3. Traffic Demon

            Drinking at your parents’ house is always a tricky balancing act because you want to drink enough for them to be tolerable but not so much that they question your maturity.  I figured two glasses of wine was an appropriate weight-distribution stick to carry across the tightrope.  That’s right, I didn’t plan to get drunk, so no, I had not arranged for a DD, but unbeknownst to me, I would be encountering one of a different sort later that night.

            I guess I should go ahead and clear this up now: I will be referring to my parents by obviously pseudo ‘nym’ names as well.  They will be Papa Nym and Mama Nym, and yes, as I thought through this naming convention, I had a good chuckle and a few minor regrets.  It’s a pity that my father doesn’t have a sister who could be Auntie-nym.  Get it?  Like antonym.  Maybe she could be Papa’s diametric opposite.  Or if I had a gay twin brother who sounded just like me…  But I don’t.  Which, actually, is kind of why I was at my parents’ house in the first place.

            A nasty thought had been festering in my mind for several days after my encounter with the mall demon (though at the time I didn’t know that this was what she was) but even once I had planted myself at the kitchen table of my youth, it took me over an hour and two glasses of wine before I was able to spit it out.  The question, I mean, not the wine.

            My mother was talking ad infinitum about work at the food bank and how frustrating it is when people turn in food that is well past its expiration date, or submit seemingly sealed boxes where the inner bag has already been opened.  My father had no doubt heard this complaint at least a thousand times more often than I had but he still fixed his understanding eyes on her and nodded empathetically.  I, meanwhile watched those eyes and that nod, and tried to determine how Cage-y they actually were. 

            “How come sometimes when a bag of Lindt truffles get hot, they melt out of their wrappers into a bag of mush, but sometimes it’s just the insides that turn into liquid?”

            “Very interesting,” I said, “But what I want to know…”

            Mama fixed me with a disapproving glare, and Papa affected a smirky little half-smile, curious to see how this potential argument played out.

            “Sorry,” I said, “I guess it just doesn’t seem like starving people need Lindt chocolate truffles in the first place.”

            “Well, they don’t usually get them.  Some employee always nabs them first.”

            “Oh, well that’s good then.  Or… How do you know the insides turn to… sorry, I was wondering… I don’t, I mean… there’s no possible way I have a sister, is there?

            Mama brayed like a donkey.

            Papa hung his head.

            “So, that’s a no?  OK, that’s what I thought.”

            “Why?”

            “Well, it’s nothing really.  I just ran into a girl the other day and I thought she looked a bit like…”

            “And you figured you should make sure you weren’t related before you…” Papa thinks he’s funny.

            “Don’t you dare cheat on Daisy.”  Mama doesn’t.

            “I wouldn’t.  I was actually at the mall buying Daisy a gift when I saw this…”

            “Can I see it?”

            “No, mom. But anyway, the girl looked a lot like, well, us, but no sister.  That answers that.  You’re sure?”

            “I would know, sweetheart.”

            Obviously.  But now she and Papa were making weird eye contact and he seemed to nod slowly.  Holy shit!  Was he confessing an affair to her?  I poured a third glass of wine and thanked the heavens that I hadn’t described the face-shifting bimbo in more detail.  What if dad used to have a blonde big-boobed secretary in the years after my birth?  I didn’t remember ever meeting her, but then, I wouldn’t have, would I?  Did carpenters have secretaries?  Jesus Christ…

            “Your birth was a miracle, sweetheart,” said my mom.

            I drank some more wine.

            “Your mother and I never planned to have children,” added Papa.

            Miracle, accident, potato, potahto.

            Mama took a deep breath and continued, “I had a condition when I was young, and the doctor’s told me that I had… that I had lost all of my eggs.”

            “Her internal Easter bunny did too good of a job,” said Papa, reminding me where my sense of humor came from, and I don’t mean a rabbit in my mom’s vagina. “But apparently he missed one.”

            “We were really scared when I started to… you know, show.  But then we realized what was happening and we… well, we warmed up to the idea.  The doctors said it didn’t make sense, that the chances were insanely small of any viable eggs remaining, of one actually being fertilized, but now it seems obvious… you’re one in a million.  That’s why we named you ‘Craig’.”

            (An aside: Obviously that sentence makes no sense with my nym name, but for the sake of journalistic integrity, I’m leaving her speech intact.  And to you demons out there, if you’re able from that to figure out what my name is, well… I’ll see you soon.)

            “And you’re sure that…”

            “We did research,” said Papa, “That’s what you do when something doesn’t make sense.  And consider that this was before the internet.  I called clinics, I sent off for medical papers.  I wanted to know how it had happened.  I wanted to know how we had been… blessed with you.”

            Interesting.  I pushed back from the table.

            “I should really head out,” I said.

            “But you’ve barely touched your food,” bristled Mama. 

This wasn’t true, I’d touched it quite a lot, pushing it back and forth on my plate to create the illusion of eating, a deception which had apparently failed.  It’s not that my mom is a terrible cook, though she is, but I was distracted by thoughts of my potential siblings, my problematic patronage, and by the troubling prospect that my father had perhaps been unfaithful.  I shook my head.

