The Viking

"The Walmart manager smiled as the rest of his crew lit up in bright smiles. The camera flashed, and the regional store crew laughed and shoved each other playfully as the flash dimmed to nothing.

Harry Monds, the manager, chuckled too as his assistant manager examined the photograph she had taken on her phone. A nice picture, his employees looking happy and productive. Walmart's finest. Tyresa, the assistant manager, smiled as well and walked off.

They were supposed to take a store picture, shift by shift, showing happy and grinning employees enjoying their careers at Walmart. Harry squinted and pulled up his trousers, trying to think if any more shifts were due that day. Probably not, unless somebody had a replacement, and that wouldn't count.

Harry returned to his office in the back of the store, contemplating life and new beginnings. He stopped in front of the security mirror and looked in. With a grumpy smile and wave, he could barely see the security team laugh and wave back. He kept looking.

An overweight, squinting, sixty-something-year-old with a combover, slacks, and an average blue polo shirt looked back at him. Yuck. Harry remembered the rules, smiled reassuringly, pretended to dust something off his shirt to the security team, and went back to his office door. Jiggling a key, he walked in, sat down and slumped into his chair.

Outside, Tyresa and several other employees jumped as they heard the sound of Harry's .38 caliber revolver, kept for self-defense, firing loudly in his office. Tyresa and the others rushed in and saw Harry's form slumped over his desk next to a book on Norse mythology. He was unresponsive. Blood was splattered on the wall behind him, and more of it was pooling from his open mouth.

The security team rushed in and cleared the area. It was labeled a suicide, and rumors went on for days of what had caused it and what Harry Monds's problem had been. Weeks passed, as a new manager, Walter Jones, had been going over Harry's old routines and taking care of work the former manager would have done himself.

Things were getting back to normal, as the topic of conversation had passed, and people were starting to smile and laugh again. Walter walked past the many cashier stations, pausing to look at a board full of pictures hanging near the security window. There were his employees, with a little flower cut out for Harry Monds's memory, staring back at him.

Walter smiled at the pictures, the employees on them smiling back in return. With a flutter, the paper flower for Harry Monds fell from the board, floating gently to the ground below."