Supermarket of the Dead

It’s getting near Halloween, and by near I mean about a month – hey if you’re a kid looking forward to Christmas that’s practically tomorrow. I’d like to say that I’ve spent the last month working on spooky posts but I haven’t. I’ve been suffering from a horrible bout of depression and haven’t had the will to do very much except lay in bed, read the internet and occasionally look up wind-up toys, that wind-up toy research day was the height of my activity recently and it only involved…ready for it… reading the internet in bed.  

So no I haven’t got anything in the can and I hate myself for that. But I still want to post something spooky thus I’m going to tell you about one of my dreams! That’ll be fun, I really enjoy those creepy YouTube channels (my favourite is currently Cayleigh Elise) so I’m all up for sitting here telling people about scary things because I enjoy it so why wouldn’t everyone?

Welcome to a nearby supermarket, you’ve never been here before and in fact don’t’ know anyone who shops here at all, you recognise no-one in the shop, a shop that’s…. a bit shabby: it’s not dirty or messy but it hasn’t been refurbished since it opened and it’s been open for longer than you’ve been alive: everyting that should be white is now cream and everything that should be cream is now brown, the pattern has been worn from the linoleum at the really popular sections and because this is a supermarket in a less than affluent area that’s in front of the frozen chicken nuggets and cheap buckets of ice-cream primarily. The store’s signature colours are red and white, so if you live in the UK it’s a bit like Iceland but stocked like Tesco, all the signs are red with what was once white lettering and white accents and all the own-brand food uses red and white as their colour scheme.  The other noteworthy thing about this supermarket is how short all the shelving is, the isles are long, stretching back from the checkout that stands like a row little sentry boxes along the front window but the shelving is short, you’re a kid – under 12 – and the even piled with their yummy wares the shelves don’t reach the top of your forehead, standing in one isle you can see all four walls of the building.

Supermarket shopping is boring so you’re wandering around in the cake and bread isle while your mother is back somewhere in the frozen goods isle, you’re roughly aware of where she is and it’s far away AND at the back of the store somewhere. You’re lazily looking over the own-brand bagels, bread and croissants when a feeling of unease sets in and you begin to feel a little paranoid. Looking around you realise that not only is there no-one in the store you know, but no-one you recognise at all, you’re pretty sure you’ve never seen a single person in this supermarket outside of it, not the staff, not the shoppers, and this doesn’t just lead to mistrust but fear. Then you look back and shit yourself, all of the goods on the shelves have turned into body parts, there are stacks of arms and legs, stumps still blood stained, piled up where the croissants used to be, heads in plastic bags where the bread was, still trying to breath – or possibly scream so they can heard – inside their baggies. You hastily look around again and everyone in the shop is a zombie, everyone, the veil has been lifted, this is a shop filled with the death, catering to the dead and it’s a trap, a trap for you.

So being a child, and an utter coward: you run - it shouldn’t be too hard to run out of the shop, it’s a series of straight lines filled with slow and shambling things that should be easy – so you run until you realise, too late but soon enough to see it coming: the checkouts. There’s a row of tills with only a small person wide gap between each and they’re all staffed by the undead who are waiting for you, stepping out to catch you. And they succeed.

  

This was a reoccurring nightmare I had from roughly September to November during my second year of senior school (related to my feelings of being trapped with no end in sight by having to start the second year of five at a place I hated? Nah, can’t be). I’d have it every six or so days and gradually it slightly evolved, after a while I’d recognise the shop and know what was coming and that just added another dimension of misery. Wanna know how come I stopped having it?  I escaped! One day I managed to just dodge around the zombies at the tills and make it out of the exit. I woke up filled with relief but also really pleased with my subconscious for being so logical.

Thanks for reading, see ya soon.