Ethically Sourced
by Jim Best
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
“I’m takin’ my girl out to dinner for our anniversary with the money,” Chinstrap said. “Fancy shit.”
“Where?” Beanie asked.
“Mickey D’s,” Chinstrap said with justifiable pride. “Gonna get some of those half-beef burgers!”
Beanie whistled. “You think it’s worth it? I mean, you’re talkin’ eighty or ninety bucks for a half-plankton patty.”
“Half meat, man!” Chinstrap said. “Half beef! Shit, do you even remember the last time you had a burger that was real beef and not seaweed and crickets or some shit?”
Instead of answering, Beanie shrugged. “Well, I hope you all have a good time. I’ll be happy with a tank of gas and a half-dozen eggs.”
They were two of the twenty or so seated in the tightly packed Ethiclone waiting room. Heavy-set men with goatees, skinny women in tank tops, young people fresh out of college, elderly people deep in retirement and now working two or three jobs apiece. These two were some of the few whom Vanessa had seen making genuine small talk over the last couple of days. Most just looked at their phones. Vanessa knew that if you asked them what they were thinking about as they waited, mostly they’d say the exact same thing as Chinstrap and Beanie: what to spend their upcoming payments on.
“Mark?” she called from the doorway.
Beanie glanced up and nodded, then looked back to Chinstrap. “Nice talking to you, dude; you take it easy,” he said, extending his hand.
“You too, boss!” Chinstrap said. “Hey! You got wheels?”
Mark shook his head. “Roommate has the car this week. Hoofed it most of the way here.”
“Wait out front once you’re done? If you want, we can split the cost of a ride?”
Without hesitation, Mark nodded. “Sounds great! Thanks!”
Vanessa cleared her throat. “Ready, sir?”
“Right, right, sorry!” Mark said, offering Chinstrap a final wave as he walked towards Vanessa and the swinging doors.
“Follow me,” she said, leading him to the open exam room. “Ever sold to us before?”
“No,” Mark said, keeping pace with her. “I’ve sold plasma and marrow a few times; I’ve heard this is a piece of cake compared to that.”
“You heard right,” Vanessa said, jumping into the company line with distracted ease as she reviewed the electronic chart. “Less time, less pain, better pay.” She reached the door without looking up.
“And it’s saving the world,” Mark said, slipping onto the paper-lined black chair.
When she looked up, Vanessa expected to see the wry, knowing expression of cynical amusement that typically went with such statements. Instead, the young man’s deep brown eyes were filled with an earnest naïveté that was almost alien. Ordinarily she’d have responded with a pithy quip of her own, but she was so caught off guard that the first thing she said was, “How’s that?”
Mark shrugged. “Well, I mean, you sell blood or marrow, you save one, maybe two people, right? But with what you guys are making, it’s feeding thousands of people while lowering the carbon footprint, right?”
Vanessa smiled. “You’ve done your homework. That’s our entire mission here at Ethiclone. Solving the food crisis and the climate crisis in one fell swoop.” She’d found her place in the script again, but still she found herself unnerved by the guilelessness of this young man with chocolatey eyes. “So, a few screening questions: any family history of neurological diseases such as Tay-Sachs, Huntington’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob, or Fatal Familial Insomnia?”
Mark blinked and appeared to consider. When the long pause made clear that he didn’t know the truth, he just gave the correct answer. “No.”
Nodding, Vanessa continued. “Have you lived in or traveled to any regions of the world that take part in ritual endocannibalism, such as Papua New Guinea, or otherwise been exposed to prion diseases such as Kuru?”
Mark blinked again. “Um, no.”
“Good, now we just need your signature on a few forms,” Vanessa said, handing over the tablet. “Let me know if you have any questions.”
She watched as Mark’s eyes danced down the screen, his finger tapping out his preferred payment method as he squiggled his signature. Will he ask about it? she wondered.
His eyes stopped, and his brow furrowed. Here we go, Vanessa thought.
“Um, could you explain this?” Mark asked, turning the tablet screen to her. She leaned down to see what he was pointing at on the form, but it was for show. She knew what he was asking about. It was the only part of the form that any of them asked about.
“I _____ hereby yield all parental rights and claims over the product(s) generated from my genetic material on this date, _______, to Ethiclone and their subsidiaries.
__________.”
Vanessa smiled and rolled her eyes. “Oh, if I had a nickel for every time someone asked about that one, let me tell you. Worried you’re selling us your firstborn?”
