Kutztown, Chapter 1 (Shop or Die)

Think, Patty. 
         
Think.  Think.  Think.

I’ll start by collecting my bearings, and assessing the situation. 

Alright, I’m in a department store. 

I’m holding a baseball bat from the sporting goods department, and it's sticky with purplish blood. 

Every muscle in my body is aching with exhaustion. 

The fire alarm is going off. 

Gurgling screams are coming from the store’s manager. 

A warm spring breeze is coming from the smashed open storefront. 

Gurgling screams are no longer coming from the store’s manager. 
         
I just stepped on a tooth.

I have assessed the situation. 
         
I’ve decided to hit the skinless bear on the head again. 
         
I do so. 
         
…
         
No matter how flat Patty made the monster’s head, nothing changed.  She was still standing in the same food aisle of the same department store, and the fire in men’s wear was spreading.   
         
Regardless, smacking the large monster with the bat felt right, or at least more right than any other option available to her.  After about five minutes of this, the sprinkler system went off, to put out the fire.  Patty had put up with a lot recently, but getting completely soaked was enough to get her to finally leave.

She carefully walked to the registers, and mused over how normal everything had seemed only a few minutes earlier.  Of course, back then there wasn’t a mutilated customer in the eight items or less aisle.  Patty took a closer look, to confirm it wasn’t anyone she knew, and couldn't help but notice they had fifteen items in their carriage. 

“Bastard had it coming.”

She also couldn't help but notice that he'd been torn into exactly eight pieces.
         
Patty shut it out of her mind, and instead went to bag her items.  There really didn't seem like a point int paying for them anymore.  Sure enough, they were all exactly where she left them, not ten minutes earlier...

...
         
Patty had stood in more or less exactly the same spot, ready to ring up a few essentials in the ‘self-checkout lane’.  To Patty, the bare essentials consisted of razor blades, toilet paper, all-purpose cleaner, deodorant, generic brand cereal, and a baseball bat. 

Her mother, after reading an article about 'the dangers of college', made Patty promise to get one for protection.  Patty told her mother that she'd only need it in the off chance she was mugged by a cow, but got one anyway, to humor her.  If her mother ever found out what happened there, Patty would never hear the end of it.
         
Patty strolled up to the blinking screen, pressed ‘English’, reached into her pocket for her wallet, and flinched, as the front doors of the store smashed open in a brilliant explosion of glass and metal. 

The greeter ran toward the opening, and peered confusedly at the mysterious shadowy shapes outside.  When the skinless bear lunged through, there was nothing anyone could have done to save him.  The demonic creature opened his wide, powerful jaw and clamped it down upon the old man’s arm.
         
Patty convinced herself that she was hearing things.  She could have almost sworn she heard the creature say, through gnashing, clamped fangs,

“Aren’t you going to say hello?” 
         
Patty paused.  If Patty was frozen in panic, she never would have admitted it.  She watched helplessly, as the large beast literally tore the greeter limb from limb.   

Without a word, Patty gripped the bat and made her way towards the back exit, just as the monstrous bear finished with the greeter, and descended upon the eight items or less aisle.  There, the demon found a cowering middle aged man who had wayyyyyyyy too many items in his carriage.  You already know how he fared. 
         
Patty passed the store manager, who ran right past her, towards the storefront.  Patty stammered and pointed, but the manager ignored her.  He was a ‘time is money' and 'can do’ kind of person, which was a path that led him straight to a demon from hell.  The manager skidded and literally bounced off the creature’s chest.  As he stumbled backwards, the demon's claws extended almost a foot in length, to the size of large chef knives.  Patty’s survival instincts finally overcame her disbelief, and she ran full tilt towards the emergency exit in back, just as the beast began sinking its claws into the manager's torso. 
         
Patty wasn't the only customer running for their life, of course.  Many others were already well ahead of her, pushing their way through the emergency exit.  Patty certainly would have joined them, had she not stopped to look at the fire. 

The same portion of Patty’s mind that led her to freeze at the register was applying the breaks once more.  A circle of fire rose above a rack of discounted t-shirts, sending black smoke billowing upwards.  Two of the shirts parted away from each other, to reveal the figure squatted inside. 

Patty’s mind was built upon a foundation of rational knowledge, and one of its cornerstones was the firm belief that people, when on fire, don't sit still and smile smugly at you. 

