Dresden Files FIC - Ups and Downs Challenge: Happy Pills
Title: Happy Pills
Author: guardian_chaos
Characters: Harry, mentions of Bob and Mister
Rating: PG
Words: 2973-ish
Original Posting Date: October 22, 2007, here at dresdenflashfic.
Summary: Harry endures the nightmarish ordeal of having to wait in line at a convenience store to buy cat food.
Author's Note: Behold! It is a gen fic! With no character back-story speculations! Whoa! O_O Partially inspired by a bit of chat between joonscribble and I, this is just something light, but with plenty of irritated!Harry to pull itself through.
Ahem. Also, this signifies an attempt on my part to try out a new style. If I've failed miserably, please tell me. I'd really appreciate the feedback. =)
* * *
Oh, Bob is so going to be hearing about this day when I get home, I inwardly grumble to myself as I pull my jeep into the parking lot of a local convenience store (“open 24/7!” as a brilliantly lit neon sign in the window cheekily declares) and unhitch my seatbelt.
The parking lot is lit up garishly by a single yellow streetlight and this does nothing to improve my mood as, with a grunt of pain, I spin myself to the side in my seat and allow my feet to dangle through the open space of the jeep that Murphy is ever-so-fond of telling me “should be a door” because the way it is now will only ensure that one day I’m going to be “robbed blind” and “never see it coming”. It’s a nice sentiment, and I appreciate the heavily disguised care she occasionally tries to inflict upon me, but the last thing I’m going to be doing right now-at just past midnight, no less-is go shopping for another vehicle, and especially not when I have far more pressing matters to attend to.
Taking a pause where I am sitting, I inhale briefly and then angle my hockey stick so that it is resting vertically on the ground before me, just outside of the vehicle. My hand tight around the hockey stick, I make sure it is secure and is not going to move before I slide down from my vehicle with it as my support, hissing in pain as my left leg is jarred by the impact of tapping the ground. Gasping at the sudden pain, I stay where I’ve landed for a second or two or forty, just breathing with my head pressed firmly against my staff as I count backwards from a hundred.
Eventually the pain in my leg subsides slightly and, swallowing back any pain that might still remain, I compose myself and begin to move away from my jeep.
“Harmless,” I mockingly imitate Bob, as I use my hockey stick to help me limp across the concrete expanse leading to the entrance to the store. “In fact,” I continue, raising my voice, “it’s the most pathetic supernatural nuisance I’ve ever heard of! Hardly worth pursuing at all. And!!! As a matter of fact, Harry, I am nearly convinced that I have seen worse threats to you, and to anyone else who might encounter such things, in the meals you prepare for yourself!”
The door is before me now, casting a white-greenish hue out onto the parking lot, and so I cease talking to myself, knowing that such things are frowned upon in public places. The little bell hanging at the entrance to the convenience store rings out a cheery little greeting to me as I press my shoulder against the glass door and shove my way into the building. Seeing one random person in the corner look up as I arrive, I nod briefly to him and he goes back to whatever it was he had been doing before I came up and disturbed him.
“Harmless,” I can’t help muttering to myself one more time as I head off in the direction of my intended purchases, feeling a little bit cold. To combat this, I shove my free hand into my pocket and it brushes up against something slippery.
My eyes slowly widen. Retracting my hand, I see that it is covered in a dark green wetness, accented nicely by the store’s florescent lighting.
Oh, my mind dizzily informs me. That’s…probably not a good thing.
Some random impulse draws my attention downwards and I look to see that this green is splattered all over the sides of my coat. Even better, this something seems to be going all the way around to the back of my coat, where it is no doubt causing a questionable stain around my butt. At least I would assume that, as I had certainly landed on that particular part of my anatomy enough times this day to excuse such reasoning. I sigh, and the sound is pitiful, even to my ears.
Hell’s bells. That’s going to take dry-cleaning. And I can’t afford dry-cleaning.
Tightening my grip on my hockey stick, I try to forget my troubles and limp into the animal-targeted section of the store, which is conveniently wedged in-between the “useless things you’ll never want to own unless you’re actually in this aisle for far too long” section and the “I would like to try as many brands of lemon-lime-flavored energy drinks as I can possibly buy in one place” area.