Mark grinned, evidently relieved not to be the first to ask. “It just caught me off guard seeing the phrase ‘parental rights’ in there, I guess.”
“I get it. It’s weird. But this isn’t Faust. Ethiclone just wants to protect itself from litigation. Some guys used to slap paternity suits on sperm banks they’d donated their… specimens to,” she explained. “A few women with eggs they’d donated as well, though not as many, I think. Anyway, this isn’t a baby, obviously, but since we are talking about DNA and using it to grow something, it’s just a precaution. Personally, I think it’s overkill.”
“I gotcha. CYA, right?” Mark said, returning his attention to the tablet.
“Exactly.”
Mark finished the last form and handed the tablet back. Vanessa held up an unopened mouth swab in her blue-gloved hand. “Ever done one of these?”
He winced. “Sure, a few COVID and CAPTRIP tests when I was a kid.”
Vanessa chuckled. “Nah, you’re thinking nasal swab. I’m not gonna tickle your brain, just need a little swab of your cheek. Nothing to it.”
Mark’s face relaxed. “Oh, okay, what do I do?”
“Open wide,” Vanessa said, breaking the seal on the swab and placing a firm but gentle hand on Mark’s cheek. His mouth opened without protest, and again she was struck by how much trust lay in the brown depths of his eyes. This kid was born too late, she thought, trying her best to meet his gaze.
The tip slipped inside with professional ease as Vanessa ran it along the inner wall of Mark’s mouth. His eyes got wide for an instant, then returned to normal. She sang in her head to get the time right. Happy Birthday to You…
“Alright,” she said, pulling the swab back out and putting it in the specimen bag, “all done.”
Mark rubbed his jaw. “That’s it?”
Vanessa smiled wider as she set the bag down and picked up the tablet. “That’s it! Now, you mentioned you prefer PayPal?”
“Yeah, email should be the same.”
“Mmhm,” Vanessa murmured, hitting send on her tablet. There was an audible ding from Mark’s phone as $250 hit his account. “There you go. Also, Mark, have you ever tried Ethiclone Cultured Meat Product?”
Mark shook his head. “They can’t keep it in the stores long enough; it’s been out of stock my last couple of allotment days. I’ve heard good things.”
Vanessa smiled. “Well, with your contribution we’re gonna work on that. Get some real, ethically sourced, affordable meat in the stores for people. In the meantime, when your next allotment day comes around, here’s a twenty-dollar gift card for any Ethiclone Cultured Meat Product of your choosing.”
“Thanks,” Mark said, taking the plastic card. He went to slip it into his pocket, but paused, looking at it in his hand. “Hm, it’s really something else. What you guys are doing.” He looked back up, smiling, and Vanessa felt the weight of his gaze. “Thank you.”
Smiling took effort, but Vanessa made herself do it while she held her eyes on his. Why shouldn’t I look him in the eye? she thought. It’s not like I’ve done anything wrong. I paid him. He was eager to take part. What’s this sudden pang about? So, he’s a little naïve. It’s not like he didn’t know what this was about. “Just doing our part, same as you.”
A few hours and several donors later, Vanessa was sitting on the rolling desk chair in the lab, entering data and thinking about a young man who genuinely believed she was helping to save the world.
Well, she thought with surprising defensiveness, who’s to say I’m not?
The lab door buzzed, announcing the arrival of the night shift. “Vanessa? They’re still letting you in this place?”
Vanessa exhaled, releasing tension in her shoulders she hadn’t realized she had. “Hey, Gunwant,” she said, “how’s life treating my favorite Sikh?”
Despite working together, Vanessa wasn’t really sure if Gunwant could be called her colleague, since they technically worked for different companies. She, along with all the front room technicians who oversaw specimen collection and data entry, worked for Biofirm. Gunwant and the other lab workers, who spliced and diced the gene batches destined to be grown into meat, worked for GenTech. Two medical contractors, both of whom had only one contract. Despite being so large, Ethiclone hardly seemed to have any of its own employees.
Gunwant frowned when he saw her face. “Something up?”
“No. Well, yeah. Nothing really. Gunwant, do you ever think about what we do here?”
His mouth broke into a bemused smile. “Explain yourself?”
“It’s nothing, really. There was just a donor today who kinda put me through the wringer.”