“Did she really look that much like us?” she asked.

No, I thought, just like dad.  And me. 

Then he read me’s mind.

“After you were born,” Papa added, “The possibility of another surprise child weighed heavily on us.  But we knew it wouldn’t happen.  It was impossible, but then, so were you.  Still, to make it a certainty, to ease our expectations… when you were still a baby, I had a vasectomy.”

I think my mother misinterpreted my sigh of relief as a half-gag of disgust, because she said, “Woah, TMI, honey.”

And even though this was LI than the ovary-bunny, I still finished off the last of my wine and headed for the door.

“Hold on,” Mama Nym called after me, “If you’re not going to eat dinner, at least take some desert.”

She placed two Lindt chocolate truffles in my hand.  I pocketed them, gave her a hug, and shook Papa Nym’s hand.  He locked eyes with me in an ‘I just talked to you about my penis’ kind of way and said, “Be careful out there.”

I assured him that I would.

But it’s hard to focus on the road when your mind is filled with unwanted thoughts about your parents’ genitals and I reflected that perhaps I could transfer this focal subject to something newer, younger, and better.

“Call Daisy,” I requested of Siri as I turned my car – yes, I was still driving a car at this point – out of my parents’ neighborhood and onto the highway.

“Hello.”

“Dr. Jones!” I over-said, “Discover anything exciting today?”

“As a matter of fact, beneath the top layer of dust I located a second, equally fascinating layer of even more dust.”

“Sounds like my dick.”

“What?”

“You know?  Because I haven’t been using it lately.  Obviously.  Because you’re out of town.  Sorry, I’ve got dicks on the mind.  But at least it’s my own now.  Could be worse.  Could be my dad’s.”

“Do I even want to ask?”

“No… perhaps not.”

“OK then, I won’t.  So, aside from dusty dad dick, how’ve you been?”

“Not great.  Not bad.  I thought for a moment I might have a sister, but it turns out I don’t.  And though my dad didn’t have an affair, or at least, not a fruitful one anyway, I learned that my mom probably steals Lindts from the food bank, so I guess I do descend from morally dubious stock.”

“Well, glad to hear it about the sister thing.  I guess.  I do have a sister, but you knew that already.  You said your mom steals lint?  Like pocket lint?”

“Actually…” I tapped my pant-leg then shifted to my left butt-cheek while shoulder-pinning my phone to my ear as I fished one of the chocolates out of my pocket.

“Hey Craig,” Daisy said, vaguely questionish, “Do you feel like there’s something wrong?  It just seems like you’re distant.”

“Well, geographically I am.  But sorry, no, we’re good.  I just got distracted by a chocolate that I’d rather not have melted in my pocket.  Figure I’ll eat it to help me visualize how insanely sweet you are. Anyway, how’s the dig going?”

“It’s fine.  Not much to do out here for fun though…”

She kept talking right through that ellipsis, but my listening trailed off as the truffle ejaculated molten chocolate all over my chin and shirt.  I shoved the remaining hemisphere of dripping sweetness into my mouth then grabbed the nearest piece of fabric I could find – a torn extra-small shirt – to try and get the brown lava off of my actual shirt before it stained.

Of course, in the process of doing this, my attention to both Daisy’s train of thought and the speed limit had lapsed, so when I saw the blue lights approaching in my rearview mirror, I metaphorically shat myself in much the same way that the troublesome truffle had literally just shat my shirt.  I merged into the right lane, braked just hard enough to look suspicious, and dropped Daisy into my lap just in case there was some kind of no-phones rule in whatever parish I passing through. 

The blue lights were joined by a left-hand turn signal as they followed me into the right lane.  Either he had signaled backwards, or those three – why did I drink three!? – glasses of wine had affected me more than I thought.  This was bad.  The turn signal blinked off as the lights approached rapidly then were joined again, this time by a right hand signal, which signaled to my lungs that I should breathe a sigh of relief as this officer wasn’t pulling me over.

But instead of going right, he merged back into the left lane and flew past me blaring his horn.  I assume his intent was to give me a hands-on lesson about the Doppler effect, which I appreciated almost as much as the realization that this guy wasn’t actually a cop, but rather one of those tools who buys blue headlights for absolutely no reason.

“Hey, sorry about that,” I said as I lifted the phone back to my ear.

“Are you OK?” Daisy asked.

“Yeah, this guy is driving like a lunatic and I got chocolate on two of my shirts.  No big deal.  Extra-small, in fact.  Anyway, what were you saying?”

“What was the last thing you heard?”

“Uhhhh… most of it.  You’re bored.  And do we have a problem.  We don’t.”

“Ok,” she said, “I was just saying that we got a new group of researchers at the site today and they seem like an OK…”

I had now slowed considerably to avoid further scares as I continued to try and clean my shirt, but found that I was still gaining on Honky – I mean this acoustically, not racially – the pseudo-cop at an alarming speed.  Once I was close enough to read his assorted bumper stickers, he switched on the right hand turn signal again, and slowed down further, forcing me to do the same.  I considered passing, but cars treating the speed limit like a Buzz Lightyear slogan were zipping by in the left lane.  Besides, I was going slow anyway, and why not wait the extra few seconds?  That would give me a chance to listen to whatever Daisy was now saying about her degree of career satisfaction.  Or I could read the bumper stickers.