The naked, nearly skinless figure didn't seem to care about the fire in the least.  In fact, as he stepped away from the shirts, part of the fire moved right along with him, almost as if it were a part of his body.  A bit of his melted skin slipped off the side of his face, and splattered upon the cheap tile floor, like a large dollop of melted wax. 

The fiery man raised both arms, and the fire enveloping him began spreading with a life of its own.  Flames leaped from rack to rack of unfashionable garments, but Patty was too distracted by his eyes to care.  Despite his burning, melting flesh, the fiery man's eyes were completely undamaged, albeit lidless now.  His lips were little more than shriveled black lines at the corners of his gums, and yet he somehow spoke in clear English,
         
“You aren’t safe, Patricia.”
         
It took another step towards her.  Another bit of flesh, which again melted instead of charred, dripped off his nose and sizzled upon his foot like fat on a skillet.
         
“Nowhere is safe. We’re every…”
         
That’s as far as he got before Patty started beating him with her bat. 

Patty swung the first blow at his head, the second at his knees and the next several wherever.  She swung until there was both no movement or flame erupting from the man.  Its life and flame extinguished at almost the exact same moment, save for the fire that had already spread away from him.  Those flames continued to burn on their own, and although the fire alarms were going off, Patty could already tell it would consume most of the store before help arrived.
         
After taking a second to try and figure out how the fiery man said “Patricia” without lips, Patty renewed her effort to escape.  She spun in place, and began moving, only to stop abruptly, right in front of what had to be the quietest bear in the world.

Patty was dumbfounded.  She hadn’t heard a single step it made, yet there it was.  Its hairless exterior looked more like exposed muscles than skin, and its paws looked more like a cat's than a bear's.  In fact, the monstrous creature really didn't look much like a bear at all.  Regardless, nothing else could possibly have been that big, so Patty's mind accepted no other explanation. 

It stood on its hind legs, with its head towering almost two feet above Patty’s bangs, and its faced pinched forward, almost as if God had reached down and squished the center of his face.  The monstrous creature decided to pause a moment before attacking, to allow the finality of Patty's situation to fully sink into her mind. 
         
Patty spent the moment gripping firmly onto her bat, and calmly remarking,
         
“You look like a giant, killer Pug.” 
         
Its knife-like claws extended once again, superhero style, and Patty could see a thin layer of blood coating the surface of each point.  She went out on a limb, and assumed it wasn't the monster’s own blood upon them. 
         
Pat surprised both the beast and herself with a sudden, brave swing of the bat, right upon the end of its nose.  Overall, it was a light hit, little more than a ‘biff’ or ‘boff’ at best.  Surprisingly, the demon staggered back from the blow, more stunned and surprised by the strike than Patty dreamed possible.   
         
The demon gave a yelping howl that did little to dispel its pug-like appearance.  Patty wanted to swing again, but realized escape was a much better option.  A second later, the beast took a blind swing at the space it saw Patty last.  Had Patty not run away, it would have sliced her neatly in two.   

Patty had a head start, but the bear soon recovered, and began its pursuit.  It howled as she ran, and once again, Patty decided she was hearing things.  Every time the beast roared, it almost sounded as if it were calling out her name. 
         
Patty didn’t even waste time rationalizing it, as that would have detracted, even the slightest bit, from running.  She darted from aisle to aisle trying to lose the hulking beast, and for a little while she was managing pretty well, right up until the demon began pushing the aisles over upon her.

One moment Patty thought she was safe, halfway down a long aisle of discount goods, perhaps a hundred feet from freedom, and then there was a single ominous metallic thump.  The thump was soon followed by a foreboding creak, as the shelving of an aisle began to tip towards her. 

Patty dove forward, as stale food and unwanted toys spilled out at her feet.  She landed nowhere near the end of the aisle, but when the shelving struck the row to her other side, the slowed momentarily, giving Patty the time she needed to frantically crawl toward freedom.
         
One after the other, the rows toppled each other over, until the last one finally landed against the jewelry display case, spraying broken glass and overpriced cubic zirconium across a quarter of the store. 

For a brief second, as the shelving toppled down towards her, Patty made escaping her only goal, shutting all other dangers and problems away from her thoughts until she was safely out from under the falling shelves.

It’s amazing the things you can forget when you’re trying to escape from underneath a retail cave-in, things like giant monsters.  Patty only forgot for a second though, as she emerged from the collapsing shelving, which was just long enough for her to lose grip of the bat. 
         