“What, was he a dick?” Gunwant asked as he dropped into the rolling chair next to her.
“Just the opposite. A true believer in our mission at Ethiclone. He said we’re saving the world.”
“Oh, the horror!”
Vanessa rolled her eyes. “I know, I don’t understand it either. I guess I feel like I was taking advantage of him.”
“Bah, hogwash!” Gunwant said. “He got paid, right? And it’s not like you fed him the steady diet of Ethiclone propaganda he swallowed.”
“My paycheck depends on his gullibility,” Vanessa said, standing up and rubbing the small of her back.
“That’s too harsh,” Gunwant said, “after all, we really are doing important work here.”
“Ha!” Vanessa barked, “sure!”
“I mean it. People have to eat, and we’re giving them the first truly sustainable meat source in history.”
“And making one company a lot of money.”
“That’s capitalism!” Gunwant exclaimed, “Seriously, Vanessa, where’s this coming from?”
Vanessa sighed. “Do you think he’d feel the same way if he knew we’re feeding him cancer?”
Gunwant’s face darkened. He seemed to be getting genuinely angry for the first time. “Vanessa, that’s an absurd exaggeration.”
“Oh?” Vanessa said, putting her hands on her hips. “You told me—”
“I said we spliced certain cells found in cancer, Vanessa; it’s not the same thing.”
It wasn’t enough for her. She could appreciate that none of what she was feeling was in any way the fault of her well-intentioned, generally harmless work friend, but right now she had to bite someone’s head off, and he happened to be available. She opened her mouth to do just that when the buzzing of the lab door gave Gunwant a reprieve. Both turned to look.
A mane of hair the color of moonlight appeared in the doorway. “Hey, Vanessa,” Janet the receptionist said, “still want a ride?”
The anger vanished, leaving deflated exhaustion in its place. She turned back to Gunwant, an apology on her lips, when he raised an open hand. “Get some rest, ok? I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Nodding, Vanessa walked out with Janet. In the hall beyond, the night shift manufacturing crew was coming out of the locker room, lining up to don their PPE and hit the production floor. White coveralls flattened out feminine curves and beer bellies, while masks and safety glasses under bright yellow hard hats obscured facial features, rendering each worker indistinguishable from the next. One by one, they lined up before the reinforced steel door, held their ID cards to the electric eye, and waited for the buzz that signaled its opening. Each time it did, Vanessa could hear the thrum of the machines on the other side.
“You ever go back there?”
Janet glanced back at the door. “You mean to the production floor? Nah, no clearance for it. Besides, all that protection gear looks like a pain.”
“Yeah,” Vanessa said, thinking about that buzz and the thrum of machinery that followed. It suddenly seemed wrong that she had never seen the production floor. Why that would be the case and why now, she couldn’t say.
If she was being totally honest, she had never even thought about it before now. She’d seen the result, of course, the tube-like packages of pinkish meat product sold in an ever-increasing number of grocery stores. But as for the time between when she collected the specimens and when they arrived on the shelf? She’d had an astonishing lack of curiosity up until this point.
By the time she was saying goodnight to Janet at the door to her apartment building, she had an idea. It could not be called a plan yet, just a series of thoughts that formed a story in her head. She could go through with any one part and still back out if she wanted. With that decided, she gave herself permission to sleep.
She spent the next day managing to work impressively well with her mind as bifurcated as it was. The front half smiled and chitchatted and took notes and swabbed cheeks. The back half, though, was considering the door. Janet’s badge didn’t give her access to the production floor, but Vanessa’s did. Or it had once. She’d been told about it during orientation. It was a holdover from Ethiclone’s startup days when the lab techs did the manufacturing themselves. Changing it would have meant a costly software patch. She’d never tried it herself, and the trainer had made it very clear that being able to get back there did not mean she was welcome to go.
“It’s a liability nightmare,” he’d said, smiling with his mouth and threatening with his eyes. “You need a metric ton of PPE, plus specialized training, and if, God forbid, you had an accident, our insurance would get very, very upset with us. So please, for everyone’s sake, stick to the front of the building.”
Would testing to see if it still worked do any harm? If it didn’t work, that would end it. If anyone asked her about it, she would say her badge had been acting funky earlier, and she was just testing it. The odds were that Ethiclone had caved and spent the money to fix the access. And if it did work? They wouldn’t fire her for poking her head in the door. She could always tell a version of the truth; she’d gotten curious about the cloned meat process and wanted to see it for herself. That wasn’t a crime, was it?
