The Devil Went Down to Costco

By Stephanie Scissom

Lucifer glanced around, then surreptitiously shoved the box under his arm and hurried to the front of the store. He ought to just steal it, but he didn’t use his powers for trifling things if he could help it. Still, if Mephistopheles or one of the others saw him…

He scanned the sea of registers. Two lights on out of about twenty. He strode toward the closest. The cashier, a teenage boy, smirked at him and cut off the light.

“Wait!” Lucifer raised his free hand, but the teenager merely shrugged.

“Sorry, dude. I already counted out my drawer. Try register three.”

Lucifer growled and stalked toward register three. The line was four deep.

“What the hell?”

The lady in line in front of him turned and gave him a scathing glare. She jerked her head at the little boy next to her, who paused munching on his Hershey bar to run his hand up his face and wipe a snotty nose. Lucifer grimaced and looked away.

“Hurry up, Bobby, before it melts,” the woman chided her son.

“Hurry up, all of you,” Lucifer muttered and ignored another glare.

The cashier looked to be a hundred and twenty, by Lucifer’s best estimate, and she moved like a mouse on a glue trap. The lady in front of him had a baby in her cart in addition to the disgusting chocolate child. The baby started to cry. Lucifer glanced at the older child, who now had one finger up his nose.

“Ugh!” he said. The boy grinned, a look of pure evil. He flicked a booger on Lucifer.

“You little brat!” Lucifer cried, stumbling backward.

The mother whirled. “Sir!” But she couldn’t deny the evidence on Lucifer’s pant leg.  Exasperated, she handed him a baby wipe.

He snatched it from her. “You need to control that beast before he becomes a serial killer or something.”

“It’s a booger. Grow up,” she snapped, waving the large binder in her hands.

When she turned her back, he glared at the child so hard that the chocolate bar in his hand turned to liquid. It ran down his arm and covered him like a strawberry in a fountain. He shot Lucifer a suspicious look, then glanced at the empty wrapper in his hand and began to wail.

“Bobby!” the mother cried, grabbing the diaper bag.

“All the wipies in the world won’t get that off.” Lucifer laughed.

“I was going to let you go first, but you are unspeakably rude. You can just wait.”

“Oh, come on!” He threw his hands up. “My wife—”

“Someone married you?” She unloaded her cart, then threw the binder on the belt.

“What is that?” Lucifer jabbed a finger at the binder.

The woman gave him an evil smile that mirrored her son’s. “Coupons. I’m an extreme couponer.”

What happened in the next hour was more devastating than any torture Lucifer had endured in Hell. After everything rang up, there were coupons, thousands of them, to be scanned by the ancient cashier. Occasionally, one beeped, and she’d look at the woman. “Did you buy the sixteen-ounce soup or the eight-ounce?” And then they’d dig to find the product. The brat with the chocolate bar wiped a hand down Lucifer’s pant leg when he edged up too close, and Lucifer almost vaporized him on the spot.

Finally, the old lady said, “Your total before coupons is three hundred fifty-three dollars and eight cents. After coupons, your total is a dollar and eight cents.”

The woman with the binder paled. “That’s not possible. You must have missed one. I owe you eight cents. Please rescan them.”

Lucifer slammed the box of Tampax on the counter and uttered a flurry of curse words as he dug through his wallet and flung ones on the counter. “Here! It’s on me! Just get out of my way!”

“I will not take money from a heathen like you,” she said. “Rescan.”

“Why does anyone need seventy-six boxes of croutons?” he demanded. She ignored him.

By the time they were through, she owed eight cents, and Lucifer was shaking. He glanced down at the snot and chocolate on his leg and resisted mightily the urge to destroy the entire store.

The elderly cashier gave him a disapproving glance and took the box of Tampax. “Do I know you?” she asked.

“No,” he sighed. “But I knew your brother, Methuselah.”

She scanned the Tampax, then scanned it again. No beep. She clicked on the light and said over the intercom, “Price check, Tampax twenty-four count on register three.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephanie Scissom is from Altamont, Tennessee. She inspects tires and plots murder by night at a tire factory and attends a somewhat excessive number of Jake Owen concerts on her nights off. She’s published in romantic suspense and horror, with four full-length novels and numerous shorts. Her story Dandelions recently placed first in an international competition.

---

More Stories | Facebook