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| Photo credit: Wikipedia |
“Get me out of here!” Somebody,
probably a woman, screams. “My baby, oh God! Somebody please, help my baby!”
This
is the situation at Divas Stores, a large independent departmental store
serving the folks of Crivers Town.
400
customers and employees have been trapped in there.
Computer
malfunction.
The
computerized steel doors came down and trapped everyone that was lucky (or
unlucky) to come shopping in that place inside. Some of the folks in there got
separated from their spouses. There’s Jack Senghor who stayed behind to lock up
the car. The doors came down before he got through his little business; there’s
the kids, three of ‘em, of Engineer Forge, who ran into the store ahead of their
father who waited behind to say hello to some guy hauling along a train of
shopping carts. These kids made it inside and barely a minute later their
contact with their parent was severed when the steel door crashed down.
One
customer who got trapped under the weight of the falling door was smashed like
tomatoes. His skull popped like roasted corn and spilled white stuff on the
terrace. He wasn’t a particularly observant guy nor was he the listening type
or he would have heard the yells of “Run!”
from the other customers. But who could blame the guy. His ears were plugged
with earpiece of his IPhone and his
face was on the screen of the gadget, his fingers busy searching the
files-probably the music files. The IPhone survived the ordeal, intact. How
about that for a feast of irony? Good enough for two.
They
found the kid’s ID in his pocket; his name was Muzak Game. And just as well.
Worthy
of mention is the case of Mr. Dash. (Reader Beware: Name used here as a rhetorical
device-not real name-but to buttress the fact that he would have been on the
other side, the OUTSIDE when the doors came down.) And true to his name, Mr. Dash
scudded into the store at the wake of the door primarily on the false
impression that the Divas Supermarket management was trying to lock people out
to stifle congestion. Oh yes, it’s happened times a plenty before. Surprise,
surprise, Mr. Dash, you had that one coming.
Several
others were in there, not to buy something. They came window shopping. Or,
since they came nose to nose with the goods we might call it shelf shopping. The only fortunate thing
in this whole mess, if you see it my way, was that the haywire computer left
the lights on. The electricity was an advantage but it was a curse as well.
The
trapped and flustered customers tried banging on the steel doors of Divas ignoring
the pleas and cries of the two clerks to ‘keep
away from the doors.’ Those lucky or unlucky, as you would soon find out
for yourself, to touch the doors were fried on the spot. Summarily,
electrocuted along with those who were close enough to touch them. A man died
of electric shock because the limb of a frozen chicken in a basket carried by a
woman who had made a mad dash for the door brazed his knuckles. Talk about
going to a cold hell in a hand basket.
The
computer mistaking the panic-stricken folks for intruders or burglars took
drastic security measures. About twenty people were fried instant. And soon all
the trapped folks were huddled at the center of the departmental store to avoid
unknown outcomes. Burnt child dreads fire, hey?
“The
phones are out.” Someone, a female voice said.
That
statement got people started. The worst
thing that could happen in this kind of situation is a phone with a dead
battery or one with a dead network. As everyone found out checking their phone
screens, the network was gone.
“As
part of security measures folks, the computer has ability to shut out phone
network within the store premises,” said one of the clerks, the initials on his
badge said his name was Dave.
The
alarm system that ought to alert the cops had not been activated. The computer
probably didn’t see reason to do so since none of the trapped suspects was going nowhere or possibly,
because it believed it was okay to shut the doors and keep it shut. Maybe, it
just didn’t consider the heat police interference necessary and so the
emergency shutdown had somehow (abnormal under such circumstances) not activated
the alarm system.
The
scene on the outside of the supermarket’s another issue. Customers are boiling over
that the store decides to shut people IN without checking with them if they got
family OUT-the paying family member. Engineer Forge would fall in this group.
Remember the guy who stayed back for a little chit-chat while his kids scuttled
into the store?
However,
before their very reasonable inquest, some of these protesters had witnessed
the madness of store personnel (the ones who were stuck with them on the
outside) when they decided to knock on the steel door of that goddam place.
What transpired in those few seconds it ah, transpired was a ripple effect.
Folks touching the electrified doors electrocuting folks touching them-about
fifty persons suffered electrocution.
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There
is a legend in this part of the world. Legend of a sacrifice exchange that was
bound to turn in on itself like cancer or like a black hole eating itself up.
As the legend goes, it’s pretty much the same as legends go, by the way, there
happened to be a cluster of people which the people of Crivers Town (which at
that period in history was no more than a plot of land surrounded by
forests-evil or otherwise and went by the name, Crivers Village) had slated for mass sacrifice.
Legend
has it that these sacrifices had been blood relations-as far reaching as nieces
and in-laws-of a man who had stood up against the sacrifice of the only
daughter of a widow. This man, Celeste, had actually masterminded the girl’s
escape to the neighboring-enemy village. The entire village was infuriated when
they learned of this fact. The full weight of tradition was brought to bear.
The
population of people that made up the entire village was a meager 400. And this
included the family to be annihilated. The sacrifice exchange family added up
to fifty four people. It took the ritual executioners only six minutes to bury
the men, women and about twenty kids alive. The children, (not the adults. The
adults were mysteriously mute. Even the women in the group were mum.) rained curses
on the entire village, on the land and the peoples. Of course, the village
folks scoffed at their fragile attempt at revenge.