As I critically stare down the various, brightly colored bottles and packages on the shelves, I try to decide between buying for Mister the “Pro-Health” or the “Hairball-defense” variety of the cat food brand that he can usually be bothered to eat, even if it does take hours and hours of coaxing. I quickly choose “Pro-health”. The cat eats too much of my own food to be healthy as he is now-as Bob would no doubt be quick to point out if ever given the opportunity-so I might as well give him a fighting chance on the way out.
My ankle throbs massive spasms of pain up my leg as I gingerly turn around and find that the other side of the aisle is stocked with various painkillers. Oh! That is convenient. I can suddenly see how these stores get their names.
Without much conscious thought, I quickly hobble closer to the rack and pick up a bottle of aspirin-maximum strength-and shuffle it, with a dry rattle of pills, over to the arm already holding Mister’s bag of cat food. As the bottle settles against my ribs, I take up my hockey stick from where I had briefly left it leaning against the shelves and use it to propel myself in the direction of the checkout counter. Each step is an exercise in good judgment, and it is quickly proven to me that I have none as the red-hot fire shrieking up my left leg only intensifies.
Biting my lip, I try harder to transfer the majority of my weight to my hockey stick and struggle to stay upright as I walk/limp/continuously-almost-fall alongside the refrigerated section of the mini-mart. In passing, I catch a glimpse of myself, reflected against the glass that protects the store’s ample supply of fruit drinks-the brightly colored kind in those gallon jugs. Against an orange jug, I see that there’s a dirt smudge on my forehead and that I apparently also have a black eye. The rest of my appearance only goes downhill from there. It seems that, in addition to leaving a colorful collage of its green slime against my coat, my encounter with the “harmless” creature that Bob spoke of has left plenty of marks on my skin, as well.
Annoyed, I turn away from my reflection and putter on to the checkout counter, only to find upon looking up that an insanely long line of three whole people has formed there. I pause for a moment to digest this, debating whether or not I should call upon my “wizardly strengths” to cause a spectacle that would result in my being at the front of the line. A split-second later it occurs to me that this kind of thing has a high chance of chasing the cashier away as well, and so the urge quickly leaves me.
Instead of causing mass-hysteria, I only hobble to the back of the line and lean with my makeshift-staff against the candy counter. From where I am standing I notice that, of all things, a muffled yet unmistakably cheerful rendition of The Lovin’ Spoonful’s hit song “Do You Believe in Magic?” is playing in an tinny voice above my head. Glaring at the dish-shaped radio speaker, I am delighted to see it short out in a flurry of white sparks and then go silent.
My day a little bit brighter, I shuffle forward a step as the dark-haired man at the front of the line bags his purchases and leaves the store, providing space for the endless litany before me to move forward. As my foot hits the floor to do so, my ankle sharply protests, all the way up to my ears where it collides at the center of my forehead in the ferocious beginnings of a terrible migraine. In sudden, blinding agony, I clench my teeth together to prevent the whimper I feel struggling to get out and lean even more feebly on my hockey stick. Beneath me, my ankle still protests my sudden dodging of the “harmless” thing that had gone after me earlier.
Hoping to soothe the injured appendage, I lean down with the intention of gently rolling my ankle in my palm, only to see gravity yank my aspirin off of Mister’s bag of cat food and to the floor. The bottle strikes the ugly blue tile with a noisy clatter that rebounds in my head and draws the attention of everyone in line.
Still reaching towards my foot with my green-splattered and dusty rear in the air, I freeze in place as the bottle rolls away and a half-dozen or so eyes fall to flickering between it and me. For all of the experiences I have ever had with dodging supernatural threats and verbally sparring with the wittiest of them all, I have never quite figured out how to handle situations like this. So I improvise and quickly stand up, only to bump into the person I had not realized had come up behind me and then consequently lurch dizzyingly into the rows of candy stacked up beside me, sending chocolate bars and sugarless gum packs stampeding to the ground around my feet in a frantic rustling of plastic wrappings and cardboard sleeves.
