Weekly Drabble #271: Two for One (Patreon)

This week's prompt is from Framing device with 'AV clubhouse', so with such a neutral idea, whatever could the story be about?

Ah heh heh heh heh

~

Two For One:

The AV club hadn’t really wanted Katie and Kelley around; the twins were new in town, new to the school and... and really weird. They just didn’t fit in... plus, there were all those rumours about what happened at their last school. Even the preppy groups that the twins should have been a shoe-in with had ostracized them. Nobody wanted them around, but the AV club was the last and lowest refuge in the school, so the twins had nowhere else to hang out.

The four founding members of the club – Alan, Achmed, Lisa and Carl – didn’t really want Kate or Kelley here, but they couldn’t say no. Instead, they gave the girls an impossible task to accomplish before they could join, one that was sure to make them give up of their own volition. It was coming up on Halloween and the club were watching scary movies – movies that the teachers wouldn’t have approved of, if they cared at all about what four nerds did in the ass-end of the dusty old school building – but it was perfect. Every month the club gave themselves a challenge, to film as a group or by themselves. This month they had to create the scariest movie they could. If the twins wanted in, they had to beat everyone else’s entry and the only way to do that, the girls were told, was to catch some footage of The Bargain Hunter.

That was that, the rest of the club told themselves. The yuppie blondes would be out of their hair and they didn’t have to feel bad about turning someone away. It wasn’t their fault that Katie and Kelley weren’t AV club material. It was the kind of thing that everyone had to do, so if they couldn’t, then there wasn’t any place for them here. Simple as that.

Weeks went by with the occasional bit of pleading but Lisa, always the spokeswoman for the group, stayed firm and told the girls they had to get footage of the Bargain Hunter or find some other group that would take them – and that wasn’t happening. It was keeping them out of the AV club’s hair, so that was mission accomplished as far as the four of them were concerned.

Until neither of the girls showed up for school for three days straight. It wasn’t like them to both vanish like that. Only Katie showed up on the fourth day, and she looked like shit. Rumours swirled about her sister, but the girl didn’t answer anyone’s question. She didn’t even more than a few syllables, even when the teachers called on her. She was practically a zombie, only casting strange looks over at whatever member of the club happened to be in class with her at the time.

Finally, just before lunch they all got a text from her.

I HAVE IT.

AFTER SCHOOL.

AV LOUNGE.

The message was cryptic as it was vague. During lunch hour, the children argued with each other. What did Katie actually have? It couldn’t be the Bargain Hunter, Lisa pointed out. So it was fake and if it was fake, it was still a fail and she and her sister weren’t getting in. Over the afternoon, Katie wouldn’t say anything more, even when pressed. “After school,” she told whoever was questioning her. “Then you’ll see.”

So with the clock ticking down and the various members of the AV club getting increasing curious (and a little nervous, though none of them wanted to admit that), they waited for the final bell. Once it rang, they scurried through halls filled with milling students eager to get home. The AV clubhouse, such as it was, was a stuffy, cramped storage room filled with AV equipment, much of it not only older than the students, but many of the teachers. It was tucked away in the back of the building like an afterthought, much like the club itself was to the rest of the school.

Katie was already waiting for them. She’d organized the room a little, setting some cans of food out – store-brand beans and spam – alongside a bottle of water and a bag of grapes. Completing the odd display were three bottles of ketchup; two were generic and sat on a hand-written tag that read ‘Special! Buy one, get one free!’ while the third was a pricey gourmet product. ‘All organic!’ its small sign declared.

“Just setting the mood,” the blonde girl mumbled when she was asked what she was doing, standing on a stool to unscrew the room’s lightbulb. “You wanted something scary, didn’t you?” She looked up for the first time. Her eyes were dark and sunken, like she hadn’t slept for days. Her hair, normally styled immaculately, hung loose from her scalp in stringy clumps as if she hadn’t washed it for a while. “That’s what we got,” she added as she turned away.

“Katie,” Alan began. “Where’s Kelley?”

She paused for a moment, her back still to the group. “She’s not coming,” she finally said. “She’s in the hospital.” Before anyone could ask more, the girl continued, her voice toneless. “She’s fine,” she added. “They say she was lucky.” Under her breath: “We won’t be lucky forever.” Then she lifted her head. “But I have what you wanted,” she told them. “The video you told us we had to get.”

