Piggly Wiggly
Tomorrow’s forecast is ½ inch of snow. In the Bible Belt, that’s a directive to stock the bunker for 40 days and 40 nights, cuz there ain’t no plows, no one shovels anything other than shit, and the salt trucks capsize more often than they deliver their payload. Translation: the parking lot is full of frantic folks and the store shelves are empty of everything but vitamins and greeting cards.
Duck Donuts
A mom who hasn’t really slept since 2023 orders coffee while bouncing her baby and berating her toddler for toddling. Once caffeinated, she clangs her little family unit through the cowbell covered door, knocking into a startled Spanish-speaking couple. “I thought they all got rid of all y’all,” she muttered, brushing past them and chirping her key fob to find her suburban utility vehicle.
Upright Physical Therapy
“Today is your last day of benefits, Trudy,” the clerk says, inexplicably perky, considering she is essentially condemning the woman to continuous decay. “I thought it was 90 days or 30 sessions?” Trudy responds. “That was before. As of February 1st, the Government will only provide benefits to the owners of insurance companies.” “What about my Social Security?” Trudy gasps. Perky Clerky shakes her head, “the donut shop next door is always hirin’.”
UPS Store
”What the fuck?!” The skinny white guy oozes a toxic mix of hostility and entitlement. He gets more and more agitated as the women in front of him complete their Amazon returns while Fox blares from a large TV over the copy machines. Finally: “Reason for fingerprinting, sir?” The associate asks in a heavy accent. “I need to get a gun again, ASAP.” The talking heads are highlighting hundreds of patriots pardoned for crimes against the police, glorifying them all by name. She happens to glance up as she processes his ID through her computer. “I am sorry, Mr. Mueller,” she says, handing him back his driver’s license. “My machine seems to have gone down, l will have to call tech support.” He pulls a shiv from his jeans, stabs her, plugs the machine back in and finishes fingerprinting himself. He finds a dish towel in the returns pile and wipes everything down on his way out.
Duck Donuts
The PT patient wheels in, passes a startled looking couple seated by the window. The baker comes out when he hears the cowbells. “Ya hear ‘bout the shootout at Walmart? Soccer mommies fightin’ over a carton of eggs. And the eggs dun got scrambled!” He bursts into laughter at his own joke, then: “What can I get you?” “I heard you were hiring and I am here to apply,” she replies. The baker looks down at her and laughs even harder. Swiping at his eyes with oily hands, he yells at the people by the window to buy more or get lost. They hold the door for the wheelchair to exit.
Piggly Wiggly Parking Lot
Mueller surveys the lot, jogging past a crippled hag at the bus stop on his way to an SUV spewing exhaust. It was better than he could have hoped for: bitch nursing baby in the front passenger seat; toddler playing on the mom’s phone. He rips open the car door, drags his blade across the woman’s neck, hands the baby back to the toddler and yanks the iPhone from her pudgy hands. He holds the phone over the dead woman’s face then searches contacts for ICE as he drives out of the packed lot, complaining to the toddler about the traffic and the people at the UPS store. “Hey baby,” ICE answers, assuming the call was from his wife, not her murderer.
Budd’s Guns
A shabby electric truck pulls into the back of the icy lot, next to the SUV. He can smell the baby’s 3-day-old diaper and his wife’s blood and decay through the closed windows and his toddler gazes at him vacantly. Mueller trots out of Budd’s with a large case, takes the duffel from the man, counts cash. They trade keys, Mueller drives off in search of a stolen license plate. The other man leaves the rancid SUV and staggers into the shop, shouting “somebody, please just shoot me,” and sinks to the floor, wailing. The police and media arrive simultaneously in a swirl of blue lights and bloodlust.
Waffle House
Mueller scrolls through his phone while awaiting his T-bone and egg platter. He grins when he sees that a deranged man was just arrested at a gun shop mid-state and charged with murdering his wife and willful neglect of his children.