One of them seemed to be written in Braille, and another said, “Be glad your parents weren’t pro-choice.”  I’d seen this bumper sticker before and I had always hated it.  Talk about a major assumption there, honky.  Not every pro-choice woman aborts every pregnancy.  I had always commented to whoever was passenging with me when we passed such a sticker, that it should have a clause that read “if you weren’t a planned pregnancy, like I was.”  Except now I’d just learned that I wasn’t.  Maybe the bumper sticker should read ‘Be glad the doctors tricked your parents into thinking that they didn’t need to use birth control.’

            As my thought process moved steadily forward, my car didn’t, for though the other car’s turn signal was still on, he had yet to turn.  Cars behind me kept waiting for openings then darting out to pass me on the left. 

            And then, just as I had countered the driver’s rightwing bumper sticker, he now contradicted his right-hand turn signal and merged into the left lane, cutting off a car that had just snuck out from behind me.

            “Are you kidding me?” I muttered.

            “I know, right?” said Daisy.  Well that was lucky.  And so was the guy who managed to brake just in time to avoid reading a Braille sticker with his front bumper.

            I accelerate back to a little below the speed limit and returned to cleaning my shirt as Daisy continued talking about whatever it was I had just agreed with.  I genuinely tried to listen, but I kept getting distracted by the endless honking.

In front of me, the cone of my headlight colored headlights were hanging out with a matching light-blue set, and a glance to my left revealed that Honky – who I now saw was a heavyset black man – had matched my speed.

Except Honky wasn’t the one honking this time.  No, the cacophony I was hearing came from the rear where a dozen cars and counting had collected behind our slow moving vehicles, which now blocked both lanes.  I speculated that perhaps the pseudo-cop had slowed to avoid harassment from a real cop.

“Hey, can you just call me back when you get home?” asked Daisy from where she had again fallen to my lap.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, pressing the phone, and a splotch of muddy chocolate to my cheek.

I glanced over at the neighboring vehicle and saw that he was looking at me.  Did he want to get over?  I suppose we had already established that he was turn signal impaired.  I slowed to let him pass.  He slowed to match me.  The cars behind us accelerated the frequency of their honks.

I sped up.  He matched me again.

I glanced over again and did a double take.  I wondered if his fixed stare might be the result of the unintentional partial blackface that Mama’s Lindt had put on my cheek, an oddly ironic yin yang type scenario, since his black face had now turned white.  He saw me staring, and I think he knew what I was seeing, because he finally accelerated. 

As his taillights cleared my hood, he flipped on his left turn signal, and perhaps because I hadn’t caught on to his directional dyslexia, what he did next caught me totally off-guard.  He cut to the right, right in front of me and I cut off the road caught a guardrail.

I sat there in my car, staring out at the passing traffic in shock.  I was horribly confused, not by the Braille bumper sticker, not by a sighting of a rare black republican, but instead by my encounter with yet another Nicholas Cage who now, 60-seconds later, was gone.

There was no way Papa could have fathered the man I just saw, but vasectomy aside, he had seeded an idea in my mind.

“Research,” he had said, “That’s what you do when something doesn’t make sense.”

And research I would.  But first I needed a tow-truck.

2. Mall Demon

            Demons have a sense of purpose, a specific goal, which I assume is gifted unto them by their dark lord.  They might occasionally do things that are unplanned or indirect but not often.  I however am not a demon.  So please, in this recollection of my first demonic encounter, forgive my human aimlessness in much the same way Cassie did on our shopping trip on that fateful day.

            I had invited Cassie to the mall with me because unlike my exquisite word choice, my powers of jewelry selection were, and still are, exceptionally weak.  Why was I buying jewelry?  Had Trevor told Daisy that her failure to wear any emblems of our relationship indicated a lack of commitment to the metaphorical bonds that a chain would symbolize?  He had not, because Daisy had not met him yet, or if she had, I certainly hadn’t heard of him.  That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I was there of my own accord, at a mall, on my way to a Kay Jewelers of my own volition. 

Well, Cassie had recommended it.  I demanded she accompany me.

            We were the only couple in the mall within ten years of our age in either direction and one of very few pairings not holding hands.  In my self-conscious mind’s eye our lack of intimacy drew more attention from passersby than the interracial gay couple who sauntered past, arm in arm as we traversed the evil landscape of the food court. 

‘He must beat her.’  That’s what I assume the pretzel-munchers were all thinking.

            As we neared the escalators down from the food court to the premature Santa’s lap set (OK, that wording is grossly ambiguous.  The point is, it was still early November) Cassie stopped abruptly.

            “Oh my God,” she said.

            “Are you talking to me?” I asked.

            “You go ahead.  I want to check out their griddles.”

            I looked around, baffled.  Was there a McDonald’s I had missed?  Then I spotted the fantasy paraphernalia store and realized that she had said ‘girdles’ not ‘griddles’.  The store sported a variety of swords and leatherware beneath a giant cutout Smaug.  Cassie hobbitted off towards it.

