killing a retarded girl (disturbing content)

Yasmeen’s falafel sandwich, salad, baklava, water. Mid-evening bowl of frosted flakes.

I work at a place that is kind of a Wild Oats but looks more like an old hunting lodge (Old Faithful Inn style) with check out stands. There is a retarded girl around , maybe 16 years old. Meg from work and I decide to kill her. (For what reason I’m not sure. It’s not meant with malice, but probably as some sort of condescending eugenicist mercy killing? Or do we simply not want to have to deal with her?) In the produce section (looks like Ta Lin, actually) I try to chloroform her, but she’s struggling too much and won’t go down. I call in help from Meg and some others, mostly older men in suit pants and short sleeve button downs. We drag her, wrapped in plastic, over to the bagging station at the check out, lay her down on the low shelf of the baggers station, and Meg proceeds to throttle her. We all crowd around so that no one can see what’s going on and to help hold the girl down. There is a nun around that we know is with the girl, and we are rather desperate to keep this activity from her.

Flash to later, the girl is dead, her body gotten rid of. There is a news story, they are looking for her. They show her on the TV, her face drawn up with a series of lines obviously meant to guide surgery. Apparently she wasn’t retarded, she merely had a condition of some sort from which she would have recovered and returned to a full functioning state. She was apparently also a nun, and perhaps a nurse, too? The ghost of the girl is standing around with me, mocking me, as I realize what has gone on. She mouths verbatim the news story as it is pronounced. She sneers at our folly, only I can see her, panic begins to rise inside me.