Unbecoming

The air surged with static whenever a monster emerged. That electric shock that always seemed to result in the press of a phone’s record button. Two teenaged girls, dressed in their school uniforms, stood at the mouth of the aisle, near a tower of organic tomato sauce, trying to muffle their panicked giggles, high and tight, their phones raised. Zel leaned over the cash desk, just far enough to see a woman becoming a monster. 

The monster pushed and pulled pasta boxes off the shelf, each landing with a dull, jingling slap on the faux-wood tiles. Her lips were thin over her teeth, a feral rictus of frustration. 

Zel stepped out from behind the cash desk, her fingers trailing over the worn Formica while Sawyer, the store manager, placed deodorant in the impulse-buy display from a box she balanced on her hip. They’d seen this all many times before. Pasta knocked on the floor didn’t need intervention. Not yet. It was better that the monster slaked her rage on a couple of boxes rather than on people. 

“It’s like a rage room or something,” one of the teenagers said, her kilt flicking slightly with the sway of her hips, not entirely able to keep her schadenfreude smile hidden. She tapped the screen a few times and put a kaiju effect on the monster, turning the pasta boxes into rows of houses. 

“Karen the Kaiju,” the other teenager said in a stage whisper. 

“Ma’am, if you are looking for something specific maybe I can help you, like, find it,” Chantal, the store’s newest hire, said. Anxiety and excitement combined as she tried to address the situation. There was a rip and a tear and a near growl. “You really shouldn’t open boxes; we can’t, like, resell them.” 

“Well, I can’t see the pasta,” the monster yelled, hard-edged and power hungry. “That’s why I opened it.” 

“Sawyer, help, I forget what I am supposed to do,” Chantal said, more than simple panic edging out her words. 

“We’ve got one,” Sawyer said, still stocking the deodorant in perfect lines near the cash desk. The klaxon before the calamity. 

Zel sighed as she heard the recognizable splashing, shattering sound of pasta being dumped all over the tile floor. Chantal backed out of the aisle, her hands in front of her, only just managing to step around the teenagers. 

“What the hell even is conchiglie?” the monster yelled, throwing another white box with black serif typeface out of the aisle. 

“You’re up, Zel,” Sawyer said, straightening the deodorant. 

“Rage room over,” one of the teenagers said as her friend stopped filming; their attention waning when Zel walked toward the aisle. 

“You can’t throw me out,” the monster shouted at the top of her lungs. 

“Not here to do that,” Zel said, starting to sweep the pasta into a pile with the side of her sneaker. It sounded like the roll and clatter of rocks on the shore. Soothing. 

“I’m a paying customer.” The monster’s pitch was less frantic now, not by much, but still measurable. 

“I know,” Zel said, straightening the boxes on the shelf. There was always a key— a cause for the fevered frenzy. As she brought the boxes back to the edge of the shelf, lining them up with a degree of unneeded precision, Zel watched the monster. The skin around the monster’s nails was picked and scratched and scabbed. The monster dug her thumb into her flesh so hard it drew blood as her eyes flicked over the pasta boxes once more. “And I have to make dinner for him.” Her eyes widened, as though she didn’t expect to say that much. 

“What kind of pasta does your partner insist on?” 

“He’ll only eat macaroni,” the monster said, her hands shaking. 

And there was the crux of the matter. 

Sometimes, the only control a person had was where they bought their macaroni. 

“Would he be okay going out for dinner? Just today?” Zel put a hand on the monster’s shoulder. This was always the most difficult part, gauging if she could turn them from the mess. The evidence of their behaviour was almost always the worst thing to face. It made them dig their heels in harder. It prolonged the tantrum out of embarrassment. It made them a whirlwind of unpredictable fury. 

“It might be nice to go out,” the monster said, her voice softer and brighter, as she unfurled the tiniest bit from her angry hunch and left the store. 

The teenagers loitered for a few more minutes, whispering about text and filters. They snapped a selfie and left without a word, the video likely already posted and shared around on half a dozen social media platforms. 

“A new regular for Zel,” Sawyer said, standing back to look at her work as the store’s glass front doors closed. 

“I panicked and I couldn’t remember the signs. Then I couldn’t remember what you said to do with them,” Chantal said, the words tumbling out in a rush. Her shoulders slumped as she sighed and pulled out the binder from below the main cash desk. It was the first thing they’d trained her on that morning. “I’ll add her to the list. Macaroni Madison?” 

Zel nodded. “Better than Kaiju Karen. Because…” she started to say in a sing-song voice. 

