The Hoax

Ryan was stocking some kind of canned vegetable, he assumed beans (everything on aisle four was beans). The supermarket was nominally open twenty-four hours a day, but the night shift was (un)lucky if they saw a single customer between midnight and dawn. It was this pervasive solitude, more than anything, that caused Ryan's short yelp of heart-arresting panic when the aisle behind him exploded in a violent, cacophonous spray of steel shelving and assorted canned goods.

A thick shelf caught Ry in the small of his back, and he used the falling momentum to twist and avoid bashing his head on the half-emptied wooden pallet of mystery cans. He performed an odd little shaking pirouette around the wooden frame before falling hard on his tailbone. Later, he would brag to his friends that his greatest injury that night was from sitting down on the filthy linoleum. His tailbone was fractured, though it would be hours later before the shock and adrenaline wore off enough for him to notice. At just that moment, he was recovering from what felt like a series of heart attacks and allowing his fight-or-flight response to bury the needle firmly into the red area marked FIGHT. Ryan whipped his head back and forth, searching for the spectacular douche-cork that had ruined his peaceful graveyard shift.

A werewolf rose from the wreckage. Okay, not a werewolf, but definitely a guy who was at least seven feet tall with the shoulders of a mutant bull. The beast wore a red flannel shirt and thick blue jeans (I'm being attacked by lumberjacks! screamed Ryan's internal monologue), was furred with thick curly hair from forearm to chest, and stood with a hunch not entirely unlike King Kong. It was panting heavily (angrily? Can panting sound angry?), and after a moment Behemoth Bunyan scooped up a four-foot steel shelf in one hand and began to whirl about, eyes wild, makeshift weapon brandished before him like a club.

Ryan's fight-or-flight needle flipped firmly back to 'flight.'

Ryan fell back on his hands and painfully, frantically started to crab-walk backwards over the treacherous field of dented cans. The lumberjack whipped his head violently in Ryan's direction, and they both froze, wild eyes locked. The beast bared his teeth, of all things, grinding his lower jaw from side to side as a thick, foamy strand of drool oozed from one of his glinting silver-capped mandibular canines (HE'S GOT SILVER FANGS, Ryan's mind screamed).

The man had several days worth of stubble, and hair buzzed short enough that Ryan could make out the pulsing veins mapping his scalp. A low growl started in the monster's throat, growing quickly into an inarticulate scream of rage followed by a deafening bellow:

"WHAT DID YOU DO WITH HER?"

Ryan's hands slipped on the floor, and he fell in surprise onto his elbows for support. "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked, realizing as the words left his mouth what a very stupid and dangerous thing he'd probably just said.

The giant screamed like the damned and began a slow, clumsy charge up the aisle, building just enough momentum to really faceplant when he inevitably slipped on one of the many cans of something-probably-beans.

The moaning leviathan lay twitching on the floor, blood and drool oozing from the corner of his constantly-moving jaw, and he lifted one meaty paw in Ryan's direction. The hand fell limp, and the attacker began to sob. "Give her back," he sobbed, "just let my baby go, please."

"...dude, what the HELL?"

All the fear was gone, and in its place Ryan felt an ill-advised sense of outrage.

The sniffling giant reached laboriously into his back pocket, and withdrew a sweat-soaked piece of parchment coated in red stains and runny ink. It read:

'Time is up. You will never find her now.'

Ryan groaned, and buried his face in his hands.

The large man looked at him with pleading, shining eyes puffed and red from days of crying. "I saw you leave the note, asshole. Saw you jab the knife between the bricks in the service hallway at the mall, right past the maintanence closet I work out of. You thought I wouldn't find you, but I saw the whole thing, watched the blood spread through the sheet. Please, just... I'll do anything. I need my Jenny back."

Ryan groaned again. "I'm going to lose my job."

Jenny's fiance barked a short, mirthless laugh, and a little of the old rage returned to his eyes. "You'll be lucky if you don't get fifty years, you son of a bitch."

"It's a prank, dude."

"You... what? WHY?! What? You took her for a prank?! IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK THIS IS, YOU -"

Ryan held up a weary hand.

"I have no idea who Jenny is. The stains were stage blood from Halloween. The service halls are creepy, the knife was from Goodwill. I wanted to scare someone. I don't... I have no clue what is going on here."

"B-but... she's... you said I could..."

Ryan placed his head between his knees, and began to cry.