Suburban Supermarket
(à la Harris Teeter or Piggly Wiggly)
I’m talking to my mother in the beer section, sitting on the floor with my back against a fridge door, looking up at her. Cases of beer piled high in the aisle lend us some privacy. I’m beyond agitated.
“All the meat used to convict these people had the same date,” I tremble and point off to my right. “They used the same packages! Not a single one of these people is guilty, Mom!”
In the distance, a “slow parade of the guilty” – six people shackled together, heads bowed – moves by a large deli case by the cashiers. Shoppers heckle, hiss and toss old cold cuts at them while onlookers laugh.
I flash back to a man (Samuel Jackson – type) in a hidden bunker letting me in on the secret, showing me clues on the cold cut packaging that unravel the mystery.
My mother says, “Get a grip on yourself, Dave.”
I point around. “But this is all a lie! Everything here.”
“Go buy some dinner,” my mom says. “Ease your mind off all this.”
I wander to the deli and prepared food section towards the front of the store. I feel exposed. In one case are two huge halves of red cabbage. They are so large that nothing else fits in the case. The next case has globular gray slabs labeled “World’s Best Chicken Parm!”
Seemingly friendly butcher says “Hey there! Hungry?”
{WAKE}