The List.

A hallowe’en horror.

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Dorrie had always loved lists. As a young girl she’d spent hours alone, feverishly logging her thoughts. At first, she’d listed the toys she’d wanted and been denied by her parents, then the things she was prevented from doing by the shackles of her childhood. Later, she’d added those who slighted her at school; teachers as well as classmates. These inventories of irritation were her special secret, squirrelled away underneath her bed.

She did once try to write a happier list. At university, she made one of boys, and sometimes girls, who caused her now mature body to tingle with anticipation. She dared to speak her desires to a man she thought might see the world as she did. He turned her down and her lists curdled to rage and hurt; curated in a box at the back of the wardrobe inside her tiny student room.

When she found herself in dull work, a small flat and a grimy city, she was dismayed to discover her world was not getting brighter or better as she deserved. Her lists kept her going. Words wreaking revenge on all those who did her wrong. The vitriol posted on walls and cupboards, unseen by non-existent friends and unfriendly neighbours, and slipped into her handbag or coat pocket for company.

Such long lists. The landlord who took her exorbitant rent without dealing with the black mould that ran across her walls. The bus drivers who failed to stop in the pouring rain. Her boss who rolled his eyes behind her back. The colleagues who laughed and made her an outsider.

The pale, lanky, assistant, at the small supermarket near her home, was a rare exception. He had only ever been associated with her shopping list. No matter that she knew off by heart what items she needed on her weekly trip; if something could be listed then it was. As she paid at the till, he would do what was required of him, silently. No silly small talk about the weather or the traffic.  She liked him. It was his fault that had to change.

It was her fault she had pulled the wrong list from her purse as she walked into the store, a roll call of betrayal, not groceries, but he could have let it stay on the floor where it had fallen. She had not asked him to pick it up. In fact, she had tried to swat his long gangly arm away, as he stopped stacking the shelf next to her and reached down for the folded sheet of paper.

Even after he had grabbed the list, it had not been too late. He could have saved himself by just giving it back. He didn’t have to start reading it, kneeling on the dirty linoleum. He didn’t have read it aloud, catching the attention of other customers. He didn’t have to make them stare.

Now he was at the top of a new list. One that gave her much more satisfaction than any of the others. She would look after this one. She had been sloppy, letting her old list get covered in bright red splatters, as her empty metal basket came crashing down.

ENDS

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