Safety First

"Remember: anything from family planning goes into a bag. No one wants to be parading around with that sort of stuff. It's a small town. People will talk."

"Excuse me," the nearly-bald man grinned widely. "I was just looking through your store and, well, I was just wondering-"

Condoms, I thought to myself. Of course it's condoms. Condoms or a douche. Oh. Maybe condoms, a douche and some lube. That would be good. I just stocked all of that. I know exactly where it is.

"Where do you keep your condoms?"

Jackpot. Click one more on the clicker that really doesn't get clicked, usually, till the end of the day when I remember that my clicker actually means something.

"Of course," I smiled warmly, walking him down the aisle of chips and pop. "What kind were you looking for?" I asked without thinking. Really, as a cashier, it's none of my business what sort of condoms the man was buying - but you couldn't blame me for being curious, now could you?

"I need one box of extra ribbed, one box of extra thin, and two boxes of assorted flavours," he said, with no intention of lowering his voice. No shame in buying condoms, I thought, must get laid pretty often.

I bopped to the beat of whatever song was playing through our speakers. I had only been there for a few months and I already had figured out the tracklist that slowly creeped its way into my skull and had nestled in there, like a hibernating bear. Or a tumor. Two assorted, extra thins and ribbed. Oh, no. Extra ribbed.

"Helluva lot of condoms," I sort of felt my mouth moving and sound coming out, when my brain was just shouting 'SHUT UP'.

He laughed and walked back down the chip and pop aisle. "It is, but it's totally worth it." He nabbed a bag of Doritos off the shelf and tucked them under his arm, like an old, racist woman clutching her bag around a black man. "I think that's everything."

I suppressed my laughter for as long as I could. "Nice selection," I nodded at the chips. "Cool Ranch is my favourite too."

"Only intelligent people like Cool Ranch," he grinned as I rung through his purchases. Not forgetting what my overly-anal-retentive boss told me the first day of work, I quickly put the condoms into a bag.

"Oh, I don't need a bag," he smiled.

...

My brain stopped for a second. "But you're buying condoms," I spoke slowly, as though he had no idea what he was really purchasing.

"Mhmm," he chuckled. "I don't need a bag."

"Do... you have a bag of your own?" I looked him over once. He didn't seem to be carrying a cloth bag, but then again, this was the man who came in to the store to buy condoms and a bag of Doritos.

"Nope," he smiled, stacking the boxes on top of each other. "It's all good!"

"But," I said as he started to leave the store. "But people will talk."

He shrugged one shoulder and slid on his sunglasses. "Let 'em talk."

The Working World

There was nothing abnormal about that Thursday afternoon. The sun was shining, the air was cold and everyone who came through the door of the shop had asked about the fire down the road.

"Oh, the old bakery," she smiled sadly. "Turns out an electrical shortage was what made the Chrismas tree go up in flame and well-" she listened to everyone carry on about how they didn't know where they would get their bread from now. Typical, she thought while scanning their items through; nevermind the people in the apartments above the bakery who lost their homes, or the family that lost their business. Nah, buying one's bread is far more important.

"Have a nice day," she smiled, pulling her hair over one shoulder as she organized the debit slips to all face the same way. For the most part, it was slow and when things got slow up front, time decided to linger for as long as it could.

The door swung open and a blast of cold air hit the cashier. "Hello," she smiled warmly at the rather strange-looking man. He wore no coat and no sweater, just a rather dirty looking teal t-shirt. His beard wasn't much of a beard, more like tiny curls that looked glued on to his face. In his hands he held a small square of white paper.

"Can I help you find something?" the cashier jumped at the opportunity to do something other than organize slips that no one really cared about anyway.

The man looked over his shoulder, as if expecting someone behind him and slowly made his way to the counter. He lay what she thought was his shopping list in front of her and began to mumble quietly under his stale breath. She turned her head and noticed that it wasn't just one piece of paper, but many; stapled together in a kindergarten-fashion of a book, with thick, kindergarten-esque pencil scribbles all over the 'cover'.

"Very nice," she nodded nervously, her usual 'customer service' smile plastered on to her face.

He flipped the cover back and on the first page of his book, was a hand-drawn picture of a girl. A faceless girl with long flowing hair. And the caption read: 'I like girls with pretty hair'.

"Oh," her smiled fell and she knew that this wasn't going to be some sweet project done by this overly-proud-of-his-son's-drawing-ability's kid.

The verbal response must have been enough for the man, as he flipped to the second page and leaned in closer. The picture was of the same faceless long haired girl, but now a man accompanied her. 'I like to brush their pretty hair'.

