“It must be the heat,” one of the customers said as I rang
them up and they moved on.
The heat?
My bones ached from the chill even inside the store where I
was working for the Christmas rush.
Something had made my pen explode in my uniform shirt
pocket, leaving a rink of ink like a bullet hole just over my heart, spreading
like a disease to my fingers and then my arm. I even left stains on the cash
register keys and left my fingerprints on a number of boxes. I claimed when
customers complained that it came off poorly printed labels until some smart
assed lady accompanied by a crude dude noticed the stain on my chest and asked
if I was bleeding.
“Sure, I’m of royal blood,” I thought, but kept this to
myself, bearing the brunt of their abuse with a grin.
I tried hard not to blush, but by then the blue had blotched
my skin here and there, and I couldn’t get the manager to give me a break long
enough so that I could go to the restroom to wash it off.
He passed my station several times with a strange twinkle in
his eyes as if he thought all of this too funny to have it stopped so soon.
This steamed me. And each time I looked back down at myself,
I found another patch of blue, and that the circle on my chest left its imprint
on my inner arm as if I was Gutenberg and had just invented the printing press,
using myself as both press and paper.
I did my best to hide these blue abrasions, bending my wrist
in unnatural ways, slumping my shoulders until I looked like the Hunchback of
Notre Dame.
A lot of people looked at mere queerly. Most thought my
whole act as amazingly funny. Some customers refused to move on immediately and
would stand and stare and ask, “How come you have all that blue all over you?”
These were mostly kids so the concept of justifiable
homicide would not have held up in a court of law.
Eventually, I gave up and started to boast about the pen
that had exploded in my pocket, treating as if I had done it more or less
intentionally.
Some of the people then came up with theories as to why it
had occurred.
But not everybody was pleased.
One lady complained about the blue marks on the ears of the
teddy bear she’d just purchased, and didn’t buy my claim that some of the bears
came from the factory that way.
“It’s the humidity,” I said, trying not to look down at the
poor stuffed creature and how I had marred it.
She pointed to my breast and its spreading circle and told
me I was full of shit.
At that point, I told her I had to go to the men’s room, and
flagged down the manager who was suddenly concerned about the hold up in the
line, standing behind me to listen to my string of excuses.
Finally, he closed down my register and told me to go wash
up.
“It’s the heat,” one of the customers said as I made my way
away from my station.
But my ears and face were red with a blush that only made
the blue marks look darker.
“Yeah, it’s the heat,” I thought.
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