And yet, as she stood in the hallway in front of the heavy steel door, she couldn’t help but feel like Bluebeard’s wife. Instead of an ornate brass key, she held a plastic ID badge, and instead of a chamber of severed women’s heads, beyond lay… what exactly?
Probably an extremely mundane factory floor, she thought with annoyance, pressing the badge to the scanner. The door unlocked with a buzz and an audible click. Vanessa felt a lurch in her stomach like she’d reached the top of a roller coaster. She hadn’t realized until now that she’d been hoping it wouldn’t work. That would have made for an easy excuse to drop the whole thing.
She glanced over her shoulder, feeling like a dirty sneak. Satisfied she was alone, she pushed the bar and opened the door. Just a crack at first. Immediately she could hear the thrumming and pounding from beyond. Propping it with her foot, she snatched a hard hat, glasses, and mask from the nearby rack. She told herself it was not a disguise as she hastily pulled them on.
The first thing to strike her on the other side was the sound. She didn’t hear it; she felt it. It wasn’t one noise but a hellish orchestra of machines running in strange harmony. Something else as well. A low and whining whistle, barely audible, that somehow managed to be heard beneath the rest.
Then there was the smell. Anyone who harbored the delusion that Ethiclone’s products were handcrafted in sterile, white rooms by state-of-the-art robots would be shocked by the all-too-earthy smell of the production floor. It was the smell of fresh meat on the razor’s edge of decay. Sweet and rich, with a coppery tang. Vanessa felt a terrific urge to turn and run back into the fresh air of the front half. Instead, she lowered her head and took a deep breath in through her mouth, closing her eyes as she did. Her stomach settled, and she was able to breathe normally again.
The floor was an unbroken slab of cement, mottled with stains of spray paint, bleach, and what looked like blood. Vents lined the high ceiling, circulating the cold, ripe air. Blue plastic drums were stacked helter-skelter along the scab-colored walls, stretching back into the deeper recesses of the plant. In the distance, a forklift zipped between rooms.
To her left, Vanessa saw three massive, polished metal vats, each the size of a small house. Thick letters stenciled in black read: MATURATION VAT 1, MATURATION VAT 2, and MATURATION VAT 3. Stairs led up to a gangway above. She took a step forward, then froze.
There was a sound coming from the nearest vat. It was wet and organic. Foreign in this room that had never seen sunlight. The whining got louder too. It was like a whale song sung at an octave just barely within human hearing. Goosebumps broke out on her skin as she started walking again.
It’s meat, she thought, just meat.
Inside the vat, something moved against the wall. The whining had become a long, breathless scream. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeee…”
“Oh, shit,” Vanessa whimpered as she stood halfway up the stairs, wringing her hands. “Meat, fucking meat,” she said, as with each step she grew more certain that something was alive beside her.
Up on the gangway, Vanessa shivered under the cool air of the vent. She held her head up, chin pointed to the ceiling as she leaned over the guard rail. The smell was unfathomable. It was like having her entire head shoved into a bowl of raw beef. Even through the face mask, it was strong enough that she could taste it. She couldn’t hear the machines anymore. Just the screaming. She looked down.
Inside MATURATION VAT 1, a mass of tissue writhed. The bulk of its semi-solid form was unarticulated hunks of red and pink flesh, while the rest was assorted parts. Boneless hands and arms that flopped and twitched. Infantile legs with wiggling toes. Several dozen earlobes. At least three mouths that Vanessa could see, complete with lips and teeth. One actually opened as she watched, and a stubby tongue lolled out. And it had eyes. Wide, chocolatey brown eyes that searched the room.
A thin scrim of peach-like, babyish skin had grown in places; a few spots even sprouted fine hairs. On other parts there were rubbery black growths, and what Vanessa thought must be cysts. One burst, issuing a small torrent of blood. The eyes all closed at once, and the high-pitched whale song got louder. “EEEEEEEEEE!”
It’s trying to scream, she thought, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it—
Vanessa took an accidental deep breath and got a lungful of fetid air. She gagged, and it occurred to her that two things were about to happen. First, she was going to vomit. After that, she was very likely going to pass out. And if she didn’t move quickly, she’d do both into the vat.
