Fiction: November 2006 Archives

It was a typical Friday night at the store – or so Roger guessed. He didn’t really know because this wasn’t his usual shift, but he had always heard that Friday nights were generally slow and uneventful. The slow part turned out to be true, not so much the uneventful.

It all started when the woman approached him at the counter. He was in the middle of ringing someone else up, but that didn’t stop her from butting right in.

“Do you think you could help me over in the posters?” she asked.

Roger looked from her to the customer in front of him, then back again. “Sure thing,” he said. “I’ll be right over as soon as I finish with this gentleman.”

The woman nodded and walked away. Roger apologized to his customer, completed his transaction, took a deep breath – he found he was doing that more and more as time went on – and walked out onto the floor to find out what the woman wanted.

(sung to the tune of Born to Run)

In the day we hide from alien viruses and murderous skateboard teens,
At night we run from reptile hookers and vampire Charlie Sheens.

Sprung from fumes on the 405,
Undead Nicky Hilton wants to eat your face alive--Oh,
Maybe this town rips the bones from your back;
It's a death trap,
It's a suicide pact.
Better get out with our brains,
Or kids like us, baby we'll be torn in twain!

It was a few minutes after one o'clock on a Sunday afternoon in November when K. noticed (and how could he not?) that his left arm had fallen off.

The purpose of this day's visit to the mall had been to do some early Christmas shopping. It was K.'s practice to buy generic, practical presents -- pens, calendars, refrigerator magnets, oven mitts -- just before the "peak" holiday shopping season and store them in his closet until just before Christmas, at which time he would wrap them and assign them to random people on his gift list. This tradition had served him well in the past, and he had no intention of deviating from it this year.

K. had not yet begun his shopping at the time the incident occurred. Unburdened by packages and yet unaccountably weary, he was walking aimlessly and distractedly through the massive, clogged corridors of the shopping center when he stopped in front of a Spencer Gifts -- not to window shop (K. never did this) but rather because his body was telling him to pause. Finding no nearby bench, K. simply stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the hallway. That was when his left arm -- of its own accord -- became detached from his body and fell with a thud to the cool, shiny floor, taking K.'s shirtsleeve and wristwatch with it.