“Sam Sulek,” a Short Story by Durian Gourd

Friday night shifts at the cash register tend to pass extra slow. Once the late evening rush fades I feel less like a cashier: more like a prop to make the occasional stray shopper feel less lonely walking through abandoned aisles at this odd hour. Occasionally, a group of stoned kids with bloodshot eyes will come in and leave with armfuls of Takis and ice cream and to be honest that’s probably the least depressing type of person that appears at this hour. Often it’s straight up neckbeards that come in late, leaving with impressive quantities of chips and TV dinners. The guy that pushes carts in the lot for us is a total neckbeard. I’m glad there’s two of us that work here. And now that I think about it, almost every grocery store I’ve shopped at seems to have at least one guy that looks like us that herds in carts from the lot. 

Without any shoppers to ring up, I’d tuned everything out for some time in a long daydream. It was about forty five minutes after midnight. 

I flinched once I heard the automatic doors open in what felt like the first time that hour. Reflexively, I looked over to see who was entering the market. I couldn’t believe what I saw, either: the guy that walked in ever so nonchalantly was like no one I’ve ever seen in this suburban Ohio town.

*

Ever since I was a little boy I dreamt of things that were beautiful. And powerful. Beautiful because they’re powerful. Things like the silverback gorillas of Africa which carried themselves with an air of surprising grace and sophistication along with their brute, blunt-force aesthetic. 

After I get off work at odd hours every day I usually go through the same routine. I sit down and eat a bowl of cereal. Sometimes shower. Then, until I sleep, I’ll usually watch TV or videos on my phone.

Recently, I’ve been into anime. I’m completely captivated by how much power a given individual can have in these oft whimsical universes that adhere to naught but the laws of absurdism. Once, I watched a scene where the battle of two individuals was so intense that it permanently changed the climate of the island where it transpired in wake of their duel.

*

In that moment I wasn’t sure if I’d dozed off at the register and started dreaming. I thought my eyes were deceiving me. Maybe inappropriately mixing the elements of the anime universes that captivated my imagination with the banal realism that had swallowed the lopsided majority of my waking hours. 

I thought this type of person was a breed strictly relegated to fiction: the impossibly, unbelievably, preposterously muscular figure. He wasn’t short, standing around five foot eleven, but he still looked damn near wider than he was tall. His arms were about as thick as the average obese person’s thigh, but in pure muscle, as shown by the definition and vascularity. His capped shoulders looked like he was wearing football pads somewhere beneath his skin. 

I didn’t get a good look at his facial features since I was so intrigued by his unreal-looking physique. I did see that he had wavy, unkempt-looking hair that sat at about shoulder-length. His baseball cap had Japanese letters on it and his square-shaped, acne-clad face made a generally stolid impression.  

When he passed the checkout area with his shopping cart, I got a glance at his lats. They made him look like some type of stingray or something from behind. I thought of that one episode from Spongebob, when Patrick entered the fry cook games and entered the arena strapped to a random, hilariously hulking fish that managed to intimidate all the average gym-going fish.

He disappeared into an aisle. Very casually, like a bear lumbering back into its woods. Once I had a chance to process what I’d seen I started to get a low-grade anxiety. My hands started to sweat.

If he wanted to rob this store for everything it had, I’m not sure anyone could stop him. I certainly wouldn’t be able to. Even without the key to the cash register he could probably break open the goddamn thing with his bare hands and only minor exertion. 

I started getting more and more nervous. Especially since I was the only cashier on shift. 

*

When he appeared at my checkout lane I didn’t even have time to be nervous about his size because I was pretty taken aback by the raw quantity of food the man had fetched into his shopping cart.

When I saw him he gave a slight nod. “How’s it going?” he asked. His voice was very unassuming and he was very soft-spoken for a man of such gargantuan proportions.

“Not bad, just ready to go home and watch some anime,” I said. “Looks like it’s Thanksgiving, huh.”

He chuckled. “It’s Thanksgiving every day for Sam Sulek,” he said. 

I pretended to understand his reference and laugh, though I was uncertain if Sam Sulek was a household name for people of his build or if the guy was referring to himself in third person. 

Presumably he came here after the gym. He was wearing baggy athletic pants and a tank top made from an oversized t-shirt with the sleeves and some change ripped off. Not only was he gargantuan but he was also extremely lean.

Given the raw quantity of groceries the man had, we had forever to stand here and chat. He scooped his groceries out of his cart by the armful and dumped them onto the conveyor belt. 

Down the conveyor belt came a parade of unhealthy and calorically dense foods.

Loaves of white bread. Peanut butter and jelly. Heaps of ground beef. Several gallons of chocolate milk. Seven boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Pork chops. Eggs, eggs, and more eggs. Butter. Why so much chicken? And that was only the tip of the iceberg.

I didn’t want to look weak in front of this mysterious and incredibly strong man, so I did my best to quickly shuttle his groceries from the conveyor belt to the scanner into tactical placements in double-lined brown bags. He was clearly the stronger out of us two but I thought maybe I could impress him with my speed.

“Any fun plans for this weekend?” I asked the mysterious man. 

“Going to the gym tomorrow for legs and back tomorrow, which I’m excited for,” he said. I’ve seen enough gym memes on Instagram to know that leg days can be notoriously unfun. I couldn’t really tell if he was being sarcastic or not. “Other than that, nothing really. I have a few exams next week so I’ll be on campus hitting the books.” 

