Chapter 4
"When you smile…
…Be happy for now"
-Be Happy For Now, by ATP
Simon Young was, to the extent of his knowledge, the only Wal-Mart greeter under the age of 75, having lived for only twenty-nine years. He was most assuredly not in it for the money, as it didn't pay particularly well. He did, however, enjoy just generally being a friendly person and making people smile, so, when his childhood dream of being a stand-up comedian fell through, he decided that this would be the next best line of work. After all, what could be better than making a living by trying to cheer people up?
Being dead, or anything else that's not so mind-numbingly repetitive, part of his mind chipped in. There had always been a part of him that disagreed with whatever he wanted, but it was easy enough to push it back. Everyone had an inner voice of dissent, and it was just easier for Simon to ignore it than it was for most people. His coworkers had given him quite a number of nicknames because of his eternal happiness. While he imagined that they weren't always meant kindly, he usually enjoyed them anyway, most especially 'Smiley' and 'Gingerbread Man'. In truth, he did very much resemble the gingerbread man from his employer's new ads, he wasn't terribly tall, his skin had that same shade as the cookie, and, just like the gingerbread man, his face was decorated with a smile that never went away.
"Hey, Smiley, you hear that some girl found number 14 yesterday?" one of Simon's coworkers asked.
"Yeah, too bad, really," Simon sighed, still smiling, "You have to wonder what drives a person to do that kind of thing. I mean, everyone gets angry, but who gets mad enough to tear fourteen people's throats out?"
"I sure dunno, but what really scares me is that it could be, like, anyone, y'know? For all anyone knows, I could be the killer, or even you, Smiley. I mean, who knows what sort of evil thoughts may be brewing beneath that grin of yours, and what are you so happy about, anyway?"
"Always happy, because I'm always alive. And, hey, being alive sure beats the alternative by a long shot."
"How very true. So what all are we expecting in today?" the coworker asked, as Simon almost always knew exactly what was going to arrive due to his friendliness with the shipping managers.
"Um, we got a new case of camcorders, few boxes of video games…what department do you work in?"
"Electronics."
"Okay, there's some more extension cords, a pair of TVs, shipment of Xboxes, some light fixtures, though I'm not sure that's your department… and that's all that springs to mind. Oh, and on an unrelated note, that bizarre firearms section is getting a shipment in today."
"What makes it so bizarre?"
"We try and pass ourselves off as a family store, and yet we sell guns, and guns kill people, so one can conclude that it is safe and family friendly to kill people?"
"Well, they're supposed to be used for sport."
"Yeah, but what if they're not? What if that guy who rips people's throats out, or to be equal, that girl who rips people's throats out, decides it would be quicker and easier to buy a gun here and just shoot people?"
"Well, there's a way they track what gun a bullet came from, not quite sure how that works, but then it'd put a stop to it real quick."
"Still, I just don't know, it seems wrong."
"Don't know what you're talking about. That's like saying that kids shouldn't be allowed to watch football because sometimes people get hurt, or race car driving because of occasional crashes. Accidents happen, you need to accept it."
"Keep staring, I might do a trick" was written in white across Kelly's otherwise black t-shirt. It was nine-thirty at night, and for some reason that she couldn't quite remember, she'd volunteered to pull the extremely late shift at the diner and needed to buy a liter or two of something with a huge amount of caffeine to keep herself awake until four thirty in the morning. Of course, the only place on her way to work was a Wal-Mart.
"Welcome to Wal-Mart," the man at the door said cheerfully as Kelly walked through the motion-sensitive doors. When she looked over at him, she couldn't help but laugh a little because he reminded her so much of the gingerbread man that the company used in their commercials.
Fifteen minutes and a liter of Mountain Dew later, Kelly was once more wearing the navy blue apron that she hated so much and serving hamburgers to people who had nothing better to do with their lives then come to the NiteOwl Diner at nine forty five and order food that wasn't remarkably tasty. So many of the faces were familiar, too, from the time that she'd worked this shift a month before. As a matter of fact, she could swear that there wasn't a single face that she hadn't seen either then or within the last week.
Patches seemed restless. He'd kept Jennifer up all night by pouncing on her and licking her face every time she started to nod off, he'd even bitten her once or twice when that hadn't worked. So, she'd passed the hours by tossing small objects to the other side of the room and having Patches fetch them. So much about the dog puzzled her, he'd fetch the objects without being told to fetch, if she asked him to go get her anything that was laying around the room, he'd go get it, despite the fact that he'd probably never even heard some of those words (such as shopping basket) before. The thing that confused her most, though, was that the dog didn't have a nametag or even a collar, almost as though he'd somehow taught himself to do all that.
At the moment, however, Jennifer was busy looking through the kitchen to find something to eat, and Patches was barking loudly from the bedroom across the hall. After finding nothing that particularly fascinated her in the cupboard, she moved on to the refrigerator. Pushing aside a few jars of mayonnaise and a bottle of ketchup, Jennifer noticed a six-pack of beer at the back.
"What's this doing at a church?" she wondered, "Ah well, Sam never said anything about not taking it, so…" She took the six-pack out of the fridge and walked back to her room. Once all the liquor was gone (and that didn't take too long), Jennifer lay on the bed unconscious, which probably better prepared her for what was to come.
