The Wal*Mart at the Center of the Universe

Phillip Van Sant

The smell of Hazelnut coffee wafted out of the break room and down the aisles of the Wal*Mart where Jamison lay on his back in a sleeping bag on top of a mattress made out of thousands of plastic grocery bags. He was staring at the ceiling and felt no small amount of irritation as he listened to the tick-tick of his wristwatch count off the minutes and seconds until he would have to get out of bed.

As the days went by, and they did go by quite regularly, more so as of late, Jamison was finding that he no longer looked forward to his morning ritual. Sure, the coffee would be hot, the silence uninterrupted and the pace in which breakfast was consumed was similar to how a person would eat a toasted bagel while reading the newspaper and drinking a mimosa on the beach in the Bahamas. But really, what was there to look forward to?

Tick-tick went the watch, then a few ticks more, and then finally it was time. Jamison took a deep breath and, like a cadet in front of a drill sergeant, he unzipped his sleeping bag and leapt out onto the linoleum floor, clinching his hands and grimacing in anticipation of the cold he knew was waiting to envelop him. After gaining, almost losing, and then maintaining his footing, he dashed up the aisle to the break room and grabbed the piping hot pot of coffee from its cradle and poured himself a cup.

For a brief moment, Jamison closed his eyes and relished the chill that ran up his spine. He looked down at his arms as goose bumps rippled from his shoulder to his wrist causing his arm hair to stand up. To his left, in front of the woman’s restroom, was a pile of clean, unworn bathrobes. He picked up one from the top of the stack and draped it over his shoulders. It was purple and fluffy and very soft.

A full minute passed where Jamison stood still and let the coffee and robe warm his body. More chills ran up and back down his spine. His eyes widened as the caffeine began to take hold. It was getting colder every day, and every morning was less bearable than the previous one. The heating system, a large metal and plastic, gasket laden, monstrosity containing copious amounts of valves and ducts, had been broken since May. Its absence had been, until recently, inconsequential. The calendar, which Jamison was seventy five percent sure was on track and accurate, told him that it was early October-ish.

“Fuuuuuuuuuck me,” Jamison whispered out loud but to himself.

As a child he had considered himself to be quite tech savvy. He could do things like: set the VCR date and time for his parents, create email accounts for his little brother and older sister, fix the internet when it became disconnected (the trick was in unplugging the router after the modem power has been restored), he ran faxes and blue-prints for his Dad during the summer for extra cash, and even made a light bulb light up from a potato in elementary school. Only half the kids in the class got their potato lights to work, and Jamison’s bulb was the brightest of them all.

“Fuuuuuuuuuck me,” he said again out loud and to himself.

While the heating system’s failure was by far the worst breakdown in the building, it was not the first. The tech-savvy boy of his youth was no more. A while back, Jamison had learned that his knowledge of electronics and mechanics was so limited and cosmetic, that it might not have existed at all. He only knew how to put one machine into another machine.

After peeing and brushing his teeth in the employee restroom, Jamison went back to his bed and lay down. He picked up his three hundred dollar, multi-purpose remote control with touch screen capabilities and pointed it at the giant, seventy-five inch LED-LCD high definition television.

“Please wait. Thank you for your patience,” the television said in a macabre, half human, half-robot voice. As he waited, patiently, he picked up a pastel green X-Box 360 controller from the floor. It was dirty and smelled horrific.

“What the…” he said out loud and to himself. He looked down to the floor where the controller had been a moment earlier and saw a crusty Tupperware bowl with the remnants of week old pasta sauce caked on the side.

“Shit,” he said out loud and to himself. It was a sixty-five dollar, limited edition, collector’s edition, pro edition, frequent buyer edition, gold membership edition, controller. He threw it off his bed. The pasta stained, shit smelling, pastel paperweight cleared three aisles before crashing into something that sounded like a pile of pots and pans. He reached down again, finding another, less distinguished and elite controller on the floor and pressed the large button in the middle.

After a moment the screen turned bright green and white. The X-Box logo appeared on the screen and an icon that said, “attempting to connect to the server.” Another minute passed and the icon disappeared with an un-emphatic, “unable to connect.” None of this surprised since the internet was dead.

When the console menu finally appeared, Jamison scrolled down the index until he reached a menu tab that read, “play disc.” It wasn’t a question. Jamison thought it should have been. If the inventors of the system were around, he might have wrote them a letter. He pressed A and waited for the next menu to appear. Another long series of questions and queries popped up asking relevant questions such as: Use saved data? Continue campaign? Choose your difficulty…etc…

When the game finally started, Jamison slouched back into his trash-bag bed and relaxed, farting out loud and to himself. He played for three hours and accomplished the following: sixty-five headshots, five rescues, ten new mission dossiers and had virtual sex with a hooker in a van. All these things were great and needed repeating to maximize his score and gamer tag points. But first, his stomach grumbled audibly, some real food was necessary. He got up, stretched and began walking towards the food section.