“…a single incident of take…” Sawyer said, responding to the rhyme they’d made for themselves. 

“…does not a monster make.” Zel nodded. 

“That was, like, way more than taking though,” Chantal said, flipping through all the incident reports in the binder. “It was, like, ruining. Now we need to clean and do discounts and, like, file damages with the insurance.” 

“That’s why I hired you. So sick of filing those,” Sawyer said, rubbing the space between her eyebrows with her free hand. 

“But you let it keep happening,” Chantal said, looking between Zel and Sawyer. 

“And that’s why I hired her.” Sawyer pointed to Zel. “She has a preternatural sense of what calms a person down.” 

“But how?” Chantal asked, her head tilted to the side as she started opening drawers behind the cash desk. “It’s not like you can learn this from, like, on-the-job training, is it?” 

“Just really good at guessing the reason for the outburst.” Zel shrugged and the air in the store seemed to settle. 

“And the bachelor’s in psych doesn’t hurt,” Sawyer said, adjusting the box of deodorants on her hip and then another deodorant from the box. 

“Are you doing a master’s?” Chantal asked. 

Zel shook her head. “Too much money and too little credit to get a good enough student loan.” She shrugged. “So, I work here instead. At least I can help people here. Seemingly.” 

She looked around at the mess of dented pasta boxes and shattered shells. 

#

Static filled the air as a yawping monster began to shove all the adult diapers off the shelf. Zel looked up from the inventory list she’d spread out over the cash desk and Sawyer put a hand on Chantal’s shoulder. 

“They don’t provide shit for shit,” the monster yelled, kicking a box and sending it sliding to the end of the aisle. 

The two teenaged girls, who were now regulars in the grocery store, skulked to the top of the personal hygiene aisle. One of them had their hand extended until the other shook her head. “He looks dangerous, more than the other lady.” 

“We’ve got another one,” Sawyer said, taking her cell phone from her pocket while the teenagers ran from the store. “You’re up, Zel.”

Zel crept toward the aisle and peeked around an endcap of vegan butterscotch pudding, wanting to see before she stepped into the monster’s space. He was hunched over with his mouth open, a monstrous snarl of tongue and teeth. Zel was cautious, more so than with a woman. As she walked to him, her heart tried to beat its way out of the cage of her ribs. With each step she took toward the monster, her vigilance grew. His nailbeds were split and bleeding, like his nails were too large and too sharp. “I have to pay for all his shit, literal shit,” the monster yelled. Skin flaked near his elbows and wrists, like anxious eczema, revealing the gelatinous, nearly-nacreous slide of a congealing bruise. 

“Pay for what?” Zel asked, projecting a calm she didn’t feel and keeping her voice low as she picked up a box, turning the dented corner in toward the shelf. The French language side now faced outwards. 

“The nursing home,” he said, his growl turning to a whine halfway through. “They provide nothing. Too expensive to keep staff and supplies to care for him. Too expensive for us too.” Clotted blood from his fingers smeared over his cheek bones as he dragged his hands down his face, pulling the skin under his eyes. 

“We have a loyalty program,” she said, picking up another box from the floor. “It isn’t much of a discount, but it takes the edge off.” Zel looked at the shelf rather than at him as she brought the box in line with the others. 

“Any savings will help, considering we already need a loan,” he said, picking a box of diapers from the floor and strolled to the cash desk. 

“Interest rates: the actual cost of living,” she said. It was a morbid joke, but it surprised a laugh from the monster. 

“Do you have an enrollment form?” he asked. The knot of tension that made his back curl untied itself as she handed him the brochure and a pen. When he returned it, there wasn’t a smear of blood on the page. His cheeks were flushed a regretful-rose when she smiled at him. The static charge in the air dissipated, leaving a trace of petrichor as the automatic glass doors slid open and then closed. 

“That was scary,” Chantal whispered, watching him through the doors. 

“But nothing harmed,” Sawyer said, putting her cell phone back in her pocket. 

“Add him to the book,” Zel said, rubbing her hand over her forehead. She was surprised to feel that it was a little wet and that her heart rate was still fast and harsh. 

“Why do we, like, name them all?” Chantal asked, picking her way around the scattered diaper boxes near the front of the store. 

“It makes them human again,” Sawyer said. 

“To us,” Zel said, bending forward and cupping her hands over her mouth, her breathing too fast, white dots scattering across everything she could see. 

“Fucking hell, Zel, sit down,” Sawyer said, but the sound was muffled at the edges. 