They called him The Bargain Hunter or The Late Shopper. He appeared in stores – especially the big box store on the south end of town – just before or after closing, wandering through the aisles and trying to decide between two different brands of the same product. People said it was usually ketchup, but it could be anything.

“Two for one,” some employees would hear him mutter. “Or all-organic. I can’t decide. Can’t decide.” There was a story there. Years ago, well before anyone in the AV club had been born, there’d been a young man with a pregnant wife. She’d had a craving for something special to eat. It had been late and he’d wanted to stay home, but her mother, father and sister had badgered him into it, saying what kind of man ignored his pregnant wife’s needs?

The Bargain Hunter had gone out to get groceries, trying to decide on products before heading home. In his indecision (and perhaps a little frustration and passive-aggression), he’d stayed well after closing before making his purchase. That had cost him dearly. It had, in fact, cost him everything.

While he’d been gone, his wife had died. No one really talked about how it happened. Some said it was a fire, but they did so with furtive looks and followed it up by telling the person who asked to leave it alone. If you could find the right person in the right mood, they might tell you a different side of the story... but there was no way of knowing if that was true, either.

These storytellers said it wasn’t a fire, but that someone had broken into the house and killed the Bargain Hunter’s wife. Sometimes a burglar, sometimes an inmate or serial killer escaped from the prison down the road. “Two for one,” they said the killer had written on the house’s walls in his victims’ blood. Two for one.

When the Bargain Hunter came back home, he saw that mocking message and went crazy. Or he heard a fireman’s graveyard humour as they struggled to put the blaze out. Either way, it ended the same. “Two for one,” he said as he killed the fireman or the hiding killer, whichever way the tale went. “Two for one,”  they said he muttered as he hacked his sister-, mother- and father-in-law to pieces later on, blaming them for him not being home to save his wife and child. “Two for one,” he said as the police gunned him down.

“Two for one,” he muttered as he stared at the products in his hands, trying to decide if that was a better deal than the ‘all-organic’ single bottle of ketchup.

“Two for one,” was what everyone said the trade was. Two lives for yours if you tried to interrupt him. It was only a story, of course. Old MacReacher had died of a heart attack on his night shift and the finger-shaped bruises around his throat were caused by him falling on a stack of produce. Laquita had been killed by her boyfriend who’d suspected her of cheating, and the bloody footprints, a size and a half bigger than his own shoes, that walked out of the store and ended at the threshold were his. The death of Jacob Masterson’s cousin and his girlfriend were the result of a mugging, and if the boy said anything – who could trust the word of someone who’d had to be committed?

The Bargain Hunter didn’t like to be interrupted. He certainly didn’t like to be stared at and he really didn’t like it went you tried to get him out of the store early. He wasn’t finished. He hadn’t decided, and until he did, you had to leave him alone. Some said that if you could get him to leave on his own, then that would be the end of it. That was his unfinished business: to leave early like he should have, to get home in time. But that was only a guess. Then again, all of this was just a story that was itself decades old.

“You have a video of him?” Lisa asked skeptically.

“Yep! Just for you,” Katie said, getting a little more energized, but there was something off-kilter in her voice. She pointed to the group’s TV. She’d wheeled it out and put a flash drive into it, and there were four chairs in front of it. “Check it out and let me know if you think it’s scary enough for Kelley and me to be part of your group.”

Achmed raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to watch with us?”

A shadow passed over the blonde’s face, but quickly disappeared as she shook her head. An uneven smile appeared in its place. “I’ve already seen it. This is for all of you, remember? You said you had to judge it yourselves.”

The other four children took their seats as Katie checked the connections on the TV. Except for the hallway light coming through the door, the room was completely dark. “All right,” Katie announced as she picked up the remote. “Enjoy.”

Lisa scoffed, but the blonde didn’t seem to notice. She started the video and stepped outside, closing the door behind her. The movie began with the twins outside the big-box store. Katie was taking the video with her phone and held up her arm up to show the date and time on her watch.

“You think we’ll see him here?” Kelley asked.

