Big Box Faith

Big Box Faith

The people followed each other in vast loops around the tall freezers, down the aisles, stopping only to grab a box from a shelf. Examining, pretending to read the contents of the labels now worn thin with touch. Then, with careful nod, placed them in the cart by size and shuffled onward.

Around and back, in a single file. Sometimes, a stop at the refrigerated section to look through the glass doors, covered on the inside with mold and mildew. The line flowing around the obstacle, never ending.

Others, at the bread shelves stacked on the plastic trays, the bakeries' aluminum carts, holding the trays stacked high. The upper racks mummified in failing cloudy plastic wrap, dust, cobwebs, and fperished flies in the folds.

It mattered not; they were used to the routines, needing the normal. That was the currency that they yearned for, the ordinary of the past. The ritual.

It calmed, it placated; It was that one store remained after the sequence. The sequence changed everyone, to the last.

So, they came to march, to survey the part-empty shelves. Once, with useful products, things that mattered, prosperity. More livable, convenient.

Signs and labels spoke silently, in every way imaginable.

Creature comfort. Ease of living. The good life.

Accept the propaganda, our wants dominated our needs.

Chasing our youth, never to age.

Always Narcissus with his unending search for beauty, yet unfound.

Try, this or that, keep buying. Come to paradise.

Marching in coluum, through the double doors, now askew. Credit cards in shriveled fingers.

The doorman, a bag of bones, an orange vest. Long past decay, withered parchment skin with a fitting name badge, “Wilt.”

The lines stretched past the TVs, telephones, and appliances. Beyond seasonal items in the center, then markdown clothing, trendy, placed ahead of our intellect.

Moldy candy, snacks, crackers, nuts of every sort, on the right, Mattresses and auto supplies in the corner soaked from rain through the rust-holed roof.

With no interest in the sundries, all came for food. The Friday rituals with pockets lined with payday earnings.

Weekly prayer meetings, with mid-century repeating rockabilly music piped in to mask the unmoving ceiling fans, the silent tire repair.

In line behind the woman in the oversized sleeveless green floral-print house dress. Mismatched slippers, a crown of pink plastic hair curling rollers, completed her loss in battle with style.

A marching Penguin as she waddled side to side. Arthritis had laid claim to her years, tolls on her hips and ballooning purple ankles. Interstate roadways of veins, complete with backroad maps on calves.

Bone on bone clicking cadence of her hips. Her spine tinkling in a small murmer of background noise.

A coupon warrior in a flowery, lace-trimmed mu-mu.

Luggage-sized purse, in the crook of her right elbow, the battle shield of an on-sale gladiator. Left hand steering the oversized cart, nimbly sliding her leathery age-spotted hand from left to right along the push bar to turn through the aisles around the decay.

She had purpose, fixated on the section. A guided missile targeting the groceries.

The salvation of the packaged meals.

Beyond the defeated deli case meat coolers, chilled fish and chicken, long past cadaverine smells, seasonal crab and salmon. All covered with a layer of dust and dead vermin.

Past salads: Potato, Cole Slaw, imported sauces. Specialty cheeses, black with age, soiled with time.

Following around dead birds scattered, an unnoticed decoration on top of crated supplies, under cart bumpers, fouled in the broken shopping cart wheels.

Alongside a decrepit, diminished shopper, bony fingers wrapped around the push cart handle, remains suspended by the grip, in attempt to reach the back, the salvation.

Frail, long past the throes of death, a cocoon of coupons scattered about the body, a plastic club membership card proudly displayed. A fossil on display leaning against the palletized gallons of cooking oil.

Dust motes dancing in the sun's rays, undisturbed by shoppers.

The speckled sunlight from shattered car windows, the parking lot full, never moving, not since the sequence. Broken glass washed only by rain. Tires, dry rotted, flat as the nation. Expired.

Eddies of ragweed on the cement islands defining the parking. Dried dead trees, shrubs left to fend for themselves against the call of nature.

Unreadable handicap parking signs, showing specks of blue paint, once a testament of society protecting less fortunate.

