The Headshrinker's Dilemma

Chapter Two

Dale hated grocery store bathrooms. They always had the same smell. Bland. Almost stale. Like an elderly person dressed in thrift shop clothes, the air and the water in the air smelled decrepit. He made sure to lock the door when he entered. He pulled the man’s shrunken head out from his pocket and looked at it. Such a shriveled-up piece of shit really, you could barely even tell that it was actually a person’s head. Dale thought about flushing it down the toilet but there was just something wrong about that, after all it was a man’s head. Dale searched the bathroom frantically for answers, looking over the disgusting mildew and tan walls for some form of escape or glint of a plan. But there was nothing. He had boxed himself in. Trapped in the back of a grocery store, in a disgusting old bathroom. Wait. Dale looked at the shrunken head in the palm of his hand again. He realized something: there was no evidence really linking him to anything. He had the head of the man right there in his hand and the body was safely tucked away in a compartment underneath one of the produce sections. It would be days, maybe weeks before anyone would discover the body, if then. All he had to do was walk out of there and never come back.

Yes. And that’s what Dale had decided he would do. Just wash his hands of the whole thing and never come back. Maybe he would even leave town this time. He was taking most of his classes online now, he could just continue to do that and he could do that anywhere. Satisfied with what he believed was a logical answer to a very illogical problem Dale decided to take advantage of the facilities, all of a sudden his stomach was churning, bubbling, gurgling and talking back to him, he had to use the bathroom, a deuce for sure, most likely from his nerves. Whenever he got nervous he ended up having to take a deuce. Dale went from stall to stall until he stumbled upon one that was somewhat decent, enough where he could at least sit down.

Sweet release.

And then.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

“Yeah?” Dale answered, his voice cracking as he tried to finish taking his deuce.

“Uh… I – I just wanted to check on you. You uh… You’ve been in there a while. Are – Are you okay? Do I need to call someone for –”

“No, no, no, no, no… I’m – I’m fine. On the shitter, ya know. Um… Just – Just give me a minute, okay? And then I’ll be right out your hair.”

“Oh, no worries…” the cashier shouted through the bathroom door and wall. “It’s not like we’re that busy this late at night – Ha Ha!”

For some reason Dale liked the fact that the cashier had laughed so frivolously and freely at the end of her sentence. He made a note of that: if he ever got out of the mess that he was in and came back to this town then maybe he would check in to see if she was still working there, he couldn’t recall her face exactly in the moment, but he vaguely remembered her possibly being kind of cute in a very shy and awkward kind of way, perfect for him, he thought.

“So ah… Yeah, I’ll ah… I’ll be right out, okay?” there was a spring of hope in his voice as he thought about his escape out of the grocery store, the cashier was obviously none the wiser, totally not on to him.

“Okay, you feelin’ better then?”

“Oh yeah… Yeah. Much,” he hurriedly shouted back. “Thanks!”

Dale hurriedly rolled down the thin toilet tissue and finished up. He almost tripped getting his pants back up and moving so fast to get out of the bathroom. He washed his hands and stared at himself in the mirror for a moment. He was not an attractive man, he knew that. He didn’t exactly know what made him not that attractive, maybe his weirdly shaped nose, sprigs of facial hair that didn’t quite make a full beard, more patchy than anything else, and his grain of hair was just, well, ew and bland, he could never do anything with it to make it look good or even close to decent. He was like the poor man’s Shaggy from Scooby-Doo and Shaggy wasn’t that much of a looker himself. Yet, even with all that, he still liked himself and was okay with just being himself despite all the flaws.

Dale stepped out into the corridor of the backroom. It was kind of spacious in the back. But it had the same smell as the bathroom, stale, but with less of the watery air feel to it, more to do with the old boxes and wood that were lying around in the back. Dale was pretty sure that some of that mess had to be dry rotten, probably even had some mold on it. He hurried along the way, itching to get out of the store before anything else came up.

He turned the corner to head out the double swinging doors and the cashier was standing there waiting. Dale jumped, her being there just standing freaked him out. He got a good look at her. She was like him. But cuter. There were some obvious flawed featured about her that went along with her awkwardness. She wore glasses and had freckles and her hair was brown, shoulder length. Funny thing was that she reminded him of Velma. Maybe him and her would make a good pair.

