Hello.

This is quite possibly the last thing I will ever write. He’s after me, I know he is. I feel that this is my last chance to relate to the world what happened last week while I visited my friendly local ghetto supermarket. I know he saw me, and he’s after me, but hopefully I can let the world know what happened before he gets me.

We’ll call me Bob, to protect my innocence. I lost it a long time ago, but still.

The story starts as I entered the grocery store early last Saturday evening. Well, really, it starts when my wife (bless her) had a craving for pickles with cream cheese and asked (begged) me to go to the store for her. At any rate, I entered the store, thinking I would procure the desired items and be on my way back home in fifteen minutes flat.

That was until I passed the produce section, on my way to dairy.

“Nein! Nein! Dere shall be no fwoots! No fwoots! I shall have the schnitzengruben! Immediately!”

Startled, I peered down the aisle. A shortish man in a pair of tan pantaloons tucked into knee high black boots was shaking his fist at a very short bald man in a robe. The short bald man was offering the taller man a kiwi. I could see that the taller man was quickly becoming irate and I feared a more violent confrontation was imminent.

I edged a little closer down the aisle. The taller man paid me no attention. The bald one was speaking in a low, soothing voice, gesturing with the kiwi fruit in one hand, and, I now saw, a cucumber in the other. The taller man’s face started turning purple. Suddenly his heels snapped together, his arm sprung out straight from his body, and he exclaimed, “Heil!”. Performing a sharp about face, he marched off down the aisle. After a moment’s pause, the short bald man started trailing after him, still with the kiwi and cucumber in hand.

I followed this odd pair to the deli section, where the military dude was confronting the poor deli clerk, demanding “schnitzengruben” at the top of his considerable lungs.

“Yo, you crazy, bro. Ain’t nothin’ like that here, yo,” explained the ghetto deli clerk.

“Vat?” asked the man.

“Bitch, please. I said we ain’t got nothin’ like that! You deaf, yo? You need a cap in yo’ ass to make it clear?”

The man in the pantaloons considered this pronouncement for a moment, then pulled out a gun and shot the deli clerk in the head. He toppled over, and the man reached into the deli case, grabbed a kielbasa, snapped his arm out again, turned around, and marched off. No sooner did the bald man catch up than he was off after the other man again. His protests became louder. “Adolf, you must find your chakra. You must touch your inner peace. Breathe deeply…”

Adolf was having none of it. He stormed through the store, shouting random sausage names, saluting all the white people with his arm straight out and shouting “Heil! Heil!” and shooting the ones that didn’t salute back. Which was pretty much everyone, since there weren’t a lot of white people in this part of town. Meanwhile, the robed bald guy was repeating his pleas for Adolf to find his chakra, but I wasn’t seeing that there was any impact.

Suddenly, the little man ran around until he was directly in Adolf’s path. Dropping the kiwi and cucumber, he sat himself on the ground in front of Adolf. He closed his eyes and set his hands on his knees, palm up.

“What! What! What ees dis you awe doing? Get out off my vay!”

The bald man cracked an eye. “I am protesting peacefully. This is a sit in. I shall not eat until you have calmed down and restored balance to your soul.” With that, he closed his eyes again.

Adolf gazed down at him for a moment. “Gandhi, you awe cwazee. I shall not tolerate such fwoolishness,” he declared, promptly pulling his gun and shooting Gandhi in the head. He picked up the cucumber, examined it, then bit off a bite.

“Hmmm,” he said thoughtfully, then saluted Gandhi’s corpse, about-faced, and suddenly I was staring into the eyes of this maddened killer. He eyed me while munching on the bite of cucumber.

“I crapped my pants,” I blurted out suddenly.

“Heil!” he exclaimed.

Then he was gone, leaving in his wake a grocery store massacre and me, with my soiled pants and terror-filled memories.

Of course, since most of the store personnel were either dead or cowering behind their checkstands, I grabbed my pickles and cream cheese and booked my ass outta there. But I know he’ll come back for me. I…