Signs to honor the military. The word Veteran in green still visible, now unread.

Marker posts of what was once. Showing nothing, announcing to no one, now here was a place that brought together the masses, for the rituals.

Modern churches, big box stores, our present cathedral of worship.

In the end, it was how the earth cleansed itself of the race that defiled it. Created by man, to proliferate, yet, the opposite. It delineated the parasite, to start anew.

A plan unfolded, an act of Mother Earth. Try this species, or that. See what works. If not productive, harmful, eliminate, regenerate, continue.

Maybe Divinity at work, whatever you believe, then again, it might have been the lack thereof.

The hue and cry was worldwide. Yet not one voice carried the day once the sequence started.

It was accepted, the powers correct, as advised. They were informed, they had all of the answers. All the facts. The inside information, the complete sequence of the health of the nation.

Take this vaccine, a must to survive.

In our interest. Obey.

Then, whispers of a master plan, where only the select few were to remain to re-populate with a purer, more perfect human. Refined, disease-free, able to withstand the elements, live longer without problems. More like gods of Mount Olympus.

Others spoke loudly, eliminate an inferior race, throwback to a world war in the last century.

Cheap slogans, as the bodies piled. The frail at first, those homebound, then aged. The infants and toddlers next, and finally, everyone was exposed. Then sequenced.

No escaping; it was everywhere, the virus lived in the air, our very breath. It consumed both oxygen, moisture, and carbon monoxide. Thriving in our atmosphere.

Science said, a necessary vaccination. Keep the disease at bay. Not to worry. It is under control.

Be proud, take the vaccine. Not just a miracle cure, but a life enhancer. Something guaranteed to help. Protection.

Be proud, you participated in the vast, best inoculation.

But the mind wanders, suddenly back to the present.

The rattling close, returns us to this corrugated steel cathedral.

The noise, dice cambering across a wooden table, the clatter of bones.

Together, now the shuffling sound of dice in a cup.

Sandpaper swoosh of clothing, about. Shuffling along. A steam engine climbing out of a valley.

Imagined sighs, no voices heard, just the rumor of feelings.

Turning to scan the crowd, looking back along the line. People of every stripe, races unknown in the dim sparkling light from the shattered glass, dancing on the shoppers, the dried and sickly wares, the long gone.

No children, only empty strollers pushed by faded women, heads turning left and right for their offspring. Mouths hanging open in a call to the young, not there. Occasionally, a teeth clatters to the floor.

Suddenly, the apparition appears in the late evening light.

The union was planned, ethereal knowledge. Two passing spirits from time past, long past.

Remembering the last semester of learning, testosterone, estrogen mixing was the main. The eternal need to procreate.

A union like none before. Hope and dreams, eternal.

That thought lingered, brought to the fore with the sequence.

A chance meeting in the aisles. The walk recognized. The sashay of the hips, the step.

Lived before, but ages past.

Then recognition, the familiar set of the jaw, but the eye sockets dry, still known.

Memories flooding back, under the bleachers. In the hallways, hands, then more.

The future unfolding then. Making plans.

Gather documents, borrow cars, cash for the ceremonies. Plans to elope.

Telling friends, secrets.

The discovery, then moves miles away. Forbidden calls. Parents with to end the planned nuptuals.

The distance, then in time and distance, forgetting. Moving to productivity, to age, to life a family, anew.

Then the sequence, years in the making, and here, together by chance.

Both stop and stare, recognition in the plain.

Yet, there is no union, there is no glory. Time has moved on, the present,

Attempt, falling on deaf ears, yet the feelings rekindled. The spark inside their chest, the rekindling of hope.

Then, slow movement, let go of the stroller, release the cart.

They collapse into each other's arms, bones mixed together in eternity.

Now piled together forever in the grocery aisle.

As the line of shoppers moved around the heap. Rotten cloth, tooth fillings, one pair of glasses, a pile of bones, another obstacle for the shoppers.

Yet, to worship at the end of the week mass, in the grocery section.

The sequence hath made ghosts of all.

Come to pray.