I Left To Get Milk Years Ago.

When I became a father, my worst fears were to be seen as the deadbeat who disappeared one horrible night. That fear was forced upon me in the most stereotypical way.

The trip was only supposed to take maybe 15 minutes.

It was three months after my daughter was born. My wife and I were exhausted from the mixture of being parents to both a newborn and a 5-year-old. As soon as we’d get one down, we’d be pulled directly into the line of fire for the other. Those days were pleasantly exhausting; you don’t understand how much I would give to be living through them again.

Anyways, it was dark out during the cold hours of early November. My son was 5, like I said previously, and this little menace needed a warm sippy cup of milk to even begin to achieve his REM cycle. The problem with that was that we were completely out of any kind of milk that wasn’t breast milk. So since our baby was out for the time being and my wife was currently entwined in the arms of our boy, I was tasked with heading to the store for his, ever-coveted, night-night juice.

The drive was short but had felt stretched out to oblivion with how heavy my eyelids began to feel. Car horns kept me awake during the slow monotony of traffic swerving by. With every little wave to the people around me, I prayed that they could see the exhaustion settled deep into my eyes.

Finally, the store’s luminescence sign roared against the twinkled darkness of the night sky, and I had made it to my destination. My feet dragged behind me as I meticulously made my way past other exhausted-looking patrons around me. I chose to bypass the need for a cart as all I needed was one simple item and my wife possibly needing me home as soon as possible to defuse our time bomb of diaper-sporting fussiness.

Due me a favor and take a moment to think of the layout of your local supermarket in your head for me. If you have multiple around you, then pick your favorite. Now task yourself with finding something easy as milk. You’re fairly certain you could find it with your eyes closed, right? Maybe take a few turns and head straight in a certain direction, right?

Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

My body was in autopilot mode as it sleepily maneuvered the memorized maze of shelves. Walk straight back, left turn at the baking aisle, make a slight right after that, and BAM, you’re there.

Except that when my eyes adjusted to the shelves ahead of me, I was standing in one of the pharmacy aisles; staring blankly at an assortment of bandage sizes littered across the shelves. I was beyond confused because I can recall walking past the cereal and bread, then making my way into the baking aisle. So how the hell did I end up on the other side of the store?

I attempted to rationalize this mistake with how tired I had become over the last few months, then began my way back to where I needed to be. I took a left turn and was suddenly standing in the automotive section. This was located in the back right of the store, the complete opposite of where I needed to be. Fear filled me for a quick moment as I began to think that I had finally lost what was left of my mind.

My hand fumbled around in my pocket for my phone to call my wife, but there was nothing rattling around in there besides some gun and my keys. The panic grew intensely deeper in the crevices of my chest. I could feel every harsh beat of my heart hit against my rib cage.

I knew that if I didn’t make it home soon, then my wife would start worrying about where I was, so I began forcing my legs to work beneath me. They were heavy as lead, dragging me from one random aisle to another. With a quick glance up to the ceiling, all I could see were shelves maneuvering all around me like a kaleidoscope of everyday merchandise. It all defied everything I possibly knew about the universe as it all began to fold in on itself.

Bags of chips ran down on top of me as the tiled floor cracked and shifted my stalled visage to another side. My sleep-deprived mind couldn’t handle what was happening around me, so I forced them shut tight, holding back a gentle cry.

“Dad?” I heard a familiar voice ring out to me from afar.

It was the voice of my son, but with less innocence to accompany it. My eyes opened reluctantly, and there he was, standing mere feet away from me on the other side of the dairy fridge. Ironically, in his now much older hand was a jug of milk, while his eyes stared at me wildly. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything from the cold air wrapping around me from standing in the supermarket fridge.

He was so much older than when I last saw him. Maybe 10 now.

Tears swelled in the ducts of my eyes as I tried to reach out to the mirage of his form. Once again, the aisles shifted around me. Warm air broke through the cold once again, and I was now standing in the spot he was, holding the same jug of milk. In the distance, I could hear the subtle ringing of my phone. Without any other options to keep myself sane, I followed it.

Buzzing echoed off of every shelf as I inched my way closer to the source of it. The closer I made it to the entrance, I saw more people beginning to crowd around the inevitable source of that horrible sound. Lying there on the ground was my bloodied and broken form, with a series of quiet onlookers encircling it. The milk began to feel warm in my hand.

A soft melody of giggling began to play behind me. I turned to it to see a small child with soft brown braids moving behind the shelves of the baking aisle ahead of me. I followed, leaving the incessant buzzing unanswered behind me. Standing solemnly there was a little girl, maybe around 6 years old. She had the soft braids that I had followed and large eyes that resembled chocolate saucers. This was my daughter, appearing to me years apart from when I last saw her, just as my son had previously.

Her little hand beckoned me closer. I obliged without hesitation.

The shelves around us began to close in as the gallon of milk grew warmer in my hand. Everything around us was vibrating at a frequency so extreme that I began to feel queasiness settling in the deepest pits of my gut. The only constant in my vision was the visage of my daughter calling for me to draw nearer.

The ever-heating gallon in my hand ruptured, causing scalding milk to spray over us both. For a minute, the illusion broke over my child’s future form, and I was staring down a hissing creature made of grotesque angles and molting flesh. It scurried away under the shelves around us. There was a moment of fear in my chest, but I quickly turned to find the exit nearest to me. My feet pushed against the shifting tiles around me for the hope of escape.

As I drew closer to the doors, the group of onlookers that once loomed over the illusion of my own corpse stood as a barrier between the realm of reality and me. Standing shoulder to shoulder with looks of pain and anger over their pale faces. A low murmur began to emerge from their throats as the giggling began behind me again, then morphed into that heinous hissing.

“Dad?” My son’s false voice attempted to echo out to me. “Dad, where did you go?”

There was pain in his voice that caused tears to form in my ducts. His questions morphed into sobs the closer I got to the barrier of mournful gawkers. Heading the charge of my accursed jailers was an impersonation of my wife dressed in clothes of black; tear-streaked makeup running along her cheeks.

“You…you abandoned us.” She managed to say through broken sobs, “how could you?”

The voice this being spoke with shifted from my wife’s into a dark grumbling. I could see the mask falling away and I mustered the strength that remained in me to strike the creature. The wall of gawkers screeched along with the leader in pain, which broke their barrier, allowing me enough space to push through them.

Time slowed around us as the doors came closer to my view. Claws tore at my clothes and deep into my skin. My hands found the tranquility of the smooth glass doors at last.

Darkness enshrouded me as they opened.
——————————————————————-

“Somebody call 911, quickly!” I heard a stranger’s voice call out from above me. A hand pushed behind my head, then flipped me over to my side.

My body was convulsing on the ground in a seizure. I hadn’t had one in years, but the current stress of life finally seemed to catch up to me.

When I finally came to, I was lying at the edge of the baking aisle just to the left of the milk I was quested to obtain. My phone was buzzing away in my pocket; the Good Samaritan that helped me spoke to my wife and explained the situation away. A family member brought the milk to her, and now I’m sitting in an empty hospital room just grateful to see another day. Just grateful to not have lost any time like my mind attempted to perceive.

It may be residual stress affecting the pulses in my brain, but I swear that outside of my room is that familiar mix of giggling and hissing stalking me from the edges of the darkness once again