#Convenience store

[oldshowbiz]

What every roadside convenience store looked like during my childhood

[dat-soldier]

POV: your date with an androgynous emo boy is going well

[tampire]

I'm Spotted at the Grocery Store, y'all want anything? Spot is cosplayed by me and photos taken by @grayhaven_photography

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I met death (as in, the Grim Reaper) and it was literally just a magical girl with a hood working at a convenience store.

[barelyahumanbeing]

The Strange Night at the Convenience Store

Pairing Humanoid monster x reader

Plot You moved to that place recently and already had a favorite convenience store. There was nothing special about, until you had to go there at night and cross into a peculiar version of it... with also a peculiar attendant

Warnings: None

N. A. So this is my first story for this blog, and I'm so excited with this new project! I have plans of bringing other formats besides lists like this one, so please tell me what type of content you feel more comfortable with 🥰 I'll also create a masterlist with all my content separated by creature, title and other categories in the future, so everything will be kept in order. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this little story and feel free to share your thoughts!

🥀 You moved to that city a few weeks ago and were still adapting to your new routine. It was the first time you were going to live alone, so you were excited and scared at the same time

🥀 Among all the things you had to manage by yourself now, it was discovering the supermarkets and shops that existed near your place, and which of them had the best products and prices. One day, you found a convenience store on a gas station located on a block behind the one where your building was, which sold snacks and essential items at a good price. It quickly became your favorite store, and you went there on every opportunity you had

🥀 Thing is that you always went there by day, so you never needed to leave your apartment by night when you wanted a good treat

🥀 However, there was this time when you forgot to shop at day, so you only found out your pantry was empty when it was almost 21pm

🥀 You sighed. Your movie night would have to start later than you planned

🥀 You left home promising you were going back to its comfort soon

🥀 You used to cross an alley right behind your building to shorten the way to the store, but you didn’t want to use it at night, so you took an entire walk around the block.

🥀 When you were about to cross the street, you noticed a change in your surroundings. The street, the buildings and cars were... different. Old. It was like you were in the same place, but in a past version of it. Even the few people you saw on the sidewalks wore strange clothes: they weren’t retro clothes like the ones you used to see in popular shops, but real, old clothes, though they were in good conditions, as if they were bought recently. The people were strange as well, but you weren’t sure about why you thought that

🥀 You didn’t understand what was going on, but you decided to pretend everything was alright and enter the convenience store. It was better than making a scene and attract unwanted attention

🥀 It was like entering another dimension: it was the perfect scenario of those convenience store of the movies produced in the 1980s, but realistic… and with an unsettling aura. Maybe it was the green neon lights that came out of nowhere, casting a sinister glow over the objects and colored walls. You saw a calendar and went there to see the date. You held your breath: the sheet was new, but it was from February 1984

🥀 So not only you traveled to a different universe, you also traveled back in time

🥀 The store was empty, but this didn’t bring you the relief you were expecting: the idea of being alone at night in a distorted reality was far too scary

🥀 As you walked through the corridors, you observed the racks and found the strangest things, from weird foods with even weider flavors, objects which use you couldn’t imagine and other things you were unable to identify.

🥀 Well, unlike you imagined, you weren’t really alone in that place: a voice called from the bottom of the place. It was a male, duplicated voice that spoke polite words in human language, but little it had to do with humanity

🥀 “Good evening, Miss. What can I do for you?”

🥀 You froze in your spot. The voice was talking to you. The person – or whatever was that – already saw you. What should you do next?

🥀 Since you didn’t give any verbal response, the voice spoke again

🥀 “Hey, it looks like you’re lost. Do you need help?”