Whirling around, she leaned her body over her knees and retched. As she did, she began to scream. Instead of trying to cover her mouth, though, her hand flew to her ears, trying to block out the desperate noise. Her gorge let fly three more times until at last she heaved and nothing was left. She sank to her knees with her eyes closed, hands still clutching the sides of her head.
“That’s why you’re supposed to wear earplugs,” a voice to the right said.
Wearily she lifted her head to see the speaker. They loomed over her, a human-shaped thing in safety gear, neither man nor woman. Their eyes held no anger, only a species of tired acceptance. “Come on then, let’s get you back where you belong. You upchucked all over the floor. We gotta sterilize now.”
When they went to take her arm, Vanessa flinched. “I don’t want to see it again!” she hissed.
“Well, girl, you can close your eyes until we get to the floor. Just hold my hand.”
What happened next happened fast. From the moment she was escorted off the floor until the moment she was let out the front door, her career with Biofirm and Ethiclone formally at an end, took less than an hour. To Vanessa, though, it felt longer.
Two figures waited at the door: Mrs. Wilder, the office manager, and Ricardo, the head of security.
“Vanessa,” Mrs. Wilder said, “I’ll need to speak with you in my office, please.” She cut her eyes to Ricardo. “Will there be a problem?”
Vanessa wanted badly to feel indignant, but she couldn’t muster the strength, especially under the stern and withering gaze of the matronly woman she had been on good terms with at the start of the day. Looking down at the floor, she shook her head.
She asked if she could use the restroom first to rinse her mouth and was told that if it wasn’t urgent, it would have to wait. So, Vanessa sat with the taste of vomit thick on her tongue. The office manager glanced up at her and, without saying anything, slid a box of tissues across the desk.
As she wiped her lips, Vanessa opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs. Wilder raised her hand. “Let’s wait for the HR Rep,” she said, looking into her laptop screen.
Vanessa bristled. She gritted her teeth, still coated with a film of bile, and said, “Did you know? What they, what we are doing back there?”
Mrs. Wilder said nothing. The laptop chirped that a call was coming through. “Hi, Joel,” the office manager said to the monitor. “She’s here.”
“Thanks, Pam,” a man’s voice said. “Can you wait outside with the door closed, please? Shouldn’t take too long.”
Nodding, Mrs. Wilder turned the laptop around and stood up. Vanessa watched her go until the door clicked shut, then turned to look at the screen. The HR Rep was a dough-faced man of middle age, who looked like a quintessential sitcom dad. Short, neat hair, graying at the temples and combed to a rigid part. Thick-rimmed glasses that magnified his pleasant blue eyes. A tender, “I just hate to have to do this,” smile formed on his face.
“Hey, Vanessa, I’m Joel, VP of Human Resources for Ethiclone. I guess you know what this meeting is about?”
Vanessa thought about the words Human Resources and winced. “Rewarding my curiosity?” she said, not managing to sound aloof.
Joel politely chuckled and shook his head sadly. “Mm, those damn ID badges,” he sighed, “I tried to tell them. Maybe now they’ll listen.” He shrugged, throwing up his hands in resignation. “As it is, I’m very sorry to say we’re going to have to terminate your contract with Ethiclone and its affiliates.”
“As if I would have stayed?” Vanessa said, rolling her eyes. Assuming this was the end, she started to get up. Joel bid her to sit.
“Hang on, there’s a little more, Vanessa. We need to go over the terms of your severance. I’ve been told to offer you what we call the Karen Silkwood package.”
“Who?” Vanessa asked.
Joel smiled. “Oh, I suggest you look her up sometime, but we’ll skip that for now. Ready?”
The spiel consisted of three parts. First were the reminders. Joel reminded Vanessa of her NDA, and that any breach of confidentiality, including of proprietary manufacturing information, could and would be pursued to the full extent possible. He went on to say that while the unrefined cellular tissue she had seen might have looked unpleasant to someone unfamiliar with the science of lab-grown meat, absolutely no laws were being broken by Ethiclone.
At this, Vanessa snapped, “Meat, my ass! That isn’t cellular tissue!”
Joel shot her a glance, then continued. “Now Vanessa,” he said calmly, “in addition to legal and monetary ramifications, you should be aware it would be quite easy to have you killed.”
There was no malice in his voice as he said this and no more gravitas than if he was reading off terms and conditions. Vanessa waited for him to laugh or to get angry. He did neither. She was suddenly aware of just how many locked doors there were between this room and the outside.
