#you never hear of anyone beating the Waffle House staff

[hetalia-club]

Hetalia Theory #1006

America can be killed and does have a health bar. Pieces of his heart are locked away inside each waffle house location scattered around the united states. This is why the environment is so hostile and the employees are so combative. It's also why the locations always stay open 24 hours and only ever close down if death is certain. They are protecting him. If you travel to every waffle house location and challenge the staff to hand to hand combat and you somehow beyond all odds manage to defeat all of them at every location he is the final boss. His stats are insane and you winning is near impossible unless you bring Papst Blue Ribbon and manage to shoot enough of it it into his mouth. This will lower his stats slightly. But it also enrages him and will drastically change his personality. Many have tried none have succeeded. Every waffle house fight you see is an attempt gone wrong.

[elvespartyofcanada]

The Story of Dark Walmart

Let me tell you about Dark Walmart

 Hi Voters,

Storytime.

I am writing to you from a new apartment and that doesn’t matter except there’s a light in the bedroom and the connection is loose so it flickers when you turn it on. Like strobe lights in an awful club that decorates with dressers and a picture of my Mom (my kind of club). We haven’t asked the landlord to fix it yet and I have an inkling we never will. 

I mention this because you have to understand: I have Dark Walmart on the brain. Last summer I was changed and moments like this (when it’s like my clothes are at a rave without me and I just saw a post about buying weed from a wendigo in a Walmart) remind me of that.

So buckle up, fucknuts.

Imagine: the summer of 2016. No Bryan Adams but lots of Bruce Springsteen. A beat up old Honda Civic. It’s almost dusk at the height of probably-June. The air is thick and sticky and not like maple syrup. Maple syrup is nice. This air isn’t; it clings to your skin and fills your lungs. Three girls not in the beat up old Honda Civic: KYG, me, and a Friend (BFS, Best Friend She).

We’ve spent the day doing what most teens do in the summer months; escaping. The heat, the house, our parents, all of it. And we picked the best place to escape to, the tried and true oasis of the drought-desperate suburban teenager: the mall. Where there are candles that smell like men and people you hide behind pillars to avoid and so much air conditioning you feel the ache in your bones for days. It’s places and aches like that that get you through the summer when you live where we live

It’s Late. Not late, when things close and the mall empties and there’s the hustle and bustle of last minute cinnamon bun sales and sweeping that would put curlers to shame, but Late. When people empty out but the desolate few remain and it gets Quiet in a special way. When you know you’re here because you’re not Somewhere Else.

It’s Late and we don’t want to leave. It’s been a good day and the walk to the car would be too much and we don’t know if we have anywhere to go. Maybe a McDonalds or maybe a basement, but those aren’t always the best option (McDonals would become the best options months later when it introduced waffle fries and I will never forget that day).

So we perservere and we make our pilgrimage to the last resort. The Hotel California of the summer 2016 Canadian mall: Walmart.

But first, some history.

In 2015, Target came north.

We didn’t need Target. We had had Zellers, a special place that sold everything and nothing and had a restaurant everyone and no one had ever been too and everyone and no one knew someone who’d worked there once or never. But Zeller’s died a slow, painful death (there are still a few out there, dimming the lights and selling overstock from 2010 and it’s best not to ask who’s buying it or what they’re buying or worse, why it’s not selling) in 2010-2011. And when it died it left holes in malls across the nation.

And in January 2015 Target filled those holes.

And in April 2015 they left them empty again.

I think I bought Oreos and a can of artichoke hearts once. I know I bought a sweater I can’t find anymore.

Target’s Canadian presernce was short lived and largely unremarkable. Greater economic minds than I (so, anyone) have discussed ad nauseum why Target failed but we all know.

It wasn’t Zellers.

Also Zellers probably left a curse on every store because that’s Zellers (not a sponsor) (please come back).

So this Walmart. This Walmart filled the hole that Target left after it failed to fill the hole Zellers left. So we walked in, into the last store in the mall, the last place we thought of and (almost) the last place we wanted to be, filled with the knowledge we were stepping into a two times over reasonably-priced goods graveyard.

We were not prepared.

It was colder than even the mall. The cold went past our bones and into our souls. My children will know the cold of Dark Walmart.

Then there was the chicken.

There were no greeters at this Walmart. Only a wall of cold, unseeing, unfeeling, boneless, skinless, chicken breast to greet us. Or warn us away.

We went further. Maybe there were snacks. Maybe there were people to hide behind pillars from. We doubted there were candles that smelled like men. But we ventured on. And we saw we were alone.

Utterly

           completely 

                             totally

                                        alone.

 No staff. No customers. No pharmacist. No photographer.

No one but us.

And we kept going.

And as we got further, past the clothing no one ever bought and the chips we didn’t trust, past the toys we didn’t want and the books we’d never heard of, it got dark.

Maybe it was to save money and counterweight the cost of the soul-aching air conditioning, or maybe it was because it was near enough to closing to judge our presence but not near enough to kick us out. Whatever the reason, at first it was only half the lights, then it was fewer. And fewer and fewer.

We reached the back wall in almost darkness.

And then we heard it.

Or rather, we didn’t hear it.

No music.

No talking.

No announcements or sales or jingles or ads.

Nothing.

Like we’d had a reasonably-priced and dubious quality blanket dropped over our heads.

Like we were 16’ underwater and trying to talk to a creature with no ears (The Shape of Water trailer looks great).

It was like a sensory deprivation chamber decorated like a dentist’s office.

So we left. Quick as our heels could take us. We bought no chips. We bought no candles. We certainly bought no chicken.

But we left changed.

I can’t describe it better than to say I remember the cold. I remember the silence. And the dark. And the emptiness.

I don’t think it will ever leave me.

And every time I see a post I remember. 

We have seen Dark Walmart. We did not see a wendigo and no one tried to sell us weed, but they tried to sell us upsettingly cheap boneless, skinless chicken breasts in a discount grave, and I think that’s worse.