🥀 In fact, you needed help, but you weren’t sure if you could seek for any help in there with an unknown being... Still, you decided to risk it. It wasn’t like you had many choices

🥀 “I do... I think I ended up in the wrong address, and I’d like to know how I get out of here”

🥀 You said those things while approaching the counter. When you realized what you were doing, you were already standing before it, staring at the voice’s owner

🥀 He was a man, or something like that: a humanoid individual dressed in the same style of the people you saw outside, but in his case it was the typical attendant uniform of the movies; he was taller than any human you’ve seen in your life, being able to touch the ceiling in case he raised his arms; his skin was of a dark shade of green, and most of the visible skin was covered in a discreet layer of even darker hair, and the same color was seen in the thick strands on his head. His eyes, resembling gold and contrasting with the green of his body, glowed under the neon lights when he laid them on you. You comforted yourself thinking it was just a gleam of curiosity

🥀 To be honest, you were curious about him too. First, it was obvious that he wasn’t wearing a costume: the green, the gold and all that hair were too real to deceive one’s eyes. Second, there was no way one could fake that height: you barely reached his chest. Besides, in the middle of that extraordinary situation, you realized you weren’t sensing any threat coming from him; you felt like you were in the presence of a common person, which only difference lied in his appearance. It was like a weird dream, except that you knew you were awake

🥀 He spoke for the third time, and you confirmed the origin of the voice. It vibrated inside you now that you heard it closer

🥀 “Yeah, I see you don’t belong here. I’d be scared if was you, too”

🥀 That was said in a playful tone, and you saw the long fangs on his mouth when he opened it to smile. You let out a nervous laugh

🥀 “I don’t understand what’s going on... I went to a convenience store near my place, but tonight things went... differently. And now I’m here”

🥀 The creature made a "Hm" and thought of this for a moment. The absence of confusion in his traits showed you that, apparently, the case wasn't as unusual to him as it was to you. And, in fact, his reply let it clear

🥀 "It used to happen more often in the past. It's been a while since the last person from your side ended up here, but it's no big deal. We don't know why or how exactly it happens, but sometimes you just cross the door without noticing. Usually they get scared when they realize they're lost, but you don't seem scared at all"

🥀 He approached the wooden board as to observe you from close. You were apprehensive, but didn't step back

🥀 "Still, I'm sure it's your first time here", he continued, "I don't remember seeing your face before"

🥀 You crossed your arms in front of your chest. That was your time to smile

🥀 "You always remember people's faces?"

🥀 “Not always, but the most interesting ones never escape my sight”

🥀 You spent a considerable time staring at him, measuring those words. Was that his way to say you were pretty or, at least, peculiar? What was even considered pretty in that place? Whatever the answer, the whole thing was unbelievable: a non human individual was flirting with you?

🥀 "Well, I think you haven't seen much people from my side, then", you commented, "I'm pretty common among my people. I don't think you'd remember me anyway"

🥀 The glow in his eyes came back, stronger as he leaned over the board. The fangs seemed to glow in his smile

🥀 "I work at a convenience store, dear. I've seen more people than you could count, and I'm telling you: my eyes and my memory work well together"

🥀 Your smile faded a bit, less because you didn’t know how to respond than by embarrassment. Your hand brushed your hair behind your war before you could stop it

🥀 "If you say so..."

🥀 Fortunately for you, he made you a favor and changed the conversation's direction

🥀 "So, since you're my only client at the moment, guess you can have my undivided attention. What do you need for tonight? Coke? Snacks? Something else?"

🥀 You laughed at the casual tone after such an intense dialogue about remembering faces

🥀 "I need something for a movie night. What do you have for me?"

🥀 "Tell me what you want"

🥀 "I want you to surprise me"

Tell me if you want Part 2!

[whereserpentswalk]

You saw an angel shopping at a convenience store. They were just sort of hanging out. It's actually a myth that all angels are less powerful than all gods, or all serve them. Angels exist to uphold cosmic law, while gods are powerful entities but are free to do what they will with that power.

Anyway, you end up going up to the angel and talking to them. It's slightly awkward at first. You expected them to be both more humanoid and more divine. They have a doll like body, made out of white hard plastic with obvious joints, their wings are made out of pure light, and they have black hair and glowing yellow eyes. They're only wearing a t shirt and baseball hat, nothing else. They seem incredibly uncomfortable being here.

You end up saying hi though, and asking them how they're doing. You realize it's not normal to talk to strangers like that but you're doing it. They seem a bit afraid to talk, but eventually you ask them if they're ok talking, and they say yes, and become ok with it. You offer them an apple, they say it's pretty but they can't eat, and they'll watch over it until it dies.