I was rattled to learn that this guy was a college student. He looked like he was 35. Though I guess he realistically could’ve been 35 and going to college late after over a decade working in construction. I didn’t bother asking where specifically he goes to college since pretty much everyone here in Oxford, Ohio goes to Miami University.

“What do you study?”

“Mechanical engineering,” he said.

“Very cool.”

My uncle was a mechanical engineer who used to work on robotic automation systems in car factories. I imagined the conveyor belt being an assembly line where Sam’s groceries were ushered through the scanner and into the bags by an elaborate system of robotic arms. Then, I imagined them being replaced by Sam Sulek’s arms. No way the robotic arms of my imagination could be as strong and efficient as his, though.

By the time I finished scanning and bagging the man’s groceries I felt the sweat condensing on my forehead and on my torso beneath my shirt. 

“Alright, that will be 274.13,” I said. 

The man looked unperturbed. 

Sometimes with numbers that high, bitchy middle-aged white ladies will point their fingers and accuse me of making some mistake, demand to scrutinize the itemized list while everyone behind them in line eyes me passive aggressively. Only to find out that they did indeed buy a lot of money’s worth of food. 

He swiped his card through the reader then appeared to stare at a spot somewhere behind me with a vacant expression. 

“Looks like it didn’t go through,” I said. “Would you mind swiping again?”

“Oh yeah, sure.” He swiped once again and afterwards I saw his brow furrow, looking perplexed. 

“It looks like there’s an error,” he said. 

Maybe the magnetic strip was simply worn out from him swiping too forcefully without knowing just how strong he is. 

“I can put in the card manually then if it’s not working,” I said, as he handed me his card. The cardholder's name read Sam Sulek.

“Alright, here’s your receipt,” I said, handing him a receipt about a meter long. “Good luck on your tests.”

“Thanks,” he said in a very polite tone. “Hope the rest of your shift passes fast.” With a slight nod of the head he disappeared into the night. 

*

The next time I saw Sam was two days later on Sunday night under similar circumstances. I saw him walking in from the parking lot: the figure cut from the streetlight’s glow was far too distinctive to be the silhouette of anyone else.

In he walked as the automatic sliding doors opened for him like two obsequious machines. Yielding to him as if he would casually pry them open like King Kong did to the jaws of the T-Rex if they didn’t get out of his way. 

Back so soon? He was back; I surmised he must have forgotten something. No way he could have wolfed down that quantity of food in just two days. 

This time, he had a sour look on his face. He didn’t appear to have the placid demeanor that he had the prior time. Maybe he was suffering from some of the side effects of anabolic steroids, i.e. the infamous ‘roid rage.’ 

Every few minutes — for around thirty minutes or so — the usual silence of my late night shift as a grocery store cashier was punctuated by what was presumably Sam screaming like many do when they lift heavy. A primal scream that sounded like he was deadlifting one thousand pounds, followed by the sound of food packaging getting Gronk-spiked into his cart. 

The sounds made me nervous. 

Once again I was the only cashier on shift. I braced myself for the interaction as he came pushing his cart into the checkout.

I expected the parade of unhealthy foods to start coming down the conveyor belt once again but instead he looked me in the eye and grinned wide, walking right past the register like a douchebag in an F-650 pickup truck blowing past a stop sign. 

“I ain’t paying. Do something you fat fuck, I dare you.” 

Even from fifteen feet past the register he still craned his neck back to grin back at me, goading. 

I knew what I had to do. It was my duty. I couldn’t just roll over for this guy and be his bitch just because he’s bigger than me. 

I made up my mind that I would try to stop him. If I die, I die, I thought. I sprinted at him full speed and went for my best football tackle. Even if my body composition was far inferior to his I still had some decent mass and probably weighed around what he did.

But despite being so bulky he was surprisingly agile. He dodged me effortlessly with a quick half step to the side. 

Then, he initiated contact before I even hit the floor. He felt like he was made out of asphalt. With such a superior body composition, I was only able to offer feeble resistance once we collided. 

He pinned me down and subdued me, effortlessly. From under what felt like a slab of concrete I flailed my legs violently, trying to get up, but I couldn’t. 

I felt impotent, emasculated. 

*

I jolted awake, startled, my flailing legs tossing my anime girl bed sheets up in the air. 

I exhaled, relieved. My second encounter with Sam Sulek was naught but a bad dream. 

I looked at my alarm clock: it was about 10:30 in the morning. The small bit of sunlight seeping through my curtains looked a little more nostalgic than it normally did at this hour. 

I got out of bed and started going through my normal morning routine. I brushed my teeth. 

Even if it wasn’t real, I couldn’t shirk the lucid emotionality I felt in my dream. The feeling of being emasculated by Sam Sulek. 

Usually, when it was time to confront my shirtless torso in the mirror, I shied away from the challenge issued by my reflection. I opted to change shirts only in an area without a mirror when I could. When I got out of the shower, I put my shirt on instantly before the mirror could show me the years of junk food abuse I subjected my body to. 

This time, I wasn’t going to run away. I stared at my arms in the mirror. I thought of the industrial machinery my uncle worked on and thought of my arm being replaced by those imaginary robotic arms from the car factory. Then I thought of the robotic arms in the mirror being replaced by Sam Sulek’s prodigious muscles. I smiled for the first time in days. Reached for my workout clothes for the first time in years.