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.
