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.