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Lake Jucas
Feb 20, 2011

WHAT OF OUR BARGAIN?
I have some free time this week and I miss the dome. IN.

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Lake Jucas
Feb 20, 2011

WHAT OF OUR BARGAIN?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knnHXzGWqYk

Candy Shop
1353 words

Marcus picked through the rubble until his hands found a broken piece of cement that was small enough to fit in his palm. He wound up, twisted his body sidways, and flung it across the water just like he'd seen so many times on auntie's TV, but instead of skipping across the sufrace the piece of cement plunked in and sank beneath the rush-colored puddle.

Marcus sighed. He'd wiled away countless hours by himself in this vaccant lot, trying to get rocks to skip, but not once had he succeeded. He had no one in his life who could tell him it was because the pieces of the cement he used in this lot were too rough, and the run off that collected here in wide puddles was too shallow.

Sure, he had his auntie, but he was getting old enough to realize that she didn't really want him around. It was why he spent his summers wandering Brooklyn, looking for it's hidden nooks, places where there weren't people to remind him how alone he was.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Marcus looked up, saw the gray clouds pregnant with rain, and realized he'd have to head home. Reluctantly, he squeezed his way through the gap in the back of the chain link fence that bounded the lot, and made his way through the alley that rounded the back of the Chinese restaurant that emptied out onto Thompkins Ave.

It struck him how empty the streets were. Sure, it was a week day, but you'd still normally see people milling about. He thought everyone must have hurried inside because of the coming storm.

Half way home, something on the pavement caught his eye. He looked down and saw a twenty dollar bill. It was wet and sticky with-

It's not sticky. It's fine.

-he saw a perfectly crisp twenty dollar bill. He shot a quick glance up and down the street, felt his palms get sweaty. Twenty dollars was a big find for him. He almost never even got to hold that much money unless it was his birthday or Christmas. His auntie would tell him that the money wasn't his, that if he took it it'd be stealing, but auntie wasn't here, so he ducked down, scooped up the twenty, stuffed it in his pocket, and hurried round the block, looking over his shoulder just to make sure no one had seen him.

As he walked, his mind raced with possibilites. He could hop on the G and head straight into the big Toys R' Us in Manhattan, but he quickly dismissed that idea. Auntie would notice if he had a new toy. Then he thought of the candy shop, the one he passed almost every day, with the fading yellow sign that only said "Candy!" in white letters. He could buy more candy than he'd got on any Halloween and keep it stashed under his bed. It'd be gone before Auntie suspected a thing.

Rain had already started trickling down by the time Marcus reached the candy shop. He was so excited about his windfall that he didn't notice the lights outside the shop – and near every shop on that street – were off.

Marcus pushed open the front door but found the shop was empty. Not even Mr. Nguyen was there, and he was always there, even on Christmas. "Hello? Mr. Nguyen? Are you open?"

Marcus waitied, but there was only silence. He glanced around, frowning. The lights inside the store were off, but the hours the door said the store should be open. Also, the door was unlocked, and Mr. Nguyen wouldn't leave his store unlocked. Not in this neighborhood. "Mr. Nguyen?" he shouted again, this time at the curtain behind the counter, "Are you back there?"

There was a muffled sound from the back of the shop, then silence. Finally, Mr. Nguyen emerged. "I'm here. We're open," Nguyen said.

Marcus looked at Mr. Nguyen. The man was pale, with beads of sweat collecting on his brow. Another muffled sound came from the back room, and Marcus's eyes drifted towards the curtian, which Mr. Nguyen seemed to be blocking with his body. Was that movement he saw?

"Can I help you with something?" Mr. Nguyen asked.

"Yeah," Marcus said, turning his attention from the back room to the clear plastic wall with cubbies filled with more candies than he could name. He pointed, "Can I get some of them? And them? Oh, and some of them?"

Mr. Nguyen stared at Marcus for a long moment as the boy rattled off his order before he moved away from the back room, grabbed one of the white paper bags, and started filling it. When the boy was finished, Mr. Nguyen plopped the bag down on the electric scale with a heavy thud and read off the total. "That'll be...$19.47."

"Perfect!" Marcus grinned ear to ear as he slammed the perfect, crisp twenty on the counter.

Mr. Nguyen's eyes went wide and he recoiled in horror from the twenty.

"What's wrong?" Marcus asked, but Mr. Nguyen didn't respond. Instead he started stammering something in Vietnamese and reached around under the counter in a panic. Marcus blinked, not sure what was wrong. He looked at his perfect, crisp twenty and-

A sharp pain shot through Marcus's head, worse than any icecream headache he'd ever had in his life. He stared at the twenty and it wasn't perfect or crisp, but was caked with congealing blood.

Mr. Nguyen found whatever he was reaching for under the counter, and pulled out a baseball bat. Before Marcus could ask why Mr. Nguyen had grabbed it another explosion of pain errupted in his head.

The world spun. Images popped into his head. Lights in the sky, all the colors of the rainbow and more. Something crashing, sitting in a crater in the vacant lot. A world covered in, antidulivian marshlands, filled with creatures he'd never seen but seemed to know.

The world went white.


Earlier...

Patty Nguyen froze when she heard the from door chime, but it was only her husband that emerged through the curtain. "Thank god! You were gone for so long I thought something might have happened!"

"I'm fine, but we need to get out of here. It's worse out there than what they're saying on the radio. There's bodies everywhere," Mr. Nguyen said as he set down the case of bottled water he carried. "What happened to the radio?"

"It just stopped broadcasting twenty minutes ago, so I shut it off." Patty stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her husband, "This can't be happening. One boy can't be responsible for all this!"
"You heard what they said on the radio, he's not boy any more. Now hurry up, we have to get to the bridges before they close them-"

The front door chimed.

"You didn't lock the door!" Patty gasped.

"Hello? Mr. Nguyen? Are you open?"

Mr. Nguyen held his wife, "Maybe he'll just go awa-"

"Mr. Nguyen?" the boy's voice came again, this time closer. "Are you back there?"

"Listen to me," Nguyen whispered to his wife, "I need you to run. Use the back door."

"I'm not leaving you!"

"Patty, please! For me!"

Before she could respond he slipped away and vanished on the other side of the curtain.



Marcus sat up, head spinning. All around him was blood and viscera-

There's no blood. It's just the candy shop.

Marcus was sitting in the candy shop. It was dark, but there was a flash of lightning from the storm that was now raging outside, and Marcus assumed the power had gone out.

Marcus got up and spotted his candy bag on the counter. The bag was soaked red, and beside it was Mr. Nguyen's severed hand-

There's no hand there. Your candy is fine.

His bag was sitting there, perfectly pristine and white, filled to the brim with candy. Marcus couldn't help but supress a grin.

"Thanks Mr. Nguyen!" he called out, but there was no response. He was alone.

You're not alone, Marcus. I'm with you.

Lake Jucas
Feb 20, 2011

WHAT OF OUR BARGAIN?
I'd like to offer three crits to the first three people who want them. I have a lot of down time at work tomorrow so I'll try to hammer them out quickly and post them sometime after the

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