Nightshift 42: Callahan's Grocer
S.T. was bored. Bored and feeling useless. He'd stomped around town, looking for a distraction from his own self-pitying funk, as the light had waned. Boredom and feigned anticipation had given way to dread. He'd circled back around to the grocery to see if there was anything less useless on the bulletin. No dice.
Then it happened. Everything changed, without the comfort of a closed door and an unchanging dormitory room. Usually it was like an elevator with a dinner service -- if the doors open on the same sight as you left, either it's a crap elevator or you're in a stockbroker's office tower. And if it were the latter, the food would need more unpronounceable French things.
This had no frame, no steady point of reference. The smell of rotting fruit, esters and alcohol, hit him first. Papers curled and became brittle. The ambient temperature dropped at least five degrees.
It was night, and the closest thing he had to a weapon was a ballpoint pen and a rack of rotting tomatoes. At least he hoped the tomatoes were on his side.
[for Spider Jerusalem, open to threadcrashing once we get going]
Then it happened. Everything changed, without the comfort of a closed door and an unchanging dormitory room. Usually it was like an elevator with a dinner service -- if the doors open on the same sight as you left, either it's a crap elevator or you're in a stockbroker's office tower. And if it were the latter, the food would need more unpronounceable French things.
This had no frame, no steady point of reference. The smell of rotting fruit, esters and alcohol, hit him first. Papers curled and became brittle. The ambient temperature dropped at least five degrees.
It was night, and the closest thing he had to a weapon was a ballpoint pen and a rack of rotting tomatoes. At least he hoped the tomatoes were on his side.
[for Spider Jerusalem, open to threadcrashing once we get going]