Carnage

Carnage Khaliah Williams (bio) It was over for maybe minutes.Then it was never over. —Heather McHugh, "Acts of God" Lacey's index finger lazily moved across the page of the encyclopedia she had opened and laid out on her workspace during a rare moment of quiet in the store. It had become her habit to read silently to herself when there were no customers, committing to memory the genus names in Greek and Latin. This was not required of her for the job, but she took pleasure in her continued ability to learn something new. She added Poecilia sphenops to the notebook where she kept the list of each memorized species. A voice broke the silence of her study. "They dead. All of 'em." The woman pronounced the word dead as though somewhere in between the e and a was a hidden y that gave the word two syllables instead of one. The extra syllable fascinated Lacey; she wondered what it would look like on paper, d-e-y-a-d. The new letter seemed almost natural. She began to contemplate the mechanics of the word, what its origins would be, its potential definitions, translations into French and Spanish, how one might conjugate this new discovery. "They dead," the woman said again, tapping her finger on the bag so that the plastic rustled loudly. Startled, Lacey looked up to find in her line of vision an angry face attached to a petite, rotund body. In addition to the scowl on her face, she wore a stained denim shirt, untucked and hanging loosely over dingy blue jeans; her coat, a thin windbreaker, looked unsuitable for a Northeast December. Surrounding her was a passel of children who resembled her in every way, except where her face was contorted with anger, their small, round faces hung low with sadness. The woman slammed her hand down on the counter. The children backed away quickly, their tiny eyes alert and fearful; Lacey jerked back to attention. "They dead, and I want my money back." She pulled the fraying strap of the brown purse hanging from her shoulder and dropped it with a thud on the counter, then began to wade through its contents with her large hands. She pulled out a wad of crumpled papers—ATM statements, coupons, receipts—and placed them on the flat surface of the worktable without care for the organized order forms and neatly stacked fish encyclopedias that [End Page 68] Lacey spent much of her day studying. She took her time looking at each piece of paper, grunting when she found something useful, sighing when what she held in her hands was merely trash. When it appeared that she had found what she was searching for, a crumpled piece of paper with the light blue Pet Place logo emblazoned on the back, she unraveled it and tried to smooth it out. She lifted it up to her face and squinted her eyes so that her brow furrowed, softening her looks for just a second before she thrust the paper at Lacey's chest. "Here. Now, $7.16. That's what I paid for 'em," she said, grabbing handfuls of what had been her purse's innards and shoving them back inside, leaving the counter clear but disheveled. Lacey suppressed the urge to reach out and tidy up her workspace. Instead, she reached for the receipt the woman was now waving at her. Lacey tried to straighten out the creased paper with her fingers, surprised that it still felt glossy despite the treatment it had endured. Though the lettering was mostly faded, the black ink now a dull gray, Lacey could still make out the date of purchase as being more than two weeks ago. She began to put together the right phrasing to help the customer in front of her understand that she would not be able to offer the desired refund, but the woman's face, drawn back into a sneer even before Lacy could get words together, let her know she'd need backup. ________ It was two days before Christmas, and Lacey was working the fish counter at Pet Place, the job she had taken instead...