Excerpt from an Untitled Novel
by Will Verdeur
Bill dropped his basket of potatoes.
His chatty neighbor Elizabeth, who had been busy assaulting him with a boring story about her bloodhound, went silent.
“What the fuck is that thing?!” a terrified voice yelled from somewhere in the store.
Running toward the sound, Bill and Elizabeth saw the yeller, holding up his phone, recording the strange figure staring at him from the other side of the grocery store aisle.
Looking at that figure, the hair on the back of Bill’s neck stiffened. He felt felt a chill he knew didn’t come from the industrial AC. Bill had never seen something more hideous. And yet, the figure seemed somehow unremarkable, nothing like a monster from his childhood imagination.
The figure at the end of the aisle really just looked sick. It had scarlet blotches all over its skin. A trickle of black oil oozed down its face and chest from the corner of its mouth. Its eyes were blizzard white.
A retired medical researcher, Bill tried to make a diagnosis. He couldn’t.
Bill, Elizabeth, and the phone guy stood frozen, staring at the diseased thing that stood before them. Bill felt a strong urge to get the hell out of there. But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t tear his eyes away.
The figure growled. Bill, Elizabeth, and the phone guy dropped everything and ran. The relinquished baskets crashed on the linoleum. The figure crushed jars underfoot.
Rushing back into the produce aisle, Bill figured he could make a break for the door. Whether his companions thought the same or merely followed him he didn’t know.
The three shoppers came to a halt when they heard a store clerk shriek. Another figure, blotchy, filmy-eyed, and drooling oil, stood between them and the door.
The phone guy stopped filming. The hand that held the phone shook. Beads of sweat formed around his temples. Still, Bill watched him dial and then put the phone to the side of his head.
“H-hello?” his voice shook. “9-1-1?”
The call dropped.
The store clerk ran toward Bill and the others. The four of them now stood in a clump in the middle of the produce aisle. Other clumps of shoppers and employees were spread out throughout the store. People stood motionless, afraid that moving would draw the figures closer.
In the tortured silence, the eerie buzzing of the fluorescent lights and the strange growls of the diseased was all they could hear.
“There’s an employee exit at the back of the store behind Aisle 22,” the store clerk said.
She looked about sixteen and was holding up a lot better than the shaky phone guy.
“If we book it,” she added, “we might make it.”
Bill gazed out over the corridor of checkout aisles and grocery shelves. The linoleum floor between them stretched out, interrupted by petrified groups. The drooling figures continued their disgusting growls.
In the distant corner, Bill saw the sign: Aisle 22.
“Let’s make a run for it,” said Elizabeth, no longer bubbly, but firm and resolute.
“I-I don’t know,” the phone guy said. “Let’s wait for the cops.”
“You think these things are afraid of the police?” Bill said.
Even still, the group remained in place for a moment until Elizabeth said, “On the count of three…”
Bill took a deep breath and got ready to run. He heard his neighbor say, “One…”
They didn’t need the other two numbers. As soon as Elizabeth had said “one,” one of the figures let out an ear-splitting shriek. All four of them bolted. The other clumps of shoppers and workers, until then equally petrified, also sprinted in the same direction.
Chaos. A giant blob of desperate sprinters, all obeying the unspoken law of every man for himself.
Running toward Aisle 22, Bill watched the phone guy fall behind the rest of the group. Instantly, one of the freakish things leapt across the store, pouncing on him. He flailed as it lifted him by the ankle and threw him into the air. He flew down the aisle and slammed into a checkout machine.
With his bones shattered, his body contorted, and his blood everywhere, he must’ve been dead. And yet. By his moans, Bill knew the man was still alive and in unimaginable pain.
Having incapacitated its victim, the figure wobbled toward its mangled prey.
While the phone guy’s life ebbed away, another figure had done the same to a second man: an elderly shopper with a tennis ball cane. The figure’s throw killed the old man mercifully.
Now the figures moved toward their respective victims, the gurgling moans of the phone guy grew more desperate and pitiful as the gruesome thing approached. When at last the figure reached the contorted body of the phone guy, his moans became whimpers. The thing reached out its arm, extending its flayed fingers toward the man’s face. The man’s whimpers became cries of terror, muffled by his shattered jaw.