#

“We’ve got one,” Chantal whispered, tapping her knuckles on the cash desk in front of Zel. “Like, in the cereal aisle.” 

There was no static charge in the air as Zel took a breath. There was no rabid scream. She walked towards the cereal, each step measured, expecting the brattle of spilled bran flakes. But there was nothing. Between the organic puffed rice and the unsellable popped rye, she took a step, toe first and quiet. Sometimes, unexpected and authoritative sounds could start a tantrum roaring. 

The woman in the middle of the aisle stood curled in on herself. The sides of the cereal box she gripped collapsed under the force of her fingers as she sobbed. Ragged and raw. 

Skin-lacerating misery. 

Not a monster. Not at all. 

“Are you alright?” Zel’s eyes widened. It was a question she’d never asked in this store. 

“The cereal, the spelt, it was farmed in Germany,” she said, halting and gasping. 

“Yeah.” Zel took another slow step closer. 

“I miss Germany so much,” she said, curling further in on herself and wrapping her arms around the box as though it were a stuffed bear. Her breath came faster, no sobs, just quick and heaving. Dangerous. 

“Yeah, hey, why don’t you take a seat?” Zel asked, reaching out to take her elbow, putting gentle pressure on her shoulder. “Head between your knees, okay? I’m going to get you some water.” Her hand was light on the woman’s back. She really didn’t want to leave her. Not at all. But there was no one in the aisle. There never was when she was dealing with a monster. 

She ran to the front of the store. “No nickname. No book,” she said. Her hands shook as opened the fridge display and took a glass bottle of water, almost dropping it. 

It took Zel a few more minutes to coax the cereal box out of the woman’s arms and send her on her way. There was nothing more to do— except hope this was the worst of it. 

#

Diaper Dean still blushed every time he bought a box of adult diapers, his smile sharper than it should be, and Macaroni Madison eventually convinced her partner to try rotini, her nails still too long. It did not go over well, she reported to Sawyer and Zel, but it was a start. The nameless woman came in every Wednesday, buying little things here and there. Always a convenience food item, painkillers, and a bottle of wine. And she shared little. Not even a name. No matter how hard Zel tried. Too many questions and she shut down. Too many smiles and her face went blank. Too many looks of concern and she turned away. 

She needed help but didn’t want it. 

Yet Zel was drawn to try. Regardless of what the woman thought, Zel had to help, was desperate to help, in fact. 

“Is there anywhere you go for fun?” Zel asked the nameless woman as she scanned a bottle of rosé. A bottle that Sawyer always referred to as cheap and cheerful. 

The nameless woman frowned as she shook her head. “The bookstore. Sometimes.” 

“Yeah, an avid reader then?” 

“Mostly,” the woman said, waving her card over the reader. 

Usually, a book lover would light up, talk about their favorite writers, the best opening lines, a character they adored. But there was nothing. Her expression was blank and her eyes hollow. 

“I like the bookstore over on Main,” Zel said, packing the bottle of generic painkillers into a paper bag along with the wine and frozen pizza. 

The nameless woman nodded. “I’ve been there.” She left then, making Zel feel listless and pathetic as she stood behind the cash desk. Even though it was the most that the nameless woman had ever spoken to any of them, it still wasn’t enough. 

#

All too soon it was Wednesday again. The nameless woman was back for microwavable macaroni, more painkillers, and this time, two bottles of chardonnay. 

“Read anything good recently?” Zel asked, desperate to find a way to connect to the other woman. 

“Haven’t read anything,” the nameless woman said, her voice hollow as she considered her newly purchased medication before putting it in her handbag. 

“What’s your favorite book? I’d like to read out of my comfort zone.” Zel’s skin at her wrists and elbows itched, the nerves skittering and prickling. It made Zel want to scratch and pick. To feel the congealing, dark lump of scaled-something that was barely beneath the surface. 

“Don’t really have a favorite anymore,” the nameless woman said. 

“Oh, yeah, hard to find the time for hobbies these days, I guess,” Zel said, tapping her palms against the cash desk, her fingers flexed high. The silence between them was awkward and charged at the same time. “Do you want to grab a coffee? Sometime, not today? Maybe?” The words just tumbled out in a tangle, like she was a teenager asking out her first crush. The nameless woman shrugged and left without saying another word. 

The next Wednesday, the nameless woman put a book on the cash desk with her usual bottle of wine, a single samosa, generic painkillers, and a bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills. The book was tattered and well-read, the spine creased. 

