The cigarettes were arranged by brand behind a locked glass case as if they were a valuable work of art on display. The two pyramids on a pack of Camels reminded Caroline of a movie she saw once about a man lost in the desert who began to see things that weren’t there. She couldn’t remember what these hallucinations were called, but she let the thought pass and made a mental note to look it up later. She tried to put herself in a desert in Egypt instead of a gas station in Alabama, but the image didn’t come easy. She tried to feel hot sun on her face and the taste of dust or sand on her lips but she couldn’t make the scene stay long enough for her to escape. So, instead she walked slowly through the old, run-down building, breathing in the smell of stale donuts and bitter coffee, the gas stations staples. The lights were a bright white, and one in the back corner was flickering above the drinks. Caroline made her way through the isles filled with cough drops, condoms, and various road trip snacks. She picked up a box containing a bottle of Advil, suddenly aware of a small but persistent throbbing pain in her temples. She considered the box for a moment before setting it down and moving on. Instead, she slipped a pack of spearmint gum up her sleeve and carried on. A middle aged man stood behind the counter flipping through a magazine that Caroline couldn’t see the cover of. He looked up only once to acknowledge her, and then continued to flip through the glossy pages. It was clear she wouldn’t have to worry much about him.
Caroline had faced many gas station clerks. They often leaned one way or the other when it came to security. She’d faced men and women behind counters with their shotguns ready at the sight of her baggy jeans and dirty sneakers. She’d also come across the indifferent college student clerk who clearly sees her mischief but doesn’t care enough to put a stop to it. Then every once and a while there would be one who was afraid of her, who could smell bad intentions on her breath and in her hair, and would decide to let her have her way with the racks of magazines and the individually wrapped twinkies. Most of the time though, Caroline tried to avoid their attention at all. She’d rather not take the chance to find out which way a clerk will respond to her habit.
That’s how Caroline would describe it to anyone who asked. She had a habit of picking things up. This was a game she played with herself. It was almost second nature by this point, it was so easy she felt like the packs of gum and lighters were practically begging to be lifted from the shelves. She could sometimes feel them reaching to her, whispering to her that it’s just a little thing, no one would even notice it was gone, or at least not until after she was.
Her targets were never the big name places. The GetGos and Sheetz’ of the world were harder to lift things from. They were on a certain level of respectability, as high up in terms of class as a gas station can possibly be. The places she sought out where built for wrong turns on the highway and weary traveling families on the way to cabins in the middle of nowhere.
Caroline, a nomad at heart as her father once said before he himself ran away, found herself returning to the American South time and time again. Not only do they have the best small, beat up, sketchy gas stations, but also the best locations for people watching. Caroline loved to watch people mill about and make decisions. She loved watching people on road trips, exhaustedly trudging into the convenience stores on the hunt for an energy drink and some Chex Mix.
Today there were two men in construction worker wear picking out trail mix and Little Debbie snacks and an older lady taking her time on a cup of coffee that Caroline assumed had been brewed at the earliest, three days ago. Caroline wasn’t very interested in either, so she continued to examine the different cigarette packs and their designs. She found herself in another section near the front counter next to a rack full of activity books. She browsed the sudoku and word search puzzles until she came across a single copy of the King James Bible. Amused, Caroline flipped through the verses thinking of course to herself. Of course you can buy a bible at a gas station, it’s the American South after all! The most highly recommended reading material while one scarfs down their boiled peanuts and bagged pickles, two treats Caroline had passed when she walked into the gas station convenience store. Her first thought hadn’t been to steal the bible, but it did cross her mind after a moment. She imagined the irony, and even pretended that the very thought could make the bible heat up and burn her hand as a warning not to do it. The only thought that stopped her from lifting it, and was often the thought that kept her from collecting too much, was the question of what she’d do with it when she got away. If she stole the bible, Caroline would probably throw it in the backseat of her 1992 Nissan and never think about it again. It wasn’t as if she was looking to convert herself right then and there in a gas station in Alabama.
Still, Caroline found couldn’t shake the smile that found her when she came across the bible. Maybe she found it amusing the way places holy sacred texts could be dumped in gas station that rarely sees the same customer twice and has a cockroach problem. Caroline thought back to her world religion class in high school, the only class she’d enjoyed before dropping out in junior year. She thought of Roman and Greek Gods who weren’t even lucky enough to end up in crappy gas stations. Their stories interested her more than those of the Christian God. After all, she recalled, many of the traditions we consider Christian traditions started as Pagan rituals that the Christians adopted, practically as an advertising strategy in order to get more people to turn over to Christianity. But with the rise of Christianity, the worship of Pagan Gods receded into almost nothing. She wanted to know where the Pagan Gods were hanging out. If after their worshippers gave them up they had to find day jobs to support themselves. Maybe they ended up working in the crappy gas stations that are home to both Playboys and Bibles.
