Bring Your AK47, Loser, We’re Going Shopping!
(satire is dying; i first wrote this story several months ago, before ammo vending machines were real- i didn't realize i was writing prophecy at the time.)
It’s noon. I meant to get to Tarmart two hours ago, but traffic on the way here was an absolute nightmare. Three accidents, an overturned semi, two detours, five construction zones, fifty-seven potholes, a sinkhole, a nurse’s strike, a teacher’s strike, a protest, and some downed power lines from our last earthquake. And now I have to pee. Oh, that reminds me: add toilet paper to my list.
I would have taken the bus but it only runs every hour and the fare is $7.50 one way and it’s not air-conditioned at all and last time I was on the bus I got called a Slut and a Snowflake and a Spic so I decided to take my little bucket instead. The good thing about driving a beater is that it very rarely gets its windows broken into or outright stolen. In fact, my car has only been broken into three times this year—two of the times they didn’t even break the windows, which was thoughtful—and my car has only been stolen once this year.
The parking lot is full, and I have to park so far from the Tarmart that the massive building is only a speck on the concrete horizon, even though you can see it from space. Heat vapor rises from the black asphalt, and I’m about to legitimately piss my pants. I start speed-walking, which is probably for the best because about a dozen people in various states of sobriety try to approach me asking for money on my way into the superstore.
I nod hello to the security guard armed with an M16 in hand, a shotgun hanging from his side, and cross the threshold into the store. Shit, I always forget to bring a sweater to Tarmart. The air-conditioning is a reprieve from the heat at first but give it about ten minutes and your teeth start chattering. At least my eyes don’t have to adjust, it’s just as bright in here as it was outside, thanks to the six hundred rows of fluorescent bulbs.
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