One
of the children was particularly stubborn and declared the coming of a sign in
seven days to confirm the certainty of the curse. And the laughter was tuned up
a notch-the village roared with poisonous laughter. The laughter caught like
wild fire and held on. Some of the onlookers were actually holding their
tummies from laughing too hard. They laughed all the way home.
Laughed
at the fifty four-thirty four adults and twenty screaming, cursing children
buried alive. Dying, hanging on but choking on sand as it came off hoes and
spades of their executioners. Some of these caught the sand with their eyes
wide open, dying with sand grains pricking their eyes, unable to reach up and
wipe their eyes cause their hands are bound with cords, unable to scream cause
there’s sand swarming down their lungs and slowly choking the life out of ‘em.
Sand
grains going into their nostrils, grains careening down the vestibule of their
ears, their insulted lives disappearing into a world of gray-swimming in an
endless sea of sand. Sand that spelt tortured death, doom, misery; sand from
which their Maker had formed each one as a work of legendary craftsmanship; the
selfsame through which they were now committed to their Maker; sand that has
become the instrument of a curse and is itself accursed.
Corrupt
sand.
The
last thing to die out that day was the voices of the children. Doused one by
one by the avalanche of sand filling up the pit of their destruction. Their
voices snuffed out like lamps doused by cupping a bowl over it-a task
undertaken with cruel force and finality.
Seven
days later, the door to the village shrine splintered and the high priest
observed that someone had desecrated the sacred calabash-the all-seeing eye of
Hedion. An abomination, by all means. On closer inspection, the priest found the
element of desecration-sand. The little girl’s prophecy had come to pass. But by
the seventh day, most of the villagers had either forgotten the child’s utterances
or willfully chose not to identify it with the event in the shrine.
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Trapped
within the walls of Divas Supermarket, the customers-turned-victims face the
worst dilemma of their lives.
Meanwhile,
something else starts happening. Some kind of trembling that feels like an
earthquake shakes up the very foundations of the place. It’s like a growling
from the belly of the earth. A few items tumbled off the shelf and a series of
crashing sounds were heard including squeaks and gasps from the imprisoned
customers and employees. One plump mama actually fell down in a faint.
Right
here in the 21st century, a link had been enacted. Some good-natured fellow who
would by all means have stood his ground against the murderous mob that
sacrificed an entire bloodline, had come to settle in the young town of Crivers.
He, Divas George, had built his supermarket in the Town of Crivers. Equipped it
with some of the most advanced technological gadgets. The people of the town
often boasted of the wonders of that store; the best by far, in the entire
region.
Yet,
this place was to be the downfall of the town and no thanks to civilization-much
of the town no longer believed in fetish stuff and couldn’t recognize ancient
landmarks. Development had wiped out evil forests and all that. The spot Divas
had erected his supermarket captured the plot of land where the sacrifice exchange
had been buried ages ago. But the folks at Crivers Town didn’t know that. And what
was more? He’d married a direct descendant of the girl who was rescued by Celeste,
the man who had been buried alive with his entire generation line. How about
that for poetic justice?
Fate
is a master of suspense.
Judgment
had come to the Town of Crivers with teeth bared and talons drawn.
And
really, knowledge of folklore wouldn’t have mattered much since these new
generation residents didn’t much care for curses that arose out of the ground
after many centuries and it was indeed many centuries ago since the legend of
the sacrifice. As point of fact, they were civilized and therefore, did not
believe in ghosts. God bless them.
All
deaths that followed after the electrocution, took less than six minutes.
The
earthquake had aroused something that had been sleeping under the earth. Had shaken
it loose from its dungeon deep under the earth’s surface. Something thirsty for
revenge.
There’s
this guy who’d been having a good time making gruesome jests about the whole
situation-calling it all the work of some angry evil supernatural force thirsty
for blood sacrifice.
And
then a few moments after the shaking, this guy began gawking and they all took
it for a joke. When he wouldn’t stop, somebody took a cue to put an end to the
whole mess and gave him a round house slap. A big chunk fell off the guy’s face.
It was like hitting the edge of a child’s sand castle with a board. The man who
hit the jester stumbled backwards, gasping in horror. The palm of his hand
which had made contact with the rearranged jester’s face was covered with sand
but that wasn’t all. The grains of sand seemed to possess a form of life. They were
crawling up his arms and chewing off his flesh like acid at the same time.
He
squealed in congealed terror, got a bottle of water and tried to wash off the
sand. The grains thrived on the water, blossomed and covered his arm like a
swarm of tiny bees and then his arms disappeared. All that was left was a stump
by his armpit.
All
over the store shapes of children rose through the floor tiles. Only these were
not flesh and blood children. They were formed of sand. Twenty sand children
walked through the store decomposing living humans. Somebody tried striking one
of them with a baseball bat. The sand kid exploded then washed over him. In a
minute, the brave guy himself was a heap of sand.
In
six minutes, men, women and children were chewed up by the sand kids.
When
the storm died down, the steel doors opened up. Those left alive on the outside
rushed in and found the greatest nightmare of their lives.
The
world had gone to hell in a hand basket.