In a stupor, I stare down at the mess as it settles, realizing with sudden, awful clarity that I’ll have to bend my knees if I want to clean it up. And others have seen me, so I have no excuse to not pick anything up.
Groaning in preparation for the horrible task I must soon pursue, I carefully begin to sink down, using my hockey stick for support, but give up less than a few inches down from where I was and quickly force myself back to my feet with a dangerous lurch of my head as the world starts to twist and blur itself into one massive entity before my eyes.
Blearily blinking reality back into focus, I see that there is no longer anyone ahead of me. Ecstatic about this, I slowly creep forward, using my staff more than my actual leg as I approach the counter. Out of nowhere, the bottle of aspirin I had dropped slaps down on the plastic surface beside me. Despite myself, I cringe at the sound as my head screams, even as I utter a polite “thank you” in reply and reach to pull the bottle towards myself.
The man who had retrieved my little bottle of happy pills only nods curtly, but is too absorbed in his magazine to do much else, so I simply turn my attention back to the cashier, a young woman in her early 30’s, steel-faced and apparently sucking on some kind of hard candy. A bitter one, if the expression on her face is anything to go by.
“Is this it?” she asks me, ringing up my two items with a raised eyebrow.
I nod, grinning sheepishly at her. “Yeah,” I say, my voice sounding strangely foreign in the mostly quiet building. “Could you maybe bag it for me? I keep dropping things today.”
That raised eyebrow rises even higher as she looks behind me at the pile of fallen candy, but she makes no comment on its presence. “Of course,” she says instead, turning to her cash register to read the total of my purchase. “That’ll be $14.38.”
Silence floats over the room, accented only by the humming of the drink machines in the foreground.
“I’m sorry, what?” I stutter, hoping I have heard her wrong as I plunge my hand into the pocket that does not have slime in it and dig around for the money I suddenly know I do not have. The search produces for me a crinkled ten dollar bill, a vial containing some kind of tiny scales I can’t really identify at the moment, an old business card of mine and a dirty nickel, all of which I lay out on the counter as I continue in vain to scour my filthier pockets for spare cash. Finally, I just look up at the cashier, having no idea what to say as an icy dread sinks into the pit of my stomach. “I don’t have that much with me,” I admit, startled.
In response, she stares at me for a moment before her gaze falls instead to my two wanna-be-purchases. She seems like she wants to say something about them-or about me-but she chooses not to, and words cannot express how exceedingly grateful I am for this.
“Um,” I murmur, going back and forth between which of the items I wasn’t going to buy. Should the cat skip a night of food, or should I skip a night of sleep? It was a surprisingly difficult decision to make and, given the options and the incredibly tantalizing nature of the aspirin bottle, I wondered briefly if Murphy would be interested in owning a cat.
The cashier quietly clears her throat, effectively bringing my attention back to her. “Mister….Dresden, is it?” she says, and I look up to see her squinting down at my wrinkled business card. As I do not correct the name, she sets the card down and points to the side, above the row of candy I had just suffered passage through. “We do have those, if you need them,” she offers.
Blinkingly, I look to where she is pointing and see a series of single dose-sized drugs, all lined up on the top row of the candy aisle. Profoundly relieved to have this decision taken from me, I immediately take one of the packets in my hand and place it gently down on the counter.
“I’ll take this then, thank you,” I say, unable to keep from being at least a little bit pleased-even if I am a bit ashamed of the fact that I had no choice but to settle. A sample size isn’t much, but I can always bug Bob into helping me brew some sort of herbal remedy for the pain later. All I’m really looking for now is a way to make driving easier until I get home, so yeah, this’ll work.
Seeming to be laughing under her breath but at least having the decency not to reveal it, the cashier pushes the larger aspirin bottle to the side and rings up the tiny packet instead.
“$9.54,” she says, as the new total comes up.
I hand her my ten-dollar bill and thank her as she gives me back a receipt and my change, both of which I quickly pocket as she tells me to “get home” because I “look like hell".
