#shout out to ci and their unstoppable power of yes anding

[mortemoppetere]

TIMING: current PARTIES: @vanoincidence & @mortemoppetere LOCATION: a grocery store! SUMMARY: emilio and van go grocery shopping and everything is really normal. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

They were out of hot sauce. Again. It was Emilio’s fault this time, though he’d never admit it. The latest bottle had been yet another victim in the long-standing tradition of the slayer growing frustrated at the wrong moment. In this case, a burned batch of macaroni led to Emilio gripping the glass bottle a little too tightly, which in turn led to a very predictable explosion of glass shards that he was left sweeping up in a quiet panic. So, they were out of hot sauce. Whatever. It was a fucking thing, it happened to everyone, it was fine. He could just go to the store and get more, along with everything else on the list Teddy had left hanging on the fridge.

Why Van had decided to tag along for the ride, he wasn’t entirely sure.

“I am not buying you a candy,” he warned, yanking a shopping cart free from the jumble by the door. “You are a lot without sugar. I won’t add to that. We are only here for hot sauce. And…” He squinted at Teddy’s list. “What the fuck is chicken jello? Is that supposed to be chicken and jello? What are they using jello for?” He stuffed the list into his pocket. They’d figure it out. 

Turning to Van, he sighed. “We are in and out,” he told her sternly. “No playing at the little machine with the stuffed dogs in the glass. We get what we came for, and then we go. Okay? I will leave you here if you try to make it take longer.” He wouldn’t. “Just find the…”

The doors to the grocery store opened. Emilio froze. There was a giant slide ending in a gaping black hole in the floor. There were horses galloping through the aisles and running people over. A fan blew a miniature tornado around the floor. Emilio turned to Van. “How badly do you think Teddy needs chicken jello?”

—

Van had just been leaving after seeing Wynne when she saw Emilio heading to the store. She had nothing else going on, and being alone meant more than she could deal with these days, and after their newfound respect for one another, who better than to spend her time with? He hadn’t explicitly said no when she asked, and hadn’t stopped her from following him, so it was allowed, or so she deluded herself into thinking. 

She padded towards the store after him, rolling her eyes at his comment about not buying her candy. “I can like, totally buy my own candy.” She didn’t want to, though. By the end of this trip, she’d slip a bag of gummies into the shopping cart and by then, it’d be too late for Emilio to say no. Maybe. Van made a face at Emilio’s question. “They have some good ideas, and then there’s stuff like that, and I really can’t defend them. I don’t know.” The idea of chicken jell-o made her squeamish. Maybe it was for a spell? No, that didn’t make sense. 

Van sighed, rolling her eyes. “You’re just mad you can’t ever win prizes, aren’t you?” She had spent the better half of her elementary years at that machine, and it showed. She was a pro. “I don’t even have any quarters, anyway.” The doors opened, and Van’s hand shot out to stop the cart from proceeding further inside. She looked towards Emilio, eyebrows pulled together. “Um. Hopefully not at all? Maybe we can figure out a way to make nature’s jell-o or something.” 

“I think they will totally understand. Hopefully.” Teddy was an understanding person! Van couldn’t imagine them getting up in arms about jell-o. But before she could try and urge Emilio back out of the store, a serpentine shape slithered from between boxes of oatmeal, the jelly-like eyes stopping her in her tracks. “Is that a gummy snake? Five footer? I thought they didn’t sell those–” It unhinged its jaws, jelly tongue and jelly teeth in full view, before making a move to devour either her or Emilio whole. 

—

“Then buy your own candy.” She wouldn’t. Emilio knew Van’s play here, knew that she was definitely going to try to weasel her way into free candy before the shopping trip had finished. And Emilio, ever the strongest soldier, would deny her no matter how much she whined. He made a pact with himself now, prepared to steel himself against her inevitable pleading. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford to buy Van candy. It was the principle of the thing, was all. You buy a kid candy once, and she’ll ask a thousand times over. Kids had long memories when it came to things like that.