            “But…” I butted, “Where am I supposed to start.”

            “Where every Kiss starts,” she said.

            “Kay?”

            “Great.”

            “No, I know what store.  Where do I start within the store?”

            “Well,” she said, taking a step closer to me and interrupting the idyllic frolic of a pair of pre-teen Nirvana fans, “You love Daisy, right?  And you want her to have the best, yeah?”

            “I mean, I don’t really believe in true… you know… love.  And I don’t think there’s a direct correlation between money spent and…”

            “Then start with the cheapest option.” I nodded.  This advice seemed compatible with failure to hold down a job lately.

            Cassie grinned and patted me on the arm, very bro-like, then hurried away towards the store, which was simply titled RPGS with a smaller sign beneath it that read (Role Playing Game Shoppe) and an even smaller sign beneath that which read (NOT Rocket Propelled Grenade Store!)  This seemed obvious to me, not because of common American attitudes towards weapons in public places, but rather because of Cassie’s enthusiasm about getting there.  She wasn’t a movie prop person like her friend Brent.  No, she was a costumer, which should retroactively explain the interest in the girdles.  And glad I was for that distinction.  After all, if she were a – can you believe they call themselves – propmaster, she might have bought an elaborate sword and subsequently skewered me for being such a pedantic and clingy mall non-boyfriend.

            It was also a good thing that my real girlfriend (not Cassie, nor the RPG kind) wasn’t a propmaster either.  To the layman, Cubic Circonium and Diamond are basically Potato, Potahtoe.  Though in the latter half of that awful metaphor one is definitively wrong, to my jewel of a non-jeweler girlfriend, they would likely pass for one and the same.

            I joined the escalator behind a pair of circus stilt-walkers and/or freakishly tall elderly folks and began my descent into the Cave of Wanderers in search of the cheapest jewel available, vowing to myself that I would not touch the rest of the treasure.

            I was just RPGing into my orphaned Arab role when past the shoulders of the geriatric giants in front of me, I noticed my father getting onto the up-scalator amidst a sea of teenage girls.  I only got a glance of him as the elderly ents shifted position, but several things about him struck me as odd, not the least of which were the absence of my mother, the presence of the glam squad, and that blue top which looked too tight on my dad but great on that hot girl.

            Leaning my head unsafely over the side of the escalator I blinked hard and tried to come to grips with my sanity.  What would Freud have to say about me mistaking a ridiculously attractive blonde for the man who seeded my mom?  And she was hot.  I really can’t overstate that.  Her blue shirt was such a cool color that her heat was practically melting it away in my mind.  I’ll confess that I liked what I saw, particularly in the absence of Daisy, but the illusion was shattered as I tilted back up off her chest and into reality where she now looked like… a really hot girl eying me with disgust, looking down on me, both literally and figuratively amidst her lady friends as they all floated away up the escalator with a series of condescending stares.

            I was red with embarrassment and figured in the interests of cooling off, I should glance back at her once more, letting the literal blue of her shirt and the metaphorical blueness of my dissatisfying long-distance relationship chill me back to an emotionally equilibrium.  Instead, my confusion amplified.  Why had I been so attracted to this girl?  Sure, she was chesty and topped with some sexy locks, but neither made up for Nicholas Cage’s face, nestled in between them.

            I was floored.

            By the escalator which had abruptly ended while my hand was still on the banister.  I scurried out from under a waterfall of snickering sophomores and U-turned back onto the upward option.  Altitudinal aerobics.

            “Sorry,” I said to no one in particular, then tried really hard not to gaze too deep into the hole in the fabric that struggled to contain the ambiguous butt in front of me.  I didn’t even bother to confirm its gender once we’d leveled out.  I was busy investigating a larger hole in the fabric of my reality by scanning the upper deck for the blue breasts with the oddly shifting face.

            So I tripped again and was trampled again and when I’d regained my footing, if not my pride, the mysterious faceshifter was gone.  But my curiosity wasn’t so I eenie-meenied and went left.

            I had just spotted her again chatting with her friends in the entry to an American Eagle when a Renaissance Faire wench with Cassie’s face accosted me.

            “Really?” She said, I leave you alone for two minutes and you’re already chasing after a high-school girl.  Don’t tell me it’s because she’s a shoplifter.”

            Well at least the wench clearly was Cassie and this wasn’t another case of face-swapping.

            “You don’t understand,” I said, “I thought she was my… she looks just like Nicholas Cage!”

            “Awww… and you hate him.  If you’re trying to pretend you don’t find her attractive, that’s still a little extreme.”

            “I’m not kidding!  Look at her.”

            Cassie sighed and stared at the girl in blue, who was standing next to the American Eagle cash register, silhouetted by a Sale sign that matched the pattern of my future former futon.

            “No she doesn’t,” said Cassie as the girl glanced back out at the mall, “But she really is shoplifting.”  And Cassie was right on both charges.  The girl had gone back to being distractingly gorgeous, and was in the process of stealing not only my sanity, but also a stack of AE gift cards.  “Who shoplifts gift cards?” Cassie asked, “They’re not activated yet.”