Katie sighed; apparently the question was a familiar one. “That’s what those boys said. He appears here more than anywhere else. This was his last stop before he headed home. Come on, we have to get in before they lock the doors.” The girls trotted up to the building, the sliding doors whooshing open. The greeter grunted a monotone hello, annoyed at having more customers so close to closing. Much of the video was of Katie and Kelley wandering around and chatting, ducking the staff as closing announcements played and other customers were shooed outside. The lights started to dim as the cleanup started; from the girls’ various hiding spots, it seemed hurried, even more than minimum-rage employees looking to get home early might do. Ten minutes passed, then twenty and more of hide-and-seek as the twins tried to avoid being caught, but only filmed familiar aisles.

The AV club started to get a little bored, shifting in their seats, but then Kelley whispered. “There! There!” Katie turned the phone, but caught only an empty aisle.

“What was it?” she hissed back.

“I saw...” Kelley trailed off. “I saw something.”

“It was one of the staff.”

“It wasn’t,” the other twin insisted. “Come on.”

“All right, just be careful. I think I saw one of the cleaners nearby. We don’t want to get caught again. Mom and Dad are pissed enough at us from last time.”

“We’re not getting caught. We’re going to get this stupid video for those stupid AV jerks so we can get in their stupid club and not be complete pariahs. Like the AV club is so special.”

“It’s this or we sit in the library every day and stare out the windows.”

“Ugh. But at least the Ms. Collings doesn’t sneer at us like that Lisa girl. But if this doesn’t work, can we call it? I’m tired of running around all night.”

“If we don’t get anything tonight, then we’ll stop.”

“Good. They’re just messing with us anyways.”

“I know, but this is a little fun, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. A little. Oh! I saw something. This way!”

The video bounced and looked down at the floor as the girls hustled towards whatever Kelley had seen. They ducked around displays, behind stacked pallets of electronics and groceries, weaving their way around the rushing staff before reaching the condiments aisle.

And there, standing in it, looking between two different bottles of ketchup, was the Bargain Hunter. He was tall, but not more than the norm. His head was hung low, his face away from the camera as he examined the items in his hand. “Two for one,” a scratchy voice mumbled, “or all-organic...” He looked back and forth, unable to decide between quantity or quality. “I can’t decide...”

“It’s just some guy,” Lisa announced, interrupting the movie. “They got one of the grade twelves to do this.”

“Ssssh,” Carl told her. The boys were watching the screen. It was possible – more than likely, even – but there was something about the man in the aisle... the way he stood, the way his short hair hung down his face in a way it shouldn’t quite have been able to, the way his voice sounded. It was off. All of it was just slightly wrong, but Alan noticed the big thing first. There was no shadow on the floor. Even in the low lights of the store, the man Katie and Kelley had found should have cast one, but there was nothing.

“You can fix that up in editing,” Lisa scoffed when he pointed it out. “We can do that ourselves.”

Katie and Kelley were still filming the strange man as he whispered to himself, staring down at the products. “I can’t decide,” he repeated. “It’s too much. Two for one or all-organic? I don’t know...”

“Holy shit,” one of the twins whispered, excitement making her voice crack, louder than it should have been. “It’s him. It’s really him.”

The video jumped briefly. When it resumed, the man had half-turned towards the girls. He even seemed to be a little closer. “I can’t decide...” he repeated. “I can’t... two for one or all-organic... I have to choose. I don’t know, though. I have to decide.”

Neither twin said anything, Katie turning the camera to her sister. They’d noticed that he’d moved and they ducked out of sight. “Maybe we should go...” Kelley said, her voice hushed and shaking a little.

“Let’s just get a little more and then we will.”

Kelley nodded. Katie peered the camera around the corner and then let out a gasp. The man was standing right in front of them. He’d heard them. “I couldn’t decide...” a rasping, angry voice said as the camera bounced and swung. “You interrupted me. You’ve made me late. You’ve made me late!”

The girls screamed and started running, the feed nothing but a blur as they ran away, red-vested employees popping out of aisles in surprise as the pair of shrieking twins dashed for the exit, pounding on the locked doors and demanding someone let them out.