After talking for a bit they start talking with their boss, whose a very powerful angelic knight. They're negotiating with the fae again, and they need to buy some things that fae like, and they were sent to earth for the first time because thats where things are cheapest. They take this task very seriously, in angel culture one is only valued by their ability to serve their angelic duties, no other entitiy of the cosmos has a culture of such strictness. You show them some things you think might work. The apple was one of them apparently.

You end up complaining about your boss a bit. The angel asks you where you work and you point to the office building across the street from you. The angel said that they found the massive glass towers on earth pretty, that only human cities have them, and they didn't know what they were for. You've never thought of the place you worked as pretty.

The angel asks if you're a boy or a girl in a slightly awkward way eventually, and you explain that you're neither, just like them. They're a bit confused, because they thought humans had two sexes, but you explain that you chose the form you now inhabit. They tell you they would choose to be female if angels were allowed to. They tell you some demons who used to be angels chose genders, but that they'd rather die then fall so it'll never happen to them.

Eventually you have to say goodbye to them. They give you their number, it's an irrational number but your phone will call it all the same. You ask to take a photo of them, and they let you, they ask why and you tell them they're pretty. They became weirdly happy about that. You don't think angels call eachother things like pretty, especially not for just existing, for just being there. When you hug them their body is strangley cold, you remember they're closer to a machine than a human in how their body works, it's strangely calming and refreshing just to touch them. Mabye soon you can touch them again.

[yvesiu]

❐　 ✦　˚ ◜ 　✿┈　 🥪 、

❐　 ✦　˚ ◜ 　✿┈　 🧃 、

[himiuwn]

on the job

[mystei]

I'm training myself to draw comic background on CSP.

(Note to self: use more 3D assets)

[wanigumo]

かじかむ指

[hakuwaii]

[oldshowbiz]

corner stores as you remember them

[itsonlycomic]

convenience store blues

(featuring @steviefeesh & @pcanimal !)

[noealzii]

That famous Lawson in Japan

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was helping the VeggieTales characters return to their human forms, and I needed to steal magic cashews from a convenience store to do so.

[jamiesfootball]

Whumptober Day 11

Prompt: convenience store

Here on ao3

Sometimes how it goes is this:

When Jamie was really little, his mummy used to work the swing shift.

In the mornings, she had a part-time job, which he thought had something to do with cleaning although he couldn't remember for sure. After that, she would pick him up from daycare, and they'd stop home for a quick meal. Then she'd take him, his little backpack, and his kid-sized football down the street to the old woman who watched him when mummy was at work. After making him promise not to cause trouble, his mum would kiss his cheeks and wrap him in a hug so tight for so long that Jamie would grow fidgety, wriggling around in her grasp until with one final kiss she let him go.

Watching her leave, he'd instantly regret the wriggling. He'd swear to himself that next time he'd do better, and his mummy would hug him forever and never have to go to work.

Then she would leave and he'd get caught up playing footie and he'd forget all the promises he ever made his mum.

At least then he'd had the excuse of not being any older than four.

Jamie would play long into the dusk, kicking the ball repeatedly under a sign he couldn't read but that he'd been told meant that he wasn't supposed to have any fun. Once it got dark, he'd retreat inside, where his stomach would growl but he wouldn't ask for a snack because it's rude to ask for something that someone hasn't offered you, especially when they can't afford to share.

So he'd sit next to the old woman, chewing on his tongue because he also wasn't supposed to talk – "Baby, please give Moira a break for Mummy? She's doing us a favour." – and while Moira watched her shows, which were all a lot of other people talking, Jamie would daydream about where his mummy worked.

The swing shift had nothing to do with the playground – Mummy had promised – but in his imagination, it was right next to the park. In his imagination, Mummy had a chair that looked like one from their kitchen, and the chair faced the swing set and the slide Jamie wasn't allowed to go down backwards. She wasn't technically in the park, because his mummy wouldn't lie to him, but in his head, she was right along the edge by the trees. There, she'd sit in her chair, and people who looked like the talking people on TV would come up to her and order food – juice boxes and snacks, he assumed – and his mum would whip them out of her purse with the same little flourish she used when she made Jamie's toys magically reappear from behind her back.

It made him happy to think about mummy giving juice and snacks away. It made him less happy when she actually got home, when she was tired and her smile broke. When she wiped her eyes against her uniform, smearing makeup like wet soot across the floor.