He snorted as Van, at the very least, agreed with him on the chicken jello. “They probably want to cook some big meal with it,” he warned. Teddy often had… interesting ideas about food combinations. Emilio wasn’t sure he had any right to question them, given his tendency to forget eating altogether for days at a time, but if Van agreed with him on this point, he figured it was a good question to ask. (Though, it was Van, still. Maybe he shouldn’t put too much stock in her.)

“I’ve never tried it. I would win prizes if I wanted to. It doesn’t look very hard.” Not nearly as hard as taking care of… whatever was going on in here. Emilio had half a mind to ask Van if she was responsible for this, eyes darting to the hole in the ground, but it looked different than what she normally caused. Less eldritch horror, more… cartoonish. “What is nature’s jello?” 

She was right, though. Teddy would definitely understand once they explained the situation. Emilio prepared to back out of the store, but the arrival of a giant snake interrupted the motion. He was just about to comment something dry and utterly unhelpful when the creature made a lunge towards both him and Van. Emilio rushed forward with the cart, shoving it into the snake’s mouth and tugging Van along with him instinctively. The snake chewed on the metal. Behind them, a creature with white fur and an unsettling grin scampered in, scribbling over the door with a paintbrush. When it pulled back, the door was gone. Emilio grunted in irritation. “Okay,” he said. “Looks like we’re… finding another exit.” The snake spit out the cart. “Quickly.” 

—

“Maybe I will,” Van challenged with a sneer that had little to no heart in it. They both knew that she had no plans of actually buying her own candy. She thought that was pretty obvious, and by the way Emilio looked at her, she knew it was obvious to him, too. The more time they spent together, the more he learned her tricks, but in turn, she learned his, too. It was weird, going from being perpetually annoyed by somebody to instead finding a level of understanding with them. Nearly losing both Wynne and Nora had done a number on them both, and with Teddy’s absence, there weren’t many others to turn to. Still, she was like, super annoyed by him and she let out a huff as if to exaggerate that fact. 

“I don’t think chicken and jell-o should ever be combined. Like, sure, maybe chicken stock is jelly-like when you refrigerate it, but I can’t imagine just eating that.” Her grandma had done that a lot with soup stocks, and it was always frustrating when she’d open a container of pudding to find jellied stock instead. One time, she hadn’t been paying attention and had taken a spoonful. It wasn’t nearly as good as when it was warm and not jellied. She cried a lot that night, scraping her tongue with her toothbrush to get rid of the taste. 

“I think you should try it. You’ll see how not-easy it is sometimes.” She hoped the machine would prove her right and Emilio wrong. If god were real, he would do this for her, she was sure of it. But they bypassed the machine and the longing in Van’s heart to click around on the big red button was subdued by Emilio’s question. “Um, bones. Probably. Yeah.” Gelatin was made with bones, right? Regan probably knew. She tucked away the question for later, still mesmerized by what was laid out before her. 

It was thanks to Emilio’s quick thinking that Van didn’t become a snack for the jelly monster. The cart was crushed between the monster’s jaws, and as Van felt herself being pulled backward towards the door, it vanished, just as a little creature scampered away. Van gulped, pushing herself to keep the anxiety at bay. The exercises she’d been doing with Teddy had to work, and she thought that the ring around her finger should, too. It should keep everything at bay. The great Melting didn’t need to happen, nor did a portal! They could do this without her doing those things! 

“This way!” Van grabbed Emilio’s sleeve, dragging him towards an aisle that was seemingly empty of any art. Except, as they got closer, the floor dropped beneath them. Van crashed down onto something soft, but the momentum was enough to knock the air out of her lungs. It took her a moment to understand where they were. “Are these– balloons?!” She looked around them, eyes growing wide as she took in the number of balloons that were reaching the ceiling. There were a plethora of different kinds, both plastic and foil. She could see her haphazard reflection in a GET WELL SOON balloon, and she refused to be a part of a situation where somebody would gift her one. “We–” She frantically looked around for Emilio, noticing he was more than a few balloons away. “How do we get down!? Do we pop them?! EMILIO, HOW HIGH UP ARE WE?!” 