Whistling as he walked, he grabbed a can of peaches from aisle seven, a can of tuna from aisle six, and a bag of frozen broccoli from the freezer aisle. He ate the peaches first while the broccoli was thawing. They were so sweet and syrupy. He opened the tuna can and dumped its contents into a brand new plastic Tupperware container. He opened the employee fridge and pulled out a jar of pickles and some capers. Capers made a terrible substitution for fresh celery, but like the mayo, which was among the first perishables to go, celery just didn’t exist anymore, not for Jamison at least.

When the preparations were finally complete and the tuna was ready to eat, he stuck a clothespin over his nose. It took him three and a half forkfuls of tunapicklecaper before the bowl was empty. He didn’t chew much if at all. Instead he chugged a large glass of water and rinsed the contents down as quick as possible.

After swallowing the last bite, Jamison shuddered and almost wretched. At least he didn’t have to consume that much protein for another two days And, for good measure, he went back to aisle seven and ate another can of peaches. They were still so sweet and so syrupy. And they always would be.

Now that lunch had been eaten, Jamison made his way to the aisle where the fresh produce had once been kept. All the fruit and vegetable stands had been dumped and cleaned thoroughly. It was one of the first things Jamison had done after deciding to make Wal*Mart his home. All of the produce stands were empty except one. Jamison had stuffed pillows, couch cushions and paper money into one of the stands and made it a lounge spot. It was quite comfortable.

He grabbed a book from a near by pile and sat down in the fruit-stand-money-couch. He opened the book to page one and read. When he got to page two he stopped and got up. He looked around the mostly empty aisle and then left, slowly making his way back to his bed. Along the way he passed a large pile of charred plastic, wood and metal. It had been over a year since he burned the home furnishings section and the pile was slowly disintegrating. The wire frames of mattresses jutted out from the rubble like skeletons from the grave. Jamison thought back to when he had burned the mattresses, it had been one of those very bad days, the kind where questions of ‘what happened’ and ‘why’ were still important. He looked around and pieces of rubble and ash were scattered around the surrounding aisles, building up into many small piles, and a few large ones. Ash, like people, didn’t like to stay static.

Back at his bed, the Television was waiting. It was rarely impatient, but he had noticed on more than one occasion that it would randomly shut off if he let it sit idle for too long. Quite rude in his opinion.

With his head on a pillow and his feet resting comfortably on a padded cushion, Jamison pressed a button on his super cool remote. The screen changed to a pure black background with the words NO INPUT DETECTED glowing in almost supernatural white light. He leaned to the left and felt underneath his sheets and found a Wii remote. He pressed a button on the Wii remote and the screen changed again. The greeting of the Wii, which reminded him to tighten the strap around his wrist every time he played, appeared in a matter of seconds. After an adequate amount of time passed, the screen changed to the Wii menu. There were many choices ranging from creating little characters, internet browsing, game downloads and even email, but Jamison moved his Wii-mote and pointed at the upper left hand corner. PLAY GAME? It asked. “Fucking yes already,” Jamison said out loud and to himself.

In a matter of many seconds that might have added up to a whole minute the screen changed again and the game title appeared. Harvest Moon, a game about agriculture and farming amongst other political ideals, such as capitalism, supply and demand and just plain old business, was a good way to pass the time. Jamison had never played the game before living inside the Wal*Mart, but he found that there was something in human nature that needed to farm. Farming, Jamison concluded, was instinctual. Something about planting seeds and reaping their digital rewards was immensely fulfilling, so much so that Jamison often forgot about his absence of friends and family while he was engrossed in the game play, a luxury he had not experienced in other, fancier, more technologically advanced games. Even when he was fighting Bowser on a volcano in a castle with no more mushrooms at his side (probably while being small Mario, because no one reaches the end of the last level while still big, unless one has fire power) he couldn’t help remembering his sister and brothers at his side playing along, always losing, but always having fun.

Besides, Harvest Moon was a masterpiece of agriculture and he was fine with putting himself completely inside the TV for a few hours to forget what must be forgotten and remember what must be remembered: on TV and in games, things grow and grow and grow in and out of season.

