DAY 2: Children of the Sand

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            “Get me out of here!” Somebody, probably a woman, screams. “My baby, oh God! Somebody please, help my baby!”

This is the situation at Divas Stores, a large independent departmental store serving the folks of Crivers Town.

400 customers and employees have been trapped in there.

Computer malfunction.

The computerized steel doors came down and trapped everyone that was lucky (or unlucky) to come shopping in that place inside. Some of the folks in there got separated from their spouses. There’s Jack Senghor who stayed behind to lock up the car. The doors came down before he got through his little business; there’s the kids, three of ‘em, of Engineer Forge, who ran into the store ahead of their father who waited behind to say hello to some guy hauling along a train of shopping carts. These kids made it inside and barely a minute later their contact with their parent was severed when the steel door crashed down.

One customer who got trapped under the weight of the falling door was smashed like tomatoes. His skull popped like roasted corn and spilled white stuff on the terrace. He wasn’t a particularly observant guy nor was he the listening type or he would have heard the yells of “Run!” from the other customers. But who could blame the guy. His ears were plugged with earpiece of his IPhone and his face was on the screen of the gadget, his fingers busy searching the files-probably the music files. The IPhone survived the ordeal, intact. How about that for a feast of irony? Good enough for two.

They found the kid’s ID in his pocket; his name was Muzak Game. And just as well.

Worthy of mention is the case of Mr. Dash. (Reader Beware: Name used here as a rhetorical device-not real name-but to buttress the fact that he would have been on the other side, the OUTSIDE when the doors came down.) And true to his name, Mr. Dash scudded into the store at the wake of the door primarily on the false impression that the Divas Supermarket management was trying to lock people out to stifle congestion. Oh yes, it’s happened times a plenty before. Surprise, surprise, Mr. Dash, you had that one coming.

Several others were in there, not to buy something. They came window shopping. Or, since they came nose to nose with the goods we might call it shelf shopping. The only fortunate thing in this whole mess, if you see it my way, was that the haywire computer left the lights on. The electricity was an advantage but it was a curse as well.

The trapped and flustered customers tried banging on the steel doors of Divas ignoring the pleas and cries of the two clerks to ‘keep away from the doors.’ Those lucky or unlucky, as you would soon find out for yourself, to touch the doors were fried on the spot. Summarily, electrocuted along with those who were close enough to touch them. A man died of electric shock because the limb of a frozen chicken in a basket carried by a woman who had made a mad dash for the door brazed his knuckles. Talk about going to a cold hell in a hand basket.

The computer mistaking the panic-stricken folks for intruders or burglars took drastic security measures. About twenty people were fried instant. And soon all the trapped folks were huddled at the center of the departmental store to avoid unknown outcomes. Burnt child dreads fire, hey?

“The phones are out.” Someone, a female voice said.

That statement got people started.  The worst thing that could happen in this kind of situation is a phone with a dead battery or one with a dead network. As everyone found out checking their phone screens, the network was gone.

“As part of security measures folks, the computer has ability to shut out phone network within the store premises,” said one of the clerks, the initials on his badge said his name was Dave.

The alarm system that ought to alert the cops had not been activated. The computer probably didn’t see reason to do so since none of the trapped suspects was going nowhere or possibly, because it believed it was okay to shut the doors and keep it shut. Maybe, it just didn’t consider the heat police interference necessary and so the emergency shutdown had somehow (abnormal under such circumstances) not activated the alarm system.

The scene on the outside of the supermarket’s another issue. Customers are boiling over that the store decides to shut people IN without checking with them if they got family OUT-the paying family member. Engineer Forge would fall in this group. Remember the guy who stayed back for a little chit-chat while his kids scuttled into the store?

However, before their very reasonable inquest, some of these protesters had witnessed the madness of store personnel (the ones who were stuck with them on the outside) when they decided to knock on the steel door of that goddam place. What transpired in those few seconds it ah, transpired was a ripple effect. Folks touching the electrified doors electrocuting folks touching them-about fifty persons suffered electrocution.

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There is a legend in this part of the world. Legend of a sacrifice exchange that was bound to turn in on itself like cancer or like a black hole eating itself up. As the legend goes, it’s pretty much the same as legends go, by the way, there happened to be a cluster of people which the people of Crivers Town (which at that period in history was no more than a plot of land surrounded by forests-evil or otherwise and went by the name, Crivers Village) had slated for mass sacrifice.

Legend has it that these sacrifices had been blood relations-as far reaching as nieces and in-laws-of a man who had stood up against the sacrifice of the only daughter of a widow. This man, Celeste, had actually masterminded the girl’s escape to the neighboring-enemy village. The entire village was infuriated when they learned of this fact. The full weight of tradition was brought to bear.

The population of people that made up the entire village was a meager 400. And this included the family to be annihilated. The sacrifice exchange family added up to fifty four people. It took the ritual executioners only six minutes to bury the men, women and about twenty kids alive. The children, (not the adults. The adults were mysteriously mute. Even the women in the group were mum.) rained curses on the entire village, on the land and the peoples. Of course, the village folks scoffed at their fragile attempt at revenge.