—

“Great,” Emilio replied, knowing as well as she did that it wasn’t going to happen. He used to think he’d never understand her. The first day he met her, in the woods with the goo she swore was cheese and the desperation to keep her from eating it, he’d decided that she was the sort of person he’d never fully get. It hadn’t been something that bothered him, largely because he didn’t get most people. He hadn’t understood Teddy at first, either. Most days, he still didn’t understand himself. Not getting people was fine. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.

But… as time went on, he found he’d understood Van more and more, just as he had with Teddy. It was slow going, and often times she still left him puzzled, but he knew more than he used to. He didn’t think he’d ever be an expert — he wasn’t sure anyone was — but he knew enough. He knew she wouldn’t buy her own candy, he knew she’d beg him to get her some when they were done here. He knew he’d probably do it, because the way she made her eyes big and sad reminded him a little too much of something he’d lost a long time ago. He knew she’d be insufferable about it, too. That was the worst part.

He also knew Teddy well enough to snort, to put up a poor imitation of them by making his voice a pitch higher and attempting an accent that sounded more like a California surfer than anything close to his partner’s actual voice: “It’s good for you, Em,” he mimicked, smile tugging at the edges of his lips. “You haven’t even tried it, come on. At least take a bite.” He turned to Van, expression deadpan. “You’re right. We are not getting the jello. Especially not if there are bones.” 

Of course… they might end up getting nothing at all, with the way things were looking. The store was in disarray, and Emilio wouldn’t have known where to find chicken jello even if the aisles weren’t wobbling like the floor was made of rubber. Emilio managed to save them both from a giant snake, but they lost their exit in the process. And weren’t there other, bigger things to worry about? He let Van tug him along, away from the snake still pulling the shopping cart from its teeth.

He kept up with her as best he could, trailing along behind and grimacing a little more with each aisle they passed. That one was full of cartoonish looking bees in the middle of a court session. The one beside it had turned into a bright pink river with a frog floating atop a medicine cup. Finally, there was one that seemed normal enough, but stepping into it found them falling, Emilio scrambling for any kind of traction he could get. When the world stopped spinning, they were on the ceiling, balloons all around them. Emilio tried shifting closer to Van, but he felt a little unsteady. “Ceilings are high,” he said, looking down to the floor and trying to measure. “Maybe… six meters?” He grimaced, looking back to Van. “How do we get down? You come to these stores more than I do.”

—

“I don’t know meters!” Van rolled to the side, grabbing the balloon tightly so that she wouldn’t slide off. It seemed sturdy enough, but did she really know anything about this place? “You think all stores are like this!?” She gave him a look of desperation and disbelief. Why did he think this was normal? Or rather, did he think this was normal? “I wouldn’t take you to a store like this on purpose! You’d complain the entire time!” 

Van wiggled around, hopeful that the balloon she was sitting on would somehow float closer to Emilio. It did not. She reached out a hand, fingers ghosting through the air in an attempt to try and grab the tip of his shoe. She let out a huff, already annoyed by the constant squeaking beneath her with every move she made. She looked around them, hopeful that maybe they could propel themselves down the foil strings attached to the bottom of the balloons. 

Unfortunately, the large looking animated bee had other plans. It buzzed dangerously close, stinger fashioned like a needle as it began to pop every balloon, getting closer to the ones that she and Emilio were on. “I hate this town! There, I said it. I know too much, and I’m like, positive that it’s punishing me for knowing too much!” The bee was only getting closer despite Van’s hatred, and she turned to try and launch herself at Emilio’s balloon, it popped beneath her with the help of the bee’s stinger. She fell for what felt like an eternity, until the feeling of being submerged enveloped her. 