What felt like a punch to the gut slowly filled the cashier's body.

'I like to cut their pretty hair'.

Now, by this time, the girl knew that calling a supervisor would be the intelligent thing to do. "I'm," her voice significantly higher than usual, "I'm just, uh, gonna call a supervisor and-"

"No supervisor," he growled, his eyes wide with anger.

Her feet frozen on the pressure mat, she watched as he flipped the page again. Pictures, photographs, of the man in front of her, with these girls, no older than herself. Him grinning into the camera as he pulled their hair and thrust inside them; the photographs perfectly capturing the peak of their horror. His yellowing grin bright and cheery as the girls' faces showed nothing but terror.

"You have very pretty hair," he mumbled, his head turning as his hand caressed her arm. "Very pretty hair."

"Supervisor," her shrill voice tried to escape her mouth, her eyes still glued to the paper in front of her. "Supervisor, please. Someone."

"Such pretty hair," his finger twirled a strand of her dark hair. "Can I have your pretty hair?"

She shook her head in disapproval. "No. No, you cannot."

He narrowed his dark eyes and flipped to the last page and what she saw made her gag so hard she nearly vomited.

It was another photograph, but instead of those poor girls being raped, she saw the man. Standing proudly with one hand on his hip, the other hand holding up a disembodied head of a blonde girl that looked vaguely familiar. Her mouth seemed to be cut up and blood trickled from the corners. He had sheered her hair off, like a sheep, on one side of her scalp, the rest all bunched up in his fist. There he stood, as if holding a prize winning trout at a harmless lakeside cottaging competition.

With one swift motion, the cashier moved back and grabbed the speaker. "Supervisor to the front. Emergency. Supervisor, please hurry."

He grabbed his book and with the same speed the cashier had for the phone, the man ran out the door, back into the cold afternoon.

Her eyes filled with tears as she tried to erase the last ten minutes from her memory. What had that even been? Where did he come from? And why her? If she hadn't taken that shift, it wouldn't've happened to her. Why couldn't she say no to shifts or helping people who clearly just needed help being redirected out of the shop.

With a slow stride, her rather overweight supervisor (who smelled of fresh cigarette smoke) finally walked up to the cash.

"What is it?"

"A man- he just- and he-"

"... Where is he?"

"He left and-"

"Then what's the problem?" she asked, shaking her head.

"He... he had these pictures and-"

"That's nice," the supervisor rolled her eyes. "Get back to work."

Morticians

I only have half an hour to write up 500 words for today. And why did I leave this til this late? Because, frankly, I really had no idea what the shit to write. I was thinking about stuff all day but none of it was writing, and I suppose part of me feels guilty for that but I was thinking about Halloween costume ideas and Nathan Fillion and other things that a rather lonely nineteen year old girl thinks about.

And right now I'm watching Six Feet Under and it's just a sad way to live my life through fictional characters. I cannot believe that I talked myself into going to university as early as I did. I can't believe I didn't take a co-op like any normal person would've in my situation. Why the fuck in my right mind did I decide to go to McMaster anyway? What did that do? Just made things worse.

So, now I am watching David and Nate sit around in the parlor room and all I want to do is have my own quiet room and crying room and morgue and just work on bodies all day. Make people look pretty for their families to see one last time. Just to sort of, well, help them, I suppose.

But no, that's shitty and gone. For me to go to mortuary school, I would need 300 hours in a funeral home, a co-op and my chemistry from high school and if there's one place that I won't go that's not McMaster, it would be high school. What good did high school do for me anyway? All high school taught me was that I'm a douchebag and if I charm enough people with my douchebaggery that I'll get the marks I need to get into university.

What did university teach me? That I am not charming enough to charm intelligent people. Which, okay sounds awful when I say that. I believe that all of (most of) my friends are intelligent. Whether they are good at math or English or anything really. I am tired of my unintelligent friends, though. Which, again, sounds awful, but, again, it's true.

I'm not even sure what I should be writing here for tonight. I didn't come up with anything weird or thought-provoking or dripping with pretentiousness. I just didn't realize that it would get this late, but then again, that's typical of me. I start something and then I either avoid it or I want it done. Probably why there are so many of these blogs kicking around on the Internet; I like to make stuff and then watch it slowly die.

Maybe that's why I wanted to be a mortician to begin with. Because they've already done all the dirty work for me. They lived and I just have to finish them up. Watch'em go into the ground or into the oven and then, well, then I'm done.

atoms vs evil

A project I'm starting to get myself writing every day like I should be doing. At least 500 words - No matter what.

And if I start to not do this, someone kick me in the crotch.