I can’t agree more. If only she knew why I looked like hell.
Nodding politely to her, I rub my hands against my thighs to remove the green liquid once again staining them from my pockets. Hands less slick now, I re-grab my hockey stick and limp out of the building, the same bell that had signified my entrance now signifying my exit.
Making my way haltingly across the parking lot and then somehow managing to hoist myself into my jeep, I sit down in the driver’s seat and take from my shopping bag my newly bought, sample-sized aspirin. I look around my vehicle for water or something else I can use to swallow the pill down, but when nothing shows itself to be immediately apparent, I simply place the pill on my tongue and swallow it dry.
Settling in against my seat as I wait for the aspirin’s miracle effects to kick in, I wonder what I will say to Bob when he asks me what happened to me, as he is sure to do as soon as he sees me enter my apartment at this late hour, covered in slime.
I certainly won’t mention that the only truly dangerous part of the “harmless” creature I had gone after was that the slime it cast outwards from itself when frightened was incredibly slippery and very easy to fall down around. I also won’t add that it practically defeated itself by running headfirst into a wall the instant I had spotted it. Or that I didn’t do anything for the entire “battle” but lie on my back and flail because I had slipped and was having trouble standing back up. Or that the creature didn't seem to notice I had fallen and only kept running, repeatedly, into that very same wall until it ran no more. Why would I give Bob that satisfaction?
But even so, the ghost would figure things out on his own eventually. He always did. And then he would laugh. All the way right back into his skull. There wouldn’t even be words to define his amusement. It would just be an unspoken, “I was right; you were wrong! See! Do you see this!? This is your mistake! See!” kind of attitude that Bob occasionally adapted to himself when the mood struck him and he felt particularly humored about something or another. In this case: the image of his former student being felled by a fairly large puddle. Which was, in its own way, a little sad, but still funny.
Blinking myself out of my reverie to find that the pain in my leg had faded to a somewhat duller, almost tolerable ache, I start up my jeep and drive home, awaiting the lecture that is sure to come.
At the very least, it certainly has the potential to be an interesting one.
***
~October 22, 2007
Author: guardian_chaos
Characters: Harry, mentions of Bob and Mister
Rating: PG
Words: 2973-ish
Original Posting Date: October 22, 2007, here at dresdenflashfic.
Summary: Harry endures the nightmarish ordeal of having to wait in line at a convenience store to buy cat food.
Author's Note: Behold! It is a gen fic! With no character back-story speculations! Whoa! O_O Partially inspired by a bit of chat between joonscribble and I, this is just something light, but with plenty of irritated!Harry to pull itself through.
Ahem. Also, this signifies an attempt on my part to try out a new style. If I've failed miserably, please tell me. I'd really appreciate the feedback. =)
* * *
Oh, Bob is so going to be hearing about this day when I get home, I inwardly grumble to myself as I pull my jeep into the parking lot of a local convenience store (“open 24/7!” as a brilliantly lit neon sign in the window cheekily declares) and unhitch my seatbelt.
The parking lot is lit up garishly by a single yellow streetlight and this does nothing to improve my mood as, with a grunt of pain, I spin myself to the side in my seat and allow my feet to dangle through the open space of the jeep that Murphy is ever-so-fond of telling me “should be a door” because the way it is now will only ensure that one day I’m going to be “robbed blind” and “never see it coming”. It’s a nice sentiment, and I appreciate the heavily disguised care she occasionally tries to inflict upon me, but the last thing I’m going to be doing right now-at just past midnight, no less-is go shopping for another vehicle, and especially not when I have far more pressing matters to attend to.
Taking a pause where I am sitting, I inhale briefly and then angle my hockey stick so that it is resting vertically on the ground before me, just outside of the vehicle. My hand tight around the hockey stick, I make sure it is secure and is not going to move before I slide down from my vehicle with it as my support, hissing in pain as my left leg is jarred by the impact of tapping the ground. Gasping at the sudden pain, I stay where I’ve landed for a second or two or forty, just breathing with my head pressed firmly against my staff as I count backwards from a hundred.
