Jessup used to think thieves were the scum of the earth. Scab-picking sleazeballs just a mote better than serial killers, pedophiles, and rapists. But what had happened lately at the Quick Fill? It made him reckon that so-called artists were the true creeping brutes, ranking only a quarter-step above the Devil. Hell, maybe even tied with Big Red himself.

The kid was bone-thin and filthy, his pockets jammed full of pilfered junk, his arms full of those gold bars they all tried to steal. Jesus God almighty, it was too hot for this. The AC was blasting inside the mart, but it showed 106 on the old, cracked thermometer hanging by the mute and useless pumps. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Jessup said to the kid. He put his newspaper down and rubbed his eyes. He’d be eighty-two this May, and he was more chained to this godforsaken gas station than he’d ever been before. Bitter irony. 

“The fuck you gonna do about it, gramps?” the kid said. He stopped in front of the automatic door, his dirty shoes sinking into the priceless Persian rug, now frayed and faded and as pointless as the rest of the expensive crap that didn’t belong in Jessup’s store. 

BEE-doop. The door slid open. But the kid had stopped, that was good. Might be enough. 

“If you leave with that stuff,” Jessup said. “You die.” He wiped a trickle of sweat from the long hair that was matted to the back of his neck. He looked like a goddamned hippie, but it was too risky to leave the store these days, even for a haircut. 

The kid laughed. “Like to see you stop me,” he said. “Geezer hillbilly.”

Jessup looked up at the camera in the middle of the store. The monsters had to be watching, were probably toasting each other with virgin blood while they clubbed baby seals. Fucking artists. How was this even art? Who was this for?

The kid turned back to the door. Took a step.

“Kid, don’t!” Jessup said.

The kid flipped him the bird and walked out the door. 

Then, poof. 

He was gone. Vaporized into a billion tiny red-pink droplets, splattering the edge of the Persian and the pavement outside with a fine mist of human goo. The armful of gold bars he’d been carrying landed with a thud on top of his clothes and shoes, which had floated to the ground like a dark magic trick. Now you see him, now you don’t. Only, Jessup still saw him. Still saw the little pieces of him, sticking to his store, coating the merchandise.

Jessup took a deep breath. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. No tears. Don’t give the bastards, the artists, the satisfaction. He stood, zipped up his coveralls. Went into the back room, got the mop and bucket, and began to clean up. Imagined the Artist and her twisted cronies salivating over every gore-streaked swipe.

Lord, how had he gotten into this mess? Greed, of course. He’d seen an opportunity and wanted to cash out. But instead of a big payday and a life of ease, he’d gotten this. Blood and guts and the worsening sense that this was all his fault.

It had all started with that woman. The Artist. She stopped at Jessup’s middle-of-nowhere gas station at midnight six months back. Did he ever see her car? He couldn’t remember. But how the hell else would she have gotten there, on that lonesome road through the Mojave a hundred miles away from anywhere? 

He shivered when she entered. From the chill night air, and from her beauty, maybe. She was gorgeous in a way that hadn’t seemed right. Alabaster skin like stretched canvas, not a hair out of place. She was too perfect. She gleamed like fool’s gold.

“This place is great,” she said, blinking at the flickering fluorescent lights, the rundown displays. “The right energy, you know?”

Jessup didn’t say anything. He knew what the store looked like: yellowing walls, stained ceiling tiles, the thin desert dust that coated everything that had been out longer than a day. But he was used to weirdos. At night, it was strictly the freaks. Sometimes tripping, looking to score. Maybe burned out or on their way to the moon. Jessup didn’t care. What they did was their business, and that was fine, as long as it didn’t interfere with his.

“You Jessup?” she said, motioning at the sign by the roadside.

He grunted.

“Jessup,” she said, seeming to savor the word. “Jesssssuuuuup.”

Just another weirdo. He went back to refilling the cigarette stock behind the register. 

“Cal,” she said. “Do you mind if I call you Cal?”

Jessup dropped a pack of Camels. Nobody had called him that in years. 

“I suppose just ‘Jessup’ will work if you’re averse,” she said. “Ever heard of Prada Marfa? Banksy? Pope.L? Do you at all follow the world of performance art? 

Jessup considered her too-bright eyes, the blood-red of her lips. The way her skin seemed to shimmer. “What do you want?” he said.

She laughed. “You’re perfect,” she said. “I’ll need you, too.”

Jessup stilled. It had been a long time since anyone needed him for anything. “The hell would you need me for?” he asked.

