Another Vape Shop - a short story, a cautionary tale

There was nothing alarming about the vape shop that replaced the GameStop. Vape shops had been popping up around town over the past several months. Yet I couldn’t help but notice that something had changed. As much as I want to blame myself for not seeing it sooner, there was no way I could have known. Who could have? Even if I could have predicted our downfall, I’m not sure I could’ve changed anything. I simply would have had to experience everything with the absence of hope.

What I didn’t know then was that this vape store, and all the other vape shops were located in precise intervals spread over town. Gary Summers, my God rest his soul, showed this to me on a map once. He also showed me a chart showing the exponential growth patterns. What started as 2 vape shops spread over a 20-mile area quickly became 4 shops spread equidistantly. Only a few months later there were 16 vape stores. When there were 256, it was already too late. As aggressive as the growth was, it was still subtle enough that I didn’t notice the little things at first. I can’t remember the last night of darkness, before the perpetual neon glow polluted the sky. I can’t remember when the air was without flavor. Day or night no longer existed. Eventually we no longer had homes. Our entire town was nothing more than a seamless vape store. When we weren’t asleep in the aisles between cannabis pipes, vape displays, or blinding neon lights, we wandered an endless maze.

I joined a group of survivors, all drifters, scattered from everywhere. There was a rumor that the neon maze ended at the ocean. Maybe we could build a ship and sail away for the vapers’ fog. Another story suggested that the vape stores ended at the northern tundra wilderness. Hope was the currency of life, the price of admission, a gambler’s ante. With that fragile hope, we walked, avoiding those that had given up. “Non-walkers,” “fog sitters.” The ones fueling the insanity.

I wasn’t sure how long it had been. Time was an abandoned relic. But we stumbled upon something that I couldn’t understand. For the first time since this hellish nightmare began, I saw that a vape store had opened inside of a vape store. For a moment I glimpsed into infinity, a never-ending cascade of vape shops, one inside another, inside another, inside another. I fell to my knees and wept. I lost myself to the madness. When my sanity returned, the group I was traveling with were gone. I didn’t blame them. I would have done the same. I reached into my pocket discovering my wallet. Carrying it was a habit from years gone. I opened it and found that I still had my debit card. With nothing to lose I approached the sales counter and bought an electric vape and blueberry cotton candy vape juice. I stopped walking. I sat in the fog.

Sometime during this haze, I noticed a neon light turned off in the distance. Was a vape shop closing? I stood up and shuffled in that direction. I noticed that others had noticed as well. A sea of the hopeless and damned are gathering, unsure what we might find.

--

090325

I'm DC. I'm on a creative journey. I write & publish comic books with XanCon Entertainment. You can check us out at www.xancononline.com or at GlobalComix  at https://globalcomix.com/a/xancon-entertainment/comics

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