FEATURE: “The Other Side” by Saint-Lazare

It was one of those days at the shop. As if a gust of wind had pushed them all inside. Sometimes, all it took was one person to enter for everyone on the lookout in the street to rush inside too, and the cramped space would go from a heavy silence to a scrum in the blink of an eye. 

And of course, we were out of small bags. 

And naturally, the paper from the payment terminal had gotten stuck across it. 

And, needless to say, the sullen archaeology graduate the boss had thought fit to hire was twiddling her thumbs in the back of the shop. The idea of ​​conducting archaeological digs had seemed too overwhelming to her, and apparently, being a retail shop worker fell into the same exhausting category. Meanwhile, I was alone at the till, collecting payments in a flurry like a boxer cornered on the ropes, already with the cramps of an automatic smile. Yes, we have all the latest editions of the Catan expansions, they are right in front of you. No, sorry, we sold out of the last Dungeons & Dragons starter set. Sorry, are you paying by card or cash?

Some damn kid had come over to my side of the till and was having fun bouncing the big plastic ruler I used to trace the columns in the ledger. "Your music isn't very nice," I said under my breath, watching the parents out of the corner of my eye. Some of them would fly off the handle if you so much as glanced angrily at their little prodigies. They did not even flinch, but the kid retorted with a sly smile: "That's shop music." It took a superhuman effort not to rip his head off. "That doesn't impress me," I whispered surly. He left the ruler alone and went off to rattle the bags of dice further away.

The shop was still full, and I noticed with terror that a whole group of Chinese tourists had just entered. The archaeologist was still staring blankly at the chess sets. I absentmindedly scanned the Arkham Horror box that a woman handed me, as my bladder was about to burst. 

"I see you driving past my house every Saturday, you know!" 

The nasal voice had distracted me, and I no longer knew where I was in the checkout process. "I beg your pardon?"

I looked up at the woman. Around fifty, rather plump, in loose clothes, hair dyed too dark, the very ruddy cheekbones of an English woman, small pig-eyed eyes. She seemed delighted to have to repeat herself. "I was saying, I see you driving by my house every Saturday!"

She kept her gaze fixed on me, a big smile on her face, and a feeling of unease came over me. "You must be mistaken," I chuckled nervously. "Are you paying by card?"

Behind her, other customers were getting impatient, and I hoped she would get the message. But no, she kept her shiny slits darted on me, all her crooked little teeth bared for me to see. 

"No, no, I'm sure of it!” She shrieked gleefully. “We always sit on our front steps, and I can see you very well behind your steering wheel! Every Saturday, a blue Citröen C3, 6:15PM!"

What kind of weirdo stares at complete strangers driving by, memorizes precise details about them, and insists on telling them about it in their workplace? She seemed unwilling to give up, so sure of herself, her debit card far from my terminal, the queue growing longer, the archaeologist leaning limply on the RPG books. It grossed me out, but I blurted it out as if I were confessing a sin: "Okay, yeah, maybe it's me."

"Ah, I knew it was you!" she exclaimed triumphantly, tapping her card like a happy child, before finally leaving with her purchase. 

It was one of those days at the shop, and I made sure to wipe it out from my memory when I typed in the alarm code and heard the shrill confirmation sound behind the locked front door. The double-decker bus was packed, as it was every evening, and I clung on as best I could to keep my body away from strangers. The crowd bled out at the train station, the terminus since the road had been closed for track expansion work. Like cans on a factory conveyor belt, it poured into the narrow pedestrian passageway, trapped between two white construction walls. The wheels of suitcases scraped against the tarmac and eardrums. Bicycles and scooters slowed down the frantic walking rhythm, sometimes crashing into oncoming pedestrians at a right-angle junction. The bottleneck, partially obscured by the railway bridge above, gave you the impression of sled pushing the saturnine flow of passers-by, bodies tense, faces closed, eyes veiled, your discomfort forcing against theirs until you were freed onto the open part of the street. The other side. And then, it was a flight of starlings, a chaotic murmuration bouncing between the congested road, the river railing, and slow walkers, to catch a bus with the same number as the one you had just left, the one that used to take you home in a few untroubled minutes before the road’s closure. My commute, repeated every day for the last three years. 

Except on Saturdays.

The shopping center itself was crowded on Saturdays, but the supermarket, tucked away in a corner, was spared, and its prices were unbeatable. Whistling ‘Vengeance’ by Blue Öyster Cult, I put my shopping bags in the boot of my Citroën C3, and left the underground car park for the usual game of dodgems that had become the descent to join the ring road, punctuated by soft bumps against traffic lights, convoluted junctions, and drivers confused by the diversion. I was tapping my wheel rhythmically to pass the time during one of these stops when I saw them. I froze.

The woman from the shop, her small eyes piercing through my windscreen with their glassy but vacant joy, and her untidy display of miniature teeth. She sat motionless on a row of steps, her shoulders limp. Around her, four other people; ageless, of vague gender, but above all, with the same physical flabbiness, the same penetrating but uninhabited gaze, the same repulsive smile. Five motionless bodies, staring at me without blinking. A violent revulsion electrified my body, and I pressed the accelerator without checking the traffic lights, my head like a Baked Alaska, the skin on my face burnt, the back of my neck frozen. 

The nausea did not disappear on the way home, nor with the comfort of my locked door behind me. As if they had slipped something under my skin. Thousands of gloopy needles with invisible eyes, observing every detail of myself without flinching; noting everything, memorizing everything. I emptied my shopping bags on autopilot. What the hell were those people? They looked like a family of degenerates, their brains eaten by microplastics, inbreeding, and amoebas. I slammed the fridge door. Nowadays, no one in their right mind would sit motionless for hours on the steps outside their house without a phone. Without chatting. Staring at drivers. Stalking them to their workplace. 

