Dwayne, part II

He arrived in a cloud of dust and parked in a mud puddle next to a bright red convertible like the one Leah drove. Suddenly afraid it might be hers, even though she’d moved three counties away after the night he finally did what he’d been threatening for months and hit her to stop her damn mouth from running, he couldn’t bring himself to go inside. How did I get here? Dwayne thought. Twenty-six years old, no job, no wife, no money, and a goddamn rash I can’t seem to shake. And a parcel of nightmares I should option to Hollywood. He waited until a cute little blonde with a nice ass, nothing like Leah’s endless legs and dark hair, came out with a six-pack in one hand and one of those tiny dogs in the other and drove off in the red car.

The inside of the Stop’n’Shop was crisp and chilly, and he peered between the bars over the front window to see who the cashier was before going inside. Jolene had been mighty friendly to him once after Leah had gone, but every time he felt inclined to take her up on the unspoken offer, he thought about Leah the last time they’d been in bed together and the way her face had stretched and her jaw had come unhinged and a fiery forked tongue flicked bright Arabic letters at him and he’d screamed, and then she pushed him off her and asked what was wrong and her face looked normal except for the gaping, ragged wound where one eye should be, and he’d slept on the couch for a week afterward.

Today the register was manned by a sullen teenage boy with greasy hair and there were no lizard men in sight, so Dwayne went inside. He got the shopping cart with the wheel that wouldn’t go straight (maybe they all were like that?) and started loading up on whatever came to hand that didn’t require any preparation beyond opening the bag or maybe a few minutes in the microwave. A fat woman trundled into the aisle ahead of him with a squalling kid on each hand and a third slung around her ample torso. The left-hand boy got free with some effort and charged down the row toward Dwayne, head down and making car engine noises with his lips. Dwayne moved out of the way but as the boy went by, his little head twisted all the way around on his neck and Dwayne watched his face dissolve, eaten by nanobots as he scampered off down the aisle and hid from his angry mother behind a display of voice-activated soda cans.

Dwayne had reached the beer section and was debating the merits of taste versus price while leaning his forehead against the cool glass of the cooler door, when there was a tremendous explosion outside. The earth shook, spilling displays across the store, and the lights flickered as a cascade of aluminum cans chorusing “Do you wish me to open now?” rolled toward him. Old instincts took over and he reached for the gun slung over his shoulder that wasn’t there, and then remembered he wasn’t out in the sand anymore and he crawled toward the front of the store to look out the window.

The large pane of glass next to the door had shattered, and Dwayne was glad he’d worn long sleeves as he made his way through the slivers to look out through the bars. The greasy teenager was shrieking and had blood streaming down the side of his head, but luckily this seemed to be a real, if superficial wound, and his face didn’t dissolve and his tongue was the normal length.

There was a monster in the parking lot.