“‘Prepare Daniel Smith for shipment.’ Easy enough.”
Realizing the back office was right behind me, I turned around to get a quick peek into it, just to see who was already here. Every desk was empty except for Carl’s, which he was currently typing at. I stared for a moment, trying to see what he was working on.
I should have looked away when my demon started talking to me again.
“Look at that, you have a perfect chance to finally end it once and for all. Carl’s not even paying attention to you, he’s going click-clack all on his keyboard. He types so damn hard he wouldn’t even hear you coming up behind him. Look at how exposed his neck is. It’s just begging to be severed.”
When people say they hear voices in their head, I believed that most of the time it was just their own thoughts that went off the rails. Sometimes, those voices would be talking about things the person would never even think about, or had repressed memories that pushed their way to the front of their mind. But now, after getting my own voice in my head, I started to wonder who else had the same issue I did.
My eyes stared at the back of Carl’s neck, noticing a number of red bumps and ingrown hairs lining up and down. He reached back to scratch his neck, breaking the skin on a bump, making it bleed a little bit. He then sniffed his fingers before going back to work.
“Okay, I knew he was weird, but that was just gross,” I thought.
“You’d be doing the world a favor by getting rid of him.”
“More like I’ll be doing myself a favor. I won’t have to deal with his weird ass in the morning anymore.”
Before I completely lost myself in my thoughts, I shook my head and went back to the main floor of the store, looking around for a collection of boxes with Daniel Smith’s name on them. The first thing I noticed when walking in to the Spanish wine section was a large number of bottles on the floor with an invoice placed on top of them. I reached down and picked up the invoice, looking it over. The bottles were indeed for Daniel, but it seemed like a few bottles were missing from the invoice. I picked one up and cross-checked it to the invoice, making sure it was the right one.
“Hey, Carl?” I called out.
“What’s up?” he replied.
“What’s going on with this Daniel Smith order? It looks like some bottles are missing from it.”
“Yeah, I shoved the missing bottles up my ass, sorry.”
My mind snapped right then and there.
Without thinking, I crushed the bottle with ease in the palm of my hand. Wine splashed all over my clothes and the floor, coating the area in a fruity, alcoholic smell. I looked down at my hand to see how many glass shards were in my hands, but not a single piece pierced my skin; my hand had instantly turned back into a claw when I crushed the bottle. I turned my hand over, pieces of glass and excess wine falling right off.
What a waste of alcohol.
I heard the wheels of Carl’s office chair rolling around as she shouted out, “You alright, Luka?”
“Yeah,” I lied, “I’m fine. A bottle slipped from my hand when I picked it up, and it shattered on the floor.”
Carl’s footsteps quickly came down the main aisle of the store, “I’ll go get the mop.”
Before I got a chance to respond, I saw Carl dash right by the Spanish aisle. I didn’t have enough time to try and put my claw-hand behind my back in an attempt to hide it. Thankfully he didn’t look my way, he was too focused on getting the cleaning supplies. A couple seconds later I heard the eerie creak of the door behind the counters opening and his footsteps quickly faded away.
“That’s it, I’m gonna kill him,” I whispered.
My demon cheered, “Finally, we’re going to get rid of him. And he went to the perfect spot to do it.”
— Follow Luka on Facebook and Twitter for more content and a look into Luka’s life!
Copyright © 2021 by Luka Tatsujo
Luka's Notebooks 