I walk soundlessly into the small convenience store, debit card in hand, a million thoughts that don't belong to me racing through my skull.
"Ay, God!" Jared, the cashier, greets. My poor puppy, he thinks. His Rottweiler was hit and killed by a coffee brown Volvo SUV yesterday evening.
"I'm sorry for your loss, son," I reply in a low voice that rumbles across the shelves full of fatty, over-priced snacks. It is rather convenient when a present person's thoughts remind me of their troubles. Sometimes it becomes difficult to keep up with more than seven billion lives.
The irritating and repetitive song about sex and drugs playing over the loudspeaker will come to an end in precisely one hundred and twenty-seven point two three six one seconds. By that time, I will have congratulated a woman on her distant successful marriage and resulting pregnancy, told a farmer to hold off on planting for two more weeks to reap the best harvest on his crops, informed a lawyer of his upcoming loss on a case, and obtained my usual orange Fanta and cherry slushy. I approach the counter. A girl five and an eighth miles south of us receives a used Corvette for her seventeenth birthday.
Jared rehearses his line in his head repeatedly as I place my drink on the false marble surface: Will that be all for you, sir?
"Yes," I say simply in response to the question unasked, just as he opens his mouth to speak. A man called Marty comes to stand behind me, his attention directed to his favorite brand of menthols. I swipe my card and punch in my number. The man who set up my debit account thought it would be just hilarious to make the pin "6666." I have to remember to send a hailstorm to him for his birthday beach trip this summer. I turn and look at Marty with scrutiny. He's not a good man. He doesn't apologize to children. He kicks puppies.
"May I help you, jackass?" he asks sardonically. Jared lets out a sound of simultaneous terror and warning. I narrow my eyes and the buildup of tar and chemicals on the inside of Marty's lungs from years of smoking lights on fire. A yelp escapes his throat before he staggers forward and collapses against me.
"Have fun," I whisper sweetly in his ear as he slumps to the floor. Blood begins pooling around his mouth and nose and spilling, thick and sticky, onto the floor. And with that, I leave the stunned Jared and the rapidly dying Marty, and return to my apartment, my son Lucifer cackling in the back of my mind the whole way.