during night shift

Here at the Weekly Weird News, we've seen plenty of strange things stumble through our doors, but this story from the Reddit hinterlands strikes a familiar, haunting chord. A bleeding man, an offer of aid, an abrupt refusal, and a disappearance before the proverbial white coats can arrive. This supernatural or masochistic, but it's fascinating that on the precipice of an emergency, the man chose to buy a six-pack and walk back into the night. This is the stuff of rural legends: the wounded wanderer who isn't exactly human, or is human but socially ruined. Either way, he wasn't a zombie, since zombies generally don't have the ID or the threshold for strong lager. This story taps into the profound weirdness of the night shift. Night and the eagle-eyed minimum-wage employees are our nation's first line of defense against the abyss. Night shift workers are our official greeters to the paranormal, the only witnesses to the weird. The clerk's decision to call the ambulance without explicit consent is the kind of practical heroism that our government shadow agencies apparently lack. It suggests a deep-seated biological instinct: "The red stuff is probably leaking out of this poor bastard, so we must help him." Even if he is a werewolf, a vampire, or a simple drunk with a tendency to pick fights with the streetlights. Our editorial team wonders if this man represents the classic "nightside" phenomenon, where the grim consumption of alcohol is a prelude to a more private crisis. His refusal of help is a stubborn refusal of the veil. Maybe he was already dead, and the moment the beer touched his lips, it was actually the price of reanimation. Or maybe he just didn't want to lose sleep to visit the ER. It's the refusal to engage with the system that makes this unsettling; he chose the drink and the dark over the fluorescent lights of the hospital. This story, filed by user Independent-Pain420 on the r/Weird subreddit, is a crucial data point in our ongoing study of the people who bleed and then buy. If you see this man, do not attempt to stop him, but do count the beer cans he's holding. Remember, a man in the shadows clutching a bag of beer is in a perfectly happy place. Their are we missing a chlorine in the pool? Let us all hope his blood was simply beer. Still, the most mysterious part is not the blood, but the fact he was nevertheless able to purchase it without being out of stock. That's just good service for the living*undead* consumer. Source: [Reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Weird/comments/1vvynbh/during_night_shift/)