“For my art,” she said. “We’re going to annihilate limitations, conflagrate expectations. Jessup? We’re gonna blow their fucking minds.”

Her lawyers descended like birds of prey the next day, settling themselves on folding chairs between the aisles of the Quick Fill. They had beady eyes and reams of paperwork for Jessup to sign. She bought the whole kit and caboodle for an eye-watering sum, enough for him to retire to one of those fat cat beachfront houses he’d seen on TV as a kid. But she needed him to stay on. The whole sale was riding on that. A year of his time, a salary that doubled the payday, and then he could go. No employees, this was to be a one-man show, broadcast live to whoever the hell her audience was.

Two long-haulers parked in front of the store. Silent men in black swishy jumpsuits unloaded the goods. They looked like ninjas. Jessup felt shabby in his usual faded navy-blue boiler suit, ‘Quick Fill’ embroidered in red on the front pocket.

“I’ll still be running the pumps?” Jessup asked.

“This is no longer a gas station,” the Artist said. “You’ll operate the installation. Keep the windows clean, the shelves stocked, run the cash register.”

Jessup laughed. It wasn’t a sound he was used to making; it came out croaky and rusty, like a crow’s rattle. “Who in God’s name would I sell any of this to?” He gestured at the merchandise the ninjas were sticking indifferently onto the shelves and in the back stock room, next to the Little Debbies and Monster Energy displays. Diamonds in glass jars so big they looked fake, fat globs of pearls on platinum strands, gold bars packed twenty to a box like Butterfingers, leather purses, some with logos he’d heard of like Louis Vuitton and Gucci, chunky Rolexes and sickly sweet perfumes and sleek white electronics he’d never understand how to operate. He pointed at a painting leaning against the wall. “That’s a Monet, for Christ’s sake,” he said.

The Artist grinned, and for a moment, it looked like she had too many teeth. “It’s a study in temptation,” she said. “A meditation on desire. Here at our glittering oasis in the desert.”

A loud whir as one of the ninjas began to drill into the ceiling. Jessup winced. The ninja bolted a camera to the tile and covered it with a black dome. The Artist pulled a silver tablet from her bag and checked the connection. She smiled and turned it so they could all see the clear image.

“Gorgeous,” she said. “Perfect realism.”

“What about security?” Jessup asked. “All this stuff. Someone’s gonna try and rob me.”

The Artist shrugged. “It’ll take care of itself.”

For the first few days, things were okay. Reporters and ‘influencers,’ whatever that meant, clogged the aisles to breathlessly catalogue the outrageous amount of stuff. Jessup read in the paper that someone estimated the store now contained over $10 million worth of luxury goods. People in line to get in gawked through the windows, smearing the glass with their greasy foreheads and hot breath. Occasionally, normal folks would show up, the kind looking for a full tank of gas, but they went away disappointed. Jessup spent more time washing gunk off the windows than anything else.

He sold a few things at outrageous sums, handbags mostly, squinting at the tiny images on the computer terminal the ninjas had installed to make sure he was running the credit cards for the right amounts. The customers would record the whole transaction on their cellphones like it was somehow meaningful. People stopped outside the Quick Fill in the dead of night to take selfies with the sign, the mart, and the miles of empty desert surrounding them.

Jessup never thought he’d miss the freaks and weirdos, but here he was. 

On the fourth night, the first shoplifters entered like an organized mob of hellions. Jessup slept on a cot in the back office, nervous about his responsibility. He heard the crash of glass and reached for his shotgun.

“Shitbird thieves,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. 

He opened the door. Three of them, in balaclavas and tactical gear, were loading goods into small crates they stacked on a dolly. 

“Freeze,” Jessup said. “Or I’ll shoot your balls off.”

“We don’t want any trouble, old timer,” one of them said. “Just stay out of our way.”

Jessup fired over the guy’s head. “That was your only warning,” he said.

“Motherfuck,” another one said. The guy Jessup shot at pulled a handgun from his waist, and Jessup hit the floor. The shot went careening over his head into the backroom. Jessup groaned; his knees wouldn’t thank him for that move tomorrow.  

From his belly, he saw all three race for the broken window. They pushed the dolly out first, then – poof. Three quiet eruptions of blood and guts and viscera that covered the glass like a hellish mist. Pea-soup fog made of flesh.

Jessup’s heart stuttered. What the hell just happened? How was he gonna get that mess off the windows? Then, his mind caught up, and he puked on his shotgun.