"I'm fine, baby. I'm just tired."

"It's alright, love, it was only a bit of a cry. Mummy must have stubbed her toe, is all. Clumsy me."

Clutching tightly to the picture in his head of his mum smiling, Jamie would eventually fall asleep, curled up next to Moira on her smelly settee that stunk of ash and perfume and nothing like home.

Really late, once all the news people finally shut up, he'd wake up to his mummy whispering at the front door. Half-asleep with dreams clouding his eyes, he'd stumble across the floor and into her legs, burying his face against her thigh with desperate eagerness. She'd take his shoes and his bag and his ball from Moira, and with one big heft, she'd add Jamie to her armful of burdens. With his slight but growing form balanced against her hip, his socked feet swaying in the wind, his mum would start them down the short, dark road to their house.

Unless it was payday. Payday was always special, but first it was awful.

On payday, he'd spring awake the second he heard his mum giggling at the door. With two bags of groceries at her feet, she'd pass over a red and grey carton of cigarettes – her payment to Moira for taking Jamie off her hands.

The old woman would rip open the carton and slide her one of the packs right back.

"Jam? You good, baby? We'll be right outside. Moira and I are just going to chat for a few minutes."

A few minutes, but to him it seemed to last a few days or weeks or even centuries, maybe. Restless after his nap, Jamie would lie on the settee, poking his fingers through the holes of the crochet blanket. Sometimes he'd gnaw on his football, still covered in dirt and grit from the road, dragging his teeth across the surface until it caught against the seams. Mummy didn't like it when he did that, but to catch him doing it she'd have to come inside and find him. He wasn't allowed outside when they were smoking, so he'd wait, antsy and bored, while his mum and Moira caught up, the occasional peal of hysterical laughter erupting from the other side of the door.

Sometimes Jamie fell back asleep, and his mum would have to wake him with a gentle shake of the shoulders to tell him it was time to go.

This was the special part.

First, Jamie would put on his backpack. Then, his mum would grab his shoes, too resigned to her son's insistence that his feet were the strongest feet in the world – or, in retrospect, too exhausted at the prospect of trying to show Jamie how to tie his shoes twice in one day.

They would each take a grocery bag. Her, the heavy stuff; mostly cans and eggs and milk, but sometimes sliced meats, cold from Moira's fridge if the chats ran long. For Jamie, his bag was light; a few boxes and bread and the bag of crisps mummy swore she couldn't live without. Nothing breakable. Nothing fragile arms could make more fragile.

Together, they'd walk home. This was the part Jamie loved.

Cold nights; warm nights; foggy nights. Empty nights; nights with cheering from the houses they passed. Nights with noises, figures in the dark that'd stop talking when they saw him and mummy walk by.

Sometimes, the figures were scary. He didn't like the way his mum would fall into step behind him, the hand holding his shoes wrapped around his shoulders and her low whisper to drop his stuff and run ahead if she told him to.

But he was roughly, maybe, four years old, still a few years away from understanding the sort of danger his mum feared, only understanding that when they got home, they had to call Moira; and if mummy wasn't with him, he had to knock on their neighbour's door and ask them to call Moira.

None of that mattered when he was four. When he was four, what mattered was this: for a few minutes, him and his mum would walk home together in a world made of mostly dark. With his precious responsibility clutched to his chest – a paper bag at risk from childishly careless arms – he would dance circles around his mummy, filling the air with his own one-sided chat about everything he hadn't had the chance to tell her before, in the short shuffle between daycare, home, and Moira's. Thinking himself very clever, he'd insist on circling every lamppost they passed, just to stretch out the night a little longer.

For that five minute walk that took ten minutes, he had his mummy all to himself.

He was four years old, give or take.

He'd not had any reason to think of it from her point of view. To wonder if maybe, having gone from one job to another with only a small break between, she might be tired. He didn't think much of the scary voices, not once they were out of earshot. He didn't even wonder at the groceries, or that she'd gone directly from work to the store. Hours on her feet, and then she'd gone and done the shopping. That the only store still open at that hour was the corner shop.

Jamie is twenty-five now.

He's standing in a convenience store at 4am and wondering how, after all of that, his mother could bring herself to love him.

