Heaven, Hell, and Convenience Stores

A relentless fever of excitement and despair was at once the main occupant of the small parking lot, situated haphazardly between the street and the 24-hour convenience store, which, despite its advertisements of hot dogs and cola, established itself as the unofficial mecca of the rambling drunks of early morning, the unluckiest (or least wanted) members of unanticipatedly large and thus undesirably dry parties, and the troubled husbands who suddenly found themselves on long walks with nowhere in particular to go. The cola was watered down, by any rate, and the pre-cooked hot dogs had long been re-cooked and set to rest at a moderate temperature, masking partially but not entirely the day-old staleness and second-rate ingredients.

The street had, unsurprisingly but by no virtue of its own, become a voyeur of late-night maladies. The slightly impaired flick of a sputtering transmission into gear often ended abruptly amidst crushed metal, broken glass, drunken curses and hastily scrawled phone numbers. Other times it met its fate with the dull thump or light crack of steel bruising skin or cracking bone, skull meeting asphalt with a sickening thud inaudible by either party, be it over the screeching brakes and droning engine (or, in some cases, the suddenly racing engine and newly placed distance between the two subjects) or over the sudden wave of the bearer's unconsciousness. The street was far from bloodthirsty, but had certainly drank its share.
The tar bubbled in a handicapped parking spot, melting and churning the paint into a dark swirl in the quickly dividing ground. The flame from beneath leapt up into the sky, lapping the stars with its hellish tongue. The ground dropped like a pothole, the wind slowly fanning the sulfurous smoke which rose ominously from it but suddenly dissipated. The parking spot shifted back to its prior form, unchanged save for a shadow covering it, as well as the dark soles of black shoes, which rested at the end of legs that blurred in the darkness into a cloaked figure.

The door jingled a merry hello, followed briefly by its sharp slam. The cashier (Dwayne, his plastic name tag said) didn't bother to look up from his tabloid; a customer was a customer, after all, and it wasn't every day that the prime minister of New Zealand was proven to be in cohort with space aliens. The fifth page, as well, promised undeniable proof that not only was Elvis alive and well, but he had opened an invitation-only cafe in Chicago that had served such personalities as Oprah Winfrey, half of the Baldwin brothers, and Verna Wyatt from Utah, Elvis' biggest fan (only the third had given a testimony, but she swore to God she saw the others there, and besides why would you accuse such a sweet old lady of lying?)

He heard the thud of food and chink of money placed lazily on the counter and an affirming grunt (typical amongst the nighttime crowd; it seems that where the police stop caring, nature imposes its own noise curfew) and rung it up silently, eyes rarely straying from the $1.50 tabloid he wouldn't bother to pay for: a pack of plain, off-brand potato chips, a bottle of pickle relish, and a bottle of club soda. He looked up at his mysterious guest and his face turned as white as the receipt he was holding, sans the message typed neatly in bluish-purple displaying the total, an abbreviated list of the items, and a plea urging the recipient to come again and donate a few dollars to the lottery machine in the corner.

The guest's raiment consisted of a black hooded cloak, a ragged black t-shirt, black shoulder-length hair, and (behind his cold, black, infinite, expressionless eyes) the fury of hell. His(?) skin wasn't particularly pale, nor his hands particularly bony. Had his teeth been visible (neither smile nor grimace was born upon his shallow face, shallow save for the infinite depth in its eyes) they wouldn't have been pointed. The fires of the underworld coursed through his blood, mingling with the plasma and burning through the capillaries, but that wasn't apparent to the stunned clerk. He wasn't visibly set apart from the rest of the store's late-night patrons, save for the fury of hell. It permeated him completely, surrounding him like a dense mist and biting hotly at an absolutely terrified Dwayne, who had been standing motionless for several seconds now. A gloved hand snatched the receipt and the freshly bagged groceries with an otherworldly hesitation, as though the intricacies of operating its corporeal form were too much to bear. With an awkward but simultaneously cool, collected, brooding gait, he walked out of the convenience store. The bell sang behind him as the door slammed shut. Dwayne shook his head slowly and pondered the benefits of sleep, scanning the room for a suitable pillow substitute, but returned instead to his tabloid. The world, after all, wasn't getting any more sane, with or without a good night's rest.

Max, the drivers license he held read, was waiting outside, leaning against the hood of a white Mercedes, twirling its keys slowly. Upon further examination of the license, he was 47 years old, 48 in October, 5'9", and had green eyes. Flipping through the rest of the wallet, he worked for a pharmaceutical corporation in public relations. The age and corporation were off, but the rest was good enough for now.

The door opened and a minion of hell walked out of it. "Excuse me," said Max, approaching the dark figure, "I don't mean to bother you, but do you happen to have a cigarette?"

He slowly stopped walking and looked at Max. His face was almost puzzled, but his mouth remained in a grimace. His eyes leveled with Max's, his gaze empty and infinite. His mouth snarled slightly, baring a hint of his crooked teeth.

"I only ask," Max continued, unfazed, "because I've been meaning to start. Need something to clear my head. But my wife can't stand the smell, and I don't want to start a fight over something I don't even like. I'll tell you what: If you lend me one and I like it, I'll go inside and buy two packs: one for me and one for you."