It was jell-o. 

“Emilio!?” Van called out, not certain if he was still above her, or somewhere in the hideous green, too. 

—

“Then learn them!” Frustration clung to him as he tried to convert the measurements in his mind despite the fact that it didn’t matter, anyway. What difference did it make the exact distance between them and the floor? The only important thing was that they were too high to guarantee a safe fall. “You do things that make me complain all the time,” he pointed out. “You were — The cheese!” It seemed worth mentioning their first meeting now, the way it had offered a quiet glimpse into the sort of person Van was. Of course she’d do something just to make him complain.

But… maybe that wasn’t the point right now. Maybe they had far bigger things to worry about, like the animated bee in the long, white wig currently flying towards their balloons, stinger out. Emilio cursed, scrambling to try to reach Van to see if he could pull her closer to the shelves before the bee found them, but it was a hopeless cause. The bee was too fast, and the shelves too far. 

The pop of the balloon seemed to echo as he grasped at thin air. He swore he paused in the empty space for a moment before falling, like one of those fucking cartoons Teddy sometimes put on for background noise. Bracing himself, he prepared for an uncomfortable landing on the hard tile floor, but instead, his fall was broken by something… squishy. Emilio half swam, half scrambled to the surface of something not quite liquid, but not quite solid, either. When he burst through, Van was already at the surface, calling out.

“I hate this town, too,” he ground out, rubbing the green substance from his eyes. It took him a moment to understand what it was. “This is not chicken jello. Is it?” Should they taste it to see? Or…

Something brushed his leg from beneath him, and he kicked instinctively. Whatever it was moved away, and a moment later, a bright blue fin broke the surface of the jello, circling the pair. Emilio clenched his hands into tight fist. “There is a shark in the jello.”

—

Van’s arms flailed out at her sides as she tried her best to push towards what looked like the edge of the jello. If she could climb up onto the shelves, then maybe– 

Emilio emerged from below, and she turned around to look at him, desperation (and jello) twisting her features. It was probably a good thing that something like this hadn’t happened to her before she accepted that magic was real. If it had, she might not have ever come back from it. Van kicked her feet, wiggling around until she got her other arm free. Finally, she reached out for Emilio’s hand, hopeful he’d have an easier time making his way towards her than the other way around. 

“I don’t see any chickens, no.” It smelled like citrus, and while she thought maybe eating her way through the jell-o would be the way to go, the idea made her stomach gargle in horror. 

“There’s a what?” Van’s eyes grew large, round as saucers as she took in the fin that circled them. She looked up towards one of the shelves she was closest to, seeing the creature who had the paint brush tail. “Hey! A shark is like, totally not cool! How is it even swimming in the jell-o so easily!” Suddenly, the creature extended the brush through the air, quickly and efficiently drawing what looked like hocks of fish before they fell from the sky, hitting her square on the head. “Oh. Ew. Ew. Ew!” Van closed her eyes as her hands moved around her face, trying to get rid of the fish that had landed on her. only, as her hand swiped them, she realized they were… plastic? Opening one eye, she observed the plastic, only to be faced with the face of the shark as it got closer from beneath the jell-o. Quickly, she chucked the plastic towards the opposite end, watching as the shark quickly made a beeline for it. 

It parted the jell-o, devouring the plastic fish, and Van noticed that the shark, too, was made of plastic. “I hate it here, I hate it here, I hate it here,” Van cried out as she wriggled around in an attempt to get closer to the shelf. Finally, she was able to grab on. Her other hand was still outstretched to Emilio. “I can try and yank– EMILIO, WATCH OUT!” The shark was barreling towards him, and Van tried desperately to will her magic to do something, but nothing happened. It was stagnant. 