            “Who shoplifts girdles?” I asked.  She pointed to herself, grinned, then realized that she was in fact still wearing an unpurchased costume sporting an anachronistic price tag.  She gasped, which was remarkable considering the tightness of the leather, and rushed back into the store.

            Which gave me a chance to quadruple check the facelifter across the way.  She was gone.  I glanced up and down the strip of stores but amongst the sea of elderly and youthful meanderers I couldn’t spot either of her faces anyway.  Another glance back at American Eagle and I saw one of her less attractive, and less suspicious, friends checking out some sort of jean bikini… bijeani?

            So I went to American Eagle for the first time in years and pretended to peruse while I kept my thoughts on the people and plaid in my periphery.

            “Can I help you?” an attendant asked.

            “Just looking,” I said, before realizing that the men’s section was hanging out in the aforementioned periphery, and that my face was pointed at a too-close wall of Aerie panties.

            “Sorry,” I said, which only made me sound creepier as I tucked my tail and waddled off towards the men’s racks, still keeping my eyes out for a woman’s, specifically in blue.

            I had just reached a display of men’s pearl-snaps when I finally found her.  Her face, which was still hers, left me feeling an odd mix of satisfaction and relief.  Perhaps I’d just been confused, seeing things.  Maybe I needed glasses.  Maybe I should test out my vision, and what better way than by staring at the blonde object of my attention, whose butt, though not as attractive as her breasts, did feature some enormous letters which I was able to sight-read with ease: P-I-N-K.

            The bottom row down, I tilted up and skipped straight to the smaller letters on the top – S-M-L-XL – which is when I noticed what she was doing.  She was switching the shirts on the ‘no-returns’ clearance rack so that the Smalls hung on hangers marked XL.  What a… Then she saw me.

            I turned quickly, but I knew I’d been made.  Still, maybe I could play it off if I acted more like a shopper.  I grabbed a Medium pearl snap off the rack in front of me and bee-lined to the dressing rooms.

            Once I was inside of a million mirror images of myself, I breathed a deep sigh of relief and we all sat down to gather my wits.  After a few moments and several glances at myselves, I had calmed down, but still felt like I should perhaps wait another minute before re-emerging into the store.   Why waste those minutes when here in front of me was a shirt, which of course I would never actually wear, but hell, why not try it on?  Daisy had lately been after me to improve my wardrobe, anyway.  And this was pre-Trevor, so the sentiment was actually hers, at least probably.

            When the shirt refused to button across my chest, I bent forward and looked at the collar in the mirror.  I was wearing (although that’s a literal and figurative stretch) an Extra-Small.  That cursed girl must have hit the guy’s rack first, and now as a result I was faced with the challenging task of getting this evil garment off of my shoulders.

            Knock, knock, knock, said the door.

            “Occupied,” I said timidly.

            “Sir,” a male voice, and an eerily familiar one at that, “Could you please step out of the women’s changing room?”

            “I… Sorry.”  My word of the day.  The handle rattled.

            “Sir, unlock the door now.”

            I’ve always been terrified of authority figures, so for some reason I listened, and the second I had released the latch, the door flew open revealing… her.

            The sexy blonde lunged inward at me, grabbing me by the shoulders and pinning me to the back wall where a metal hanging hook missed my ear by mere inches.  The situation only got sexier as she somehow re-locked the door behind her using… her elbow or foot or tail or something?  Then she locked eyes with me and my face flushed to match her ass, hot pink.

            A brief aside: I was not aroused at all by this situation, and not because I was embarrassed, or scared shitless, but because I was and still am loyal to Daisy, the if-I-believed-in-love of my life.

            “You saw,” said the blonde.

            “No I didn’t!  Besides, they’re not worth anything until the cashier activates them, so technically it’s probably not a crime.”

            Her eyes narrowed, and all of my sphincters tightened.  I was pinned to the wall by a hot blonde in a cage of mirrors, and when I glanced at the mirror I saw that I was in fact pinned by a blonde Cage.

            She saw my reaction.  I saw hers… its… and I kneed it in the stomach, admittedly feeling horribly guilty about it.  She crumpled to the floor, exarcerbating my guilt with her sexy young face.  I briefly considered picking her up and skewering her on the hanging hook, but reconsidered, thinking that would be A) excessive, B) murder, and C) difficult.  A much easier course of action would be to jump over her body, unbolt the door, and bolt.  So I did that.

            I fled AE, and only slowed as I passed RPGS, and only when a voice asked, “Who’s shoplifting now.”

            I turned and stared shame-facedly back at Cassie, flushing red, my color of the day, as I realized that my stolen garment was even tighter than the one she had accidentally near-thefted only minutes before.

            Of course, the American Eagle manager had found no signs of my assailant, and the security camera had mysteriously powered down right before the altercation, so I had to pay, not only for the cracked changing room mirror, but also for the micro-shirt, which had ripped in the scuffle.

            Cassie attempted to console me as we crossed the parking lot by pointing out that at least the girl hadn’t gone to security and accused me of rape.  Then she ruined the consolation by confirming for the third time with me that this wasn’t all the result of a hook up attempt gone wrong.  I reassured her.

