It was early morning. The sun had not yet risen and wasn’t expected to for a few more hours. The mockery of sleep Peter experienced last night along with his usual weeping over past regrets had left his eyes bloodshot and swollen with mounds of salted crust in their corners.

Today was a very big day for Peter, as his crew was scheduled to start on the construction of a new dam in South County. This kind of a project usually brought some excitement to Peter’s life, but Peter was too exhausted to feel anything but, well, exhaustion. In reality, terrible nights like this were becoming quite normal, as Peter reflected and couldn’t recall the last time he’d slept for a period of more than fifteen minutes. But the dam must be built, and so Peter stumbled out of the car in his delirium and made his way to the convenience store for his morning pick-me-up.

It was what someone would expect from any twenty-four-hour convenience store. The lighting was a drab yellow-green, with a bulb in the far corner making an audibly electric noise as it blinked on and off. Rows of trinkets and other gimmicks that no one needed were interspersed between king-sized candy bars, beef jerky shreds, and bags of chips, mostly sealed, but some open and half-eaten. Hundreds of bottled beverages lined the back wall behind glass doors, neatly categorized between alcohol, soda pop, tea, and the lifeblood from various fruits. Nothing out of the ordinary, overall.

Except the people. As Peter dragged himself through the aisles, searching for his beloved Chumpman energy drink and flaxseed paste granola bar, he noticed that the store was unusually crowded for this time of morning and everyone was stopped in their tracks, staring at him silently and unblinkingly. The silence was unnerving, actually, as Peter listened and the only things he picked up were the failing lightbulb in the corner, an unseen baby’s cry from what seemed like a thousand feet away, and a leaky pipe that was probably only in Peter’s head. Weird morning, Peter thought, and it was the only thing that floated across his empty mind.

In a strange twist of misfortune, Peter had to settle for a can of celery sticks after learning that every drink on the shelves had been tampered with. He managed to find his flaxseed bars, though, and grabbed a handful in a failed effort to offset his disappointment about the celery.

He approached the cashier and issued a sigh of relief that there wasn’t a line despite the number of people around him. He placed the items on the counter and saw that the cashier, who he was usually friendly with, was expressionless and his eyes were devoid of pupils and colored a cloudy white. They were also caved into his face, the skin around them dark like the smoke of burning tires. Peter opened his mouth to greet the cashier, but something about the atmosphere made it feel like speaking would be inappropriate. Wrong, somehow. Weird morning indeed, the thought re-circled his smooth brain.

Instead, Peter distracted himself by mindlessly watching a nearby machine as it warmed and rotated various foods, including taquitos, corndogs, and a single hot dog. His salivary glands awoke as he watched that single hotdog spin. He opened his mouth again and this time he did speak. “I’ll take the hot dog, too.”

“Buyer beware,” a raspy yet confident voice said from behind Peter.

Peter turned around and was met by every person in the store standing directly behind him. At the forefront of the crowd stood an ancient woman no taller than four feet with a rough wooden stick being used as a cane. Her skin was the same yellow-green color as the lighting in the store, as if she’d been stained with it over the years. She glared at Peter through an enormous ice-blue eye and Peter immediately noticed that her second eye didn’t exist; it was nothing but an empty socket with slivers of skin and meat that had healed grotesquely over time. The thousands of wrinkles on the woman did nothing to improve her image, and Peter found himself suddenly content with his own fatigued appearance.

“Excuse me?” Peter asked while he leaned back on the counter trying to distance himself from the creepy wretch.

“HEED MY WORDS, MORTAL!” the wretch screamed in a supernaturally deep and sinister voice. Items on the shelves flew across the store as the sound waves pierced through the air. The hair was immediately stripped off the heads of each person in the store, like the leaves of trees too close to an atom bomb, but Peter was the only one that seemed to notice.

The wrinkled wretch continued in her raspy voice, “Buyer beware, it is an ill fate that falls upon the man who purchases the last of the hot dogs.”

Peter, still in shock from his instant baldness, tried to run in fear, but the paste from his flaxseed bars had seeped out and glued his boots to the ground, rendering him immobile.

“Truly, the last time an event of this magnitude took place was in this very store…” the hag trailed off in a classic storyteller reflection, and as she did, her eye swirled into chaos until that chaos revealed a flashback of a young boy standing at the same counter Peter was at presently.

“Hot dog, please,” the boy said politely, looking up at the cashier. Had the cashier known that those would be the words to come from the boy’s mouth, he would’ve stopped him. But it was too late; what was said could not be unsaid. As the cashier reached for the final hot dog with grimy tongs, he closed his eyes briefly and shook his head in sorrow, knowing that the boy’s life as he knew it, had just ended.