She rushed towards her lost weapon in a panicked frenzy that even the most distracted demon couldn’t miss.  Patty didn’t care.  She didn't know why, but a part of her knew she needed that bat.  She was so determined to get that bloody, slightly burnt piece of wood back in her hands, she would have gladly ignored several piles of loaded guns on the way to it. 

She heard the beast as it rushed towards her on all fours, again crying out her name. 
         
There is no word for the sound of claws sliding out from an animal’s paws.  There is no name for the sound that Patty would never forget. 
                   
Adrenaline pushed Pat forward, allowing her fingers to reach and encircle the bat’s grip, just a single second before the demon reached her.  With a single push against the ground, Patty hopped up to one knee, and spun herself around in a circle.  Every muscle in her body felt as if it were dying from exhaustion, but Patty knew it was all or nothing, now or never. 

Patty leaped towards the beast as she swung, and caught it completely off guard with a single, crushing blow, driven with every ounce of strength she could manage. 
         
She silently thanked her nagging mother for making her get the bat. 
         
She silently thanked her father for convincing her to join softball. 
         
As the wooden bat slammed against the demon's head, shattering teeth and further distorting its features, Patty turned with the swing, changed her stance, and silently thanked God for blessing her with the ability to switch hit. 

The bat cleaved back around to the right, and Patty, seeing no reason to stop, re-introduced the monster to Mr. Left again.  Each swing landed against alternating sides of the demon's head, and the demon took each blow a little worse than it had the last.  Every time it tried to attack back, Patty would strike it again, before it could regain its senses, leaving it perpetually stunned, and eventually, permanently dead. 

An unreasonably long time later, Patty stopped attacking, and finally caught her breath.  The fire was still spreading, but Patty spent a few moments to pick the monster's teeth out of her weapon, and let them each drop to the floor, next to the demon's corpse. 
         
She decided not to shop there anymore. 
         
Patty calmly yanked the price club card out of her wallet, and dropped it on the monster’s body as she walked out.
         
After checking a few corpses and bagging her items, she walked directly through the devastated storefront, and into the parking lot.  By then it was twilight, which created more than enough shadows to kick Patty's imagination into overdrive.  Every time the wind blew past her, it sounded like someone was whispering her name. 

She glanced back in the direction of the shop, but the smoke was finally bad enough to obscure her vision inside.  Patty scanned the main highway next to the store, but saw no emergency vehicle approach.  In fact, the entire parking lot was dead quiet, save for the sound of the alarm, blaring from the store behind her.  She took a moment to pat her pockets, but realized that she left her cell phone back in her apartment, to recharge.

Patty was too out of breath to run, but trotted as quickly as she could manage over to her car, while scanning the shadows for signs of danger…or anyone for that matter. 
         
The lot was virtually filled with cars.  Despite all the people that retreated through the exit, it didn't look like any of them drove away.  She waited for a second, and glanced inside the vehicles, looking for any assurance that everyone was alright.

Nothing happened.  Insects chirped, and the alarm in kept screeching, but there were no signs of human life anywhere.  The only other place they could possibly be is around back, by the emergency exit…
         
Patty decided she'd been heroic enough for one day, and continued her journey to her car.  She calmed herself by quietly practicing what she'd say to the police later. 

“It was just one injured, freakish bear…and a psychopathic flaming ventriloquist.  That’s all.” 
         
Not quite…she tried again.

“Everyone put your hands together for Todd, the fiery ventriloquist, and his talking, mutant bear, Barry!  Say hello to the nice people, Barry!” 
         
No, she really didn’t buy it either.
         
Without wasting any more time, she hopped into her driver's seat, tossed the bags in back, and placed the bat down on the passenger seat.
 
In mechanical rhythm, she locked the doors, turned the key, pulled out of the space, raced towards the exit, and rode out onto the highway.  She gave a glance to the back of the store, as she passed it by.  She knew very well that several emergency lights would be attached to the wall outside, to light up the back loading area, and emergency exit. 
         
Every light was out.
         
There was nothing but darkness. 
         
Patty forced her attention back to the main road, and turned up the radio, to get her mind off it.  She’d call the police as soon as she got back to Kutztown.  In Kutztown, she knew she’d be safe...
         
No, she really didn’t buy it either.