1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

Monster of the Week: Sorry, We're Closed

by Mr.RMA

Mr.RMA I haven't done much lately with this Monster of the Week character, so I figured a change might be in order.

Hapless store employee Terry Rincewind finds himself on his own at work. The rest of the staff have clocked out for the night, leaving him to close up. Although there doesn’t appear to be a remaining customer in sight, Terry is not quite as alone as he thinks. The infamous hypermarket may have a great variety of store products, but none of them will save him.
“I sincerely apologize sir, believe me I would love to help you, but it’s store policy that all returns have to be done in person, not over the phone. If you’d like to stop by tomorrow, I’m sure we could-…” The line went dead before Terry could finish. With a sigh he hung the phone back up and leaned back against the closest wall, pinching at the bridge of his nose as he tried to brush off the latest unruly customer in an unfortunately quite characteristic day of work… a day that was only just now coming to a long-awaited end.

“Heh… another satisfied client, I take it?” the only other remaining worker in the area quipped.

“Oh, most definitely…” Terry sarcastically replied. “That just about sums up what it’s like working here, doesn’t it?”

“That’s what I’m starting to put together, yes,” the co-worker said, reminding Terry that he was in fact speaking to the most recent hire in the ever-changing lineup of Walget staff. He was an older fellow comparatively, looking to be around his early to mid-thirties. Seemed to always work the late shifts and the managers hardly ever bothered to check in on him. Terry could only assume the reason was this guy had more than a little experience in retail beforehand.

“Guess if all this hasn’t scared you off, you’ll manage just fine here,” Terry said with a tired chuckle as he resumed the usual near-closing-time procedure which the prior phone-call had interrupted.

“Oh, believe me, I’ve seen scarier,” the new guy remarked before heading off to most likely cover his part of the deal when it came to the end of the day.

“Yeah… so have I…” Terry muttered under his breath once he was certain he was alone.

Fact of the matter was, for the ostensibly mundane clerk, unruly customers were the absolute bottom of the barrel when it came to the sort of things that frequently antagonized him. Much as they were loud, obnoxious and entitled, at least those people yelling at him didn’t have razor sharp teeth and claws; at least, for as annoying as they were, they weren’t quite literally bloodthirsty, raving lunatics… With normal humans there was the possibility that you could, eventually, talk them down from whatever aggression was on their mind. It was the utterly inhuman and monstrous that were not so easily dissuaded. He’d learned as much thanks to the particular sort of company he kept these days.

Monster hunting wasn’t a side-job that Terry had intentionally sought out, but considering the fact that his only semblance of friends consisted of an eccentric expert in the occult, a vulnerable college student with inherent arcane powers, and a very grumpy werewolf, he was pretty much fated to dabble in that sort of business one way or another. Even then, he wasn’t really the one doing the brunt of the hunting… For the most part, he was doing all that troublesome human-interaction that the others weren’t entirely fond of, in order for the gang to get where they needed to go to investigate, without people getting in their way and questioning their activity. When he wasn’t the face, he might as well have been labeled the bait. More often than not if a monster was out to abduct someone, he’d be right up there at the top of the list of candidates, and the others would have to swoop in and bail him out before… well, he tended to avoid thinking of the alternative for his own sanity’s sake.

Terry’s mind ended up drifting for a moment, thinking back on those life-threatening mysteries, as well as his surreal companions. Evidently, time had gotten away from him, as this trance was only broken by the detection of a note that had been placed on the table nearby.

‘Lock up before you leave.’

He cursed under his breath as he read this message, knowing what it implied. Everyone else had already left. Now he had to actually shut everything down and make sure all the doors were locked up before he could do the same. Such was how Walget did things, last one out was responsible for everything being secure.

Terry had hoped the new guy would have at least given him the courtesy of a “goodnight” or “see you next shift” or some kind of closing salutation, but no, evidently he took after everyone else’s habit of just leaving without any sort of further acknowledgement.

“But of course he doesn’t care… No one does… Can’t really blame them…” He muttered as he tore up the note and tossed its remains in the nearest wastebin. Perhaps he was being overly negative, and in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t a big deal, but the hours of dealing with people that only ever seemed to express annoyance and frustration with his inability to just magically fix their problems tended to do a number on his self-esteem. The lack of a simple goodbye from his co-workers merely felt like just one final metaphorical slap in the face to finish off another miserable workday.

As he walked through the landmass of a store to assure all the doors were securely locked from the outside, the memories of the negative customers continued to play on repeat in his mind, all the more prominent when he shut off the speakers that pumped countless hours of the same easy listening tunes through the store all day. Now the thoughts had nothing to distract them from their nightly ritual of beating him down until the inevitable numbness set in.

It wasn’t like Terry enjoyed being like this, and often he would try to think of something else, something more pleasant, but every potentially good memory had something his pessimism could bring down. If he thought of his few friends, he’d think about how he was a burden to them, how he’d always be the weak one they’d have to put so much time into protecting, just to keep him from getting eviscerated. If he thought of his parents, he’d soon start thinking about their deaths, and how he’d failed to be there for them. Even attempting to think about how he’d been getting more capable over the past few supernatural cases, physically and mentally, barely offered him any long-lasting morale, on account of it never seeming to be enough… It only seemed to prove he was as mere a mortal as one could get. A mortal that had as much to fear about upcoming bills as he did about the beasts that lurked in the shadows.

‘Can’t help the customers, can’t help your friends, can’t help your family, can’t help yourself… Still such a child…’ Over and over this would begin to repeat in his thoughts. There was little more he could do except let it play as he finished his menial work.