“We really, really want to avoid that eventuality, for everyone’s sake. That’s why I think you will agree that our severance package is surprisingly generous.”
Vanessa exhaled and slowly nodded her head.
“You’re going to be starting a new job, Vanessa, as a private consultant. Your first and, as far as we are concerned, only client is FoodCorp Holdings.”
“FoodCorp Holdings? I don’t—”
“No, you’ve never heard of them,” Joel chuckled. “They are a small subsidiary of Ethiclone. So small they only exist on paper, in fact. As your client, they will be paying you a very respectable monthly stipend. Not enough to get rich, but enough to stay comfortable. You want to guess what your main job as a consultant for FoodCorp Holdings will be?”
Vanessa lowered her head and rubbed her temples. “Keep my mouth shut?”
“That’s the gist of it!” Joel said cheerfully. “You should be getting an email with our contract in a few seconds. If you can just e-sign that, we are good to go.”
Joel leaned back in his seat and looked down at his Ethiclone-branded fidget spinner. “I was thinking,” he said, “your situation reminds me a little of that old fairy tale, the one where the wife opens the secret door. You know what I mean?”
“Bluebeard,” Vanessa said, opening her email.
“That’s it!” Joel said, snapping his fingers. “Bluebeard. Mmm, creepy stuff.”
“Uh-uh,” Vanessa said, as she squiggled her name across the bottom of the E-Doc. Except this isn’t Bluebeard, she thought; it’s Faust.
VANESSA [23:54]: Gunwant, I really need to talk to you. Can we meet sometime soon?
VANESSA [00:30]: Gunwant?
GUNWANT [00:35]: Please delete my number, Vanessa. I really don’t want to have to block you.
VANESSA [00:37]: How much do you know?
GUNWANT [00:39]: As little as possible. Please respect that. I like my job.
VANESSA [00:43]: But what they’re doing, Gunwant, it’s evil.
GUNWANT [00:44]: We all have mouths to feed. No one likes to see how the sausage gets made. Goodbye, Vanessa.
Sometime later, on his allotment day, Mark stood in the checkout line as it slowly trickled its way from the back of the store. “Seriously!” The man in front of him exclaimed for about the sixth time, “Why insist on self-checkout if they’re gonna make a clerk check our bags anyway?”
Mark shrugged, “gotta keep us honest.”
“You’re young, you don’t remember, but I’m old enough to remember when we had people ringing us up, damnit, not machines!”
Mark issued a good-natured laugh. He was a true rarity for his day and age: a genuine people person. He enjoyed conversation and rarely forgot a face. That’s why when he spotted the woman walking down the refrigerated aisle, his first thought was that he knew her from somewhere. Was she a nurse? And what did the phrase “saving the world” have to do with her?
As she got nearer, however, he realized he must be mistaken. He would remember this woman. She was clearly not a well person, being thin to the point of emaciation. Her sunken, bloodshot eyes darted from side to side as if looking for an ambush. Suddenly she froze in place and stared.
Mark followed her gaze to the display in the center of the aisle. A cardboard cutout showed a generic family of three gathered around a charcoal grill. The dad, complete with chef’s hat and apron, held a tray covered in perfectly browned sausage links. Above this, a banner read,
“TRY NEW ETHICLONE MEAT SAUSAGE!
Ethiclone, serving you and yours!”
A teenaged clerk stood by with samples in Dixie cups. Noticing the odd customer staring at him, he made his pitch with tepid enthusiasm. “Hello ma’am, would you like to try new Ethiclone sausage? We have brats or franks.”
Mark watched as the thin woman charged. With her fists raised over her head, he was certain she was about to wail on the unfortunate youngster. Instead, they slammed down on the sample tray, sending meat-filled Dixie cups skittering to the floor. The youth jumped back, knocking over the cardboard cutout family.
“Get that stuff away from me!” the woman screamed.
“Jesus Christ!” the customer in front of Mark shouted, “Lady, the kid’s just doing his job! What’s your problem?”
“Can’t you hear it?” the woman screamed as the security guard stalked up behind her. Then she began to laugh.
Want another gripping story by Jim Best? Read “Dead or Alive” in Horrific Scribes October 2025.
| SPECIAL EXHIBIT SIX: Return to “The Interval Tenants“ | Continue Gallery Four: Predating with “The Look on Your Face“ |