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“Oat or almond?”
Bdubs shrugged, sipping on his bubble tea extra hard, a stray piece of tapioca jammed up the straw. He pulled his mouth away with a pop, grumbling as the starch slid back into the cup. The supermarket joined in his chorus, low, creaking plastic reverberating in-house thunder.
A true mark of commercial piping that hadn’t seen proper maintenance in years.
He drew his jaw upwards, surveying the wet coats of paint that littered the ceiling. PANTONE’, Lily White; and through it, dark spots and smudges fought to emerge. Stupid. Whoever owned the building needed to get a grip. It was too damp! And severely lacking in airflow. The fungi would always win.
He could do a better job in his SLEEP!
…It was the closest grocery to their apartment for miles, though.
And it was 2am.
Etho sighed against the fabric of his mask, peering into the vast selection of bottles and cartons with tentative eyes. Light from the chiller blanketed him, painting his white hair an eerie shade of blue. It ran down the slope of his nose. Bdubs thought he seemed as if he were inside of an arcade, or perhaps the downtown laser tag arena.
A look on him that Bdubs had memorised. Of course.
He reached for the almond.
“BAH.”
Etho’s hand froze, head tilted sideways to stare at him. “Bdubs.”
“Hmmm, — OH, yes, Etho?”
“...If you want the oat milk instead, you just have to say—”
“Well! Now that you mention it,” Bdubs rocked on the heels of his sneakers. If it weren’t for his beverage, he’d be innocently whistling.
His friend's hand didn’t budge, and neither did his cat-like gaze, direct and narrow. “Come on now, ‘Dubs, use your big boy words.”
…
Fine. If Etho wanted the almond milk so badly, (goodness knows why, it tasted like an ashtray left out in the rain) then he could have it. Bdubs knew what it meant to make sacrifices, to give away pieces of himself to aid others on their path to happiness. He was a shining example of a modern day man, — perfect, some might say. Not he, though, as he was far too modest for such language.
Paperboard took over his vision, the carton cloudy with condensation and bent inwards at the edges. In big, bold lettering across the front ‘OAT MILK. BARISTA EDITION’ tried to woo him. Like a petulant child, he turned away and pouted.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Fi-
“FINE. I WANT IT.”
“You know, I was thinking the same,” Etho chuckled, smugly throwing a couple into their shopping trolley. One of them did a flip, landing dead-upright between two microwave mac and cheese trays. He then pulled out his phone, scrolling through their shopping list while leaning over the cart.
Wow. He was so cool. Bdubs scurried closer, standing on his tip-toes to rest his chin on Etho's shoulder, peeking at the contents. It was HUGE. Maybe it was time to revoke Etho’s writing privileges… “And you’re sure we need all of that?”
“Well… I guess we could take off the poptarts.”
“NO! Do not—“ Bdubs grabbed for the phone, bubble tea spilling on epoxy. “—DO NOT DO THAT.”
Etho held the device up, high above his head in the middle of the supermarket. He fixed him with a raised eyebrow and a mischievous glint. It was a challenge. It was bait.
It was bait.
Itwasbaititwasbaititwasbait—-
“UGH,” Bdubs right hand threatened to implode his drink down to atoms. He stomped his feet, mouth twisted in an unintelligible sentence. “—-THE MAGAZINES.”
“Have fun!”
—————————
Every single cover had an image of his face on it.
At first Bdubs thought he had finally lost it. An anger-fuelled apparition. Etho’s unfair jab at his height eating away at his sanity like acid on paper, leaving him nothing but a perfectly average sized shell. So he blinked. He rubbed at his eyes vigorously. When nothing changed, he blinked harder, honing in a lifetime of practice.
Each open and close of his eyes felt like shutters on a camera, his own face staring back at him.
He wasn’t supposed to be on this side of it.
Gingerly, he reached out a syrup-sticky finger, prodding the flat rendition of his nose. Glossy lines sliced through it, paper denting under the weight. He hadn’t pushed that hard, had he? Bdubs went in again, this time with vigor and determination! Starting at the top, he clawed his fingers and dragged them down. Like clay, the magazine moulded into thick lines behind his path.