            Then I reassured myself that at least the money I had lost was comparable to the money I would otherwise have spent on Daisy’s necklace, and who knows, maybe she wouldn’t have liked it, so what I’d really done was saved myself a little bit of embarrassment.  Because what had happened in the mall hadn’t been embarrassing at all…

            Further insult was briefly added to psychological injury when I crouched to pick up a hundred dollar American Eagle gift card in the parking lot, a card which would have nearly covered the expenses I had incurred.  I thought about this for a second, about going back in, trading in the card, buying my girlfriend a necklace.  Then I laughed.

            I laughed because I already knew.  This card was empty.  It had never been activated, but rather stolen off the shelf and dropped in the parking lot to falsely excite some insecure teen.  Well, jokes on her.  I’m in my twenties.

            Still, what a cruel thing to do.

            That girl wasn’t just a bitch, I thought, she was a demon.          

It would be a few weeks before I learned just how metaphorical I wasn’t being.

1. Futon Demon

            My name is Craig Nym, Craig as in ‘List’ because I use it regularly in my (unofficial) line of work, and Nym as in ‘Pseudo’ because it is.   So what I’m saying is, my name isn’t actually Craig Nym, but that’s what I’m going to refer to myself as, and unless you’re a lawyer representing Craigslist, it’d probably be best if you do the same.

            But enough about me.  Let’s talk about the futon.  Which is mine.

            Daisy has been hassling me for weeks to get off my ass and sell some of the redundant furniture in the house.  Trevor (some guy working on the dig with her) says that our failure to sell off duplicate belongings indicates that we aren’t really committed to our relationship.  I’m not really sure why Trevor’s opinion matters, but Daisy’s certainly does.  After all, she’s the one bringing in the petrified bacon with all of her archeological career progress while I futz about, dabbling with my writing while swinging pendulously from one minimum wage job to the next.  It’s not my fault that I’m a creative genius, and therefore unsuited to conventional schedules.

            But about the futon, this far-away feng-shui shift happened three months into Daisy’s six-month stint on the excavation, which puts it two months after my whole-hearted (albeit not entirely willing) dive into my newfound hobby. 

            Had Trevor unwittingly redesigned my house sooner, I would possibly have found a buyer rather quickly on Craigslist for the old American Flag patterned futon, or more likely, I wouldn’t have bothered to list the thing at all.  But now I’m becoming a bit of a Craigslist connoisseur, and I vet potential buyers pretty thoroughly before I consent to a sale.

            Sure, of the millions of people in the southeast United States, there are probably at least a dozen with taste as bad as mine was in college, but would all of these prospective futon buyers suit my other needs?  I think not.  I have now rejected half a dozen email offers from local collegiate patriots, while insisting to Daisy that if we are really going to sell my futon instead of her furry egg-shaped chair thing (Trevor thought this best) then at least I am going to get a fair price for it.  America!  But that was a lie.  So now I’m pulling my minivan – long story – up in front of Pamela Fierson’s house.

            I know what you’re thinking, Fierson seems like an obvious last name.  Son of fire?  I mean, come on!  But I’d like you to know that the obvious indicators are almost never valid, and can therefore be employed as a deceptive tactic.  If you see a guy with ‘Hail the Dark Lord’ tattooed on his throat, don’t mess with that guy.  Obviously.  But if you see a guy with The Hobbit Trilogy sleeves, well… don’t mess with that guy either, but maybe give me a call.

            So why Pamela Fierson if not for her last name?  There were a couple of clues that made me suspect she’d be the perfect person to take my star spangled sleeper.

            A middle-aged woman’s interest in patterned fold-out furniture should be indication enough, but it isn’t, not in today’s tasteless world.  Brief aside - when I Google street-viewed her house, I was expecting a trailer, proving that I am apparently redneckist, but instead I saw… a totally normal suburban three or four bedroom home.  Suspicious, right?

            I thought so – unless maybe she has a son who is roughly the age I was when I bought the blasted thing – so in my response email, I casually invaded her privacy by mentioning that I have some other hideous belongings that her - just guessing - high school senior - speculating - male child might like.

            She responded no thank you, that the futon wasn’t for anyone in her family, but rather for the Social Studies corner of the 5^th grade classroom in which she teaches.  She then explained that she’d like to get the futon by next Monday as she would soon be commencing her lesson on conquistadors.  And she concluded that she’d be available to get it from me on tomorrow.

            That’s right, this elementary school teacher not only wants to teach about conquistadors from atop a Proud to be an American throne (which she must assume has been the sight of numerous sexual conquests) but also uses the phrase ‘on tomorrow’ in writing.

            If she isn’t what I think she is, then some of her teachers must have been, because this travesty of an excuse for an educational professional is almost certainly going to tilt the next generation of Americans just a smidge more towards evil.  And I don’t like to imagine demons controlling the world of on tomorrow.

            It’s worth mentioning that in the past I’ve had much more convincing evidence and still been wrong, but I try to block my history of failure from my mind as I walk up the front lawn towards Pamela Fierson’s house.

