Laura Shell
Steam
It had been hot for days, and when the rain came, steam rose from the asphalt like a mystical white fog off a lake in the early morning hours. But this was no ordinary steam because this was no ordinary rain.
Jerry drove through the grocery store parking lot, admiring the steam rising all around his car. He hadn’t seen it this bad since he lived in Orlando. But here he was in some podunk town called West Union, South Carolina, and for the past four days, it had been hotter here than in Central Florida.
But finally, the rain…
He parked his prized 1967 Camaro SS. A car he loved to drive fast. He got out, walked through the steam and humidity feeling as though he were in a sauna, and entered the grocery store.
As he grabbed a cart, he became slightly dizzy. He placed a hand on his forehead and closed his eyes. Once the spell passed, he looked up and noticed one other person doing the same. A woman. They locked eyes.
“Did you get dizzy too?” Jerry asked.
They both nodded, then shrugged.
As Jerry watched the woman walk away, he had the strong urge to tell her the circumference of her ass was quite large. He had to grind his teeth and put a hand over his mouth to keep the words from spilling. That wasn’t like him. He wasn’t a mean person. Jeez. What the hell was wrong with him?
He looked away, looked at anything and everything other than her ass as he made his way to the produce section.
Jerry went to the avocados. He liked them somewhere between hard and soft. He picked one up and it was too mushy, so he dropped it. Picked up another, still too mushy. Kept scrutinizing the avocados and increasingly became agitated with the fact that they weren’t to his liking. Next thing he knew, he was throwing them onto the ground and shouting, “Crap,” with each toss.
That’s when he noticed a man nearby doing the same thing with kiwis, only he was shouting, “Piece of dung,” with each throw to the ground.
Then there was a woman flinging bananas and yelling, “Too fucking green.”
Suddenly, a rush of store employees appeared and kindly asked the angry customers to stop what they were doing.
Jerry looked at the young employee in front of him with the name-tag of “Josh” and said, “Damn,
you have bad acne.” Then, Jerry started throwing avocados at the complexion-challenged Josh.
“Dude! Stop!” Josh emitted as he held his arms up in front of his tarnished face.
“These avocados suck ass,” Jerry continued to barrage the innocent store clerk with avocados.
Meanwhile, elsewhere and everywhere in the grocery store, people were arguing over the prices of certain grocery items.
Others got personal with store clerks, commenting on the stupidity of their face piercings or the unnatural colors in their hair.
“Pink hair? What’s the purpose of that?”
Raised voices, pointed fingers, shoving, throwing…eventually, the authorities were called. A lone police officer entered the building. He jumped up on the long counter of Personal Services, where people purchased lotto tickets and cigarettes.
“May I have your attention?” the officer stated.
Everyone in the store settled and looked his way.
“The reason you’re acting like assholes is because of the steam outside. There was something in the rain. So I need everyone in this store to stop what you’re doing and go home.”
Someone could have dropped a pin, and it could have been heard throughout the store.
All of a sudden, people started throwing things at the officer—whatever they could get their hands on, from smaller items at the registers to larger items on the end caps. And everyone yelled, “Boo.”
Then two beefy guys grabbed his legs and yanked him to the ground, where he landed violently. People of all sizes kicked and punched the officer. Jerry was one of them. He thought of all the speeding tickets he’d received on the road that stretched right in front of this goddamn grocery store. Three of them, in fact, and he kicked this officer repeatedly.
And then all hell broke loose.
Fights erupted throughout the store. She fought him, he fought her, they fought each other, everyone expressing the immediate vile thoughts from their steam-tainted minds. Products were thrown—produce, cereal, bread, packaged meat, frozen dinners, antacids, and toothpaste…anything and everything. Then, two groups of people started fires with lighter fluid and matches.
The sprinklers went off.
Some people stood tall and let the water wash over them. Others shrank like grumpy trolls as if the water were acid. After a few minutes of receiving the overhead shower, people looked at each other. That’s when the apologies began. Some with tears.
“I don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry,” was a common remark.
Jerry looked at the officer he’d been kicking. “Holy shit.”
The officer’s face was red and purple and bloody. Jerry and the others who’d attacked him helped him to his feet with a plentitude of apologies.
Jerry stood eye-to-eye with the officer and said, “I don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry. I’m normally not so violent. Toward anyone. Please don’t arrest me.”
The officer spat out a glob of blood and what looked to be a molar with a silver filling. He then sighed and clapped a hand on Jerry’s shoulder. “It’s okay. It was the steam, man. It was the steam.”
Laura Shell has been published in NUNUM, Maudlin House, and X-RAY, among other publications. Her first anthology of paranormal stories, The Canine Collection, was released in 2024. She’s a prolific writer and submitter of flash fiction and the editor of the Flash Phantoms horror fiction site–flashphantoms.net. You can find more about her work at laurashellhorror.wordpress.com.
Banner Art:
Moscow fog, Andrei Shirokov, Unsplash, 2022