Eventually the pain in my leg subsides slightly and, swallowing back any pain that might still remain, I compose myself and begin to move away from my jeep.
“Harmless,” I mockingly imitate Bob, as I use my hockey stick to help me limp across the concrete expanse leading to the entrance to the store. “In fact,” I continue, raising my voice, “it’s the most pathetic supernatural nuisance I’ve ever heard of! Hardly worth pursuing at all. And!!! As a matter of fact, Harry, I am nearly convinced that I have seen worse threats to you, and to anyone else who might encounter such things, in the meals you prepare for yourself!”
The door is before me now, casting a white-greenish hue out onto the parking lot, and so I cease talking to myself, knowing that such things are frowned upon in public places. The little bell hanging at the entrance to the convenience store rings out a cheery little greeting to me as I press my shoulder against the glass door and shove my way into the building. Seeing one random person in the corner look up as I arrive, I nod briefly to him and he goes back to whatever it was he had been doing before I came up and disturbed him.
“Harmless,” I can’t help muttering to myself one more time as I head off in the direction of my intended purchases, feeling a little bit cold. To combat this, I shove my free hand into my pocket and it brushes up against something slippery.
My eyes slowly widen. Retracting my hand, I see that it is covered in a dark green wetness, accented nicely by the store’s florescent lighting.
Oh, my mind dizzily informs me. That’s…probably not a good thing.
Some random impulse draws my attention downwards and I look to see that this green is splattered all over the sides of my coat. Even better, this something seems to be going all the way around to the back of my coat, where it is no doubt causing a questionable stain around my butt. At least I would assume that, as I had certainly landed on that particular part of my anatomy enough times this day to excuse such reasoning. I sigh, and the sound is pitiful, even to my ears.
Hell’s bells. That’s going to take dry-cleaning. And I can’t afford dry-cleaning.
Tightening my grip on my hockey stick, I try to forget my troubles and limp into the animal-targeted section of the store, which is conveniently wedged in-between the “useless things you’ll never want to own unless you’re actually in this aisle for far too long” section and the “I would like to try as many brands of lemon-lime-flavored energy drinks as I can possibly buy in one place” area.
As I critically stare down the various, brightly colored bottles and packages on the shelves, I try to decide between buying for Mister the “Pro-Health” or the “Hairball-defense” variety of the cat food brand that he can usually be bothered to eat, even if it does take hours and hours of coaxing. I quickly choose “Pro-health”. The cat eats too much of my own food to be healthy as he is now-as Bob would no doubt be quick to point out if ever given the opportunity-so I might as well give him a fighting chance on the way out.
My ankle throbs massive spasms of pain up my leg as I gingerly turn around and find that the other side of the aisle is stocked with various painkillers. Oh! That is convenient. I can suddenly see how these stores get their names.
Without much conscious thought, I quickly hobble closer to the rack and pick up a bottle of aspirin-maximum strength-and shuffle it, with a dry rattle of pills, over to the arm already holding Mister’s bag of cat food. As the bottle settles against my ribs, I take up my hockey stick from where I had briefly left it leaning against the shelves and use it to propel myself in the direction of the checkout counter. Each step is an exercise in good judgment, and it is quickly proven to me that I have none as the red-hot fire shrieking up my left leg only intensifies.
Biting my lip, I try harder to transfer the majority of my weight to my hockey stick and struggle to stay upright as I walk/limp/continuously-almost-fall alongside the refrigerated section of the mini-mart. In passing, I catch a glimpse of myself, reflected against the glass that protects the store’s ample supply of fruit drinks-the brightly colored kind in those gallon jugs. Against an orange jug, I see that there’s a dirt smudge on my forehead and that I apparently also have a black eye. The rest of my appearance only goes downhill from there. It seems that, in addition to leaving a colorful collage of its green slime against my coat, my encounter with the “harmless” creature that Bob spoke of has left plenty of marks on my skin, as well.