As an angry manager huffed and puffed his way to the front of the store, Katie turned the camera back the way they’d come. There was nothing there, then the screen fritzed and suddenly, a man was standing in the corridor. He was a ways away, but even at that distance there was something wrong with him. His face seemed off somehow, like it was simultaneously blurred and far too sharp. He wasn’t moving, but his arms hung at his sides, his hands balled into fists. He’d caught Katie and Kelley staring, and the Bargain Hunter didn’t like it when you stared at him.

The manager was hollering at the girls for sneaking in, but Katie and Kelley were screaming. Then there was the whoosh of the automatic doors opening, but the view didn’t change. Even when they heard the frenzied slapping of feet on pavement as the girls bolted across the parking lot, the image of the department store’s aisle stayed where it was. It was like it was locked in place, but then it blinked again and the man was closer.

“This is ho-key,” Lisa pronounced. “Like, it’s such a cliche. They could have at least tried to-”

The video blinked again and the man was gone. Instead, there was whispering. “Two for one,” a scratchy voice said over and over. “Two for one, two for one, that’s a bargain, Two for one.”

“It’s pretty good,” Alan said as he got up, going to the door. “Okay, Katie we saw it, you can-” The door didn’t open. He jiggled the doorknob a few more times. “It’s locked.”

“It’s locked?” Carl repeated.

“She locked it?” Lisa asked.

Alan knocked on the door. “Ha-ha, Katie. Open up.”

From the other side of door, the girl’s voice answered him. “Two for one. Four for two.”

“What are you talking about? Open the door.”

“Two for one,” she repeated. “You wanted us to get the Bargain Hunter, and we did. Now it’s two for one.”

“Open up!” Alan banged on the door. “Let us out!”

“Two for one,” Katie told him a final time. “You should have just let us into the club.” He heard her walk away.

“Katie? Katie! Open the door! Katie!”

“Two for one,” the video kept repeated. “Two for one. Two for one.”

“Turn that off!” Alan shouted. Carl leapt to do it, hitting the television’s power button.

The image on the screen didn’t go away and the voice didn’t stop. “Two for one,” it repeated. “Two for one, two for one, two for one...”

The screen blinked again, this time showing an extreme closeup of a bloodshot eye. It looked from Carl to Alan to Achmed to Lisa. “Two for one,” the voice kept saying, almost like it was stuck on a loop, but each time it repeated there was something even worse about it. Wetter, drier, angrier – each time the phrase was different but always worse. “Two for one.”

Alan was yanking on the doorknob in a panic now as Achmed tried to help, but the room was locked tight. Lisa was panicking, covering her ears. “It’s not real,” she kept saying, her own voice drowned out by the awful sounds coming from the TV. “It’s not real.”

Carl pulled out the television’s power cord. That, finally, seemed to end it. The screen went blank and the voice stopped. Without the glow from the screen, the AV storage room was completely black. “Someone pull out their phone,” Lisa said, her voice shaking. “Let...let’s get some light. “

“Mine’s in my bag,” Alan said.

“Mine too,” Achmed answered.

“I put mine down and knocked it off the chair when I got up,” Lisa complained. “Carl, what about you?”

There wasn’t any answer.

“Carl, that’s not funny. Pull out your phone.”

There still wasn’t a reply. Then came a soft, wet thump, like a sack of flour being dropped into a puddle. A salty odour began to fill the room. “Carl...?” Alan asked. His breath caught. Something was wrong, but before he could figure out what that was...

“Two for one,” a scratchy voice answered from inside the room, a voice too deep and raspy to come from a child. “What a bargain. Two for one...”

One of the janitors, an illegal immigrant, was arrested for the infamous ‘AV club’ murders. “Questionable material” was found in his house and on his phone. When he was killed before the trial by Lisa’s father, the matter was considered closed. No one talked about what happened to the four members of the AV club after that.

The student body also kept a wide berth from Katie and her sister. There were rumours that Katie had been in some way involved in the incident, but there was never any proof. Once Kelley was recovered from the ‘accident’, she was released from hospital. No one wanted to hang out with them and they spent most of their time in the library. At the end of the school year, their father got a new job and the whole family moved across the country. It was just as well, some people said.

They never really fit in here anyways.