Tales from the Gas Station: Volume One (Tales from the Gas Station, #1)

by Jack Townsend

That is, until a few months ago. That was the day I screwed everything up. The day I accidently threw off the delicately balanced ecosystem. It was a Thursday, the devil was beating his wife, and I unwittingly started a chain reaction that would eventually lead to the untimely deaths of a lot of very healthy people, starting with my own best friend.

“Jack, I don’t know how to tell you this. But the cards are very clear. The corners are-” she pointed at each as she said their names- “upright tower, reversed hanged man, reversed wheel of fortune, and upright death. These symbols tell a story. A very bad story. This can only mean one thing. You must be cursed.”

“You guys alright?” I asked. The man slowly picked himself up enough to see out the window and scan the edges of the lot. Satisfied with what he saw (or didn’t see), he got to his feet, crossed to my counter, and yelled the words, “I need to use your phone. Now!” “Okay,” I said, “It’s twenty-five cents a minute. Pay in advance. No exceptions.”

“I bet that was just Lurch.” “What the hell is a ‘Lurch?’” “He’s one of the cultists. They hang out around these parts. They don’t have real names. Part of their sacred rules. No labels from their pre-cult lives. I give them all nicknames to keep track. Lurch is the tall one. Like, basketball player tall. I bet that’s who you saw.” The man said this next part in an emotionless, matter-of-fact tone, like a news anchor reporting war death statistics. “The thing I saw out there reached down from the top of the trees, wrapped a tentacle around her boyfriend’s neck, and pulled him into the branches like it wasn’t nothing.” “Oh,” I said, “In that case, no. It probably wasn’t Lurch who you saw.”

“Whatever you do, Jack, don’t ever get old.” “I wasn’t planning on it.”

Before any of you start to get the wrong idea, let me assure you that I’m not living in an insane asylum somewhere, staring at a miniature gas station inside of a snow globe and hallucinating this entire thing. Let’s just say I had to go through a lot of trouble to write up this account of events and get it published, and if I am hallucinating everything, then that would make this book and all of my readers part of that hallucination too. Whether or not you are a hallucination is absolutely none of my business, and I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

One emotion that was undeniably real was his growing surprise at how long I had lasted. Month after month, we ended our sessions and parted ways with the understanding that it could very easily be the last time either of us would see the other. After I blew past my expiration date, Dr. V. was quick to remind me that I was not getting better, I was simply dying much slower than anticipated. But when you think about it, isn’t that all anyone can really ask for?

“Hey Dr. V.” “How do we feel today?” “Same as every day. With our hands, mostly.”

“Also, one of the customers said he saw a half-naked man in the bathroom wearing a cowboy hat and juggling knives.” “That happens.” “Oh, and one more thing,” he took off his nametag and handed it over, “I’m going to have to tender my resignation effective immediately. I can’t take all these customers trying to put thoughts into our heads without our permission. This place is evil, and I need to get out before it’s too late.”

“Thanks for letting me know. We’re going to miss you, Miguel.” “My name is Rico.” “Really?” He made a pouty face at me, and I looked at the nametag in my hand, which confirmed that he was indeed correct about his name.

“Hey man. You look like shit.” “Yeah, plus I’m wet,” I responded.

“Are you yanking my crank?” “No. This is not a joke.” “And you said, ‘half’? Of a pig?” “I said ‘half of a pig.’ An actual, literal pig. A swine hog.” “You serious?” “As a heart attack.” “What do you mean by ‘half,’ exactly?” “It’s only the front half. And it seems very upset about the whole thing." “You mean, like, exactly half?” “I don’t know; I didn’t measure it.” “Where’d the back half go?” “Can you, maybe, like, send somebody out here?” “And where did you say you were?” “At the shitty gas station at the edge of town.” “Ohhh!” she exclaimed, “Please hold.” Apparently,

We asked around, but nobody knew where the half-pig had come from or how the hell it got inside the store in the first place. Farmer Brown (who was still alive at the time) came out to take a look and provide his expert opinion. According to Farmer, the pig had somehow been “chopped down the middle,” but miraculously none of the important organs were hit. Nothing supernatural about it, just really unusual.

After she shot him down, the cultist turned his attention to his favorite target. Me. He approached my counter, with his recruitment pitch loaded up and ready to go, once again inviting me to take a small leap of faith and quit my job and follow him back to the compound where sublime transcendence and pancakes awaited. I told him I wasn’t interested and then slowly, very slowly, I pushed the entire stack of cultist pamphlets across the counter, off the edge, and into the wastebasket, maintaining eye contact with him the entire time.

A couple gnomes showed up right outside the back door, and I left them where I found them because one of them was holding a steak knife and I don’t need that kind of crazy in my life. Eventually, I decided to put price tag stickers on them and move them onto their own display near the front doors. Ever since then, the gas station has sold lawn gnomes for $9.99 each, or best offer.