"Well," grunted the shrouded stranger, "I'm not one for charity, but I know a good deal." He looked down and reached into his pocket.

This was the pivotal moment, and Max took action appropriately.

There was a flash, very brief, lost upon the minion of hell, who was busy digging through the clutter in his pocket for a roll of tobacco.

Max, the 47 year old public relations agent, stood dazed. How he had made it from his house to the convenience store was evident enough: his car was resting silently by the gas pump. The question on his mind was why, exactly, he had driven 40 miles to the convenience store across the street from his office building, why all the cards that had been inside his wallet were now in his pocket outside his wallet, why he was watching a strangely intimidating man digging through his front pockets, and, most importantly and most mysteriously, why a swirling, glowing cloud of a vaguely human height was slowly advancing from behind him.

He opened his eyes groggily and sat up. The morning sun was just rising above the horizon now, turning the sky a dark pale grayish-blue and causing the dew that had settled upon him to shimmer like the stars he had seen only moments before. It ran, now, down the front of his shirt and left streaks in his freshly cleaned glasses, now clouding over his dark, black eyes. He smelled, he surmised, unpleasantly like dampness. There was something fiery in his throat and head.

Standing up, he made a quick analysis of the situation. He, a 47 year old public agent, fairly well off, had spent the night on the greasy asphalt in front of a convenience store, which he didn't even recall ever coming to, only a momentary flash of who knows what involving a vagrant and a cloud of iridescent gas. Vowing off for good dark chocolate after 9 PM and cursing the headache his unintentional nap had given him, he staggered towards his car in an unseemly, unnatural gait. He sleepily turned the ignition and was halfway through a right turn onto the adjacent street when he was inadvertently subject to the laws of the physical universe.

Two objects, as it is universally recognized, cannot occupy the same space at the same time. This can be said of two people, two buildings, or (in the particular circumstance) two automobiles. Unfortunately for Max, the other automobile happened to be a tractor-trailer. It is theoretically possible, though of such a low probability that it is considered impossible, that (since atoms have so much space between them relative to their size) two objects can pass through each other without occupying the same space in the material world. Surprisingly enough, in the case of Max's white Mercedes which currently sharing the same proximity as a Coca-Cola painted tractor-trailer, this happened. Unfortunately for both Max and for the scientific world, this only happened through one layer of the innumerable atoms composing the two cars, and had an almost entirely immeasurable effect on the collision.

With the truck going 60 mph and Max going approximately two, it wasn't even a fair fight. The Mercedes was crushed, both at its factory-designed crunch points and almost every other point it held. It was set aloft and tumbled, each collision with the hard earth further shaping it into an unrecognizable chunk of metal, plastic, and (for a premium price) leather. Somewhere after the screech of the semi's brakes and before the second or third landing the occupant, having forgotten to fasten his seat-belt, involuntarily left the vehicle and came to rest in an indecipherable mass at the end of a long streak of blood and bone fragments.

A second law of the physical universe had been broken, however. The tractor-trailer had never been constructed by any known corporation and had certainly never been christened by the Coca-Cola company. In fact, it hadn't even been present when Max began to pull out of the parking lot, so the collision was no fault of his own, even had he been perfectly attentive.

This all certainly came as a surprise to Dwayne, who had never been behind the wheel of a truck in his life and was entirely certain he had fallen asleep inside the convenience store. But even the fastest reflexes physically possible couldn't stop the collision between truck and coupe. The screech of the tires hurt his ears but fully pulled him out of his half-dreamy state, at least for the time being. Badly shaken, after having finally stopped it and having inadvertently killed a public relations agent, Dwayne climbed out of the cab. He rested for a bit, leaning against the side of the truck next to the now-open door. Tired and confused, and in a reasonable state of shock, he stared for a few seconds at the side of the truck. The glare on it from the sun was certainly bright, much brighter than the sun itself appeared. Shock and fatigue can do strange things to your eyesight, he half-figured, half asleep and half catatonic. In any case, he was now (by absolutely no fault of his own) accidentally responsible for the death of another driver. He staggered, his body stiff but his knees weak, a few feet forward into the street to examine his incontestably deceased accident partner.

The former body of the former Max was mangled beyond recognition. The street drank what blood it could but couldn't keep up, and a pool slowly formed around the recent cadaver. Something unworldly though, something stygian, drained as well. It sizzled on the concrete in an ethereal state of half-being, despite the coldness of the morning. It seeped down, through and beyond the now-satiated street, and down through the dirt beneath. Down.

A startled vagabond, clothed in all black, ran quickly towards Dwayne in a hung-over stumble. He wondered briefly how he had drunkenly sleep-walked from another convenience store on the other side of town, which he had promptly collapsed in at 10:00 the night before, and why there was a crust of tar dried to the bottom of his shoes. At the moment, however, he was more interested in the wreckage, the impact of which had woken him from his deep slumber. He stopped wordlessly next to Dwayne, in front of the semi whose side softly reflected the deep gray-blue of the sky, and trembled. Dwayne nodded toward him with a recognition he didn't share. They stood silently, knowing nothing of the recently concluded battle in the long war between heaven and hell. But they both shared confusion, and were both overtaken with a relentless fever. For the vagabond, it was one of excitement. For Dwayne, it was one of despair.