One of the children was particularly stubborn and declared the coming of a sign in seven days to confirm the certainty of the curse. And the laughter was tuned up a notch-the village roared with poisonous laughter. The laughter caught like wild fire and held on. Some of the onlookers were actually holding their tummies from laughing too hard. They laughed all the way home.

Laughed at the fifty four-thirty four adults and twenty screaming, cursing children buried alive. Dying, hanging on but choking on sand as it came off hoes and spades of their executioners. Some of these caught the sand with their eyes wide open, dying with sand grains pricking their eyes, unable to reach up and wipe their eyes cause their hands are bound with cords, unable to scream cause there’s sand swarming down their lungs and slowly choking the life out of ‘em.

Sand grains going into their nostrils, grains careening down the vestibule of their ears, their insulted lives disappearing into a world of gray-swimming in an endless sea of sand. Sand that spelt tortured death, doom, misery; sand from which their Maker had formed each one as a work of legendary craftsmanship; the selfsame through which they were now committed to their Maker; sand that has become the instrument of a curse and is itself accursed.

Corrupt sand.

The last thing to die out that day was the voices of the children. Doused one by one by the avalanche of sand filling up the pit of their destruction. Their voices snuffed out like lamps doused by cupping a bowl over it-a task undertaken with cruel force and finality.

Seven days later, the door to the village shrine splintered and the high priest observed that someone had desecrated the sacred calabash-the all-seeing eye of Hedion. An abomination, by all means. On closer inspection, the priest found the element of desecration-sand. The little girl’s prophecy had come to pass. But by the seventh day, most of the villagers had either forgotten the child’s utterances or willfully chose not to identify it with the event in the shrine.

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Trapped within the walls of Divas Supermarket, the customers-turned-victims face the worst dilemma of their lives.

Meanwhile, something else starts happening. Some kind of trembling that feels like an earthquake shakes up the very foundations of the place. It’s like a growling from the belly of the earth. A few items tumbled off the shelf and a series of crashing sounds were heard including squeaks and gasps from the imprisoned customers and employees. One plump mama actually fell down in a faint.

Right here in the 21st century, a link had been enacted. Some good-natured fellow who would by all means have stood his ground against the murderous mob that sacrificed an entire bloodline, had come to settle in the young town of Crivers. He, Divas George, had built his supermarket in the Town of Crivers. Equipped it with some of the most advanced technological gadgets. The people of the town often boasted of the wonders of that store; the best by far, in the entire region.

Yet, this place was to be the downfall of the town and no thanks to civilization-much of the town no longer believed in fetish stuff and couldn’t recognize ancient landmarks. Development had wiped out evil forests and all that. The spot Divas had erected his supermarket captured the plot of land where the sacrifice exchange had been buried ages ago. But the folks at Crivers Town didn’t know that. And what was more? He’d married a direct descendant of the girl who was rescued by Celeste, the man who had been buried alive with his entire generation line. How about that for poetic justice?

Fate is a master of suspense.

Judgment had come to the Town of Crivers with teeth bared and talons drawn.

And really, knowledge of folklore wouldn’t have mattered much since these new generation residents didn’t much care for curses that arose out of the ground after many centuries and it was indeed many centuries ago since the legend of the sacrifice. As point of fact, they were civilized and therefore, did not believe in ghosts. God bless them.

All deaths that followed after the electrocution, took less than six minutes.

The earthquake had aroused something that had been sleeping under the earth. Had shaken it loose from its dungeon deep under the earth’s surface. Something thirsty for revenge.

There’s this guy who’d been having a good time making gruesome jests about the whole situation-calling it all the work of some angry evil supernatural force thirsty for blood sacrifice.

And then a few moments after the shaking, this guy began gawking and they all took it for a joke. When he wouldn’t stop, somebody took a cue to put an end to the whole mess and gave him a round house slap. A big chunk fell off the guy’s face. It was like hitting the edge of a child’s sand castle with a board. The man who hit the jester stumbled backwards, gasping in horror. The palm of his hand which had made contact with the rearranged jester’s face was covered with sand but that wasn’t all. The grains of sand seemed to possess a form of life. They were crawling up his arms and chewing off his flesh like acid at the same time.

He squealed in congealed terror, got a bottle of water and tried to wash off the sand. The grains thrived on the water, blossomed and covered his arm like a swarm of tiny bees and then his arms disappeared. All that was left was a stump by his armpit.

All over the store shapes of children rose through the floor tiles. Only these were not flesh and blood children. They were formed of sand. Twenty sand children walked through the store decomposing living humans. Somebody tried striking one of them with a baseball bat. The sand kid exploded then washed over him. In a minute, the brave guy himself was a heap of sand.

In six minutes, men, women and children were chewed up by the sand kids.

When the storm died down, the steel doors opened up. Those left alive on the outside rushed in and found the greatest nightmare of their lives.

The world had gone to hell in a hand basket.