—

Reaching out, Emilio grabbed Van by the arm and used the connection to pull himself through the jello, closer to her. Whatever the hell was going on, he got the feeling that sticking together might be the only shot they had at making it out of this in one piece. One disgusting, jello covered piece, but still. He wanted to keep an eye on the kid, even if she got on his nerves more often than not. She deserved that.

With the distance between them significantly smaller now, Emilio focused his attention on that fin circling the pair. “A shark,” he repeated. “There’s a fucking shark in the fucking jello, I —” The damn paintbrush creature was back, and Emilio shot it a glare. He knew that it was the thing responsible for all this, knew it had something to do with that tail it had used to remove the damn door. The chaos seemed to suggest it was some kind of fae, but he didn’t know if killing it would end the strange scenario they found themselves trapped inside. “Got lots of knives I could use to chop that tail off, pinche pedazo de m—” Before he could finish the insult, fish were raining down on Van’s head. Emilio made a face, leaning away from her, but… the fish were plastic? Somehow, it only made things seem stranger. 

If nothing else, the fish provided sufficient bait with which to distract the shark. Emilio watched as its head — also plastic — parted the jello to snap at the fish Van had thrown. It provided Van enough time to exit the jello, and Emilio felt some relief as he reached for her arm again. 

Of course, relief went out the window at her warning.

He turned to see the plastic shark closing in on him and, almost without thinking, swung a fist in its direction. The shark slammed into his knuckles, its nose collapsing almost comically in on itself as it was squished down, flattening its plastic face. The shark seemed to pause in mid air for a moment before falling back down onto the jello and sinking slowly beneath the surface. Emilio watched it disappear, turning back to Van after a moment. “We have to get out of here,” he announced, grabbing her arm and hoisting himself from the jello. “I’m going to lose my mind if we do not get out of here.”

—

Van wasn’t sure what she expected, but she knew that she should’ve guessed Emilio would punch the shark instead of trying to get away from it, or even trying to use the plastic fish snacks to his disposal. Emilio punching the shark square in the face was the least strange thing to happen here today and she knew it. 

At his insistence, she gave a quick nod, desperately looking around them as she pulled herself further up the shelf. Cans of green peas and corn fell into the jello, making a disgusting PLOP as they did so. She turned to watch them sink deeper into the green. Would things go back to normal if they left? Was this all some strange dream? Was the creature with the paint brush tail behind it all? Van had so many questions, and even if she asked them, she figured Emilio wouldn’t have the answer. He seemed just as confused as her. 

Finally at the top of the shelf (and out of breath), Van looked over to the other side of the aisle. It was… fine? Except for a hopscotch chalk drawing. It reminded her of Rosie’s drawings in front of Vic’s home. She looked over the edge of the shelf she was on top of and looked down at Emilio as he began to make his way up. “There’s a hop scotch thing over here. I think we should um, probably start from the beginning? I have a feeling if we start from the middle we’ll get in trouble.” She didn’t know if that was the creature’s rules, but she remembered being livid when her dad would interrupt her own drawings on the driveway of their home. Of how she would yell at him about not starting at the beginning, and how it didn’t count. Maybe that was like this. “We need to start over there.” She pointed towards the beginning of the hop scotch. She slowly got to her feet, staying surprisingly steady as she slunk towards the opposite end, accidentally knocking over extra canned goods as she went. 

—

Van climbed the shelf, and Emilio had little choice but to follow. The last thing he wanted was to lose sight of her in the chaos. So far, everything had been relatively harmless, but he knew how quickly the tides could change. The next time they fell from the ceiling, there might not be a lake of jello to catch them. The next time a shark came chomping for their limbs, they might not have plastic fish with which to ward it off. Even in a situation like this one — ridiculous and cartoonish in the way physics seemed to operate — Emilio couldn’t help but imagine worst case scenarios playing out, couldn’t help but pinpoint on every place where things could have gone terribly wrong.

