Work Text:
Corner Store
Open 24 hrs.
Maxx couldn’t see anyone inside through the glass of the door. Only empty aisles under yellowed, flickering fluorescents. But this was where his phone had led him. So, hesitantly, he raised a hand to the door, pushed it open, and stepped inside.
His senses were instantly overwhelmed by a metallic scent. An uneasy feeling stirred in his gut. Other than the low, electrical hum of the lights, it was silent.
“Hello?” He called out into the seemingly empty store. His footsteps echoed as he walked apprehensively to the counter. When he reached it, he heard something, barely audible, a shuffling from around the other side.
Maxx turned and walked around the side of the counter when abruptly, someone stood up in front of him.
“Maxx—”
Maxx screamed. There, on the floor, behind the counter, was a body. The body of the store clerk, bloody and beaten and scratched and flayed, like he had been mauled by some kind of animal, with patches of flesh missing from his arms and his legs and his cheek and god knows where else. His mouth was gaping open and his eyes were glassy and empty and cold.
And Cody— who was standing, staring at him, arms up defensively in front of himself— was covered in blood. All over his hands, beneath his fingernails, splattered up his shirt— but his face, his fucking mouth, was—
What the fuck. What the fuck. What the FUCK.
Maxx stumbled, his legs nearly giving out beneath him. His head was spinning. It sounded as though he was underwater, he couldn’t hear, Cody was talking to him but he couldn’t fucking hear, Cody was talking and his mouth was covered in fucking blood and Maxx couldn’t fucking hear and his ears were ringing and there was a fucking corpse on the floor. And it was staring at him with wide, dead eyes, and Maxx was staring back until he wasn’t because he couldn’t fucking see anymore, it was all just black and brown spots and the ringing was getting louder, and there was something rising in his chest, and suddenly he was keeled over on his hands and knees and spilling the contents of his stomach onto the linoleum.
Tears sprung in his eyes as the bitter taste of bile filled his mouth and poured out of him. He tried to catch his breath but it just kept coming, burning in his throat as he coughed and heaved. Suddenly, he felt the gentle touch of a hand on his back, another pushing his hair out of his face, and he froze.
Fuck, no, get— get away—
Cody was kneeling beside him, rubbing his back and holding back his hair as though this was normal, as though Maxx was just throwing up after a night of drinking a little too much at the bar. Cody, who just fucking killed and ate someone, was—
“You’re okay,” Cody murmured. “You’re okay, Maxx.”
No he fucking wasn’t. He needed to get away. He needed to get away right fucking now but he couldn’t, he could only kneel there and retch, beneath the flickering, fluorescent lights of the corner store. All he could smell was blood and puke.