Feisty Fizz of the Forgotten Fathers

Nobody really shops at the Deepshallow Valedingle Superduper-Mart. You just live it.

A behemoth of concrete with rusting metal beams and the faint smell of ammonia and partially hydroginated oils in a sarcophagus of embalming fluid. Some all too familliar fluorescent lights, flickering in certainly uncertain intervals, between just a tad too narrow aisles that seem to stretch just that little bit further then you would find it comfortable. Every cart has squeaky wheels combining into a sonata of off-beat machinations. And worst of all an air-con unit that for all intents and purposes would not feel out of place at a local meeting of the chain smoking asthmatic.

Its is a wednesday. A new shiny and totally unique soda flavour had dropped.

A limited edition so to speak.

It name. "Ouroboros Zitron: Zero Aftertaste" on a black label stamped into a surprisingly shiny can. The tab is an ouroboros, on the can is an oroboros and the oroboros's orobori have even more oroboros. A delicate oroboros meal.

A mighty promise on the can:

"A Taste That Ends When It Begins To End At The Beginning. Contains atleast 3.14....% REAL Moonbazooka Juice."

A truly mighty promise.

People come for these kinds of one-of-a-kind refreshments. Allthou describing them as people would stretch the definition.

Shuffling like centipedes in neat rows, wrapped in trench coats of disturbing length, some even seem to leave trails. The purest form of intent oozes from them like a french cheese after a week in the sun. Almost like sweat or an uncanny stream of water it pertrudes from them.

The coats are never the same. Some have collars, some have wings, one seems to be bleeding from what would usually be described as the ears and one clearly seems to smoke, which despite rising up to the ceiling never seems to touch the tiles. A cascade of different smells eminate from them. Burned cassettes, citrus flavoured toothpaste or monopoly money used in a drug deal gone wrong. Yet it never seems to bother the senses of anyone.

They never talk. Not to eachother, not to anyone outside. Some maybe emitting a discerning hum.

All sodas are kept at the ice coffin near the checkout. Its always excatly seven cans. Not one more or less. Always the same brands:

Meatberry Avalanche: Pineapple Edition,

Pure Nostalgia Nectar,

Depressow Dew,

Ouroboros Zitron: Zero Aftertaste,

Root's Rootbeer of the Demented,

Smalt,

You Know Exactly What You Did.

None of them ever seem to get restocked.

You work register six. On your nametag it says "GERTRUDE". You have long forgotten your real name. Possibly even surrendered it, at gunpoint.

Each week your job is to ting them up.

They slide the can each onto the counter. One trenchcoat leaves a finger behind. A normal finger that doesn't bleed but it still moves. Like it has a life of its own. It even begins to grow appandages of itself to further drive the point home that it has truly taken its matters by the horns.

One trenchcoat hands you a coupon. It looks like its been made from bark, yet it scans with an eerie noise. Just leaving a singular "YES" on the little screen. The soda is free. This trenchcoat stares. With a blank, uncomfortable stare seemingly taught to it by the grimmest witch of the darkest forest herself. And then the smile appears, a smile that would freeze the mariana trench, a smile learned by watching other humans through an oily window in the middle of the night. And it all lingers for far too long.

Sometimes a sort of argument breaks out between them. Not in words but in confessing motions and strange dances. Usually between aisle 17 and 17.7396 where the great cereal tree wisdoms and a society of gnomes, gnelfs and gnoblins has taken it to their task of harvesting and packaging its growing repertoire of tasty, yet slightly unhealthy, cereals.

Occasionally a cough or a hiss is heard, then a shelf tips over, nobody cleans it up, a new society builds upon the destruction. Year affter year, month after month, day after day. It repeats.

Every week the you ask the trenchcoats "Would you like a bag sir?"

None ever answer.

Except once. The green coat made of striched half chewed baseball skins and abandoned wasp nests. In a whispering tone "The fizz remembers...". Leaving behind two 1849 Double Eagle and a perfect tooth.

None of the managers question anything. There hasn't been a new one since that particular incident in 2019 with that pogo stick and the canned dog food in the security room. The tapes of that day have shown things, ungodly things. Some of them potentially even true. And some just things about to happen. Since then even the breakroom clock refuses to go past 10, skipping from 10 to 2 every time it can, with an exhausted noise it creaks while doing so.

It is past midnight. As always you drink the leftover cans of soda that nobody wants, usually its Smalt. The flavour is indescribable. Tasting sort of like a mix of the smell of windex through a pristine bong and a bus ride you cry on but don't remember how you got on the bus itself because you were already crying when you entered. Drinking it always leaves you burping in sign language.

Tonight, the left over can is Ouroboros Zitron. You shouldn't take it. Its the limited edition. The can feels warm, it breathes, pulses, tapdances on your skin.

You take it to the break room, past the taped up door that seems to only open when you in particular are tired, seemingly avoiding to touch you. Sitting down under the poster that says "It Really Gets Worse After Getting Really Worse" someone having scratched out the final "worse" and replaced it with a hastly scribbled "Yesn't".

You open the can as it begins to hiss.

The fizz climbs up your nose. Your ears bleed inwards and your memories begin to fade as they are replaced by images of weirdly sexualized ouroboros. You see the moment of your birth, you mother screaming your name at you in past tense. Dying forward at an alarming pace.

It tastes. Yellow. A carbonated sin. Like an unblinking pastor watching you flirt with someone at the local pub.

It tastes. Like a summer on a dying red dwarf star gravitating a supernova. As if you knew too much but choose too little.

You float. You fizz. You fall. Eternally.

Awoken by the familiar music of the store. You are in a trench coat. Its way too long. Dragging. In your pockets you can feel a sudden touch.

Its a receipt.

"1x Ouroboros Zitron: Zero Aftertaste | CONSUMED

 1x Soul | EXCHANGED

 1x Employment Identity | WARRANTY VOID

 CHANGE: YES"

The lights feel dimmer. You almost feel them breathing in and out.

You are at the ice coffin at the checkout. There is no more Smalt left.

You see a cashier clocking in.

His nametag an unreadable scribble.

It is wednesday.

The soda is on sale.

There are six cans.

The cashier must ring them up.