“It was a favorite before everything.” 

“How do I get it back to you?” Zel asked, looking at the much-loved spine of the battered book. 

“I don’t need it anymore,” the nameless woman said, her shrug leaden. “You keep it.” And then she left, leaving Zel blinking and reaching towards the book with a trembling hand. 

#

At the end of her shift, Zel found herself standing in front of the bookshop. She rubbed her hand over her face. “What am I even doing here?” she asked herself as she wrenched the door open. 

Her shoulders were rolled in, a tight knot shortening her spine, as she shuffled through the shelves, hands in her pockets. She saw the titles of the books, but she wasn’t looking for something to read. She wasn’t even sure what she was going to do when she found the nameless woman. Hope she looked happy in some way, Zel guessed, shrugging her shoulders as she pulled a book from the shelf and riffled through it. She picked at the sides of her fingernails, where an ache had started. 

The skin there wasn’t fragile and didn’t give easily. 

The anxious compulsion to pick and pry scuttled through her skull as she watched a young man start to shelve some books and ready the store for closing. He bumped her shoulder as he passed, his arms full of books. 

“Hey,” Zel said, her fingertips aching, like her nails were suddenly too large, too sharp. There was a need, sudden and gripping, to lash out. To let loose a little of what she couldn’t help, couldn’t control. “Fucking watch where you’re going. I’m a customer.” 

“Sorry, it was an accident,” the young man said into the books he held and backed away. 

Zel shook her head, more at herself, as she turned to leave the shop. She picked at the skin next to her nail. It split and gave easily under the sharper talon. The warm slide of blood through that small trench eased something deep within her. 

#

The scent of petrichor permeated the store, not quite the static of a storm but almost there, as Zel, Sawyer, and Chantal watched the two teenaged girls, who always seemed to film people at their worst, walk through the store and into the aisle with the salad dressing. They heard frenzied giggling and then the shatter of glass, the thick spatter of condiments. 

“Do we have one?” Chantal asked, looking at Zel, her head tilted to the side. 

Zel took a breath, waiting for that caustic shock of static in the air. But it wasn’t there. There was another giggle, another shatter and splash, but not the uncontrolled howling or the rabid rage. 

“Another one,” whispered one of the girls. “No, not that one, the glass one.” 

The frightened, zealous joy in her voice sent anger vibrating through Zel. She stood at the top of the aisle, arms crossed and shoulders hunched, the flaking skin at her wrists caught on the ribbing of her sweater cuff and pulled. She could feel the length of skin slough away and sit there in her sleeve. It was a release of sorts, like it took the stopper off a too-full pressure cooker. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she yelled. 

“Rage room,” one teenager said, her voice wavering too much for a show of teenage bravado. 

“Like everyone else,” the other said. 

“Really?” Zel said, her lips pulling back in a sharp-toothed feral smile. The ache in her gums was exquisite. She took a couple steps towards the girls. “Pay for it and go,” Zel yelled, pointing to the cash desk. Her sleeve pulled back, enough to show the skewbald purple and blue that wringed her wrists.

“But you let everyone else do it,” one girl said, looking down as a flush crept up to her cheeks. 

“Are your parents divorcing? Did your sibling get diagnosed with terminal cancer? Did a grandparent die? No?” She didn’t wait, couldn’t wait for them to respond. The rest just had to come out. She took a large step closer, so she was within grabbing distance, and leaned in. “Or are you just little bitches with underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes?”

One of the girls winced, a sharp jerk of her face to the side. The other started to back out of the aisle, grabbing at her friend’s shirt as she went. Zel could hear Sawyer and Chantal speaking, somewhere in the store, but she couldn’t listen as she looked at her wrists. Her skin had peeled and thick scales ringed the bone. 

“Was that really necessary?” Sawyer asked. 

“I think you should, like, get that looked at,” Chantal said, waving her hand at Zel. “It looks bad. Like the kind of bad where you helped someone else put on their oxygen mask while the plane is crashing and forgot your own.” 

Zel wrenched her sleeves over her hands and held them in her fists. “It’s nothing. Just a bruise.”

#

Wednesday again. Zel was slow to start scanning the items, fumbling with the weight and shape of the wine bottle. The nameless woman took a discount program brochure from the stand. 

Holding her breath, not wanting any sound to chase the woman away, Zel handed her a pen. Every movement slow. The nameless woman scrawled her name and address across the little boxes and slid the paper back across the counter. The pen rolled off the edge but Zel didn’t notice as she picked up the tri-fold brochure. There it was, in patchy blue ink. Her name. 