“Hey… I was standing here in case you needed me – listening and all, you’re sick so I didn’t want to leave you completely alone back there and I didn’t wanna be back there with you like I was stalkin’ you and stuff so…”

Dale just listened. He really didn’t know what to say. The cashier was a little weird and despite her not wanting to be stalkin’ him, she was way into his space, borderline intrusive or was that just because it was really late at night and he was the only person in the store and had happened to kill someone – but she didn’t know the last part.

“Well… I’m good now so…” Dale answered back as he tried to slide pass her.

“Good – Good to hear,” she replied.

Dale kept walking. He turned down an aisle that he knew would lead him directly to the exit. He could feel her walking behind him. It was weird and now all that he wanted to do was get out of the grocery store and away from this girl cashier. He was almost there. Close. He just had to get pass the endcap on this aisle. The girl was still behind him. But that didn’t matter. He continued. He was almost through the check outline when the girl stopped him:

“Are – Are you going to just leave all of your groceries? I rang them up and bagged them already. Down on register ten.”

Her voice had become exceptionally nasally all of sudden, annoyingly so. Mayebe that was just because she was stopping him from doing the one thing that he desperately wanted to do – leave. Everything about this cashier had become irksome, some of it Dale was sure he was exaggerating now but he was beginning to panic. The longer he stayed, the worse it got, the more chance there was of him being found out.

“Oh, right – right – thank you! Thank you! I – I almost forgot, you know with me feeling sick and all.”

Dale begrudgingly shifted steps and followed the girl cashier down to register ten. Her gait was whimsical and he could see the same freedom in the way she walked that he heard in her laughter when he was in the bathroom. For a few seconds, he allowed himself to get caught up in it, in her, and he imagined a life that wasn’t his, one where he was here at the grocery store late at night and it was him and her and he hadn’t been cursed with the power to shrink heads which ultimately led to him killing some thug that had come into the store and tried to rob him. That was a world that he wished he lived in because in that world, he might would actually chance talking to the girl cashier and then who knew what would happen then… Life was filled with so many possibilities, the problem was that there was also just as many obstacles that literally stopped those same expressways.

At the register, the girl turned to him with a huge smile. She had a nice smile too, it surprised him. Her face was definitely filled with flaws like his, but her teeth was perfect and because of that, alluring. Dale didn’t want to be rude, but he was staring and he kept doing so. When she told him the amount that he owed for the groceries that he had gotten before the thug tried to rob him (again, she didn’t know about that), he watched her mouth the hold time, breathlessly hoping to get another look at her teeth.

“Are you okay?” she asked, noticing his staring at her mouth.

Dale nodded and reached into his pocket to pull out his money. He fumbled around for it for a few seconds and then absent mindedly pulled out the few dollars he had, some loose change, and the man’s shrunken head. His eyes bolted back up to hers. She wasn’t looking down. Oh, thank God! Dale quickly shoved the head back in his pocket with all the items and did only thing he could think of -- bent over as if he was ready to wretch.

“Oh my God! Are – Are you okay? Are you about to be – to be sick?!”

Dale went with it. He had to get out of the grocery store and in hurry, he could feel the walls closing in on him. How could he have pulled the man’s shrunken head out in front of her like that?! Because he wasn’t thinking that’s why. Because he was too captivated by her goddamn beautiful teeth! The girl cashier came around the register to help him. She bent down with him getting eye level.

“Maybe you should go to the doctor’s – you want me to take you to the doctor’s? I – I can lock up the store and –”

“No!” Dale interrupted, standing straight up. “No! I – I just need to go. Really. I – I have some medicine at home that I can take. Really.”

“Oh, okay… Do you need me to drive you or --?”

“No! No, no, no, no, no… I’m fine. I drove here,” Dale shot back, grabbing the bag and this time being very careful not to bring the shrunken head of the man out with the money.

Dale laid the money on the counter and before the girl cashier could say anything else he was hurriedly walking off, making a b-line towards the exit. He was almost there when he glanced up. No, he thought. He stopped. He turned back around, staring up at the ceiling of the grocery store. Another one. Dale’s eyes scanned the whole ceiling of the store. There. And there. There. Right there. No! Another one. And that one. And… God. Dale was completely besides himself now, his heart sunk and all he wanted to do was go crawl under a rock and die because all across the grocery store ceiling, two on each aisle, one at each end cap, were cameras. Everything had been filmed.