Josh brought the car to halt on the wet tarmac, put the handbrake on, turned the engine off and took the keys from the ignition. He sighed deeply, his body seemingly deflated as some life had just escaped his body.
He was parked in a car park in a “retail centre”. One of those strange places that exist on the outskirts of cities with massive areas for parking and brand name super stores offering the consumer a much wider selection of products, ranging from bikes to beds to computers to windows to pet food. The centres were usually given ridiculous names such as the “meteor centre” or “Greenbox wellbeing Retail Park” or names similarly along those lines.
Josh unbuckled his seatbelt and it retreated like a scolded puppy back into its kennel. He leaned forward over the steering wheel for a second. He seemed nervous, a feeling of lack of confidence surrounded him and from his appearance could be seen by anyway who happened to look into his dark eyes or upon his skinny person.
He seemed to be trying to prepare himself for something. Sure, he’d put this off many a time, but now it was getting silly and he really should pull himself together.
He suddenly became animated, “Just get it over with and try not to think about it,” he thought. He pulled himself forward and popped open the car door the cold air instantly rushing in to meet him. He stepped out and began rummaging in his pockets for his keys which he had only placed there a short while ago.
His car for lack of a better description had seen better days. In fact a better description would be a small red looking thing with wheels, dints, and rust. The car was of an undetermined name and make. It was roughly of the car design and shape but the jury was out on that one and wasn’t due to return with the answer. Ever. Josh didn’t care about cars, in the sense that he didn’t car about what was inside them or what make they were how they looked or whether or not they had been seen in some fancy advert in the cinema that made no sense what so ever. A car was a car. They came in different sizes and colours to Josh and they all had wheels which was a good thing. As long as they got him from A to B and possibly back to A again, then they were good. In fact the only reason Josh had learned to drive in the first place so he didn’t have to take public transport, which was always late, stuffy, smelly and full of people who looked at you funny and talked very loudly when all you wanted to do was stare out of the window or attempted to read.
Finding his keys he swung the car door shut and jammed the key into the door. Locking the door was tricky; it could not be done from the inside and took a lot of fiddling at the outside door. It was taking longer than Josh expected, he began looking around to see if there was anyone looking at him in an odd way so he could make his “Sorry my cars a bit crappy and the door takes some locking” face before adverting his eyes away from theirs before they stabbed too deeply into his soul. He suddenly realised that looking around might give the impression that he was trying to break into the car and quickly changed his posture to that of someone just trying to lock their car and not trying to break into it, which brought him to the realisation that he might look like someone trying to break into a car who was just trying to look like someone who was just trying to lock their car.
This strange paradox hurt Josh’s mind and in a fit of frustration and an urge not to been seen as someone trying to nick a car, the lock in the door finally turned and clicked into place. Josh put the keys back in his pockets, followed by both of his hands.
He began to walk across the car park walking with a slight stoop his eyes to the ground as always.
It was cold and the strange mist like rain swirled about him, the chill to his body made worse by the fact that he was wearing a green t-shirt and no coat.
He made a direct line across the car park to the huge looming brand name computer store in the corner of the retail park; his feet patting lightly in the rain water that thinly covered the surface of the black tarmac. He looked up as he walked into the shadow of the store.
A shiver ran through him.
He could now see up close the bright enticing colours of the store and its window displays and a poster sized billboards attached the walls either side of the store. He stepped up off the tarmac on to the narrow pavement outside the front of the store, stopped dead and stared through the windows into the brightly lit fluorescent store and the shelves lined with products.
His heart was beating and he could not only feel it but hear it as the blood pounded through his ears.
The nerves were beginning to take over.
He felt exposed standing there in the open, he could here footsteps sploshing in the rain on the pavement and they were coming closer, he must surely look like a crazy person standing there. He quickly darted from the edge of the pavement towards the billboards on the wall and pretended to be admiring the amazing offer. A tall man walked passed moving up to the automatic doors, which opened for him and walked in. Josh watched sneakily from over his should, oh how he admired that man, able to just walk into the store without a care in the world and browse the products, maybe even purchase something.
He thought about turning back.
The thought bounced around inside his head, his body felt like it was going to move but his brain did not know in which direction to go. He had gotten this far and surely couldn’t turn back now?
Either a suddenly rush of confidence poured through Josh or just that his body had been caught between moving in two directions for too long and made up its own mind but he moved forwards towards the entrance of the store.