            Guess who answers on the sixth knock?  Pamela Fierson.

            I smile, and she looks a little pissed off.  Maybe because she fell into my sixth knock trap – that tendency towards the number six is a giveaway as well.  My favorite number was six growing up, but that’s beside the point.

            “I was in the bathroom,” says Pamela, as if I need that kind of information.

            I tilt my head from side to side.   I’m trying to find a hint of National Treasure or The Rock in her, but I’m not seeing it, and I guess she mistakes my bobble-heading for confusion regarding her last statement because she follows it up with, “I heard the first couple knocks.  But I was in the bathroom.”

            I wonder if she speaks to her students in the same condescending tone.

            “I’ve got the futon in my van,” I say. “Could you give me a hand carrying it in?”

            She sighs as though she didn’t expect to have to help carry it, as if she thought one guy could carry a futon by himself, as if she’s never owned a futon before.  And who buys their first futon in their 40s?  I think the answer is obvious.

            A few minutes later, we’re waddling up the driveway, exactly according to my plan, except that I’m leading and walking backwards, which is dumb, but oh well.

            As we slog through gravity I ask, “So, what price did we agree to?”

            “Sixty dollars, right?”  Yes, exactly.  I glance up and down the street.  Not a soul in sight, and none of her kind either.

            I shift the futon’s weight to my left hand, so Pamela Fierson has to shift her hold to the right.

            “Oh, I thought it was sixty six,” I say, and glance back at Nicholas Cage as he frowns and struggles to support the futon.

            “Are you sure?” Nic asks in Pam’s voice.  He’s making eye contact and… I admit it… I hesitate.

            I should explain… I fucking hate Nicholas Cage.  Why?  Because I’ve always thought he looks a bit like my dad, except that my dad is awesome, and if he were a leading actor instead of a supporting father and talented carpenter, he would choose considerably better projects than the ones baby Coppola has based his career on.  No, Dad would do great diCaprio-type work. 

So is Nicholas Cage a demon?  No, or at least I don’t think so, but he is what my mind thinks demons should look like, and he is what they briefly become, at least to me, when they let their disguises slip for a moment.

And now I know for sure.  My suspicions of her freaky over-zealous patriotism, her weirdly anachronistic grammar, and her peculiar approach to teaching were completely valid.  She is Nicholas Cage.  She is a demon.

But I hesitate, and Pamela Fierson, now herself again, sees it in my eyes.  I drop the lighter side of the futon and wrap my right hand around my back, groping for the Glock I ‘borrowed’ from Cassie.

The plan was that I would have the weapon out and leveled before the Pamela demon had the chance to drop the futon, but I am hindered both by my prior hesitation and by the futon itself, which has now landed on my right foot.

I let out a howl of pain as Pamela lets out a howl of demoniness and bounds forward like a wolf, springing off the center of the futon, and forcing me to drop my end completely.

Fortunately her wolfish movement wakes my catlike reflexes from hibernation and as I fall backwards, banging my shins on the underside of the futon, my hand produces, not the Glock from my boxers, but rather the wicked looking sacrificial dagger that was tucked there as well.

Pamela demon sees the dagger as she clears the blue field of stars, but she’s already got momentum and it’s too late for her to change direction.  She arcs Nicholas Cage’s neck away from me, creating a nice sinewy talentless target into which I sink the dagger all the way to its hilt.

I keep the dagger extended as Pamela rolls past me, whimpering on the ground.  Then she touches her neck… no blood… but then, there wouldn’t be, but she’s not dissolving yet either, and that’s not good.  She eyes me skeptically, and my eyes bounce off of hers to look at the dagger.  Totally clean.

I sit up and stab the futon, but it too is unaffected by the weapon.  The magic of American patriotism?  No.  I depress the knife slowly this time and the blade retracts back into the hilt.  What the fuck?  I’m gonna kill Cassie.

Pamela grins Cage-ishly and lunges for me, but I’m ready.  I throw the dummy knife at her, which only buys me a moment as she knocks it aside, but that moment is all I need to produce the handgun that I should have used in the first place.

Pamela adjusts her approach and springs not at me, but rather at the back of the futon, bouncing off it like a vertical trampoline even as it tips over onto it’s Star Spangled back.  I guess we’ll have to burn it now, but that’s fine.  Daisy certainly won’t mind.

I aim the handgun at Pamela, but not quickly enough.  One leap later and she’s back inside her completely unassuming house.  This brief reprieve gives me just enough time to examine the clip in the Glock.  Good, it’s still loaded with the bullets Cassie 'gave' me.  Just checking.

Standing up, I dust myself off and hesitantly approach the front of the Fierson household, glancing up and down the street once more before entering the edifice, very Bond-ish.  I can practically taste the steel where the registration number has been scraped off of my weapon as I hold it in two hands close to my face and round the corner into a completely typical middle-class suburban home. 