“Uh…”
He slurped his bubble tea. It wasn’t even one of the better pictures of him.
“ETHO!!!”
—————————
Bdubs skidded as he turned the corner of an aisle, sneakers sliding up to his friend who was crouched down in front of the canned meat. “Etho! Man, the magazines—”
“Do we need any spam?”
“Do we… it, what? Etho, we don’t eat spam,” he spluttered, watching him roll one of the tins back and forth between his palms. So salty and weird… eugh. “BUT THAT ISN’T THE POINT,” he threw an arm wide, arcing. “The magazines. They… Etho, they all have my FACE on them.
“Hm. Didn’t realise I lived with a cover star,” he got to his feet and placed the spam in the cart, tapping across the push bar to whatever pop song the speakers were blasting. “Do do, do do do do.”
“I’m serious!” What was wrong with him? Bdubs barred his path, putting himself in front of the cart. “…Etho I’m serious,” frustration changed his body language, ribcage digging into metal bars as he went dead-weight. A boulder in the road, to get what he wanted.
“You feeling okay?”
“I feel FINE. Psychically.”
“...Okay. Okay. Alright.”
“Okay?”
“Mmh. Let’s go see.”
PERFECT. Bdubs rotated around, grabbing Etho by the sleeve and dragging him along; their trolley abandoned in the middle of the aisle. He sprinted back, heartbeat hammering. Fear. Excitement. Concern. The supermarket had it all. Was this why people stayed up past 10pm?
It was something, that was for sure.
“TA-DA. Welcome to: me,” the magazines, thankfully, were still the same. He wasn’t crazy. “And this one! I did that to it,” he gestured towards the smushed copy in the middle, ravines running down his handsome face. Remnants of colour were stuck under his nails (he daren’t think further about what it was) Bdubs tried to pick it out as Etho gazed upon his likeness. It wouldn’t budge.
“It’s not a very good photo.”
“Yeah I kn— HEY.”
“I dunno, Bdubs, you’ve had better,” Etho took two steps forward until he was directly in front of one, considering it as he might consider a machine: to be taken apart, inspected, and learnt. “And, so if I…?” He had picked up a dinosaur shaped pincher toy from the shelves on the opposite side, and was shoving it into a magazine. The entire thing warped like a blackhole.
“Interesting. Do you know if we need bread? I forgot to check back home.”
Bdubs stared, mouth agape, eyes large. His bubble tea, which was now back in his hands, began to drop from a loose grip. “...We do. I guess.”
“I wonder which aisle that’s in…”
Was he dead? Dreaming? It was awfully late for him to be awake. Was it the mold? He tried to catch a glimpse of the ceiling problem again, maybe he could identify the type! Only Bdubs found that when he did, there wasn’t any ceiling to be found at all. A swirling, inky darkness stretched on and on.
And there were stars, golden bright.
His stomach lurched. “Aisle seven, I think.”
—————————
There was a dead body in the middle of aisle seven.
Face down against the floor. Male, from what Bdubs could gather. Late twenties? And soaking wet, from head to toe. Every inch of his clothing was plastered to lifeless skin, every strand of hair saturated. If he listened closely, he could hear it: drip, drip, drip. He stopped listening closely.
Etho… wasn’t even looking at it. He seemed to be having an internal debate over bread brands.
The wind picked up, bringing in cold, pre-storm air that smelt like iron.
They were inside.
Bdubs hunched further into his jacket.
He joined Etho’s side, standing close. If Etho wasn’t going to acknowledge the dead body, then he would not either. What if it wasn’t actually there at all? What a FOOL Bdubs would look like if he started going on about it.
No. He would drink his drink and stare forward.
…Which was also not correct. In front of him was a two-dimensional, low-poly picture of a shelving unit. The scale was life sized, towering up above them both, with six pixelated loaves of bread per ‘ledge’. Evenly spaced, identical, and glitching in and out of reality.