Climbing the shelves was easier than it should have been; for whatever reason, things seemed to be lighter here than they were outside the store, and Emilio himself was included in that. With one hand over the next, he pulled himself higher and higher, keeping a watchful eye on both Van and the ground below them while also doing a few periodic scans for the creature with the paintbrush tail. He was positive that that thing was behind all this, even if he didn’t know how to stop it.

He got to the top shelf just a moment after Van, pulling himself over and doing a quick sweep of the store. The half they’d traversed so far was a mess of chaos, but the other side of the aisle looked… relatively normal aside from a strange drawing of boxes filled with numbers. Emilio squinted at it, confusion pinching at his features. “Hop… scotch?” There was no scotch in the aisle as far as he could see; it didn’t even seem to have beverages of any kind on the shelves. Van seemed to understand what the numbers meant, at least, claiming that they needed to start ‘at the beginning’ and pointing with her hand at the starting line. “Okay,” Emilio agreed, deciding to trust her. What choice did he have? “You… go first.” If he watched her, he’d probably pick up on whatever it was he needed to do. 

Getting to his feet, he followed her towards the opposite end of the aisle, adrenaline thrumming through his veins. When they got to what she deemed the beginning, they climbed down into the aisle, and he motioned for Van to go ahead and do whatever it was a person did to make ‘hop scotch’ happen.

—

Van nodded, “hop scotch.” Even though her father wasn’t there, she could see him, arms outstretched at the end of the lane. One foot, Vanessa! Two feet! Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth as the memory crashed ashore, but she couldn’t panic now, couldn’t follow that memory into what happened next– how her mother came out to yell at her for playing instead of doing her homework. How an argument would kindle between her parents and Van would be left sneaking inside, closing her bedroom door quietly behind her. If she got lost in that memory, then they’d never get out of here. Surely, the magic would pull one over on the ring around her finger and something bad would happen. So Van needed to keep her head in the game. 

She climbed down the other side of the shelf, grimacing in pain as her hands ran along the sharp edges of the plastic. It reminded her of when she’d been in a different store with Debbie, and how things had exploded around them as they crashed against one another in an effort to evade the glint of the knife. “You don’t know how to do this, do you?” She turned to look at Emilio as he climbed down the shelf. Van watched him for a moment, knowing that now probably wasn’t the time to poke fun, either. But god, did she want to. Part of her wanted to make him go first, just to see how badly he’d screw it up, but what would happen if he did? Would the ground swallow them whole? Would she finally experience what it was like to be one of the many individuals she’d sent below? 

She took a deep breath before she looked back towards the hop scotch, then she began. One foot, two feet, hop, hop. It went diagonal, and then in a circle, and Van did her very best to not stumble. She wondered if Emilio would be okay with his knee. She hoped so. She stood at the end that said FINISH, too afraid to actually step over that line in case something happened where she’d be separated from him. So she waited. “You can go now! Just like, take it slow! You’re old, so I get it, it might be hard for you!” 

—

She repeated the word like repeating it made it mean something, and Emilio stubbornly refused to ask the question clinging to his mind. Van, he thought, must have known that the syllables were utterly meaningless to him, must have understood that what she was saying made little sense. She’d either explain it, or he’d pick up on it by watching whatever she did. Either way, he wouldn’t have to cop to the fact that the plastic shark swimming at him through jello made more sense than the chalk drawing on the ground.

But, of course, Van couldn’t let it go without asking. Emilio grumbled under his breath as she raised the question, throwing his hands up in a frustrated shrug. “Why would I know how to do this? It is squares on the floor. I don’t even know what this is.” He settled onto the floor beside her, frustration making the pain in his knee a more distant thing even if only for a moment. He hadn’t been counting on this much physical activity at the grocery store; he had a feeling he’d be paying for it later, when the adrenaline of the moment died down a little more. He gestured wordlessly for Van to go before crossing his arms over his chest, jaw clenched tightly in irritation. Whatever this was, he could only hope it ended soon.

