440
The paperclips slid into the lock with ease. A flick of her muddy, rain-soaked fingertips and Casey was through the back door of Paul’s Goods, the only party store in her little town of Musk Lake, population 441, soon to be 440.
Eyes raw from days of tears, she slipped her teenage frame between the moonlight licked shadows of the stockroom. The beauty of this worthless speck of America was illustrated sharply by the lack of security in Paul’s. No need, when everyone knew everyone and their secrets. Casey wanted to make her secret known. Surely it wasn’t known to the toothless wonders her Mother called friends. To the alcoholics her Stepfather called family. Thing was, there probably hadn’t been a single question yet. Casey ached for a friend, just one. One person to miss her and know something was wrong.
She clunked her way through the shop, carelessly knocking a wine bottle off of a crate. She froze, suspended by the sight of the cheap blush, plummeting silently into the tile. Teeth clenched anticipating the shattering glass, Casey gasped when it didn’t break, but bounced against the floor with a “ting.” She chuckled, noting it as the only thing around her that hadn’t broken lately.
Glasses. Home. Spirit. The screen door of their weathered farmhouse as her stepfather threw her through it.
That was last week. Last year, she thought. Time for a new one...
What kind of a store closed on New Year’s Eve, anyway? The kind that didn’t have security, of course. Musk Lake shut down completely around the holidays. Poor rednecks closing up shop to be home and do what? Ride around the balmy Alabama nights in their pickups, getting smashed and going home to add to the ever growing, ever depressing populous? Casey cursed her mother for birthing her in this armpit they called a life. Cursed her father for dying in a senseless war. She had no curses for her stepfather though. Swearing on his name was too…polite.
She moved with a sway, intoxicated on impossibly empty sadness, and found herself behind the counter, where Paul had made countless sales. Her hand found the revolver that she knew he kept under the register. Casey was intimidated by its weight, but comforted in the decision she had made. She would love to use one of his guns, but he changed the locks after disposing of her and she had to improvise. There were six bullets. One for the back door handle. Five for him.
Headlights splashed through the storefront. Panicked, Casey sprinted for the back, gun tucked into her sweater. She skidded to a stop at the coolers, almost forgetting to pick up the other thing she came for. The requested straw that broke the father-like camel’s back.
“Can I have some money to go get a soda?”
“Get out.”
Tears weighing heavy, she grabbed a bottle of Orange Crush and slithered out the back door, ready to reduce the population to 440.