In fact, it’s too typical.  The walls are decorated with a Hobby Lobby clearance rack’s worth of motel-art.  And I’m not exaggerating.  A Hobby Lobby tag is still visible hanging from the corner of a yellow-green field on a cloudy day.  I wonder what this awful gallery displayed here in a demon’s abode, has to say about the moral compass of Hobby Lobby, of if this is just representative of Pamela Fierson’s urgency to create a realistic looking human dwelling.

My view of every LaQuinta Inn lobby in the country is briefly disrupted when my phone rings, blasting out the Aretha Franklin ringtone that Daisy programed in to let me know when my better half was calling.  I wouldn’t change it if I loved her.  And I didn’t.  Change it, I mean.  Awww.

I have just enough time to fumble in my pocket for the ignore button before Pamela Fierson darts across the collage of public domain ‘artwork’ and escapes into what I can only assume is the kitchen.

I manage to squeeze off two quick shots as she disappears from view, but they don’t do shit.  In part, this is because I fired way too late.  Thanks, Daisy, for that one!  But there’s more to it than that.  My shots didn’t even damage the babbling brooks and rundown farmhouses that cover the entire wall.  The pseudo-antique cuckoo clock and the pedestal-mounted sundial (which is nowhere near a window) are totally undamaged.  The power of Hobby Lobby’s moral conviction?  No.  Unless New Balance is similarly protected.

Because next I point the gun at my head, then, realizing I’m not an idiot, I shoot myself in the foot instead.  Only metaphorically though, because apparently this fucking ‘weapon’ is full of blanks.  I’m gonna kill Cassie.  For real now.  Maybe Daisy is right; maybe I do have a habit of blaming women for all of my problems.  Probably my mom’s fault.

After all, if she had just taught me more about cooking, I wouldn’t be so confused about why Pamela Fierson is now hiding in the kitchen.  Even if stressful situations - like this one hopefully is - make her hungry, I doubt she’d have any food on hand.  As everyone knows, and/or I suspect, demons don’t eat except to deceive humans.  No, I assume they are sated on the knowledge that they have swayed humanity a tad more towards evil.  But I don’t get to finish my thought, as I am interrupted by Adele singing the single word ‘Hello…’ from my pocket, signaling that Daisy has now texted me.  I know if I don’t answer swiftly, she’ll get upset.  Trevor has no doubt explained to her that slow text responses indicate a lack of enthusiasm from the tardy respondee.  So with my totally useless weapon (except as a deterrent) still raised into the kitchen, I fish my phone out of my pocket and try ineffectively to key in 6666 without looking.

Perhaps attracted by the numerical attempt, Pamela Fierson emerges from behind the fridge wielding a monstrous butcher’s knife.  To be clear, I mean that the knife itself is monstrous, not that the butcher to whom it could belong would necessarily be, though frankly that wouldn’t surprise me either.  Pamela certainly is, and now I know why she was in the kitchen.  Because that’s where the pointy things are. 

The trained professional that I am, I stagger backwards into the half-height Doric columned shadedial, dropping the gun but hanging onto my phone, which is even now reminding me of Daisy’s message.  Hello… How do you feel about this degree of dedication, Trevor?

My shoulder knocks the cuckoo clock off the wall, and it chirps in automated agony as it intercepts the knife intended for my chest.  Pamela screams some sort of onomatopoeia and winds up for another stab, this time downward as I am sliding down the column towards the floor.

I stare upwards, sad that I’m going to die in exactly the manner of a shopper in a crafts store art aisle on black Friday, and wondering if I have time to call Daisy quickly enough for her to hear my demise and feel horribly guilty for the rest of her life.  Or at least until Trevor talks her out of it.  No, that would take too long.  He would no doubt criticize me for not having her saved as a speed dial… dial…

That’s it!  I reach upward and tilt the pedestal forward over me as Pamela Fierson brings the knife crashing down.  And though it has absolutely nothing to do with the power of the sun (these aren’t vampires, silly) the pointed part of the decorative sundial does a damn good job of stopping Nicholas Cage dead as it skewers his/her throat.

I breathe deeply then crab-walk out from under the grotesque archway made of Doric column and Satanic demon.

I’ve just gotten to my feet when Pamela Fierson bursts into a fiery sun of light, which only I – I’ve learned – am able to see.  The tremendously satisfying pulse of illumination gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside but it also casts a shadow from the sundial stand across the room to where a real clock (which I’m guessing makes bird sounds on the hour) reminds me that it’s after eight, which is probably why Daisy was calling me.

Once the demon ash is wiped off the face of my phone and I’ve successfully sixed my way in, I read the text which informs me that Daisy is pissed, and that I shouldn’t bother calling her back until tomorrow.  I sigh.  This is not the first time demon-slaying has gotten in the way of me maintaining my long-distance relationship the way I’m ‘supposed’ to.

‘Sorry babe,’ I text, ‘I love you, and I’ll call you in the morning.’  I try to add a heart-eyed emoticon to the end of this, but I’m still a bit shaky from the night’s events, and I accidentally send one with ocular dollar signs instead.  Which reminds me…

After a moment’s reflection that Pamela Fierson’s wallet, if she even had one, may have been vaporized along with her school teacher body, and that I might have to search the house to find some cash, I send Daisy a second text.

‘Good news though!  I sold the futon!’