He let out wild howls of pain when the figure dug its fingers into the man’s eye socket, which erupted with blood that dripped down his cheek. Writhing, howling, and helplessly suffering, the man felt its fingers sink ever deeper behind his eyeball. At long last, it clamped down, severing the muscles and nerves behind the eye. It ripped it out of his head with a pop.
As Bill watched, he felt worse than a ward of burn victims. He wanted to throw up.
In the commotion, too many people had tried to jam themselves through the door behind Aisle 22. Now no one could dislodge the bodies that were trapped inside the doorway. The painful cries of those people crushed against the doorjamb by the force of each other’s bodies echoed, but did not match, the wild shrieks of pain that came from the mangled man beneath the figure.
With the eyeball in hand, the figure opened its hideous mouth, still oozing that thick, black oil. Ravenously, it sucked down the eyeball, snarling, cherishing the meal.
As he watched this from Aisle 22, Bill threw up. In a hospital, he would’ve felt ashamed, but in the moment it didn’t matter. He couldn’t watch anymore, but only listened, as the figure went in for the man’s second eyeball. It was no use. The wet scrapes, the ear-splitting cries of pain, painted vivid images in Bill’s mind even as he looked away.
Bill took a deep breath. They were sitting ducks. They couldn’t get out. Someone needed to do something. But what?
“That’s it,” a balding, middle-aged man in the crowd said, trying a little too hard to hide the fear in his voice. “I’ve seen enough.”
Reaching around his thirty rack beer gut, the shopper extracted a .22 from one of the pockets of his frayed cargo shorts.
Bill heard other shoppers around him saying things like “Stop!” and “I don’t think you should do that!” Bill got in a “Don’t!” before the man spit at them all.
“Shut the fuck up!” the balding man squeaked. “You folks wanna live or not!? I didn’t cop this concealed carry for nothing!”
Raising a shaking arm, the man took aim, closing one eye and trying to control his quivering body.
Bill knew this was a bad idea, but there’s no arguing with an armed man in the cargo shorts. Bill winced as he squeezed the trigger.
Bill couldn’t believe his eyes. Improbably, the balding man in the cargo shorts had managed to hit the figure. But, with a sharp ping, the bullet bounced off it. Ricocheting toward the crowd, it burrowed in a young woman’s shoulder, who yelped and fell to the ground.
The figure noticed. By now it had finished gulping down the remains of the second eyeball. Slowly, it turned its gaze toward the fat guy with the .22. It let out a sickening shriek.
Everyone in the crowd who wasn’t trapped in the doorjamb dispersed, trying to get as far away from the balding gunman as possible. Bill grabbed the wounded woman, who was still clutching her bleeding shoulder, and pulled her to the edge of the store.
Standing alone in front of the people trapped in the doorway who were now hurling insults at him, the balding man in the cargo shorts stared blankly at the approaching figure. Piss trickled down his leg. In a flash, the figure leapt down the aisle and pounced on the balding man, who whimpered as it beat him to a bloody pulp and then sucked out his eyeballs.
Bill heard some commotion outside: cracks and slams. Out the window he saw several black SUVs surrounding the building.
Armed, uniformed men leapt out of them and ran toward the entryway. Must be the S.W.A.T. Team, Bill thought. They were dressed all in black and didn’t have the local cops’ paunches. This job demanded the top guys.
As the armed men burst into the building, the crowd cheered. The collective feeling of relief washed over them. Bill felt himself laughing. The joy he felt at this sudden rescue overwhelmed him. He looked down at his vomit-covered outfit and thanked his lucky stars.
The armed men gathered around the figures, which seemed not to notice them as they continued slurping down their victims’ gouged eyeballs. Working in an oft-drilled formation, the armed men pulled cords of thick, steel chains. They closed in around the creatures restraining them with military efficiency.
Slowly, as the creatures noticed they were being chained up, they wrestled against their constraints, just as their victims had helplessly protested their torture. But by then, it was too late. No matter how violent their struggles, they were kept at bay by the circle of well-trained armed men.