I’m not saying that the lawn gnomes are omens or anything like that. I’m just saying some part of me was noticing with growing concern that nearly a dozen gnomes had popped up in only the last five days.

I knew Kieffer, or at least I knew of Kieffer, but we weren’t exactly acquaintances. I told all this to Tony, who shook his head and insisted, “No. That’s not Kieffer. That can’t be Kieffer.” I said, “Why not?” Tony looked at me with tears welling up in his eyes and said, “Because Kieffer has been dead for two days. His body is in the trunk of my car right now.”

A Mathmetist believes that the world has been going about good and bad in the wrong way. For eons, we’ve been attempting to increase happiness, when instead we should have been focusing on decreasing suffering. Happiness is an ever-changing concept, and the more happiness you create, the harder it is to sustain. Whereas suffering is consistent. Suffering is pure, and eternal. For a Mathmetist to be supremely good, they must simply end all suffering. He began the last part of his well-rehearsed speech with a big dumb smile, saying “...and that is why the Mathmetists are working on a bomb to destroy the entire planet.” I honestly didn’t see that coming. Maybe I should have read the pamphlet.

And so, as Marlboro explained, their cult believes that killing is a kindness. “You guys are a murder cult?” I asked, just for clarification. “Hey, whoa, come on. That’s such a nasty word.” he said, holding up his hands defensively, “Try to think of us more as a murder religion, or maybe a murder ideology. Murderology, if you will.” I told him that his ideas were stupid, and he was stupid, and now he had to go and tell the man in the raincoat to go away.

“Jack, you have a dark aura! I’ve encountered this before, but I’ve never seen one as bad as yours. There’s nothing worse than a dark aura. Please, let me help you.” I hope she’s not going to try and sell me some crystals or something, I thought to myself. “I’m not here to sell you crystals or anything like that.” Oh crap, I thought, is she reading my mind? “No, I can’t read your mind, Jack.” Oh thank God.

“You want your aura cleansed, right?” “You’re putting words in my mouth, and I don’t like when other people put things in my mouth.” “Nobody’s going to put anything in your mouth.” Paul interrupted, saying “Actually, one of the steps in the ceremony is literally putting something in his mouth.”

Kieffer’s mouth and eyes were wide open, his face frozen in an eternal look of confusion. I can confidently say, given the bizarre fact that I actually had a frame of reference, that Kieffer’s corpse was way more unsettling with the eyes open. The first thing I asked was, “You stole the body back?” He didn’t answer. He just stared at the ground with a sheepish, guilty look on his face like a toddler that just got busted for dealing drugs. Oh. The reality set in, and I asked, just to make sure. “You killed another one?” “It was an accident,” he explained. “Again.”

“I’m sorry, guys. This is a little more involved than I was anticipating, and I’m going to have to bow out. Thanks for trying to save my life and aura and all that, but-” Paul interrupted me, “Just do the ceremony, Jack. It’ll take twenty minutes and if you do, I’ll give you a hundred dollars.” I’m not proud of this, but Paul managed to change my mind.

(If you were paying attention, you may have noticed that I skipped step four. This was intentional. Step four wasn’t anything special, but I’m not going to include it because, quite simply, I don’t want you to try this ceremony at home. I made the mistake of sharing the complete ritual back before I knew what it was capable of, and for that I am very sorry. In my defense, how could I have known that people would attempt it on their own? Especially after they learned what comes next.

“Mama Susan?” She looked away from the imp and smiled at me. “Hey Jack. Sorry, I thought it would be easier to come on in and see what was going on for myself.” “Does that mean you’re in the kiddie pool?” “Yes.” “Is that why you’re completely naked right now?” “Yes, it is.” Right then, Paul walked up behind us. He too was fully nude and proud to be so. He looked around like he was taking it all in, then said to me, “Hey Jack.” “Did you guys really need to take off all your clothing?” Paul shrugged and said, “It’s only weird if you make it weird.” “No,” I responded, “It’s weird either way.”

“I think we can move on now. You know the drill. Five words. You ready?” “Um,” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue, or if I wanted to go back and address what was just said. Ultimately, I elected the former. “Sure, I’m ready.” “Vein. Stick. Gray. Cinnamon. Cut. Rain.” I repeated them to myself. Then I realized something. “That’s six words.” “What?” “You gave me six words.” The doctor looked at the sheet where he had been keeping notes, then back at me, then said, “Vein. Stick. Gray. Cinnamon. Rain. That’s five words.” “Oh,” I responded. “My mistake.”

“Eh?” he said, “How about that?” “What if I just don’t tell people about this part of the story?” I asked. The non-blinded agent slammed his hands on the counter and said with a growl, “You wouldn’t dare! This was the most interesting part of our entire interaction!” The blind agent added, “Seriously! Check this out! How did I even do this without dying? I should be bleeding all over the place right now! Why am I not bleeding?!”