Besides, it was a harvest day and he had work to do. The potatoes were ripe and ready and so were the carrots. The broccoli could have waited a few more days (hours inside the game) but his storm warning device had warned him that showers were coming soon with a 95% chance of drowning all his lower ground vegetation, including the almost ripe broccoli. He harvested everything and put it into bushels and sent it to market for sale. He made a hefty sum. He always did since earning the achievement of mass grower, which allowed an extra ten percent to be added to all his sales at the marketplace. Stacks on stacks of money were displayed in one digital line of his in-game/online bank account.

If Jamison were a computer whiz and a game programmer and there were people around, he would have designed a game called Harvest Moon: Hostile Takeover. A game where the most dedicated of players would have the option of forcing other farmers to sell their land and crops, at a fair price of course, and then sell franchise farms to those players at a minimal cost. Mostly everything would be the same except dues would be paid on the land and a portion of the crop and profit. He didn’t see this as a particularly insensitive idea; in fact he saw it as a way of challenging new players to achieve new heights of economic prosperity in the virtual world. What was life if not a competition?

Yet even in the magical world of video games, things got stale after a while. Seven hours after pressing the power button to turn the Wii on, Jamison pressed it again and turned it off. His eyes were bugging out and twitching and the beginning of a migraine was setting into the base of his cerebellum. His temples were sensitive and his sinuses were on fire, but the light sensitivity hadn’t yet set in. He had time to cook some food and then eat it, and then it would be time for bed.

He went back to the employee lounge and put some dehydrated dinners in the microwave. He didn’t even look at the labels on the food to see what they were. It didn’t matter. When a migraine was on the way, nothing tasted good. But food was necessary and the less amount of time spent preparing meant more time eating and sleeping.

While the dinners were cooking, he put some hot water in the coffee machine and prepared some tea. Peach tea was his favorite, but he used cinnamon instead. There were only six boxes of peach left and he didn’t want to waste a packet while his migraine would keep him from fully enjoying it.

“Ding, ding, ding,” said the microwave. Jamison grabbed the plastic trays from the microwave and set them on the counter. He opened the employee silverware drawer and grabbed a spatula. With two quick moves he flipped the entrees in their respective plastic cases and then threw them back in for another three minutes. While that eternity went on he sipped casually at his tea. It didn’t taste good, but it was warm, very warm. He wanted to put some sugar in the cup, but thought better of that idea when he stopped to consider how sugar would taste on the way up if he happened to vomit that night when the migraine grew to its full intensity.

“Ding, ding, ding,” the microwave said a second time. Jamison took another sip of the hot tea and pressed the button on the microwave door. It didn’t open. He slammed his hand on top of the microwave like a club. “Not you too!” he said out loud and to himself. The microwave door opened empathetically.

The next hour passed like a blur. At some point he made it to his bed and ate and drank and sat and cried and thought and eventually slept. It was not peaceful sleep. Nightmare after nightmare entered his mind.

* * *

Small, scary ideas that he could comprehend only on the deepest level of sorrow and pain scoured his cerebral pathways, infecting and destroying as they went. In this hell, Jamison was able to articulate the causes and effects of all the pain anyone had ever endured during the entire history of human suffering. There were no words to describe the feeling; it was just apparent and obvious.

Sharp reminders of the migraine occurring on the surface interrupted each nightmare as Jamison tossed and turned in his makeshift bed. In the blink of an eye he went from a pleasant breakfast in hell to a painful dinner in heaven. God was Satan and vice versa. People were everywhere and nowhere. Life was real and then it wasn’t, as was pain, and joy and understanding. Fuzzy clouds of thoughts came in through his peripherals and masked all he saw. First went the things that didn’t make sense, out of his realm forever, or as long as the dream lasted. Then more clouds came and storm clouds followed them and then rain and then thunder and then lightning. All he knew was covered. All he remembered and all he remembered to forget became obscure, abstract, intangible and eventually unavailable.

Then a light came through in the sky, like a beacon from space or heaven or whatever. He didn’t need to know where it came from, as long as he knew it was there. All the secrets of pain and loss and suffering and joy and were again as clear and ephemeral as an orgasm. The absolute knowledge that happiness was there to be enjoyed by everyone; a state of mind, a place of peace, a mode of human existence with no possibility of discontent was available and unlimited to him, to humans. He knew then, as a frantic sweat broke over his entire body, that there was a road not traveled at all. He wanted to be there, to lie at the crossroads and choose all over again. All he had to do was turn back the way he came and walk the same distance he had already walked. The first step was to turn around, so he did. Then he took a step and then another. “This isn’t so bad,” he said out loud and to himself. “My life in reverse isn’t so bad!” He yelled out loud and to himself. He thought his feet might be lighter than he thought. He looked down and saw that they were. He felt his legs tighten and release. He looked at them too, and they were lighter. He realized now that he wanted to run, and, looking and feeling as fit as he did, why wouldn’t he? Then the shift came.