Caroline turned to peer back at the man behind the counter. She tried to picture him as a retired Pagan God, rolling his eyes at the bible in her hands and launching into a story about the good old days when people made blood sacrifices in his temple or whatever it was they did. She imagined him sitting on a golden throne while tiny humans burnt sage and rosemary in his honor. She wondered what it would be like to be immortal, to have stories to tell of the old days. She wondered what it was like to grow old.
She returned the bible to it’s questionable place on the shelf and turned back around to take in the whole scene again. The two men were gone and the woman had just finished stirring her coffee. Her shaky old hand moved slowly, in a way that felt ritualistic and reminded Caroline of a witch stirring a magical concoction inside of a cauldron. Caroline imagined her as an old Pagan Goddess, perhaps the Roman Goddess of perfectly stirred coffee drinks? She began to look for a lid and a sleeve for the coffee cup, which she’d spent so long stirring sugar into it had probably cooled down to a point where it wouldn’t burn her hand anymore. Caroline wondered why an old Goddess like her would worry about burning her hand on a coffee cup. If she is immortal after all, certainly she could withstand a hot cup for a few minutes. In Caroline’s imagination the old woman uses some kind of latin incantation and the cup levitates to her wrinkled lips so that she may take a sip and not worry about burning herself. Or better yet, while she sits in her very own temple with white columns and great statues of herself, a forest nymph servant holds up her coffee cup and pours the perfectly stirred drink into her mouth, between lips covered in a shade of lipstick that can only be described as “wooden church-pew tan.”
The woman looked up and met Caroline’s gaze for a moment. Startled, Caroline looked away quickly, feeling as though her cover had been blown. She could feel the old woman’s eyes burning into her the same way she imagined the bible would have burned her fingertips. She took a peek back at the woman to see if her gaze was still locked on her, but it wasn’t. Now the woman was looking at something just above Caroline’s head. Caroline swallowed and turned slowly to face the wall near the restroom and the employee back closet. Mounted on the wall was a security camera. It was big and outdated with a pitch black lense that seemed to house the eye of God himself. Caroline couldn’t decide if it was the Christian God or one of Pagan Gods she’d been imagining, but either way the camera brought her far from Roman temples and holy sacrifices and right back to the gas station somewhere off a highway in Alabama.
The camera, the eye of God, and possible even the old woman who was now taking her coffee cup up to the counter to pay while simultaneously looking over her shoulder at Caroline every few moments, had all seen her sneak the gum into her sleeve. The plastic wrap around the pack of gum crinkled as Caroline’s hands started to sweat. She realized she needed to find a way to put it down without it looking like she had ever picked it up. Her heart began to pound and she felt all five eyes, two from each of the other people and one from the video camera, on her. Caroline bent down slowly and found herself at shoe level with her hands on her laces. She let the pack of gum slip from its place in the sleeve of her jacket onto the floor. When she stood, she kicked the gum pack under the rack of different Dorito chip flavors and began walking toward the exist. Before she reached it, she paused and turned back to the direction of the counter. The older woman was turning to leave. Caroline tried to give her a polite nod to show that she had changed her mind, but the woman didn’t seem to notice. She was in a rush to leave the building, despite taking a fair amount of time just to make one coffee. Caroline turned to the counter and picked up the box of Advil from before. The cashier asked her if that would be all and she nodded, barely able to hear him over the pounding inside her head. She looked back up to the art display behind him, the wall of cigarette brands. The Camels pack stood out again. This time, however, the pyramids made her stomach turn. She no longer wished to be in the desert. The word came to mind that she’d forgotten before: mirage.
# # #
Alexa Bocek is a young writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania whose work has appeared in The Claremont Review, Literary Heist, Mystic Blue Review, and Pulp Literary magazine. She’s an editor and staff member of BatCat Press. She has also won several awards and honorable mentions for her poetry, fiction, and screenwriting. She’s been writing for several years and attends the Lincoln Park Performing Arts school as a Literary arts student.
Photo: Jeroen Bosch
Wonderful story with such great imagery! Awesome juxtaposition between spirituality and a dirty gas station. I love the “Roman and Greek Gods who weren’t even lucky enough to end up in crappy gas stations.” I think the camera was the Christian God. Pagan Gods seem more like Sheetz and Get Go deities. Fantastic work!