The automatic doors slid open in a slimy corporate fashion as if to say in a very smarmy voice “Hello, come on in.” Josh crossed the threshold into the brand name computer mega store, his hands thrust deep into his pockets and trying to keep his head down.
He felt it happen.
The hair on the back of his neck tingled; all of his five sensors and his illusive yet unknown to him and unused sixth and seventh sense became slightly more aware. He could feel them, all of them, as soon as he moved away from the main entrances into a visible area of the store he felt them all click.
The eyes.
It was the eyes, all of them, all of them looking at him he could feel them burning into him from all sides even though he couldn’t necessarily see them, they all locked on to him. He could feel the security guard somewhere behind him watching him; he tried not to move in any suspicious ways.
Most of what he could feel was the stores assistants; they could smell a customer a mile away and were armed to the teeth with their training. They were watching him, as soon as he’d entered their customer radar, which all sales assistances seem to have implanted in their heads, picked him up, they rose up like meercats smelling the air, their senses all heightened fully to customer awareness, they locked in on the seemingly unsuspecting targets and then switch hunt mode where they would then begin to prowl around the store in the hope of catching something.
Josh spotted one!
He quickly looked away.
Making eye contact was one of the worst possible things to do; he shut his eyes tight and walked on.
“I only want to look, I just want to look at various computers and note down they’re specifications and they’re price and get out of here,” he told himself in the vein hope that maybe the predator-like sales assistants could somehow read his mind and his posture and let him be.
Josh walked down an isle; shelves of computer parts in oddly coloured boxes lined both sides of him. A tall sales assistant was approaching him from his left trying to head him off at the break in the isle in a rather obvious predatory tactic. Josh speeded up, his whole body became tense; he could feel the fabric of his pockets beginning to give way as he tried to force his hands further down. He reached the break in the isle just before the assistant who began to speak… “Do you…” was all he managed, Josh shut his eyes up tight attempting to block out the whole of universe and continued up through the store. He had managed not to get caught, he was relieved. He glanced behind him expecting to see the sales assistant giving chase but he was nowhere to be seen.
This worried Josh even more as he could be anywhere.
He reached the section of the store where all the models of PC’s and Mac’s were displayed. He looked around; he could see no one else, not even a blue jumper lurking in the background, which all the sales assistants wore in this store so that customers could identify them and get help from them. Josh didn’t want their help; he wanted them to stay away. He cautiously looked one last time around and approached a PC and began looking over its specifications.
Some time past, Josh had found at a couple of models he was interested in, he would never remember anything about them so he reached slowly and carefully for the notepad he carried in his back pocket.
‘Hello how are you?’ Said a voice to his right.
He turned his head slowly and saw a grinning welcoming face staring straight into his soul and analysing the possible amount of money Josh had at his disposal. Alarm bells rang in his head, he knew what was happening, the assistant had used the first psychological trick on him, the “how are you?” A question designed to get a positive response.
If a complete stranger (or for a crazy example a sales assistant) asks you how you are, your immediate response (one hundred percent of the time) is a positive one. “I’m fine thanks” or something along those lines. When asked by sales assistance or strangers, people will not bitch about how crappy they feel or how much they hate the world the sky the universe and all the living things in it, they will give a positive response. A psychological trick you see, first thing you say to a customer and you get a positive response starts everything off positive, more chance of getting the customer talking to you the more chance of a sale. Open ended question, force a response and keep it positive. If you went up to a customer and said “do you need any help” the response will usually be negative. “No thanks, I’m fine.”
The sales assistant knew this as did Josh.
Josh stood mouth slightly open from which no response came. His mind ticked away as fast as it could still the Assistant smiled, waiting. Waiting for what was inevitably going to come.
Josh couldn’t think what to do, he would simply like to shout at the top of lungs “leave me alone you scum sucking mobile moss from the compost heaps of the city dump!!!!” But he was far to polite for this, being mean to people wasn’t his specialty. He’d been raised well in his mind, and wasn’t accustom to being mean to people he didn’t know very well, though the thought of pushing the man over and stamping on his head did briefly cross his mind. He’d left it too long, the Assistant was being to look concerned in a kind of this mans a crazy person I’d better get Knuckles the security guard to come over rough him up a bit a chuck him out way. Then it happened. ‘Fine thank you,’ said Josh as politely as he could. The life came back into the Assistants face as did the big smile. Josh cursed himself on the inside. ‘What spec of machine are you looking for?’ Asked the Assistant. Another trick! This sentence was designed to still keeping Josh talking.