“Oh yeah, now I remember…” he said out loud and to himself. He was crying he realized, sobbing in fact. “Oh yeah, I remember now…” he screamed out loud and to himself in his dream. His voice traveled in all directions and went on forever. There were no things in his vision he realized. No birds, no trees, no buildings, no houses, no clouds, no thoughts, no people, no dogs, no girls, no breasts, no sexes, no road. No road? Then where was he running? More importantly, what was he running on? He looked down and fell.

* * *

He was lying on his back and it was morning. The last remnant of the headache was sitting on the bridge of his nose, chipping away at his sinuses and nasal cavity. But it wouldn’t be there for long. One hot cup of coffee and all would be well. He felt good he realized. Something struck his stomach. Adrenaline? It came with a message in a nerve, something pleasurable and fleeting. But it was gone. He was hungry and horny. He looked down and saw a tent protruding from under his sheets. As the blood drained from his body and filled his erection, all the memory of his dream faded into the image of a tall brunette volleyball player. Her name would be Sandra if she were real. He put his hands in his pants and took care of things. Then he fell asleep again.

* * *

Tick-tick went the clock. Jamison yawned, stretched, got out of bed and began his walk to the employee lounge. His legs were stiff and his knees popped every three or four steps. He figured these things would become more prominent.

When he was halfway there he heard a peculiar sound, a click. It wasn’t loud, but it came from almost everywhere at the same time, and that was frightening. He looked around and saw nothing out of the ordinary. As he entered the employee lounge he thought he heard it again, but couldn’t be sure. He made his coffee. It was especially hot and tasty that morning. Even though there was enough sugar, he put an extra spoonful in, a little extra sweetness to match his mood. With a smile on his face he began his trek back to bed.

“BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooo…Click click click,” said the Wal*Mart.

Jamison stopped mid step and cocked his eyes up and to the left so hard that he could almost see his own brain. He hadn’t the slightest clue what he had just heard, but there was a sneaking suspicion in the forefront of his mind that suggested it couldn’t be anything good. But what could he do about it? Nothing. So he climbed back into bed,, turned on his Playstation 3 and settled into a nice racing game, only the cars had guns and rocket launchers.

“BARRRRRRRRRRROOOOOoooooooooooooo…Click click click,” The Wal*Mart began again and followed with a high-pitched siren of feedback through the roof speakers.

Jamison watched in equal parts amazement and horror as sparks began flying out of the speakers, showering the surrounding aisles and bouncing off of metal objects down to the floor. Another great bellow came from the speakers accompanied by low droning sounds from the freezer aisles. All the lights in the establishment began to shut off in small grids. In less than a minute the entire Wal*Mart was completely black. Jamison looked at his TV, which had turned off. The light on the Playstation 3 was off as well, meaning that it had shut off before he could save his latest progress.

“What the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!” he said out loud and to himself.

He took a breath, threw a fit, and grabbed a bat.

For fifteen minutes he thrashed the Wal*Mart up and down, skipping no aisles, and holding nothing back. It was mostly pitch black with the only light coming from the frictional sparks of metal on metal violence.

He throttled and grasped and huffed and puffed and threw and spewed. God damn it, he thought, this feels fantastically terrible. Finally fatigue hit him in an amount proportionally superior to his desire to break things, and he stopped. Calmly, and with no sound he made his way to the dresser by his bed. He reached in and pulled out a box of pictures that were in small, thin plastic frames, each with four small magnets glued onto the back four corners. They were pictures of family and friends, all long dead and disappeared. Sadness and loss crept into his mind with the familiarity of a ragged old coat. He grabbed the magnets off of the backs of the pictures and made his way through the darkness to the sports and recreation section. He grabbed a rifle, which he kept loaded at all times, and made his way to the light of the outside world.

The world was bright, and it took Jamison almost a full minute to adjust his eyes to the reflection of the sun’s rays on the ground. He walked away from the giant entry way of the Wal*Mart and towards a small sandbox that was next to a swing set in the children’s play area. Inside the sandbox was a small, wooden bench. Jamison took a seat and pulled the magnets out of his pocket. Without paying attention to where they fell, he dropped the magnets into the sand and covered them up with his feet, pushing them beneath the surface. When they were no longer visible, he made a few playful kicks in the sand and then counted to ten. He bent down and scooped huge handfuls of sand, letting the small granules sift through his fingers. He retrieved four of the magnets on the first try—they were covered with iron. With meticulous care, Jamison scraped the iron from the magnets and put it into an old film canister he had in his pocket. He dropped the magnets into the sand in another spot and buried them again. Wash, rinse, repeat he thought and he did just that. In ten minutes he had filled the entire canister. It was like Harvest Moon: Sandbox edition. Then Jamison realized he had it all wrong; farming was an invention of man, but harvesting? Harvesting was instinct.

