It was one thing to become separated from a parent, but to be forgotten and closed in, that – that was another thing entirely.

To be left alone in a store…

Trapped in that abominable shopping cart – it is impossible to articulate the terror that wracked my sensitive child’s mind. Would my parent ever come back? Would I be locked away forever with the doors shuttered? Did the mannequins come to life like in the movies and children’s television TV shows? How would I know if they were friends or foes? Their blank faces had no answers; they only served as canvases mirroring my fears.

Of course, much to my relief, my parent came back.

The years passed and with them came adulthood. Yet, I could never shake the fear of being left alone in the store. My parents grew old and frail, and as their mortalities faded into dust, this nightmare procured greater possession of my conscious.

And so a paralytic realization crept from dreaming to waking; I realized I had actually been left, but not by my parents – for they had been left too. We had all been deserted in a dying world. What I had apprehended, that they had not, was this very fact. More alarming was the realization that this fate was one that I could not forsake.

For I am still the child in the shopping cart.

My name is Monmouth West Sanderson. This is my tale.