Shopping alone at night when no one else is up is a lonely business.

Jamie eyes his choices. Juice boxes and snacks.

The refrigerated case in front of him has juice, but Jamie's not allowed it, so he grabs a bottled water instead.

He was already at the park, waiting along the edge by the benches, when Roy texted him that he had to cancel their morning training. Something to do with his niece and his sister, who's either in hospital or works at the hospital, Jamie doesn't know. He doesn't know what's too personal. He doesn't know where the line is.

He'll run his mouth through training – chattering and running circles around Roy up until the point he physically can't – but sometimes this truce they've struck with Roy coaching him feels like it's balanced on a knife's edge. Like they're both just waiting for Jamie to be the one to tip it over, even though he's not the one who starts it half the time. Even though Roy's the old, grouchy bastard full of mixed signals, the signs that Jamie couldn't read that he'd been told meant he wasn't supposed to have any fun. That's never stopped him before.

But given his situation with the team, with the coaches, with Zava–

Jamie needs to do better.

So he's walking past the snack displays, past his mum's favourite brand of crisps, and he's grabbing a couple energy bars that barely scrape over the line of his nutrition requirements, because he's still going to train this morning. Usually his coach brings his snacks. That, or he let's Jamie trail home after him for breakfast. Jamie never asked him to do that. It's rude to ask people to share more than they're willing to offer.

Looking down at his energy bars while the cashier rings him up, Jamie resigns himself to the fact that they're not going to taste as good as the ones Roy shares from his pockets. He didn't used to understand why his mum would hand over the entire carton of cigarettes instead of taking a pack out for herself first, but he gets it now.

The cashier doesn't offer him a bag, paper or otherwise. Jamie stuffs his bottled water and his energy bars into his hoodie pocket, and when he pushes his way out through the door, the chill from the glass isn't enough to prepare him for the brittle cold that greets him outside.

The chill isn't colder in London, the same way he knows the dark isn't darker. The opposite, if anything. But London bites worse than Manchester, probably because it isn't as cold. If it were, Jamie could simply layer up; less, and he wouldn't need layers at all. He's used to being frostbitten a certain way. Anything less, and it's hard to tell if he's being gnawed on at all.

He bounces on his feet, trying to get his blood pumping as he considers which direction to take off in first. Lampposts beckon in either direction; beyond that, trees teeth along the edge of the park.

The only scary voice shouting at him from the dark these days is the one Jamie willingly jogs out to meet each morning. That doesn't stop him from looking over his shoulder as he takes off in a light sprint.

The bottled water bounces in his pocket. His shoes drum out a steady thump-thump-thump on the pavement as he settles into a familiar beat. It's the same route he's run a hundred times, and with every stride, a dense certainty builds in him like a fog – that all he's done is found a way to tread the same path over the ghostly footprints of the old one.

He's four and he's waiting to go home. He's twenty-five and he's never learned how to settle the hunger in his chest. He has a foot stuck on either side, straddling the small kid with the backpack and the grown adult who can carry his own burdens.

He's staring at his life through the holes of a crochet blanket, unable to see the whole picture for what it is. Like there's some piece hiding in the middle, some piece of him that's been here the whole time, and if he could just find it, then the two halves would finally snap into one picture.

Until then, he's stuck in a life constantly looping back in a circle.

Until then, he'll run as man laps as he has to, until he's tired and aching and sore on his feet.

He wishes Roy would be there on the bench waiting for him after training. He wishes he'd slide him over a snack.

The way it goes is sometimes you're small and the world is endlessly big and impossible to grasp and you're Jamie Tartt, telling yourself bedtime stories about a mother while you wait for her to come home.

Sometimes you're big and the world is endlessly big and impossible to grasp and you're Jamie Tartt, and you thought something would be different by now, but instead somehow somehow you're still waiting, caught between then and now, two images layered over the other, because the past is the thing you're always carrying with you, and you can't help gnawing on the seams, waiting for the day to break open and all the light floods in.

Or maybe you’re Jamie Tartt, and it’s 4am, and your life hasn’t turned out exactly the way you wanted yet. There's nothing for it now except to jog into the ready darkness; keep his chattering in his chest and an eye towards the shadows at his back; and, when he passes them by, circle every lamppost.