The boy took the hot dog from the cashier and dropped his weekly allowance on the counter as payment. The payment was not enough to cover the cost of the hot dog, but the cashier didn’t say anything because he knew that the boy had just paid the highest price. The boy took his first bite and the store immediately filled with storm clouds. A bolt of lightning shot across the ceiling and struck a light in the corner of the store, setting it to blinking on and off.

Overcome with bliss, the boy continued eating the hot dog, not noticing that he was levitating and being transported by an unknown power. The soft pattering of rain became a torrential downpour as the screams and sobs of many men and women erupted from the clouds. The boy swallowed the last of the hot dog and opened his eyes to find that he was bound by ball and chain directly underneath the blinking lightbulb. Within reach of the boy was a barrel full of hot dogs. The boy became overwhelmed by a craving for the hot dogs and he began eating. He ate dozens – hundreds – of them for decades after that moment. In this time, the barrel never emptied, the boy’s craving never dwindled even after he became a man, nor did his slender frame ever change.

The storm clouds in the convenience store turned back to the ice-blue iris of the old crone’s eye as reality resumed and the flashback came to an end. Peter stood awestruck by what he’d just watched and couldn’t decide if he was more baffled by the flashback itself or the wench’s crystal ball eye.

His shock was interrupted when the cashier tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the total of his purchase on the register. “No way. I want nothing to do with this place, man. You’re crazy, every last one of you,” he looked at each person in the store.

“What was said cannot be unsaid,” the hag said casually.

“What are you saying, you old crone?” Peter grew aggressive, but only from his lack of understanding the situation.

“I’ll take the hot dog, too,” the old woman mimicked Peter. “Were those not your exact words?”

Peter rubbed at his temples, then wiped his face with the backside of a hand to get last night’s tear crust out of his eyes. He became emboldened and challenged the wench, “How do I know all of this is true? How do I know you’re not just some spooky hot dog witch from the woods?”

The raisin-skinned woman lifted a finger. “Why, that’s exactly what I am, Peter.” She extended her arm toward the blinking lightbulb. “You can take a look for yourself if you find it difficult to believe.”

Peter looked toward the corner of the store and saw that there were dozens of trophies and plaques on the walls from hot dog eating contests that had been won over the years. He suddenly heard the sound of undignified feasting, a stuffed mouth delivering loud moans for the world around to hear.

Peter’s feet became free of the flaxseed adhesive and, instead of running away, he walked slowly toward the sounds until his eyes met those of a thin, frail man who was chained to the wall and reaching into the bottomless barrel of hot dogs despite his face already being stuffed with them. The man was a prisoner, but it was not clear whose prisoner he was. Over the years, the man’s owner had used him in tournaments and would undoubtedly keep the winnings for himself and give the man the useless trophies.

“Please,” the man briefly begged before shoving another three hot dogs into his mouth.

“It is an – “

Peter startled as the witch began speaking just to his left. She rested her chin on the top end of her cane and began again. “It is indeed an ill fate that falls upon the man who purchases the last – “

“This is nuts. I’m out of here,” Peter said firmly, in what he thought would be the perfect way to precede his exit. But as he attempted to run, he was thrown to the scuffed white tile floor from the ball and chain that had appeared around one of his ankles. Instead, the hot dog man stood to his feet and ran out the door, scream-laughing, never to be seen again.

Peter pulled at the chain in a panic to free himself. “Give it a rest, Peter,” the witch admonished. “You’ve just freed a man from decades of torment. That is something to be immensely proud of.” Her eye was piercingly blue now, with an occasional stripe of orange streaking past. A centipede emerged from the socket of the missing eye, followed by a juice that dribbled down the witch’s cheek. The witch paid no attention to the centipede, even as it slipped into one of her nostrils.

“But, the dam. The dam. The dam must be built.” Peter argued, fighting the increasing urge to gorge himself with fresh hot dogs from the near-bursting barrel. Finally, the urge took over, and he couldn’t have stuffed his face quicker. Peter relieved the barrel of some of its hot dog volume, and the ensuing moans replaced the previous hot dog man’s perfectly.

“The dam can wait, Peter,” the ancient witch replied as the light overhead blinked. “Oh, but I wouldn’t want you to miss out on your canned celery!”

The witch snapped her fingers and in response, the sunken-eyed cashier brought the can of celery along with the final hot dog and placed it within reach of Peter. The celery had not yet been paid for, all parties were keenly aware of this fact. But the cashier looked Peter in the eyes and without any recollection of who Peter was, he simply finished with, “Consider it paid.”