Annoyed, I turn away from my reflection and putter on to the checkout counter, only to find upon looking up that an insanely long line of three whole people has formed there. I pause for a moment to digest this, debating whether or not I should call upon my “wizardly strengths” to cause a spectacle that would result in my being at the front of the line. A split-second later it occurs to me that this kind of thing has a high chance of chasing the cashier away as well, and so the urge quickly leaves me.
Instead of causing mass-hysteria, I only hobble to the back of the line and lean with my makeshift-staff against the candy counter. From where I am standing I notice that, of all things, a muffled yet unmistakably cheerful rendition of The Lovin’ Spoonful’s hit song “Do You Believe in Magic?” is playing in an tinny voice above my head. Glaring at the dish-shaped radio speaker, I am delighted to see it short out in a flurry of white sparks and then go silent.
My day a little bit brighter, I shuffle forward a step as the dark-haired man at the front of the line bags his purchases and leaves the store, providing space for the endless litany before me to move forward. As my foot hits the floor to do so, my ankle sharply protests, all the way up to my ears where it collides at the center of my forehead in the ferocious beginnings of a terrible migraine. In sudden, blinding agony, I clench my teeth together to prevent the whimper I feel struggling to get out and lean even more feebly on my hockey stick. Beneath me, my ankle still protests my sudden dodging of the “harmless” thing that had gone after me earlier.
Hoping to soothe the injured appendage, I lean down with the intention of gently rolling my ankle in my palm, only to see gravity yank my aspirin off of Mister’s bag of cat food and to the floor. The bottle strikes the ugly blue tile with a noisy clatter that rebounds in my head and draws the attention of everyone in line.
Still reaching towards my foot with my green-splattered and dusty rear in the air, I freeze in place as the bottle rolls away and a half-dozen or so eyes fall to flickering between it and me. For all of the experiences I have ever had with dodging supernatural threats and verbally sparring with the wittiest of them all, I have never quite figured out how to handle situations like this. So I improvise and quickly stand up, only to bump into the person I had not realized had come up behind me and then consequently lurch dizzyingly into the rows of candy stacked up beside me, sending chocolate bars and sugarless gum packs stampeding to the ground around my feet in a frantic rustling of plastic wrappings and cardboard sleeves.
In a stupor, I stare down at the mess as it settles, realizing with sudden, awful clarity that I’ll have to bend my knees if I want to clean it up. And others have seen me, so I have no excuse to not pick anything up.
Groaning in preparation for the horrible task I must soon pursue, I carefully begin to sink down, using my hockey stick for support, but give up less than a few inches down from where I was and quickly force myself back to my feet with a dangerous lurch of my head as the world starts to twist and blur itself into one massive entity before my eyes.
Blearily blinking reality back into focus, I see that there is no longer anyone ahead of me. Ecstatic about this, I slowly creep forward, using my staff more than my actual leg as I approach the counter. Out of nowhere, the bottle of aspirin I had dropped slaps down on the plastic surface beside me. Despite myself, I cringe at the sound as my head screams, even as I utter a polite “thank you” in reply and reach to pull the bottle towards myself.
The man who had retrieved my little bottle of happy pills only nods curtly, but is too absorbed in his magazine to do much else, so I simply turn my attention back to the cashier, a young woman in her early 30’s, steel-faced and apparently sucking on some kind of hard candy. A bitter one, if the expression on her face is anything to go by.
“Is this it?” she asks me, ringing up my two items with a raised eyebrow.
I nod, grinning sheepishly at her. “Yeah,” I say, my voice sounding strangely foreign in the mostly quiet building. “Could you maybe bag it for me? I keep dropping things today.”
That raised eyebrow rises even higher as she looks behind me at the pile of fallen candy, but she makes no comment on its presence. “Of course,” she says instead, turning to her cash register to read the total of my purchase. “That’ll be $14.38.”
Silence floats over the room, accented only by the humming of the drink machines in the foreground.
“I’m sorry, what?” I stutter, hoping I have heard her wrong as I plunge my hand into the pocket that does not have slime in it and dig around for the money I suddenly know I do not have. The search produces for me a crinkled ten dollar bill, a vial containing some kind of tiny scales I can’t really identify at the moment, an old business card of mine and a dirty nickel, all of which I lay out on the counter as I continue in vain to scour my filthier pockets for spare cash. Finally, I just look up at the cashier, having no idea what to say as an icy dread sinks into the pit of my stomach. “I don’t have that much with me,” I admit, startled.
