The Ones We Forget
By: Stella Adaire Brown
Tags: Short Fiction, Supernatural, Short Story, Fiction, Young Writers

The Ones We Forget

A small dusty bell above the gas station door tinkled. A tinkle is, by definition, a cheerful sound. Not so with this tinkle. This tinkle sounded aged and somehow irritable, like a tinkle that has seen life and has had more than its fill of both regrets, and cigars.

The tinkle, as one may have rightly assumed, was caused by the door’s being opened by what the gas station’s solitary worker drearily guessed to be a potential customer. This customer, the station employee surmised, was one of ‘that crowd’, meaning that he was tall, wore a large brimmed hat that overshadowed his face, had clearly forsaken the art of the daily shower in pursuit of other pleasures, and had one rather over-large pistole in his belt. There was also an asymmetrical lump in his jacket which suggested that large-pistole number two had chosen to stay out of sight for the time being.

The potential customer sidled up to a display of beef jerky, examining his options without much enthusiasm. He lifted an individually packaged strip of Jalapeño Hellfire and gave it the eye for a while, but eventually settled on a ribbon of the ever popular Original Cow flavor. It was rumored that what the Too Cruel For School beef jerky brand put into their Original Cow flavored jerky, made with real original cow, was the remains of their much talked over ‘kindness pasture’ where the cows that were too scrawny or underweight to be considered gourmet were sent to live out their days in whatever peace they could find in their quarter-acre field off of HWY Forty-Seven. Local teenagers told their friends from out of town that if you ate a stick of Original Cow the ghosts of all the Kindness Pasture cows whose meat you were eating would come back and kick your stomach in the night for a week, inflicting you with the bruises of their ethereal hooves. Maudie Lewis, eighty-nine, claimed that when her dear departed Harold had bit into a stick, the meat had come away undamaged, and with half of his upper teeth sticking into it.

In short, the Original Cow flavor was not a snack for the faint of heart.

The near-certain customer slapped his stick down on the counter, making the change rattle in the cash register. He stared out at the attendant from beneath the brim of his hat, his eyes two beady glints in the shadow. He was silent for a moment, his gaze trained on the attendant’s name tag. He grunted.

“‘Ad me an uncle wot was called Keith.”

The cashier’s tone was flat. “Oh.”

“Never liked ‘es face,” said the tall man, conversationally.

“Good for you.” Sarcastically drawled the shorter of the two.

“‘Don much like yers neither, now ‘s I look.”

“However will I manage,” the one called Keith rolled his black-lined eyes in mock sorrow. “With that be cash… or credit?” he spat, beginning to tire of the man’s company. Someone who knew him, even as an acquaintance, would likely say that it did not take long for him to tire of people’s company, and that he did so often.

“‘Don believe in credit cards,” stated the man, fishing a wad of begrimed paper money from the inside front of his weather-stained shirt. He passed the money over, not bothering to smooth out the folds.

Some unknown species of small insect scurried from within the wad as the attendant gingerly undid the center crease.

“Don’t suppose banking had been invented back when you were young, had it?” Keith asked the man in an unusual burst of sociability, as he unceremoniously shoved the customers receipt into a plastic bag, on which was heartily emblazoned the words; Tanks for Hopping! And, in slightly larger print, Get Your High-Quality Plastic Bags Online Today!

The man eyed the bag derisively, but took it nonetheless.

“Wotch yer back, lil Keith,” he said affectionately, thumping Keith hard on his right shoulder.

“Go away,” Keith drawled.

“Yer sounds jus like ‘em, too,” muttered the customer as he walked out the door, the bell tinkling out its farewell in much the same way as its hello.

Keith gave the bell a knowing look, for even though most believe that a bell sounds the same when someone comes in as when someone goes out, there are a few who know the truth of it. They are not special people, in any common sense of the word; they merely understand, as children do, that a bell knows how to say goodbye.

The tall man in the large hat came to the station almost a week ago. He has not been seen since. The gas station’s sole worker does not remember him. Neither do the unfortunate scouts who asked him to buy cookies and were turned away. It is often like that with such people. The memory of them is slippery, like an eel held in the hands, and, like an eel, is quickly laid aside. The forgotten ones prefer it that way. Only the bells remember them, sounding slightly more old, and dusty, and hoarse, after they have gone. Maybe it’s for the best, after all. Maybe not. None but the tall men know the truth of it, and, if anyone could remember meeting them, they would attest to one simple fact; that those men, whoever they are, are not talking.