Thankfully the closing tasks were almost complete. All Terry had to do now was punch out, time the lights to turn off, and make his way out to his van, almost certainly sitting there alone in its usual spot near the front of the parking lot. He just had to walk all the way back to the end of the store where the employee check-in station was first. He’d gotten about halfway through, listening to the sound of his own footsteps to further distract his thoughts, when he suddenly felt the inclination to stop…

…only for the footsteps to continue for a second more.

Terry turned with a jolt, but no one was there. Surely he’d imagined it… He figured he was just tired enough for subtle sounds like that to mess with him. Taking a deep breath, he turned around and continued forward, but even so… something about his footsteps continued to sound off, yet every time he looked about, he saw nothing…

…until the faintest blur of something passed the corner of his eye.

Terry tried to catch sight of it, but in an instant it was gone, no evidence lingering… and he was just about to chalk it up to the floaters in his eyes getting more persistent… only for everything to suddenly get dark.

That familiar sound of the power being cut off echoed through the building, but Terry was in an unfamiliar spot when it came to hearing it. Everything was pitch-black. Not even the exit lights were glowing. Stuck in the center aisle, a collective of shelves stocked with generic clothing of all sorts, he tried to slowly edge forward, keeping his hand held out as to not accidentally bump into anything. All the while his mind was racing in an attempt to rationalize what had just happened. Someone else couldn’t have timed the power to shut off, not while they knew other workers was still in the store… and even if they were that inconsiderate, it shouldn’t have turned off absolutely everything like this…

Something was amiss… Terry couldn’t pretend otherwise any longer. He was going to have to forgo checking out and explain himself to management later. Right now he just needed to get out of there. Turning himself around, he once again reached forward to guide himself through the complete darkness… only to feel something on his arm… something that felt distinctly like someone’s hand… and they weren’t letting go.

Suddenly, glowing through the darkness, a pair of green orbs appeared, right above where he could feel he was being detained. Full panic mode setting in, Terry instinctively gave a kick toward the unseen body of whatever those orbs were connected to, feeling his blow connect just as he felt the grip on his arm loosen, enough for him to pull it away and make a break for it. He only got a few steps in before he felt himself colliding into a nearby shelf, feeling the sharp corner of it slashing against him as he tumbled to the floor with a loud thud. Through the painful sting, he could also feel the warmth of his blood seeping from his fresh wounds, but he couldn’t stop to worry about that… Doing his best to ignore the pain, he kept running, slamming into several more shelves along the way, hearing the sound of various products clattering behind him.

Eventually, Terry stopped running into things and could deduce he was finally in the open walkway that ran through the various aisles of the store. Wincing as he clutched at his injuries, looking around the pitch-black void to try and catch a semblance of the nearest exit, the pair of green orbs popped back into sight again… along with another… and another… until he realized he was in fact surrounded by them.

“God… this is it… this is how it ends…” he murmured to himself. “This is how I go out… Guess I knew I’d eventually die in this place…” All the same he wouldn’t go without a fight. Fumbling through his pockets, he eventually found his multitool. Even in the darkness, he was familiar enough with where each knife was stored, pulling out the largest one. Maybe… just maybe, he could get through one of these guys… If he ran fast enough from there, maybe he could still escape… He had to at least try… Steeling himself for whatever was about to transpire, he began to charge forward… only to feel a sharp, piercing sensation hit him. Before he could react, he felt an intense jolt run through his body, sending him right back to the floor, convulsing, but otherwise immobile.

Terry could hear footsteps all around him as his detainers approached. He heard the faint sound of one of them crouching near him… and then the feeling of something being fitted around his mouth and nose. The sound of what had to be a ventilator of some sort started to emanate. Terry, in one last attempt of defiance, tried to hold his breath.

“Knock it off, Rincewind. Just breathe and this’ll all be over.”

He recognized that voice… Wasn’t that the new guy? The sheer confusion and lack of air left him unable to hold his breath any longer, and soon enough the anesthetic did its job.

‘Can’t help yourself… can’t help… can’t help anyone…’ Terry’s thoughts needed to get one last jab in before his consciousness faded.




“Alright… Turn it all back on.”

In an instant the store was once again awash with light. Everyone put away their vision goggles as they set to work on the next phase of the mission.

“Kid’s got potential, definitely… Got me good back there with that kick… and he shook off those nasty cuts like a champ. Guess that explains how he’s survived this long, running around with that… little club of his,” one of the cryptic individuals commented as he went to pick up the now-unresponsive Terry.

“I told you this wasn’t a waste of time,” the supposed co-worker quipped as he made sure the anesthetic continued to be administered. “So… you guys got everything ready then?”

“That we do… Tomorrow morning, the body of Terence Rincewind will be found by the first Walget shift of the day. Suspicion of murder, but I’m afraid the case will go cold soon enough. By all accounts, he will cease to exist.”

“Sounds mighty familiar,” the co-worker remarked with a clear bit of snark in his voice.

“Sure does… Anyway, see to it the others don’t miss anything. Can’t be leaving any evidence we were here. Especially once the kid’s pals get wind of all this.”

“Sure hope he’ll be ready for what lies ahead… This existence of ours ain’t the easiest thing to get used to.”

“Well, he’s about to be considered legally dead by his government, not to mention the world at large. Doesn’t leave much room for alternatives. Judging by our intel though, sounds like he’s not leaving much behind. Somehow I doubt he’ll shed too many tears over the notion of never working in a place like this again.”

At that, the two quietly resumed their work. As always, they had to get everything about this procedure right. Their organization prided itself on its efficiency after all.
JadaDoesArt and Willow Tree like this.
  1. JadaDoesArt
    JadaDoesArt
    Jfoendiehfidjejdjfbej e ndbdjfbdidbeidbdj2iebf
    Noooooo D: Terry!!!
    Aug 22, 2021