With every chain wrapped around the figures, the crowd of employees and shoppers cheered for their saviors. Bill could feel the gratitude welling up so powerfully it nearly moved him to tears.
Now that the things were chained, a few more of the uniformed men came through the door carrying large, wooden crates. While the chained creatures continued thrashing, the uniformed men shoved each one into a wooden crate, which they then nailed shut. Each crate was then chained several times to a hand-truck, on which the figures were wheeled out of the store and into the armored cars waiting outside.
When the crates were wheeled out of the building, the crowd breathed easy. But something wasn’t right. It had been bothering Bill since the moment the armed men arrived. It kept him from fully giving in to the dramatic calm of his fellow shoppers.
These armed men, they didn’t have any marking on their uniforms. Nowhere did it say they were SWAT or FBI, DEA, National Guard, US Marshals—nothing. Their vehicles were also blank.
Something about the way they moved didn’t look like cops, not even specialized cops. Maybe, Bill thought, what was confusing him was the competence, the efficiency with which they handled these strange figures. How was it that they already had this procedure in place? Why would the SWAT team have a specific drill and specific equipment for dealing with them? It seemed like these guys were trained in keeping secrets.
Bill needed to get out of the store.
And yet, where before the front doors had been barred by the figures, now a number of the uniformed men were standing. Four of them stood barring the doorway. The others marched toward the groups of cheering workers and shoppers. Some of the civilians were holding out hands expecting handshakes or pats on the back, assurance that they would be okay.
Bill’s stomach dropped. The first formation approached a clump of eight people: a young father and his two sons, an elderly woman, a mother and her early-twenties daughter, and Elizabeth. They were smiling, repeating breathless thank you’s to the uniformed men.
Then the men raised their weapons. Machine gun fire ripped through the bodies of the shoppers as if they were made of paper. Bursts of blood formed a giant, spreading, dark red puddle beneath their feet. They fell into a river of their combined blood. Each struck the wet ground with a splat.
Every civilian in the room gasped. He heard shouting from the doorway where people were still trapped. Jets of blood were flashing through their bodies and into the store. It looked like the men who had packed the crates into the armored car had gone around back to shoot the people stuck in the employee exit, preventing anyone from escaping.
“Come on!” the woman with the bleeding shoulder said, still standing next to Bill. “If we can break those windows, we can get out!”
Still clutching her wounded shoulder, she indicated with her chin the windows on the other side of the checkout lanes.
“Okay,” Bill said, nodding.
She was right. That was the only way out.
He and the young woman barrelled toward the building’s front windows. Bill picked up a heavy trash can and threw it as hard as he could at the window. With an impressive thud, the can dented the plated glass creating a spiderweb of cracks. But it wasn’t enough to break through, and it attracted the attention of the uniformed men.
“Hurry!” the young woman said, ignoring her injury and helping Bill pick the trashcan back up.
Bill and the young woman were holding each side of the trash can. With one, last, hefty throw, they let it fly into the center of the spiderwebbed window. The can clattered to the ground. Then the glass shattered.
Even as he felt the comfortable warmth of the outside air, Bill felt a sudden jet of intense heat blast through his body. He looked down: blood gushing out of his stomach. The young woman crumpled to the floor.
Bill turned to face the uniformed men before he fell. Hitting the ground, his back was coated with the shattered window’s glass. The blood on the floor was now ankle-deep.
Carnage. The suburban grocery store was now spattered with blood. A strange, dull heat rose from the floor and mingled with the heavy, industrial AC. Bodies were everywhere, littering the floor where they fell. The uniformed men that until moments ago these people had hailed as their saviors pumped lead into anything that moved.
Bill couldn’t crawl away. The blood poured out of his wound. He was still confused. And yet he didn’t have the energy for anger.
Somehow, amidst the absurdity around him, the only appropriate response was acceptance. The blood-soaked image before him faded.
All he’d needed were potatoes.
Will Verdeur is a substitute teacher and part-time graduate student based in Washington, DC. He was born and raised on the Philadelphia Main Line and graduated from Trinity College, Conn. in 2018.
Image Credit: Untitled (2021) by Natasha Zinos
The Gotham Guillotine 
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