A personal note from Caro: You will see less of my writing in August, but thankfully I have lots of good stuff lined up from some brilliant guest authors who have kindly agreed to fill in.
Nine forty on a July night, and heat still leaned on the glass doors of the Early Owl. Neon sputtered pink and blue over the empty lot. Inside, the refrigerator cases clicked through their cycles while Jack restocked cigarettes with nobody to sell them to.
The door chimed. A wiry man in a black hoodie crossed the mats, a black-and-grey striped bandana pulled up to his eyes, gun already out.
“Open the register and give me all the money. The change too. Put it in a paper bag.”
Jack’s fingers turned to wet rope. The key chattered against the lock twice before it caught. He bagged the bills, then the coins, coins rattling in like gravel, and pushed the sack across the counter. The man crammed it into his hoodie pocket. His eyes skated the aisles and snagged on the slurshy machines churning their slow neon barrels.
“I want a big slurshy.”
The register drawer hung open between them. Jack’s mouth worked before any sound came out of it.
“Uh, sure.” A breath. “What flavor?”
The man weighed the question like it mattered more than the money.
“Blue raspberry.”
Jack pulled the lever. Blue ice ribboned into a large clear cup while his hands did their own private shaking. He socked a straw through the lid and held it out. The man took it, dragged the bandana down with one finger, gun level the whole time, and pulled at the straw with his eyes shut. Then he really went at it, cheeks caving, the drink dropping in bright blue increments against all that black cloth, until the straw gurgled and rattled at the bottom of the cup.
“Oooh! Oooh! Brain freeze!”
He hopped foot to foot on the rubber mat, gun still trained on Jack, hostage to his own sinuses.
“But damn, that’s good.”
He set the empty cup on the counter and considered Jack a moment over the bandana line, tongue dyed the blue of a drowned man.
“Thanks for the drink and the cash. Don’t call the cops for a while, okay?”
The door chimed him out. Heat swallowed him whole.
The cops came, took a statement, took the cup. For weeks after, Jack woke at strange hours with his jaw clenched around nothing. Then one dead Tuesday near closing, he pulled the lever himself, filled a large cup to the dome, and drank it fast, too fast, standing where the man had stood. Waiting for the freeze to hit. Waiting to learn what could shut a man’s eyes like that with a gun still warm in his other hand.
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The cashier should have jumped the thief while he was having the brain freeze! 😀