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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Icy-Watch-4946 on 2024-09-12 13:00:29+00:00.

Better Bargains has a zero-kudzu policy. They have their origins in the American Southeast, where kudzu is just all over the place. A massive carpet of green smothering forests, burying houses, and causing all sorts of trouble. So, this chain of superstores goes crazy whenever they see the tiniest sprout of the stuff. But I don’t live in the Southeast. I live in the Midwest and I hadn’t even seen kudzu in person until they came here.

I should start from the beginning.

When I was hired at Better Bargains, one of the first things they trained me on was their zero-kudzu policy. This was about a year after they had first opened, and I think the kudzu appeared around that same time. There were many abandoned houses in the area and the tenacious vine already claimed most of them by the time I applied at Better Bargains. I would pass by some on my way to work every day. The town was dying. I don’t know why any superstores would open here. Maybe it was because the land was cheap or it was a good midway point between places that were doing better. Whatever the reason, it seems to be a good one because they are always busy.

Cutting back the kudzu was a full-time job in itself. The other front-end workers and I took turns so that no one worker had to spend their entire shift outside in the sun. It was early in the year, but we kept Summer in mind. There was always someone out there, pulling the vines off the walls and trimming them.

On the first day I trained with the shift supervisor, let’s call him Kyle. Kyle and I were clearing away kudzu together. He made sure I could do it properly.

“You missed some leaves,” a voice behind us said.

Kyle and I about jumped out of our skins. Kyle spun around and clocked the assistant manager in the eye, knocking him flat. He quickly apologized and helped him to his feet.

“That is alright, everyone makes mistakes,” said the assistant manager. He pointed to the trail of leaves we had left in our wake. “Just make sure you bag everything. Even the smallest piece left behind can sprout into a new vine.”

Not for a second did his used-car salesman smile leave his face.

The assistant manager, let’s call him Scott, had a special hatred of kudzu. When he was clearing it away, it seemed like he was on a personal crusade against the plant. When he wasn’t, he was checking up on those who were to make sure they were working up to management’s, or rather his, standard.

As for Kyle and me, we went back to pulling kudzu from the building. Kyle told me that Scott was once a used car salesman, and that was why he never stopped smiling. There were two things we knew about him. He used to be a car salesman, and he hated kudzu. It wasn’t the last time Scott would startle someone, but after this, he always seemed to appear just out of arm’s reach. The way he smiled was downright creepy. It was the smile of someone who knew they put you on guard and was trying to put you at ease.

Better Bargains was always busy, and we were always understaffed. I didn’t complain. All of my previous jobs were also understaffed, and I was used to it. When I was first hired, the sheer amount of customers baffled me. There seemed to be more people passing through the store than living in the whole town. I commented on this and the others just shrugged.

A week after I had begun working there, the building was vandalized. During the night, someone had spray-painted some sort of sign or sigil on the side of the building. Kyle was the one who discovered it when he started cutting kudzu in the morning. Scott must have thought it was somehow comical, as he couldn’t stop giggling to himself all day. The rest of the managers were more annoyed by Scott’s chuckling than the building being defaced. A crew of painters to cover had shown up to paint over the sigil by the time I had arrived for my shift and I didn’t have the opportunity to see it.

We had “anti-vandalism” training the next day. Mostly, it was a reiteration of stuff that was covered in the initial employee training. Stuff like, if we spot a vandal, alert management promptly, or report any spray-painted markings. But there were some new, oddly specific things too. Like, don’t bite any discovered vandals, no matter how delicious they appear; don’t drink anything they offer; and don’t ask for their teeth. Management explained these specific stipulations as the result of prior incidents at other locations and they had to include them for legal reasons.

The weirdness continued when roses started growing alongside the kudzu. At first, I thought it was just some wild brambles, but then it started blooming. Large red roses appeared all over the lawn and up the sides of the superstore. I did a little research and roses don’t just pop up in random places. They are shrubs for one, not vines, and are not nearly as aggressive as a kudzu. By all accounts, it seems to me that the kudzu should have killed the roses if our lawnmowers and garden trimmers hadn’t done the trick.

I think any other place would have killed to have an entire lawn of roses, but not Better Bargains. We were instructed to cut and bag them just like the kudzu. The managers reasoned that their thorns would cause more trouble than they were worth. The roses seemed to terrify them. They would only speak of them in hushed tones, as if the plants might hear them, and would wince whenever someone would speak too loudly of the problem. Kyle took great pleasure in doing this. Scott was especially fearful. He didn’t work outside for a whole week after they appeared. He never dropped that big, wide grin of his, but he was noticeably pale. Even I could see it, and I was horrible at seeing that kind of thing.

One time someone came back in for cutting and bagging with a section of rose stem stuck to their jeans. The thorns had caught enough to hold on, but not enough to prick their bearer. Scott yelped like a kicked dog and loud enough to echo off the superstore walls. Whether or not this had caused him to lose his big, wide smile, nobody could say. That wasn’t the bit that caught our attention. Afterward, management reminded us to leave all trimmed vegetation outside. Maybe Scott was allergic to roses, but then again he did go back to working outside after a while.

The building was eventually tagged by vandals again. They had painted more of that sigil on the wall during the night. I got to see it this time. It was a dot surrounded by three radial, vaguely S-shaped lines, which were all within an inverted triangle. The paint crew was called back. They had the sigils covered up by the time my shift was ended. Then, the superstore was tagged again. All three times they had somehow defaced the building without showing up on the security cameras or triggering the motion sensors.

Management had had enough. The police sent a couple of officers to watch over the building while Better Bargain looked to hire a security guard. This stopped the vandalism for a couple of days. But the day the guard was hired, the vandalism started again. The guard hadn’t seen anything. Nothing was caught by the cameras, either. The only evidence the vandals had ever been there were the sigils, and there were more of them now. It was like they were mocking us. Well, mocking management. The same sigil spray-painted over and over again.

Despite the vandalism’s frequency, its volume was manageable. I wondered how much it cost to undo for a brief moment. Ultimately, it wasn’t my problem. I just tried to avoid the wet paint when it was cutting and bagging. The days were getting longer and hotter and more than once did I get paint all over my gloves.

If the vandalism outside made management angry, they were downright furious when it started appearing inside. Whether it happened at night or during the day was impossible to tell for sure. But, it was probably during store hours because the latrines weren’t exactly under lock and key. The sigil was painted on the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling. The real mystery was how they got the kudzu and roses inside without anyone noticing.

Management’s response to this was bizarrely tranquil. I thought they might call the police or hire more security. Instead, they brought out ladders and dusty cardboard boxes. They began to hang wicker effigies and charms from the walls, aisles, and ceilings. The ones doing the hanging were as if they were in a trance. Like the charms warded off the agitation caused by the rampant vandalism. They spent the rest of the day doing this.

This was right at the beginning of Pride Month and those who loudly disapproved of Pride were just beginning to make themselves known. The other employees told me this happened last year as well. The protesting of Pride, not the roses, vandalism, or wicker figures. A much less mysterious campaign of vandalism began.

Those in the throughs of moral panic began dismantling and scribbling on anything that vaguely resembled a rainbow. As we were already on high alert for this kind of behavior, the perpetrators were caught almost immediately. Management did not tolerate these people, not this year. Having ill-doers they could catch did wonders for their morale and they did not hesitate to take out their frustrations on the protesters.

One loud middle-aged woman demanded to see the “straight section”. At least, I think she was middle-aged. She had too many facelifts and lip fillers to tell. While she was carrying on, a…

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