He watched as Etho reached towards it, fist colliding into the hard surface.
Thwap.
“Huh. Guess they’re out.”
Bdubs audibly yelled.
“Why, hello there!”
Both men leapt, turning quickly towards the sudden intrusion.
A tall man, dressed in green, was standing down the aisle from them. Bdubs identified him as a customer service assistant by his uniform. That, and his creepy, too-large grin. Did he have the right number of teeth? He couldn’t tell from where they stood.
The worker manoeuvred over the dead body, pausing on the other side to pull apart a wet floor sign, slapping it down next to the head. “Sorry for the hazard, boys,” then he moved towards them.
Bdubs didn’t take a step back. He didn’t. He was far too BRAVE for that.
“Sure hope no one slipped! …I’d hate to have to bring out the manager…” he made a slicing motion across his neck, jaw popping to the side in a grimace.
“We’re fine!” Bdubs and Etho spoke at the same time, one far louder and more insistent than the other.
“Ah-mazing!” Now that he was closer, Bdubs could see the scrawling on his name tag: Scar. “I see that you’re looking to buy some bread,” he spoke with a low salesman’s pitch, as if his words were a lie that he needed to convince them of; despite that not being the case at all. “We have plenty out the back. You can even come with me, yes, yes. See for yourself.”
Go… out the back? Of the supermarket? That was reserved for employees!
Etho was nodding along, as if it were normal.
Everything was just fine. Bdubs was just fine. “BAHAHA. Sure. Sureeee. Let’s go out the back, — that all just sounds perfect. PERFECT,” he spat around his straw, following Etho and the guy with the cheshire teeth. He made sure to walk to the side of the dead body. They did not.
“Here!” Scar led them past the freezers, stopping in front of a passcode protected door. It was white. Clean. Nothing seemed off about it.
Scar opened it.
Bdubs held his breath.
“Oh,” Etho exhaled.
Inside was a tunnel that spanned further than Bdubs could judge. A circle of red, fading into the distance. The walls were fleshy and oozing. Half of it was on fire. Flames licking at the door frame where Scar was resting a hand. “Come in, come in!”
He shared a glance with Etho. “...You can see that too, right?”
“The, uh… the fire and guts? I can see that, Bdubs,” Etho flung an arm around his shoulders, directing both pairs of feet in. Towards said fire and guts.
Bdubs continued to look at him, letting himself be walked. Not at the approaching doom. Not at the spirals of orange and yellow, painted into their reality to twist in the sky. Not at the substance on the floor that could only be blood. Definitely not that. He looked at his friend, and dearly wished that he would get the real Etho back again when everything was done.
Perhaps he would wake up soon.
They followed the tunnel down. Minutes could have passed, hours could have passed. Bdubs didn’t know. Despite it all, he knew that he couldn’t leave Etho, so he kept going.
Eventually they reached an end: a heavy wall of fog that felt like a wall, but moved like a gas. Just before it was a single, glistening shelf frame. On it was one item.
A loaf of Bdubs’ favourite bread. Wholemeal, the kind full of seeds.
Etho reached out for it, fingers curling around the crinkly plastic.
—————————
Bdubs blinked. They had teleported to the check out.
Scar was on the other side of the conveyer, holding out a bag in the same shade of his uniform. “Will that be cash or card today?”
Etho took the bag. Bdubs tried to calm down.
“Card, please” Etho swiped the terminal, a cheery beep letting him know his payment had gone through.
Then, with a flourish, Scar handed him his paper receipt. “Thank you veeeery much, make sure you put your trolley in the bay on the way out, and have a wonderful day!”
Bdubs did not move. Etho gave him a funny look until he sprung into animation. “...Thanks,” he was quieter than normal. The automatic door whirred open, and they stepped outside. Dawn was breaking through the clouds, a new day. It would be a warm one. Already, it was easy to tell from the sun.
He tried to take a sip of his bubble tea. The straw annoyingly stuttered and gasped, it was empty.
Etho froze, spinning to glance at the supermarket.
“Oh snappers, we forgot eggs.”