Burt's Demise

Burt sat in his Pontiac fire bird while the music drowned out the hoots of owls and screams of coyotes. Sitting in his car he gazed out upon the endless concrete desert of the World Mart parking lot. This was once a grassland where bison grazed alongside prairie dogs and wolves, now it was nothing but corn and soybeans for miles in every direction. Here he was in the unending stillness with only two other cars in sight He felt a little guilty for leaving Janine and George to watch the store by themselves, but no one was stopping them from just leaving. “Besides,” Burt thought, “George would probably appreciate the time along with her. He was constantly drooling over her with this strange, hungry look in his eyes”. If Burt didn't know better, he would have thought of George as the Hannibal Lecter type.


There came a tapping at the window, jolting Burt out of his thoughts. He could barely see through the smoke in the car, but there appeared to be a stout, lumbering figure standing over his passenger side door. He unlocked the door and welcomed them inside. “Hi Mom” Burt greeted her. “Oh gosh Burt dear, you know should shouldn't be smoking in here” his mother replied in a thick Minnesotan accent. Burt shrugged her comment aside while he started up the car and asked, “ready for your date? Did you get everything you were looking for?” “Yeah,” she replied, “But gosh your staff is kinda rude dontchaknow.” “I was minding my business looking fer some makeup when I stumbled upon your employees, when one ran away as soon as she saw me! Although the other one was quite helpful, he returned my prosthetic finger when it fell off. I know I'm not the best thing to look at but she didn't need to be outright rude to me.” Burt’s mother had been injured in a fire when she repeatedly rushed into the burning veterinary hospital she worked at to save fifteen kittens. She had third degree burns to 60 percent of her body, and had to have one arm amputated.


“Don't worry Mom, Ill make sure Janine knows to be more polite next time” Burt said as he pulled into the parking lot of the local Olive Garden. “Oh also sweetie, I think you oughta stop showing those violent video games on the TV’s you got there, I think that rude lady has been watching too many of those, she pointed a gun at me!” Burt sighed, his mother constantly exaggerated things. “Alright Mom, have fun on your date” Burt pulled out of the Olive Garden and started his way back to the store. Sadly he never made it. He was killed in a head on collision with a Semi truck while going 70+ miles an hour. Burt was heavily intoxicated from the copious amounts of marijuana he had smoked and chose to drive himself while still under the influence. Janine never learned to be more considerate to the stores customers, and on their third date, she was eaten by George.

I chose to end the story like this because I thought it would be kinda funny. But I also think it made “George” (name chosen for no particular reason) and Janine into stranger characters than the zombie. Thinking about my own experience as a lifeguard of two summers, I could imagine the kind of boredom and monotony the employees experience. I spent hours nodding my head while scanning a pool of screaming children and rude parents hoping someone would start drowning so I could get some variety. This was only made worse by the simmering heat and blinding sun while working forty to sixty hour weeks.

Service sector jobs are notorious for low pay, terrible hours, and apathetic managers. While I never had a manager smoking in their car, there were a few that were absolutely incompetent and could barely swim. People often describe boring jobs as making them feel lifeless and “zombie-like”. I chose to make the employees see the woman as a zombie because it focuses the story onto the strange partnership developed between George and Janine, and how the endless drone of their job (and probably some sleep deprivation) slowly drives them crazy.

I also chose to set the store in the Midwest because, like other aspects of the story, the Midwest is boring and monotonous.. The Midwest hosts the ultimate examples of urban sprawl, with numerous subdivisions like stone-bridge-iron-tree-trails-shire. Driving through these neighborhoods is almost as monotonous as the rows of corn, with similar looking grey-ish houses ringed by roundup-soaked lawns. Outside town It's nothing but endless corn and soybeans, and if Children of The Corn has anything to say, that is enough to drive anyone insane.