New Flash Fiction: God Closed Down the Store

Our latest offering is a wonderfully surreal piece of Americana/urban fantasy from Andrew Kozma. Based in Houston, Texas, Andrew's fiction has appeared or will appear in Drabblecast, Daily Science Fiction, Stupefying Stories and Albedo One. 




God Closed Down the Store
by Andrew Kozma





God closed down the store.

He said, “Thou Shalt Sell No More Meat!”

All of us, all at once, were out of jobs. I mean, none of us were going to argue with God.

Ron tried, but God turned him into a pillar of salt. The rest of us didn’t say a word until the presence of God departed, as sudden and as depressing as the popping of a balloon.

The butcher shop across the street was still doing heavy business, especially since our regular customers took one look at us, dazed and wild-eyed on the sidewalk, and swiftly walked away.

“We’re just a grocery store,” said Josephine, the general manager. She moaned.

Harold laughed. “Well, of course, then. We’ll just sell everything else except meat.”

Harold was a large man, big across the shoulders and big in the belly. At lunch, he’d retrieve an entire three-foot long hoagie from his lunchbox (folded in two, of course) and down a half-liter of whatever soda was on sale (Koke was his favorite). His realization came as a revelation. I know I wasn’t just speaking for myself that when God laid down his commandment, I heard “Thou Shalt Sell No More Meat Nor Anything Else Because You Are Capitalist Sinners of the Highest Order” though that last part was only implied in God’s tone.

We all turned as one and gathered behind Harold as he reached out towards the doors that we thought God had closed forever.

Harold touched the doors and turned to stone. Turns out, God had closed the doors forever. We stood there, still as stone ourselves.

Marge, who delivered our mail, handed the day’s supply of envelopes to Josephine. “Nice statue,” she said. “Looks just like Harold.” She peered at Harold’s confident face. “Well, almost. Still, you get what you pay for.”

We hadn’t paid for anything. Or we were paying for it now.

Autumn was down on her knees, muttering, her hands folded before her. But it was too late to start praying. That much was obvious.

“I’m outta here,” Mark said.  He was our bagboy and the envy of the entire town. He walked across the street and they hired him on the spot to wrap sides of beef in butcher paper so carefully the blood peeked out, but never leaked. Even if he stacked everything on top of the eggs, they were never crushed. He was a master of grocery physics, and he had been a physicist before moving to town. Everyone envied him.

He vanished into the butcher shop and we were left on the sidewalk. Abandoned. Forsaken. We were anathema, though none of us really knew what that meant.

Minutes later, the ground opened up and swallowed the butcher shop like a pig downing a truffle.

“Oh God,” said Autumn, her words salting the air. “Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God.”

Steven ran for his car, but a lightning bolt struck him as he unlocked the door. Holly made it to the end of the block before a plane fell on her. Bobby sprinted into the barren lot across the street and was buried under a rain of sardines.

Josephine – a true manager – gathered the rest of us together. We huddled in a circle, our arms around each other’s shoulders. Josephine looked each of us in the eye, her face as confident as a martyr’s, as worry-free as a saint’s. We all knew, right then, that she was going to lead us out of this. She bowed her head.

“This is the end. This is the end of it,” she said.