The Last Straw
by Jude Deluca
Zackie Deveraux wasn’t scared of Y2K potentially bringing the world to an end on December 31st. He wasn’t scared of the shoppers running rampant in the supermarket his mom worked in as they stocked up for what might be nuclear apocalypse once the ball dropped in Times Square. And he certainly wasn’t scared of Santa not bringing him what he asked for come Christmas Eve.
What was Zackie scared of?
The fucking scarecrow set up at the front entrance of Trailmart.
Zackie didn’t know what the store’s managers were thinking when they decided an old Halloween scarecrow was the best decoration for their holiday display. Someone was apparently too cheap to buy supplies for a new display, so they took an old pumpkin-headed scarecrow doll from last October and wedged it into a discarded Santa suit. That was bad enough already, but did they have to give Scarecrow Claus a Mrs. Scarecrow Claus as well? The scarecrow’s bride was in even worse shape than her husband.
Some weekends, Zackie’s mom brought him with her when she had to work a late shift as a cashier. He didn’t mind; he liked it when Trailmart wasn’t so busy during the later hours and he could wander around without anyone looking over his shoulder. During the summer when there was no school and he could stay up as late as he wanted, Zackie earned tips bagging groceries for people who did late night grocery shopping. Once he earned over 100 dollars in one night! That’s a lot of money for a 12-year-old.
Unfortunately, Y2K was ruining everything. Zackie’s mom still let him come with her on Saturday nights but now Trailmart was turning into a madhouse. This wasn’t the usual holiday shopping craze when everyone was buying a fortune in groceries to prepare for Christmas dinners, Hanukkah meals, and Kwanzaa feasts. These people were genuinely terrified that there might not be a new millennium if all the computers in the world failed at once. Or whatever the hell Y2K was supposed to be. Zackie wasn’t good with computers.
With Trailmart so busy, Zackie figured he had a good chance to earn some real bucks if he bagged groceries. Then he could buy some primo Christmas gifts for his friends at school. And maybe a few packs of Pokémon cards for himself with what was left over. He underestimated the Y2Kraze and what it was doing to people. Shoppers didn’t care how helpful and polite and overall adorable he could be when he put the charm on, they just wanted their groceries bagged and they were OUT. They didn’t even say thank you!
Mrs. Deveraux was sympathetic to Zackie’s plight, but there wasn’t much she could do to help. Even if he was her oldest son, she couldn’t force people to give him a couple of dollars for stuffing their canned goods and veggies into plastic bags. Plus, she wasn’t really supposed to be letting him do it anyway. The managers didn’t say anything about their unofficial bagboy, but Mrs. Deveraux didn’t want to push their luck.
At the very least, the swarming frenzy of customers offered a well-appreciated buffer between Zackie and the front display’s Santacrow. If there were too many customers shoved into Trailmart, it meant Zackie didn’t have to look at the giant, straw-stuffed monstrosity perched on a throne made of Styrofoam candy canes and cardboard gumdrops. It also meant the scarecrow couldn’t look at Zackie, either.
“It’s not looking at you, Zackie,” his mom assured him after Zackie blurted out how much he hated the scarecrow on the ride home from school. “It doesn’t even have eyes.”
“That’s even worse, Mom!” Zackie complained from the backseat of his family’s minivan as they drove to pick up his little brother from his Sylvan session. Joey’s math grades stunk. “Every time I’m near that thing it’s like it’s following me as I walk around.”
“Well, I have to admit I’m not too thrilled about that scarecrow myself.” Mrs. Deveraux shuddered. “I’d still like to know whose bright idea it was to put those things up there instead of the usual Santa dummy.” Under her breath she added, “Not that it’s much better.”
Amidst the throbbing pulse of conspiracy theorists assuming all the nuclear bombs in the world would ignite and the hapless parents worried their children would inherit a decimated wasteland, the Santacrow managed to be the scariest thing in Trailmart. When his mom brought them to the store, Zackie asked if they could go in through the back door to avoid the ugly Christmas display. Mrs. Deveraux was more than happy to oblige, even if she usually avoided the back entrance due to the dumpsters smelling incredibly rank. That had to be a health hazard, right?
“Merry Christmas,” Zackie said as he handed a gray-haired woman a bag stuffed to the brim with cans of cat food. She didn’t even stick around long enough for Zackie to make an expectant expression to silently nudge her into fishing out a dollar bill from her bag. This made the sixth shopper in a row to stiff Zackie. Growing fed up, he said to his mom, “Is it okay if I walk around for a bit?”
“What? Honey I can’t talk,” Mrs. Deveraux said as she scanned the barcodes of canned meat and evaporated milk. The shopper – a bald guy in sunglasses with a ponytail and a shirt which read “Marilyn Monroe was on the Grassy Knoll” – shot Zackie a dirty look for potentially disrupting his shopping experience. Reasoning he could get his mom in trouble for interrupting her as she worked, Zackie decided to slip away to see firsthand just how manic the holiday shopping season had become.