The Artist had left a number. He called it again and again, but there was no answer and no way to leave a message. He waved at the camera in the middle of the store and shouted for help until he was hoarse, but no response came. What in God’s name was going on here? He couldn’t make it make sense.

Finally, he called the cops. They’d heard all about the Artist’s installation, and didn’t believe that the mess covering the front of the mart was actual human remains. He didn’t have the link to the live feed that was being broadcast from the store, and that was the only camera the Artist had allowed on the premises. Besides, nothing was missing. All the shit the thieves had tried to take was puddled with their empty clothes and in the crates. The cops seemed to think it was just more art that they couldn’t understand. Did they resent him for it? Jessup supposed he would’ve, before. All that stuff. All that money.

So Jessup cleaned the windows. Hired someone to replace the broken one. The crowds eventually dwindled, then mostly died off. But he stayed awake, night after night, fueled by bad drip coffee and the fear of another break-in. He’d always been afraid of a break-in, but now his reasons had changed. Sure, thieves were the scum of the earth, but did they deserve a death sentence for a bad decision? 

He didn’t care about the junk anymore. He just didn’t want any more blood on his hands. And still, the shoplifters came.

“Wait, please,” he said, and poof.

“I’m begging you,” he said, and poof.

“Stop, for the love of God!” he screamed, and poof.

Was this hell? He called the Artist after every impossible death, and the line would ring and ring until the sound made his jaw ache.

He tried to find her lawyers, but they seemed to have vanished. He used some of his ill-gotten money to hire some lawyers of his own, but they all agreed there was no way out of the contract. It was iron-clad. And if he walked now, there was no chance of stopping the theft. No chance of saving anyone but himself. He created this mess, and it was his job to fix it.

The stealing would take care of itself.

He was to keep the shelves stocked, the windows clean.

He could sell anything in the store.

Sell anything in the store.

Jessup had an idea.

BEE-doop.

When the junkie ambled in, Jessup was ready. The guy had pupils like bottomless pits and a perpetual shiver, despite the baking heat outside.

“Howdy,” Jessup said.

The junkie ducked his head, then walked up the aisle alongside the gold, jewels, all the worthless bullshit. The junkie stuck things in his pockets and sent the occasional furtive glance up at Jessup. After a few minutes, the junkie jangled his way back toward the front door.

“One sec,” Jessup said, and came out from behind the counter, shotgun trained on the junkie. “You forgot to settle up.”

The junkie stiffened.

“S’okay,” Jessup said, holding one hand up. “You can take everything you have, you just need to give me something in return.”

The junkie turned to Jessup. “You fucking with me?” he said.

“Just doing business,” Jessup said.

“I don’t have any cash,” the junkie said. “I could suck–”

“Not necessary,” Jessup said. Voice steady, lots of eye contact. Like he was dealing with a skittish animal. Don’t run, please don’t run. “What do you got?”

“Are you gonna shoot me?” the junkie asked.

“Not if you play ball,” Jessup said.

The junkie came to the counter. Jessup tried not to notice that the crotch of the guy’s pants had gone dark and wet. The junkie pulled out a handful of emeralds and a golden beetle. Hands shaking, he rummaged around his pockets until he found a pair of condoms, one with the seal broken. He looked up at Jessup. “It’s open,” he said. “But it wasn’t used.”

“That’s perfect,” Jessup said. He extended his hand. “Two condoms, one opened, is the exact price.” 

With an uncertain look, the junkie deposited the condoms in Jessup’s hand. Then, the junkie bolted for the door.

Jessup watched, heart knocking like a crankshaft with a bad bearing.

BEE-doop. The door opened.

God, if he were wrong– 

The junkie’s foot hit the sand-washed blacktop just outside.

Jessup bit his cheek so hard he could taste blood.

The junkie took another step, then another. 

And Jessup began to laugh.

He looked up at the camera and gave a jaunty little wave. Now this was art. 

Humming, he went into the stock room, which was full to bursting with the Artist’s trash. He took a few things and went back into the store. Refilled the shelves. Then settled behind his newspaper at the counter to wait for his next customer.

---

Kerri Brady Long grew up in Buffalo, New York, and is a product of the Buffalo Bills’ back-to-back (to-back-to-back) Super Bowl losses, which taught her an early appreciation for the value of the underdog story. Her fiction has appeared in Black Fork Review and Southland Alibi, she was a staff writer on Amazon’s Goliath, and was once employee of the month at Dodger Stadium.