* * *

A half a mile away from the front doors of the Wal*Mart a buck was scavenging through one of a thousands piles of rubble, searching for signs of green leaves or grass or anything made of cellulose. Thus far, the morning had provided much more than the deer was used to. It was one of few walking animals in the area and despite it’s natural instincts of being wary, it hadn’t seen a predator in its whole life.

“Munch munch,” went the buck, “munch munch.”

After a successful minute of dining in one pile, the deer moved on, creeping closer and closer to the perimeter of the parking lot of the giant one-stop-shop that was Wal*Mart.

“Munch munch,” went the buck, “munch munch.”

There were no cars in the lot. Neither Jamison nor the deer knew what had happened to them, they just ceased to exist. The deer moved closer and closer, sensing an organic presence, completely unsure and unafraid. The deer felt magnificent.

“Munch munch, “ went the buck, “munch munch.” Closer again it moved and closer still, crossing into the cracked pavement of the driveway. There were bits of purple and green grass sprouting from the cracks between concrete squares. “Munch munch,” and then it saw a man.

The buck’s antlers were long and sharp and dangerous, yet oblivious to the beast. It had sharpened each of the tips to the specificity of its genetic makeup. It moved slowly towards the strange and unfamiliar. In it’s own capacity for social atmospheres the animal was considerably under developed. Curiosity took over and it began a crooked yet linear advancement towards the strange man.

“Munch munch,” went the buck, “munch munch.” Every movement of its upper teeth crossed a crooked path of grinding resistance with its lower jaw. The leaves and grass became mash. Mash was sustenance. Every swallow was geared towards survival. Its digestive tracks attacked the cellulose barriers of each cell and drew out the carbohydrates and fibers that were contained within. With its head low, it temporarily ignored the human and opened its mouth to take in another mouthful of the sweet sweet leafy grass. “Munch munch,” went the buck, “munch munch.”

* * *

Jamison had only a second to comprehend the situation, and another second to react. The deer was poised, head down, ready to attack. He thought he saw a snarl as it’s chin hit the ground, chewing on something, probably a body part of some other surviving sentient being. He aimed and…

“BANG!” went the gun with a deafening crack that echoed and ricocheted off of the surrounding valley and forest. The deer fell down dead with a thud and a hole the size of a gumball drilled through its left eyehole, blood squirting out the back of its head and dripping out of the front. The bullet went straight through the animal’s head like a plasma bullet through a zombie in Dead Rising 2, available on both PS3 and X-Box 360.

Jamison breathed heavy for a moment, taking in the surroundings and looking for other rabid deer that might be stalking him as well.

After a moment of fruitless searching, and frantic eye movement, he concluded he was alone once again. Slowly, he walked over to the deer, and although he couldn’t explain why, the idea of fresh meat repulsed him. He knew deer meat was healthy, but there was some remote fear that was buzzing like a beacon in his mind. It said: don’t you eat that deer Jamison, don’t you do it. “Why not?” he asked out loud and to himself.

“Because you shot it dead,” he answered out loud and to himself.

This realization made him sad once again. He turned around and looked at the broken and decrepit shell of a Wal*Mart that had been his home for…how long?

“Goodbye Wal*Mart,” he said out loud and to himself.

A tear rolled out of his eye as he walked away from the parking lot and out into the wilderness of the street. At two minutes into his trek he was as far from home as he’d been since the world went all screwy. At six minutes, all walked in silence, he dared a glance backwards once again and saw that the behemoth establishment had hardly shrunken in size from his perspective. It looked at him as if it didn’t want him to leave. It was saying, “Thank you, Wal*Mart Shopper. Thank you.”

Still moving forward, Jamison saw a three-story Target on the nearest street corner. He walked towards it, walked in, turned on the generator. After turning on the lights he surveyed the aisles and found something he didn’t expect to find.

“I didn’t know Target sold beer,” he said out loud and to himself. Heading to the electronics section, he gathered some game consoles and the biggest TV he could find. Drat. He had left his memory cars and hard drives at the Wal*Mart. But he had time to re-build his characters and stats. He had all the time in the world. Making a cup of peach tea, he began living again.

rindliterarymagazine.com