He watched as Van… jumped from box to box, going between standing on one leg to standing on two and alternating as she did so. Realizing that he would need to mimic this in order to make it to where she was, he sighed. Yeah. This was going to suck. He wondered what would happen if his knee gave out beneath him and sent him sprawling. Would the paintbrush creature erase him the same way it had the door? Would the shark grow legs and walk over to sink its teeth into his throat? Or would an empty pit like the one at the front of the store open beneath him and swallow him whole? Emilio wasn’t sure he wanted to find out the answer, dread at the possibility of fates far worse than a simple death clawing mindlessly at his throat. 

Hopscotch. Sure. He could do that.

He grit his teeth as Van called back to him, hating every ounce of uncertainty. Two feet. Hop onto the good leg. Two feet again. A hop onto the bad leg sent a blinding wave of pain over his head, and he stumbled into the next position on trembling legs, barely standing. He moved forward like this slowly, spending as little time on the bad leg as he could and waiting for the pain to pass each time he got off of it. By the time he made it to where Van stood, a sheen layer of sweat covered his brow, his breath trembling and his legs shaking. His bad leg held no weight at all now, hanging from his hips like a lifeless thing. “Let’s get this done,” he ground out through clenched teeth, grabbing Van’s arm and gently tugging her forward so that they both stepped on the finish line at the same time. 

The moment their feet hit the ground, the vast aisles of the store faded around them, and they were in a room. On one wall, a large picture window overlooked the floor they’d just been on; Emilio remembered seeing it from the shelves with the words Manager’s Office scrawled over it. In front of them sat a large wooden desk, the paintbrush-tailed creature sitting in a leather chair behind it. Emilio groaned, tired and irritated and ready to fight. He pulled out an iron knife, driving it into the table between him and the creature. “Cut the shit,” he ordered, “or I cut the tail.”

—

Emilio followed suit, and Van felt a pang of guilt as she watched the pain flash across his face. How many times had he mentioned his bad leg? Maybe they should’ve found another way, or maybe they should’ve climbed over the second shelf, but based on the buzzing sounds coming from the other side, she wasn’t sure that would’ve gone over well, either. She waited with baited breath, flinching slightly every time Emilio stumbled over so slightly, narrowly stepping over the carefully drawn lines. 

Finally, he stood next to her, and she turned to him, ready to say something, but Emilio was pulling her forward. Suddenly, their surroundings dissipated. There were no longer shelves with canned goods on either side of them. The floor was blank, void of the colorful chalk drawings. Instead, they had come face to face with the creature that was clearly responsible for all of this. Van frowned, heart skipping a beat. What did they mean if they were in front of it now? Her magic buzzed beneath her fingertips, but went otherwise unused. The ring that was twisted around her finger kept it at bay, and she felt it necessary. What if this was the last step? What if unleashing it meant something worse would happen? 

Van stood next to Emilio, taking a small step so that she was slightly tucked behind him. He moved forward, producing a knife that was now lodged into the desk the creature stood at. It reminded her of Nora’s knife– the one her friend had taught her how to practice with. It reminded her of Jade’s arsenal, too. Van blanched, but with a shaky voice she managed to stammer out, “yeah, what he said!” She bit the inside of her cheek, finally tearing her gaze away from the knife. 

She didn’t really want to see this thing die, even if it made their trip to the grocery store miserable, but would Emilio listen to her? Van took a small step forward, “we can just like, go! Nobody has to get hurt, especially not us, ‘cause like, he’s old and he’s probably already on his last days and I’ve got a long life ahead of me, you know?” Emilio wasn’t really that old, but maybe the beastly figure would find humor in her words. “And like, I’d really just rather not die to a plastic shark, you know? Or um, anything else that you might… be able to paint.” The creature looked at her blankly, and it was then that Van realized its pupils were different sizes. She wasn’t sure what that meant, if anything, but it was a detail she was sure would haunt her after the fact.

