#odd stories

I also ran into a lady when I found the batteries and I swear to fart if I was in Missouri she would have fucking screamed at me and said I tried to assault her because I almost bumped into her, but here in Utah apparently things are different. This random lady actually **STARTED** a conversation with me in the middle of Walmart **BECAUSE** I almost ran into her, And it scared my Midwest mind because my body is so programmed to bumping into people in Kansas & Missouri and getting screamed at or stared at as they walk away😭💔

Alright then, to my readers who I persume are mostly from the western side of the world, Hi, I'm blue, because I'm always blue, and I'm persian, with a very bad grammar in English and an obsession for the caped crusader and so on. What I'm going to write is neither fact nor fiction, it has roots in reality and is sprinkled with my wild imagination, but yes, where should I start?

Oh right, I've been working in my uncle's small grocery store lately, the old man has been sickly after taking to many puffs of his cigarettes that always have a very bitter lingering smell, and I've taken the job to run the shop since well, I needed the money. The store isn't that large, but it isn't small either, a two windowed store that sells both fresh goods and also other products in the other side of the counter, there is a shelf in front of the cashier's counter that stands on top of where most of the legumes are, (Today my back broke when I refilled the bean's container), and it has rows upon rows of shampoos and hair softners of brands that even I don't remember being in production line, and two of the rows are filled with different sizes of baby shampoos of a specific brand that always, ALWAYS, gets empty by the end of my shift which is by 4 am before morning prayer. On the topped rows are outdated olive oil bottles and a bear shaped baby shampoo bottle, coming from the era that using olive oil was the trend, these days people buy oils that are cheaper than the rest, no one cares about "healthy" stuff, unless they are bored or something.

On the counter which is filled to the brim with different cakes and donuts and candies, there is giant scale that works with stone measures, which by the sheer will of the God and my luck every measure is precise, cos we have a large digital scale beneath it as well haha! Got you there. The glass of the counter is covered with the names of the different people in the busy neighborhood that burrow items and had never come back to repay stuff, and from what I've seen about the customers that come and buy things from this place, I understand why my uncle just let them burrow those things, his head was more precious than the money spent on a few eggs.

There is an old radio that is always set on a very old cassette filled with songs from before the revolution, and it's sound for some reason never wavers or gets crooked, even though whatever speaker I buy is done for by the end of the night in the store, I think the building itself doesn't like new generation music or something. It's a pretty decent shop for a low middle class neighborhood that is close to the now dried river and the wheat silos, the good old silo neighborhood that was once so rife with violence that even the police didn't bother coming to break the fights. It's pretty tamed down these days, but still occasionally you get the strange customers here and there.

There is the shark Hasan, I don't know why the people call the poor one legged man that, they joke his leg was bitten off by a shark or something when I'm sure the old man hasn't even seen the sea in his lifetime, the guy sits by my uncle and they speak of olden times with him as they smoke those low quality blasted cigarettes, then there is the weird set of visitors that stumble into the store, smelling of too much cologne and perfume, buying the whole storage of nonalcoholic beer and leave. Then there is my own granny that by the will of her own power comes in with her walker, buying things before paying with coins, counting every single one and putting them on the counter, where does she find all of those coins no one knows.

It's a good experience you know, interacting with people and stuff, but let me share a secret with you, all of these people I've mentioned are all...dead. aside from my uncle, the poor guy is upstairs hooked to his breathing capsule.

So my great-grandmother died about a month ago (she had severe dementia since I was like seven so I we didn’t really know each other that well). Her husband’s ashes were buried in a military cemetery so we went to bury hers there next to his, but it took a while since covid. Once we’re there, we give the worker the ashes but we’re not allowed to go in and they said she’ll be buried in about two days, but we decided to visit my great-grandfather and great uncle before we leave. We get to him and we put flowers down, and a few of my family members pray for them and we just stayed for a little. I felt sick as soon as we got onto the site but I just put it off as feeling weird bc we’re at a graveyard and it’s not the most comfortable place. We were there for about ten minutes and I heard gunshots. It wasn’t a 21 gun solute, it was two sole shots, and then I hear a scream directly after, then sobbing. It seemed extremely close and I flinched heavily bc like it was completely quiet and I thought I was being shot at for a second. I looked around and no one had moved. I asked my mom if she heard that, and she had no idea what I was talking about. No one heard it either. The sobbing eventually quieted and it went back to silence. (Also I have no history of hallucinations or anything like that, I don’t think I made it up.)

Life as heaven or life as hell but once you've died you've simply fell, right out of your flesh into a place of colorless gloom.

It just keeps getting dark he says.

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