Creepypastas

Blue Kings

Nonplussed, I swept inside, stocked the cooler, counted cigarettes, and still had four hours to kill. Usually it get's unbearably slow around 2:30, but it had been slow as hell even before then. I did a routine walk-around the store, just to check on everything. My writer's block was still weighing heavily on me and Mike was getting slower with his responses.

I noticed, at some point, that my cash register's screen had the "out of paper" symbol lit up for pump 4, which was weird because I don't remember anyone stopping to fuel at that pump in a while. But then again, a lot of people come and go when I'm doing the cooler and I don't notice.

Taking the pump keys and a new roll of paper, I went outside. Nice night. I decided to have a smoke break once this was taken care of. I remember thinking that because I vividly recall the feeling of cosmic coincidence that overcame me when I approached the pump.

I thought they were blue L&M's at first, just by the color of the box. But when I took the cigarettes down from on top of the pump, I was taken aback to find no brand name. No design. No disclaimer. No barcode. No serial number. Absolutely nothing, but they hadn't been opened. And by that, I mean that the box still had the plastic wrapping on it.

I remember thinking, are these even cigarettes? But I stock about a hundred of these fuckers every night, and they felt like a box of cigarettes to me.

More curious than anything, I opened them up and checked—sure enough, they were cigarettes. Pretty normal looking, too.

Now, I was eighteen, mind you. Free smokes were a thing of celebration—a lucky find—not something considered sketchy or even that unusual. Someone left them here, I reasoned. And they're probably some foreign brand. Shit, or it was some printing fuck-up.

Either way, the seal hadn't been broken, so I figured they couldn't be tampered with. Same rule as beer, right? And for that matter, having any kind of plastic wrapping at all made them authentic, with my logic.

I'm sure by now, you've deduced that there was something fucked up about these smokes. Why else would I be making a case for my decision to smoke one? You'd be right.

So, I smoked one. Half of one. It tasted kind of metallic, so I didn't finish it. I ashed the thing and stood outside for a long time. My headache was totally gone. I remember staring at the dumpster for a long, long time before thinking I was really tired and kind of like I was going to fall.

In that moment, I saw nothing wrong or strange with sitting down. Then, lying down on my side. I felt really weird, but I remember that I didn't think there was anything wrong at all.

Before I go any further, I'll say that my girlfriend has always been terrified of the dark. She says that she sees stuff in the dark and her mind makes it into all sorts of scary faces and figures and what have you. In contrast, I've always been the opposite, especially since she confided this in me. If I see something I can't identify, I check it out. I get closer.

I don't do that as much anymore.

I remember lying there, just thinking about shit, weird shit, like Wilt from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends drinking a purple slurpy. And of course, in the moment, that was totally normal.

Eventually, I saw something by the dumpster. And looking back, details are very blurred. Like when you try and visualize what you saw during a dream. But whatever I saw, I remember thinking that it shouldn't be over there. I don't know why that was the thought, but it was.

I kept looking at it, thinking about what it could be. From my position, it looked a lot like a wilting fern. I finally got up, my head spun, and I started to take in how fucked up I was.