In response, she stares at me for a moment before her gaze falls instead to my two wanna-be-purchases. She seems like she wants to say something about them-or about me-but she chooses not to, and words cannot express how exceedingly grateful I am for this.
“Um,” I murmur, going back and forth between which of the items I wasn’t going to buy. Should the cat skip a night of food, or should I skip a night of sleep? It was a surprisingly difficult decision to make and, given the options and the incredibly tantalizing nature of the aspirin bottle, I wondered briefly if Murphy would be interested in owning a cat.
The cashier quietly clears her throat, effectively bringing my attention back to her. “Mister….Dresden, is it?” she says, and I look up to see her squinting down at my wrinkled business card. As I do not correct the name, she sets the card down and points to the side, above the row of candy I had just suffered passage through. “We do have those, if you need them,” she offers.
Blinkingly, I look to where she is pointing and see a series of single dose-sized drugs, all lined up on the top row of the candy aisle. Profoundly relieved to have this decision taken from me, I immediately take one of the packets in my hand and place it gently down on the counter.
“I’ll take this then, thank you,” I say, unable to keep from being at least a little bit pleased-even if I am a bit ashamed of the fact that I had no choice but to settle. A sample size isn’t much, but I can always bug Bob into helping me brew some sort of herbal remedy for the pain later. All I’m really looking for now is a way to make driving easier until I get home, so yeah, this’ll work.
Seeming to be laughing under her breath but at least having the decency not to reveal it, the cashier pushes the larger aspirin bottle to the side and rings up the tiny packet instead.
“$9.54,” she says, as the new total comes up.
I hand her my ten-dollar bill and thank her as she gives me back a receipt and my change, both of which I quickly pocket as she tells me to “get home” because I “look like hell".
I can’t agree more. If only she knew why I looked like hell.
Nodding politely to her, I rub my hands against my thighs to remove the green liquid once again staining them from my pockets. Hands less slick now, I re-grab my hockey stick and limp out of the building, the same bell that had signified my entrance now signifying my exit.
Making my way haltingly across the parking lot and then somehow managing to hoist myself into my jeep, I sit down in the driver’s seat and take from my shopping bag my newly bought, sample-sized aspirin. I look around my vehicle for water or something else I can use to swallow the pill down, but when nothing shows itself to be immediately apparent, I simply place the pill on my tongue and swallow it dry.
Settling in against my seat as I wait for the aspirin’s miracle effects to kick in, I wonder what I will say to Bob when he asks me what happened to me, as he is sure to do as soon as he sees me enter my apartment at this late hour, covered in slime.
I certainly won’t mention that the only truly dangerous part of the “harmless” creature I had gone after was that the slime it cast outwards from itself when frightened was incredibly slippery and very easy to fall down around. I also won’t add that it practically defeated itself by running headfirst into a wall the instant I had spotted it. Or that I didn’t do anything for the entire “battle” but lie on my back and flail because I had slipped and was having trouble standing back up. Or that the creature didn't seem to notice I had fallen and only kept running, repeatedly, into that very same wall until it ran no more. Why would I give Bob that satisfaction?
But even so, the ghost would figure things out on his own eventually. He always did. And then he would laugh. All the way right back into his skull. There wouldn’t even be words to define his amusement. It would just be an unspoken, “I was right; you were wrong! See! Do you see this!? This is your mistake! See!” kind of attitude that Bob occasionally adapted to himself when the mood struck him and he felt particularly humored about something or another. In this case: the image of his former student being felled by a fairly large puddle. Which was, in its own way, a little sad, but still funny.
Blinking myself out of my reverie to find that the pain in my leg had faded to a somewhat duller, almost tolerable ache, I start up my jeep and drive home, awaiting the lecture that is sure to come.
At the very least, it certainly has the potential to be an interesting one.
***
~October 22, 2007