I drove back toward my house. While passing by a toilet paper company’s ad on a billboard—don’t know what a cute family of bears have to do with the vile act of human’s pooing—I remembered that I had run out of toilet paper. I decided to swing into an all-night market. It wasn’t the safest place to go at this time of night. But I was out of TP, tissues, napkins, and paper towels, and I wasn’t about to use my avocado tree’s foliage. Even if it was considered ‘organic.’
I jumped out of my car and went inside the store. As I stepped inside, I noticed that there were a couple of men inside shopping. No women. The market wasn’t too big and had the basic essentials. The guy behind the counter didn’t look any older than seventeen.
I gave him a smile and a nod. I think I did it to remind the cashier that I was the sole primped female inside a liquor store in a sketchy part of town.
He gave me zero expression back, and I wasn’t surprised. He was probably thinking about anything else but working at 1:00 in the morning.
I went to the back where they kept the household staple items such as toilet paper. I saw some at the end of the aisle on an end cap.
I walked over and stepped up and looked at the prices. They were outrageously overpriced—probably to take advantage of procrastinating suckers like me.
I reached out and grabbed a package of four rolls that were on the shelf in front of me. As I grabbed them, a large, hairy hand intercepted the package right from underneath my nose. I turned around, and the hand belonged to a man with a receding buzz cut, around my age, dirty, and reeking of alcohol.
“Excuse me, but I had it first,” I said with a shaky voice. I wanted nothing to do with this guy. Calling him creepy was the most modest adjective I could’ve used to describe him.
He looked at me, sized me up with his beady little eyes, stopped at my breasts, and held his stare—like some scruffy, desperate predator.
I turned and faced the toilet paper again, and like a dumdum who mustered up a feeling of false courage, I snatched it up, turned away from the man, and made my way to the counter. As I approached the counter, I noticed that an extremely beautiful woman, in a black dress similar to mine, had entered the store and began to browse. She was stunning. Way classier than me, and like me, clearly out of place in this store...and in this part of town.
I waited my turn to pay behind another man, who also appeared inebriated. He couldn’t even properly pick his ATM card out of his wallet. I so wanted to get the hell out of this store, as I knew the drunk man, I had been idiotically bold to, had just finished his shopping and was getting ready to line up behind me.
After his fifth attempt and after dropping loose change from his wallet onto the counter below, he finally said to the cashier, “Well, I have it in cash, so I’ll just do that.”
I was getting a bit irritated. I just needed to get out of this place and back to my car. The guy in front of me pulled out a twenty from his wallet. Then from behind, his voice, which produced goose bumps up and down the back of my neck.
“Imagine seeing you here.”
I ignored him, hoping he would leave me alone. His voice was raspy, and he smelled like he hadn’t showered in days.
“Hey, baby, why are you ignoring me? Are you too good for me?” he said.
Now, he was being belligerent and making me nervous. I turned around and made eye contact with the classy chick who had entered the store and who had lined up behind the smelly drunk. Oddly, she gave me a stare as if we had met before, and was eager to tell me something.
“With your nice clothes and nice perfume...,” the drunken, belligerent man said behind me. He didn’t finish his sentence, and I was glad. I seriously wanted to teleport away that very instant. Far away.
“Look, guy,” I said. “I just need to get an item and get home.” I didn’t turn around, mainly because I didn’t want to look at him. Or smell him.
“And where is home?” he asked.
As soon as the drunk in front walked away, I shook my head and laid the toilet paper on the counter, and the second the cashier scanned the bar codes, I picked it right back up.
“Hey, I’ll get that T.P. for you!” said the guy behind me. Now, he was standing next to me, completely invading my personal space, shoulders almost touching.
I looked at the drunk and said, “You’re not buying my toilet paper. That’s just weird. You need to go somewhere and sober up, and you need to leave me alone.”
I reached into my purse and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. The cashier handed me my change. I put it in the March of Dimes coin slot on the counter and decided I would leave as fast as I could to get away from this guy.
I walked out and headed for my car. And about five seconds after I exited, I heard the door open and close two different times. I didn’t want to look behind me.
“Hi, sweetheart!” the same creepy man said from behind me. “I haven’t had a boner in years. It’s not that big anyway.”
Okay, this just went from creepy to illegal.
I thought he wasn’t done. That wasn’t the weirdest thing a man had ever done in my presence. He said, almost yelling and singing, “You need to know I like to suck my thumb so hard I tear layers of skin off of it. My underwear has a messy poo.”
Now it looped back to pathologically absurd.
I turned around and this guy was on all fours.
“Want to hear me bark or meow? I’m good at both,” he said.
“I don’t want you to do either,” I said. “What’s wrong with you?” I suddenly became concerned about his mental health. His sexual explicitness turned into the humorous pleas of a crazy man looking for approval.
He barked anyway. He barked like he was a junkyard dog. Then the guy lifted his leg while on all fours and peed his pants right there, in front of everyone inside the market to see. While he peed, he sang, “I love to go wee wee with my pee pee!!”
I quickly slipped into my Mazda and locked the doors. I skidded out of the parking lot while still in reverse and fishtailed onto the main highway. My heart rate settled and I made a left on Orangethorpe Avenue to get to my home. I stopped at the light on Auto Center Drive and my heart rate increased again as I spotted another person ominously standing on the curb to the right of me. They looked up at me, and I immediately recognized that it was the brunette woman in the black dress from the market.
There was no way she could be standing out here.
Right as the light turned green, I slammed on the gas pedal, doing my best in shaking what I thought I had just seen on the curb in front of an inflatable gorilla trying to sell me a Honda wearing his bodacious shades.
Something definitely wasn’t right here. Sweat poured out of the palms of my hands and all over the steering wheel. I took a couple of deep breaths and told myself that it had to have been a different women from the one inside the market. They just looked alike. That was all. No Biggie.
I then drove down a curved street to get to my house, thinking I’d avoid more specters and apparitions...hallucinations—whatever—if I avoided main streets. I eventually reached Dale Street and heeded to a stop sign at a dark intersection, where another figure caught the corner of my eye—a dark and slim figure, like the woman.
Was it the same woman? Don’t know, didn’t want to know, and kept my eyes on the road as if an invisible driving instructor sat in my passenger seat.
I tried ignoring my paranoia, my sudden fear, and turned right, away from whatever stood across the street. My car went about 100 feet when suddenly it stopped, as if I had applied the brakes, which was impossible because I clearly remembered my foot being on the gas pedal the whole time.
What in the holy hell had just happened?
I turned completely around to see if someone had chained the back bumper. Nothing. Just an empty semi-lit residential street, and whatever stood on the corner of the intersection had now vanished.
As soon as I whipped my head back toward the windshield, and slammed my foot on the gas pedal, I was start
led by a set of rapid taps on the window next to me. It had gotten colder that night and my windows had become fogged, so I rubbed the cold frost way from the window and peered through and caught the same lady in the black dress standing on the sidewalk across from me.
I completely went berserk. I screamed louder than I had in a very long time. I was scared shitless. I wasn’t sure if I was living in reality or if I was dreaming all of this. It had to have been a dream. But I soon found out there was a problem with that theory, as I was very much awake.
I thought I had lost my mind. I hyperventilated at the horrific possibility that I’d never shake this woman from my sight...ever.
Chapter Six