleed. I struck her furiously with the tire iron I had in my left hand, and dragged her quickly to the my blue Ford.

Now I must conclude my story because the thing in the basement sounds as though she is making some headway freeing herself from the handcuffs I put on her, quite tightly. I have a rather large butcher knife, which I rinse every day and prize greatly, that should do the job well. Do not think, reader, that I an unaware of how this manuscript will be
taken.

It will be received as the ravings of a murderer and a maniac who killed an innocent woman and then took his own life. (Yes, after I cleanse the earth of this monstrosity I am going to commit suicide. I have a collection of guns, some saved over from the war, and a Colt 45 which I clean, barrel and all, every day. I will probably use that one.)

It will indeed be perceived that way, but that is not my concern. I have done my best to warn you and described how the revelation came to me. I will be seen as insane, but the fact is, you will be insane for ignoring my warning. Perhaps, after you are marked, as you inevitably will be, you will walk in the night and feel the ethereal doom that you are staring in the face at all times. Perhaps the hug of the void will not spare your consciousness, either.

Perhaps in the billowy clouds of a thunderstorm you will read your own nothingness.

Perhaps, reader, when you are listening to the radio one particularly dark night, you will hear them.

©2003 John Allen