Progress. Finally. 

“Lorna,” she said, her voice soft as the shop door closed and that curling pull of tension in her spine eased a little, letting her stand upright for what felt like the first time in weeks. 

#

Wednesday started the way it usually did. Sawyer and Chantal restocked the shelves as Zel counted out the cash float. And the day ticked by, hour by hour. Around lunch time, when Lorna would usually come in, a sinkhole started in Zel’s stomach, pulling every thought, feeling, and a good portion of her spine into it. 

Even Sawyer looked at the clock, worrying at her lower lip, when their regular customer didn’t show up at her usual time. 

“Maybe you should call?” Chantal shuffled a stack of discount program brochures together. “Like, maybe she’s sick or something and wants a delivery?” 

“Not a bad idea,” Sawyer said, flicking at the cardboard cutout on the new lip balm display. “We’ve got her number now.” 

Zel pulled out the folder, first form on the top. She picked up the store phone. There were a myriad of reasons a store could call. 

She let it ring. And ring. And ring, until it hit voice mail. Lorna’s disaffected voice on the other end said to leave a message. Or not. Caller’s choice. 

Panic started to fill that hole in Zel’s stomach, cold and electric. Fear spiked and started to shred its way through the skin of her arm. She needed to do something. Anything. But there was no direction for the impulse. No place for it to flow except back in on itself. 

They all felt it. That surge of static in the air. Zel could see it as she looked at her co-workers. All the signs were there. 

Basic, simple signs. Ones she knew. They all knew. 

Zel’s hands shook as she dialed emergency services on her cellphone. Her breath hitched, catching at the back of her throat when she heard the answering click. “We are sorry, we are experiencing higher than normal call volume, stay on the line and an operator will be with you.” 

The air surged with static, crackling and caustic. 

“I’m going to drive over to her house. I don’t care if she thinks it’s weird,” Zel said, putting the recorded message on speaker phone as she grabbed the form and her bag. She was out the door, no goodbye, no check in. It wasn’t needed. 

Her nails were too long, too thick for her fingers, the keys jangled and slipped in her hands as she fumbled for the buttons— the locks and the starter. Her fingers, covered in new blood, skidded over them. She wanted to press the gas pedal to the floor. Wanted to speed along the roads. To release some of the anxious tension. To regain control. But couldn’t. Her hands flexed around the wheel as she willed the stoplight to change faster. 

Every stop sign held a few seconds of terror. Her breathing was too loud in the small car. Each inhale a rasp and each exhale a heated growl. Still, just on this side of panic, she listened to the emergency services continually tell her there was a higher-than-normal call volume. Every speed limit, a reminder of how slowly she was getting there. Anger rose from her guts, bile puddling on her tongue, so much she could spit. 

And then the phone clicked over. 

“Can you hear me?” Zel’s voice howled as she turned the corner to Lorna’s street. Not far now, another block, maybe two. A minute or three at the most. 

“Yes. What’s your emergency?” 

“I think one of our customers is dying,” Zel yelled and then bit her lips so hard that she could taste blood. 

“What’s your address? What store?” 

“No, it’s at her house.” She stopped the car in front of a small, unkempt little house and shot out the address. The bushes were overgrown and what grass wasn’t burnt by the sun was seeding itself. 

“Then how do you know? There’s a fine for wasting my time.” 

“Just send someone. Please.” The last was snarled into the phone as she bolted across the front lawn. She looked in the front window. Lorna was on the floor in a puddle of vomit. Zel’s knees gave out. She lurched in a sideways crawl, falling into the cracked, dusty remains of the garden to wait those few terrifying minutes on her own. 

There were sirens and flashing lights. The clanging clatter of a stretcher wheeled over steps, but there was no tell-tale rise of Lorna’s chest as they took her away, her hand dangling over the side. 

A piece of paper was shoved into her hands by some passing police officer. “Sorry you were the one to find me, Zel,” was all it said. 

Zel didn’t remember getting in her car. Didn’t remember the drive to the drug store. But she heard her own rage as she screamed. Reaching for a bottle of melatonin, she ripped the lid off, blood dripping down her fingers, as she struggled through the tin foil and cotton while two store clerks tried to wrestle it away from her. The skin tore across her back, nearly soundless, as her vertebrae lengthened into spines all on their own. She snapped and snarled. Her teeth lengthened, that exquisite agony. And then she poured the bottle on the floor, all of it, in one satisfying splash of pills.