The thought hit me like a medicine ball to the face. The way that woman had spoken to me was not a case of ‘oh, well, what a coincidence’; no, it was the announcement of a checkmate. The joy of finally facing her prey. 

Overcome by uncontrollable shaking, I wondered if I had just landed smack in the middle of one of those Netflix series with a creepy stalker. A crazy, clingy chick was already a pain to get rid of, the police did not give a hoot about that, but five lunatics? How far could this go? I tried to calm down, to think clearly, but I could feel my blood dancing the conga in my temples. I rushed to take a shower, trying to scrub away my feeling of unease until my skin was red and irritated. The expected coolness did not come; my temperature had risen, along with my anger. There was no way I was going to let a bunch of brainless idiots get on my nerves. I collapsed onto my sofa to relax in front of the TV, and let the flood of images wash over my mind.

The room darkened with the falling night, and the glow of the screen exposed my primal reflexes. Teenage laughter exploding too close to my window. A car idling past in the street. Incongruous noises in the kitchen, finally explained by the cat that slithered in beside me. The city noises, all suddenly amplified, foreign, came to collect in the back of my skull, gnawing, chewing, with small crooked teeth exposed in a congealed smile. 

My thoughts began to wander again. At what time of the afternoon had this woman come to the shop? Was it before closing time? What if she had waited outside to follow me home? Had she been spying on me through the windows, with her dead-pig eyes, noting my every move? Was she there now, outside, watching me? Damn, I could almost feel her horrible presence! I got up like an overstretched spring to check that the curtain was properly drawn, properly opaque. In the dark, I listened for the pulse of the night. But two rows of yellowish teeth made no sound.

My body was begging me to go to bed. But the alert pulsing in my blood feared a moment of inattention. Feverishly, I checked the local news on my phone, not really knowing what I was looking for. People being watched? In a flash, I saw them all again, sitting on their steps. One of those large houses with access to a dwelling below street level. A basement perhaps. 

Kidnappings. Why else would you memorize car makes, models, and colors? Exact times of passing? They had spotted me. They wanted me for something. I was rather athletic, but not overly imposing. Not ugly, but alone. A body in the daily flux of ​​bodies. If I disappeared, would the sluggish archaeologist report it to the boss, who lived in the capital, to the police? No, no one would notice. They had seen that. 

I started thinking about those torture porn streams. People were paying to watch men being abused live. I had a vision of their distorted grins, all identical, glowing in the darkness of a cellar, a spotlight in my eyes, strapped to a chair, naked, at their mercy. The woman, with her Arkham Horror game in one hand. An electric drill in the other. Her eyes, two narrow slits dripping with perversity. My whole body oozing with terror, I tried to banish that speculation from my brain. But it was imprinted on my retina, whether I closed my eyelids or stared at the black room. Incidentally, the darkness dissipated without me noticing. 

Outside, the static calm of Sunday morning. Inside, my body was bouncing like the current in a light switch a restless child would play with. Off: panic. On: rage. Off: paranoid. On: vindictive. I was no longer hungry or thirsty. I was beyond exhaustion. Inaction was killing me more surely than the adrenaline pumping through my synapses at full blast. 

Grabbing my car keys, I decided to return to where I had seen the woman and her cold-meat clones, to ask them what their problem was. The bypass was virtually deserted, and for the first time in a long time, the journey was quick and smooth. As I reached the red light where I had seen them, each of my muscles was swollen with fury. My foot was about to press the brake pedal to park, when I suddenly saw a figure crossing the road.

It was Her.

Limping slowly in the middle of the road. She stopped when she heard my engine, and turned to me, arms dangling. And she was still smiling. Her eyes darting into my soul. With their perverse amusement.

More than an instinct, more than a reflex; my foot pressed the accelerator pedal. 

I had not expected such a violent impact. The sound was greasy, but also strangely firm. She did not go flying like you see in the movies. No, her strength pressed against the strength of my bumper, an incongruous arm wrestling match, her shapeless upper body molded to my hood, her chin raised against the metal that was no longer blue but emerald red. Her little slits still open, even more glassy. Her molars and canines protruding from their lips, from their gums, projecting her blood-curdling smile directly onto my windshield. With a stream of vomit, I tried to block the view, then braked, hoping to detach her from my hood. A crack of the ribcage, a mist of blood from her orifices, and she rose slowly, like one of those monks in mystical ecstasy who levitates. Or a possessed woman rising from her soiled bed.

My weight returned to the accelerator pedal without my having ordered it, and she came back to confront the bodywork, still as heavy, still grinning, like a magnetic Labubu. The car sped through the deserted streets, coils of blood rising up the windshield, her fat, stripped of its bone structure, beating against the metal like an abominable giant, empty scrotum. With the speed, the skin on her face began to peel off, adhering to the hood, releasing an eyeball, the cartilage from her nose, her dentition drumming on the car like the intro to Judas Priest's ‘Pain Killer’. But I pushed harder and harder, and finally, her carcass gave way and flew off to the side like a deflating balloon. I let out a roar of triumph. I had freed myself. 

I had reached the other side.

Saint-Lazare is a multi-resurrected skeleton and a maladaptive daydreamer in recovery, stuck in a dusty crypt in France, with a taste for anonymity. They publish horror short stories on Substack https://saintlazare.substack.com/