Zackie never considered himself claustrophobic, but he was getting an idea of what it was like when he saw how packed Trailmart was. His previous idea of the frenzy instigated by the looming millennium was shattered as he witnessed the frightened anger and determination to survive etched on the worried faces of the supermarket’s customer base. People were ignoring the sales of Christmas cakes and seasonal sugar cookies for jugs of water, dried fruit, and canned vegetables. Many shelves were totally bare of supplies which could be kept in storage or deep freeze far longer than their expiration dates indicated. Shoppers were even fighting over packages of diapers and toilet paper as if they might go extinct.
Why does it seem like Mom and Dad are the only adults who’ve got a grip on things? I’ve never heard them complaining about computer bugs or atomic bombs. How’d they manage to stay immune to all this Y2Krap?
In Zackie’s ruminating on the adults in his life, he hadn’t noticed until it was too late that he aimlessly wandered to the front of the store. Finding himself face to face with the unintentionally nightmarish Scareclaus and his wife.
Zackie didn’t know how he got here, and as much as he wanted to leave, he felt packed in tightly among all the other shoppers. It was if the store was so crowded no one could move, even someone as short as Zackie. Or maybe they were all frozen in fear of the raggedy abomination meant to represent Christmas cheer. God, Zackie was so close to the straw doll he could practically smell the damned thing. A mix of especially pungent body odor and water damage from a moldy basement.
Even as Zackie struggled to get away from the scarecrow and his wife, he found himself being drawn towards it. Its mocking, jagged grin which a wiry white beard couldn’t hide. Those black, empty pools for eyes which seemed to come closer…
Closer…
“Move it I gotta get the milk and bread!”
Before he knew it, Zackie was thrown headfirst into the scarecrow’s arms. Despite the rush of survivalist shopping, a handful of people watched in horror as Zackie toppled into the Christmas display, the Scarecrow Santa falling backwards as he crashed into its straw body. Zackie suffocated on the stench from the doll, screaming as he fought to free himself from its grip. Vaguely he was aware of people crying out for help, but those cries were drowned out from his terrified wailing. The scarecrow practically weighed a ton and Zackie’s vision was obscured by red felt and brown straw. Pain shot through his arm when someone yanked Zackie out by the scruff of his shirt.
“Give him some room, for God’s sake!” A tall woman pleaded as she held Zackie by his shoulders away from the ruined display. Zackie gasped for air as he rubbed his arm. The scarecrow’s stench burned in his nostrils. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes, from the smell or the pain he didn’t know.
“What the hell is wrong with kids today?!”
“Are you blind? The poor boy was pushed into it! I’m surprised he didn’t break his neck!”
“Please, it’s a scarecrow.”
“An ugly scarecrow.”
“Honey, are you okay?” The tall woman gently asked. “Where are your parents? You’re not here alone, are you?”
The rest of the night was a haze as Zackie’s mom hurried to his side upon hearing the commotion. Zackie turned away from the topsy-turvy holiday display at the front of Trailmart, not wanting to see the scarecrow another second. He just thanked God no one tried to make him clean up the mess. Zackie didn’t envy whoever had to reset the display.
Mrs. Deveraux brought Zackie into the employee break room to make sure he was okay. Not wanting his mom to see how frightened he was from the experience, Zackie assured her he was fine and told her to go back to work. It wouldn’t look good if Mrs. Deveraux left early, and if the managers learned he was the kid involved in disturbing the front display that might be the last straw to break the camel’s back.
Reluctantly, Mrs. Deveraux returned to her register while Zackie rested in the break room. Laying down on an old couch next to a water cooler, Zackie massaged his arm. It didn’t feel like anything was broken. Zackie winced as he ran his hand over a spot in the middle. Removing his sweater to inspect the damage, Zackie let out a gasp.
There were several red marks on the skin of his arm. They weren’t bleeding, but they reminded Zackie an awful lot of when his little brother had a biting phase.
By the time Mrs. Deveraux’s shift was over, the marks on Zackie’s arm faded away. He doubted his mother would’ve believed him if he told her what he thought they were.
Hurrying out the back entrance and ignoring the smell from the dumpsters, Mrs. Deveraux said, “Maybe I should wait until the new year before I bring you back here, Zackie.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Zackie sighed as they headed for their minivan.
“I should’ve known better than to bring you here with how insane everything’s getting,” his mom apologized. Before she got in the driver’s seat she asked, “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m good Mom, just a little freaked,” Zackie assured her as he got in the passenger seat. The soothing scent of the pine air freshener helped him relax.
“I’d like to strangle whoever pushed you, but at least one good thing came of tonight,” Mrs. Deveraux said as they drove home. “After your tumble up front, someone finally threw that awful scarecrow away.”
“Really?”
“It wasn’t there when we closed,” Zackie’s mom explained as she turned the radio on. “I can’t imagine anyone would’ve dragged it back into storage with how crazy it was tonight.”
With Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer blasting on the car radio, neither Deveraux heard the scratchy noise in the backseat.
Or the sound of a tongue licking a pair of lips in anticipation.
Jude Deluca's a nonbinary aegosexual Capricorn. Their areas of interest are magical girls, slasher fiction, YA horror, 90s nostalgia, superhero dads, and big beautiful men. As a professional horror detective they work to uncover lost and unpublished stories, such as Goosebumps: Dead Dogs Still Fetch by R.L. Stine and Braden Gardner. They've previously been published by places such as From Beyond Press, Eerie River Publishing, January Ember Press, Outsider Publishing, and more.