I awkwardly pulled the door open with my left arm and stepped out of the inky parking lot and into the party store¹. Stopping to admire the musical peal of the tiny bell I had set off in passing, I blinked at the harsh flourescent lighting, my pupils tardily constricting, and slowly inhaled the confusing smell of Spic-N-Span floor cleanser and spilled beer. I kind-of realized that my right arm didn’t feel right, though I couldn’t quite figure out why. No, I didn’t look at the arm; somehow that didn’t seem necessary. Why did my jaw ache?
    The shop keeper, partially lost in shadow behind the counter, was hunched over a large magazine he had spread out before him. He didn’t so much as look up at me. I spared a moment to squint at him, but his face was obscured by the thick, bullet-resistant Plexiglas cube bolted to the turn-table in front of him. A miniature cross between a revolving door and an airlock, the cube was framed by tattered Catholic iconography, nearly pornographic cigarette adverts, hanging pouches of dubious “energy” supplements and off-brand condoms, all of which adorned the otherwise unbroken sheet of bullet-proof glass separating the world of the clerk from the world of the customer.
    Presently, the shop-keeper thumbed his way to the next page of the magazine in silence.
     “Excuse me,” a woman’s voice spoke from behind me, and I realized I was still blocking the door. Mumbling an incoherent apology, I stepped further into the party store and found myself in front of an apparent donut incubator. Ignoring the toroid treats, I turned and watched as a slightly built, young woman gracefully walked past me wearing tight shorts and a revealing halter-top. I noted with a certain amount of involuntary excitement that her right arm was completely covered in tattoos; tattoos of milk containers and children at play. The air moved around me as she walked past, smelling faintly of strawberries; I smiled approvingly and wandered down the crowded aisles toward the back of the store.
    Behind me I could hear her strike up a conversation with the shop-keeper; their low murmuring voices, further diminished by the buzzing of the malfunctioning light fixtures scattered across the ceiling, were unintelligible. No matter, it would be impolite to listen anyway.
    I wandered past dusty cans of soup, individually pre-wrapped diapers, various candies and packs of chewing gum to finally arrive at the back of the store. Above me hung an inflatable Furd Expulsion, decked out with colorful beer logos, and beside it was the bulging convexity of the party-store mirror mounted securely to the corner of the room. Together the two of them crowned the refrigerator case, which I opened slowly with my left arm.
    Energy drinks, beer, cola….I didn’t want any of that. No, I needed some peas. I knelt down and fished through the small pile of overpriced desperation groceries on the bottom shelf, finally selecting a bag of “Indigo Monstrosity²” brand frozen peas.
    As I looked down at the Indigo Monstrosity package resting in my hand, I felt its frosty chill settle through my finger joints. I was happy to have the peas, but something felt… wrong. I looked up and, distorted and tiny though their reflections seemed, I could see that the clerk and the woman were both staring intently back at me through the mirror, and had been for I don’t know how long. The buzz of the lights grew louder, and several more began flickering in earnest. Piss-poor maintenance or electrical problem, I suppose.
    Either way, I thought, still watching the silent pair, I don’t think I care much for this dump. I turned around, reluctantly breaking eye contact, and began walking towards the front of the store with my bag of Monstrous^tm peas clutched in my slowly freezing left hand. Only the buzzing of the lights and my own quiet steps filled the silence, and soon I realized that many of the lights behind me had ceased flickering and went dark completely.
    I was nearing the counter, holding the bag of produce stiffly out before me. I knew that he was looking directly at me, could feel the unwavering gaze of his clerkishness; but I couldn’t make out his face, nor really see his eyes. The girl, achingly beautiful, smiled at me. Her green eyes and fine cheekbones seemed to sparkle… but then her chin quivered with something halfway between anger and fear, and her breathing began to grow progressively noisier–almost a pant.
    Bellying up to the chipped Formica, I politely ignored the loud, raspy breathing of the woman standing next to me and carefully placed the peas inside the cube on the turn-table. The clerk slowly turned it round, thus exposing the peas to his tender ministrations.
     “Hhhaaaah…. hhhuuuhh…. hhhhaaaahh,” breathed the woman wretchedly, and I felt her looming presence move closer to me. I didn’t look, no, I didn’t but… I felt the material of her halter top, warm from the barely concealed and barely restrained flesh within, brush against my upper arm. The pressure of this contact moved rhythmically in time with her nearly ear-piercing gasps.
     “How much do I owe?” I asked the clerk, wanting nothing more than to escape with my vegetables. He slowly dragged the bag from the cube and began turning it over in his hands, looking for a bar-code, perhaps. I waxed impatient.