She looked to Emilio, ready to open her mouth, but suddenly, the creature was getting up from the seat, bounding towards them. It drew a circle around them with its tail, and then waved– it had waved, right? Van opened her mouth to ask Emilio if he had seen it, but a shriek came out instead as the floor disappeared beneath her. She closed her eyes tightly, only opening them as darkness enclosed. 

They were in the parking lot. They were out of the store. There was canned goods, candy, and jell-o everywhere surrounding them, but it looked real not like what was outside. She got to her feet, helping Emilio up, too. “Um, we’re out? I think? Right?” She touched the car next to her, and indeed it felt nothing like the objects inside. “I hate this place, can we please go? I’m going to like, only order groceries from now on, I think.” She paused, eyeing the jello on the ground before grabbing handfuls, stuffing them into her pockets. “For Teddy. Now we go?” 

—

She wanted to say something. He could see it on her face, could feel the concern radiating off her in waves, and he hated it. He hated the ache in his knee and the way he knew it would lock up later, just as soon as the adrenaline was gone. He hated the fact that she knew he was in pain, hated the fact that it wasn’t a thing he could hide. He hated the feeling of weakness that came with the shitty, damaged limb, hated knowing that it was probably at least a little his fault that it was this bad, hated that it was a reminder he couldn’t escape. Van wanted to say something, and Emilio hated it. So he interrupted whatever words had been aching to escape her lips, tugged her forward instead. 

There were bigger problems here than his bad leg. There were more things to worry about than the way he probably wouldn’t be able to get off the damn couch later, because in order for that to be a problem to begin with, they had to make it back to the couch first. They had to get out of this stupid store, and the only way Emilio knew how to do that — they only way Emilio knew how to do anything — was with a knife and a threat that wasn’t nearly as empty as Van probably wanted it to be.

The creature, whatever it was, didn’t seem very afraid of him. It looked at him with an expression that was impossible to read, looked at Van as she piped in. In any other situation, he probably would have laughed at the way she worded her plea. Jokes made at his expense, when they were like that, were among his favorite jokes to make. There were few things Emilio found funnier than his own looming mortality, much to the dismay of most of the people around him. It was a little funnier to hear the joke come from someone else, too… but he’d only laugh about it later. They needed to get out of the store first.

Glancing over to Van, he made a face. “Right,” he agreed. “We don’t want to hurt you.” It was a lie. Emilio did want to hurt the little… whatever it was. For the jello, for the shark, and definitely for whatever the fuck ‘hop scotch’ was. (He was still a little disappointed that there hadn’t been any scotch involved.) “Just show us to the door, and we’ll be on our…”

He trailed off as the thing moved forward, tensing and placing himself subconsciously in front of Van. It drew something at their feet, then took a step back and wriggled its strange fingers, and Emilio had just enough time to grip Van and take half a step forward before the ground disappeared beneath his feet. His stomach bottomed out, and the world went dark in a way his enhanced vision couldn’t quite cut through. The feeling of freefall tugged at his gut for a second, maybe two, and then it was finished. The world flickered back into place, and he was outside. He turned, confirming that Van was outside with him, then slumped his shoulders just a little. 

“We’re out,” he confirmed, glancing around to confirm it. A multitude of strange items surrounded them: jello, small figurines, a paintbrush. Spotting a cheap knee brace among the piles, he rolled his eyes. “Man, fuck that guy,” he griped, arms crossed over his chest. Van got to her feet, and Emilio let her help him up, too… but not before swiping a bag full of gummy candy from one of the piles. He thrust it towards her without looking, mouth set in a stubborn line that seemed to warn her not to mention it. “Yeah,” he agreed with a curt nod. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. And next time, we send Teddy to do the grocery shopping.” 

They’d probably love something like this. 

(Asshole.)