The Assistant had obviously been watching Josh from afar, analysing his movements and the products he was looking at deducing that he was after a new PC. Josh’s brain was caught between two cogs preventing them from turning, his brain getting more and more squished as the cogs tried to continue their movement despite of the brain (In a purely metaphoric sense of course.) He knew that whatever he said, there was no possible way that his English etiquette and eternal shyness would let him get out of this. He began to feel ill, a cold sweat clutched at his body and crawled over his skin, he began to feel very green and his stomach suddenly felt like a deep well that had been left to putrefy for many years. Josh swayed slightly he put a hand to his head as if to steady himself but more to try and push away the throbbing that was echoing more and more around the inside his head and his heart suddenly jumped and began doing laps about his insides.
The Assistant stared patiently waiting for his reply. Josh looked into the Assistants eyes but found he could not focus properly; his vision blurred, small black dots began to wiz around in his field of vision, TV like static began to cloud the edges of his sight. “What spec of machine are you looking for?” Said that Assistant again. Something snapped. Josh didn’t think, at least he thought he didn’t think, his body just seemed to take over by itself and began running on auto pilot. Those years of evolution suddenly kicked the modern and evolved Josh out of the driving seat, downed a bottle of vodka and began driving. Josh clutched his head as the Assistant spoke his words then grabbed him by the shoulders, much the Assistants surprise, and flung him backwards on to the floor, the man’s head cracking on the hard shiny floor and then Josh was off. He didn’t know which way he was going and just assumed that it was the general direction in which the exit might be. He kept his head down, not so much as to keep people from seeing him but because his head felt like someone was pumping thick liquid into it and the pressure was growing too much for his skull to take, he kept one hand to his head and used the other to steady himself while he dashed about. He could hear other people, other footsteps other voices than the ones that had suddenly appeared to be playing over and over in his head, undecipherable and manic. The voices external to his head he could make out some of the words they were saying, things along the lines of: “Can I help you?” “Can I interest you in…?” “I’m only trying to…” “ You look like a man who needs five hundred and twelve megabytes of RAM” and “Get him”. There was suddenly sharp crack and everything that was moving suddenly ceased. Josh pulled his head up and opened his eyes the florescent lights piercing his pupils and attacked the back of his retinas with large sharp hooks. He had run into some shelving. He was vaguely aware that one of his hips were hurting but was more concerned about the multiplying black dots flailing about in his eyes and the apparently closing down of his field of vision, he tried to look for the exit but he could no longer see past his own eye lashers, he ran away and as he did the feeling of a plastic bag containing wet and recently removed human organs being turned over with sharp sticks was felt in his stomach, he was unaware that he wasn’t progressing forward, he was staggering around from side to side while trying to move forward and the movement in his stomach suddenly caused the nerves in his legs to give up and retreat and he fell to the floor with a thud face down. They were close behind him he could hear them, they wanted to sell him things and he didn’t want to buy them or talk to them, he could still feel their eyes and their greed for whatever commission it is that they get from selling something. Josh scrambled up onto one knee, one of his hands held his stomach the other his head, he tried opening his eyes but it felt as if they were stuck shut with mucus, what little opening he managed to achieve offered no real grounding for reality just a swirling mass of colour and black dots moving all around him, his brain no longer able to decipher and interpret the external world it was so horrifying that he felt much better slamming his eyes shut so tight that it felt like his eyelids were going to chew off his eyes.
The unintelligible voices in his head grew like a crowd of angry tourists all trying to claim money back; they confused his neural pathways rendering any communications from his brain to the rest of his body to move useless. He tried to run but instead something wet flipped over in his stomach and suddenly it felt like his entire insides were surging upwards trying to escape from all the holes in his face. Josh coughed up a mass of gunk on to the floor with the sound of a green puss filled demon being minced in a blender its entrails pouring out into the air and spattering on the ground. Suddenly they were upon him; they grabbed his shoulders and flung him onto his back.
Hundreds of them!
Or so it seemed.
All talking at him, right into his face he tried to hear them individually, he tried to tell them to leave him alone and let him sleep but it was useless nothing worked. Josh felt something that could be described as his brain leaking of his ears and then it all went black and quiet.
When Josh awoke in his car his clothes were ripped and stained with vomit, in his boot was an entire new computer system with top of the range graphic card hard drive and RAM, network capabilities, fire-wire connection, a 17 inch monitor, a printer, scanner and web cam all with three years warranty.
By Bob Alfonzo