     “SSSSSSHhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh…. HHHHHuuuuhhh…. SHHHHSSSHHSHHAAAaahh..,” the apparently asthmatic woman wheezed at my side as I now felt her pelvis begin to press against my thigh; a good match for the breasts, I suppose. Almost all the lights in the store had flickered their way to darkness at this point, leaving only the row immediately above the checkout counter. One of the off-brand condoms had begun squirming in its packaging, worm-like segments undulating against the plastic, and the cash register beeped slowly as Mr. Vague hesitantly entered in the numbers of my prospective purchase. So slow was his progress that I contemplated leaving the Indigo Monstrosity^tm foodstuffs for some other day. But I really had no choice, the peas were vitally important, so I steeled myself and held my place. There was, however, an arm wrapping around my back, pulled along by walking fingers tracing my shoulder blades, and then I felt a lithe thigh wrap itself around the back of my legs. I was literally being rocked by the force of the woman’s breathing and my right arm began throbbing anew from the pressure applied by the nubile flesh. The register beeped again… and again.
    Her other arm crawled across me, this time insinuating itself across my stomach. This brought the grand total of limbs laid upon my body to an even three. Beep. I finally turned to the woman, intending to ask her to kindly step back, but the words never had a chance; in this dim party store I stood face to face with…her.
    Her mouth opened wide, at least eight inches across, ringed with uncountable, tiny, needle-sharp teeth. The tip of her tongue danced around, making a complete circuit of her oral cavity in fits and starts while her breath rushed past in a hoarse screech. What little chin she had was shown to be a tiny affair, weak and wobbly and pressed against her esophagus in order to make room for that gaping maw. Eyes, tiny eyes, vestigial and useless to the creature, bulged from the top of her cheekbones and looked off to the sides and towards the ceiling. Something told me that she would never, ever see me in a way that I would understand. Scraggly hair hung down in greasy streamers about her shoulders and the strands quivered sympathetically as I screamed hoarsely into the open mouth of the thing, and I swear I heard an echo from somewhere deep in that maw.
    I tried to push her away then, but my right arm was effectively immobilized by her increasingly desperate embrace. My struggle only succeeded in accidentally working my trapped right hand between her legs where something wet and hairy grabbed at my fingers and pulled them into what felt like a toothless, gummy mouth. In response to this disgusting insertion, a slight moan worked its way out of the things face, which had somehow found a way to fit the sound into its busy schedule of gasping.
     For the very first time the clerk spoke, and his voice was barely audible above the breathy thing against my side, “Your purchase, sir..” Mid-struggle, I realized that the cube was turning once more, presenting me with both my bag of peas and an accurate reproduction of a Boba Fett helmet.
    With my left arm I instinctively grabbed the bag of frozen produce and in a single motion I shoved it wholly into the slavering mouth of the creature; she gamely chomped down and began chewing raucously. Bits of Monstrous^tm plastic bag and shards of crystalline peas fell out–she was trying to push the peas out of her mouth with the wormy tongue!
     “I think you should fucking eat them,” I said, scooping the Boba Fett helmet up with my left hand and awkwardly slamming it down over the hideous head of the girl thing. Boba Fett nodded her head up and down, accompanied from within by noisy chewing sounds, and the clinging arms and leg first loosened and then fell away from me completely. I staggered a step away and steadied myself on my feet, watching in horror.
    She swallowed her veggies in great, ragged gulps and backed away from me until finally bumping heavily against a magazine rack. A printed rain of Maxim proportions descended to the floor around her.
     “You were born for us, Joe,” Boba Fett rasped clearly before completing in an inspirational tone, “Human Conservation is Everyone’s Responsibility.” The pile of magazines quickly enveloped her beneath tons of glossy pages. The quiet she left behind was oppressive and palpable.
     Almost completely dark now, the store was illuminated only by the glowing green numeric display on the battered cash register behind its protective layer of bullet proof glass. The shadowed form of the clerk loomed before me, gently reaching out and shaking my good shoulder.
     Wait, did I have a bad shoulder?
     “Joe. I need you to go to the store for me,” Chuck.
     “I’m already at the store,” I protested, “And it seems to be your store.”
     “…what?” Chuck sounded puzzled.
     “You should change these lights, Chuck. This place is a bit creepy all dark like this. And look at this magazine rack, what a disaster!”

1 – In Detroit we call them “Party Stores.” They are also known as “Corner Stores” or “Corner Shops” in some quarters. Neither name seems to fit, as such places are neither fit for partying nor are they universally placed in corners. Some people optimistically call them “Convenience Stores.”

2 – Their famous ad campaign included an amorphous green cloud raining frozen produce on a village of hungry elves. The cloud would laugh, “Hurr, hurr, hurr,” and the choir would sing, “Indigo Monstrosity!” They sold a fortune in frozen veggies this way.