It wasn't a dream. I was walking home through the fog when I saw the red light. It wasn't a neon sign; it was the glow of a wound in the side of a brick building. I stepped inside The Gristle & Bone, and the door didn't close—it healed shut behind me.
The air inside was hot and wet, like the inside of a throat.
The First Aisle: The Shelf of Pears
I walked down a hallway made of compressed, grey hair. On the first shelf, I saw a row of glass jars. I thought they were fruit. I was wrong.
The Wet Hearts: They were pinned to velvet cushions. They were still beating, all in different rhythms. As I got closer, they all synced up to match my pulse.
The Glass Eyes: Hundreds of them, floating in a thick, yellow jelly. When I moved left, they all rolled left. When I blinked, I heard a wet squelch from inside the jars.
The Second Aisle: The Living Furniture
The floor started to feel soft. It wasn't carpet. It was a layer of human tongues, laid out like tiles. Every step I took made a licking sound.
The Ribcage Chairs: I saw a row of chairs made of white, bleached bone. The "leather" seats were translucent skin. I saw a tattoo on one of them—it was my own name.
The Breathing Lamps: The shades were made of thin, stretched faces. The light didn't come from a bulb; it came from a glowing, pulsing brain inside the skull.
The Third Aisle: The Price of Looking
I reached the back of the store. There was no counter. There was just a massive, rusted meat hook hanging from a chain that went up into a black void.
A voice didn't come from a person. It came from the walls themselves. The walls groaned the words:
"You've been looking for an hour. That costs a gallon."
I felt a sharp pain in my side. I looked down. A silver tap had grown out of my own ribs. A bucket sat beneath it, and I watched my own blood start to fill it, cold and dark. I couldn't move. I couldn't scream. My mouth had been sewn shut with invisible wire while I was browsing the "specials."
The Exit
The store doesn't let you leave through the door. It digests you.
I felt the walls start to squeeze. The shelves of eyes and hearts began to melt into a red soup. I realized then that I wasn't a customer. I was the new inventory.
I am still here. I am the lamp you are looking at right now. My skin is the shade. My thoughts are the light.
Do you want to know what the "Manager" did to my hands so I could never leave, or do you want to hear about the person who just walked through the front door?