Hypnotic Shoppe Story- Tails you win Heads Zulus.

Property Wendy Slippers, All Rights Retained, TF, MC

     Carla looked up from her Cosmopolitan magazine, scanning the creepy empty Hypnotic Shoppe, near closing time.

   ‘What was that sound,,,’

   From the antique room, a large black man in a zebra loincloth leaped into the doorway. His face and body painted with white stripes, the warrior shook his spear which looked real enough. He was angry, furious.

   “Awa- Ki AWAIIII!!!”

    Carla ran. Her unlaced Keds sneakers were in the furniture display room before her marijuana cigarette had hit the wood floor.

   The tall, thin  Zulu warrior shouted again and leaped after her, smashing a small vase with his spear. Carla stopped at the end of the hall, looking for a weapon. The warrior grabbed his spear with both hands and began screaming in a frantic war cry!

   “Awa-Ki AWAI!!”

   Carla lunged left, into the room full of costume racks- the room marked ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’. She heard a rack fall as the bullish man smacked everything with his long sharp weapon. Dropping to her knees, Carla crawled under the large wooden racks mounted to the floor. Dusty old dresses and coats brushed against her, filling her senses with imagined fragrances, previously lived events and fantastical possibilities. The dizzy feeling she immediately got gave her an idea.

   The aberration of modern society hunched down, pushing through the mass of heavy outfits and costumes. Through the hedge of strange clothing, he saw Carla less than a foot from him, and gripped her throat. She grasped his arm and choked, and stuck the brightly colored birthday party hat on his sweaty bald head.

time passes

   Wendy walked in, just after teaching her dance class next door, still in her leotards and hose.

   “Carla, Closing time! Are we all going to Haven tonight?” The local hangout was a dark, gothy dance club with many levels and the group’s place to lounge and talk.

   Her eyes saw the burned out joint on the floor just as her nose registered the rich Okoume wood from a spear.

   Wendy peered around the corner, clutching her spiral necklace. At one of the large reading tables, A tall black man in white war paint, and loincloth, wearing a paper cone-shape hat, played with colored blocks. He held up two red ones and smiled at Wendy.

   “Koji ablu waki!”

   Carla was sitting beside him, smoking the last of a clove cigarette, clearly defying the company rule. Wendy added things up quickly. Carla stamped out the smoking end into a plate from the tea service, and took a deep breath.

   “Zulus, Wendy.”

   “Um,, yah I see that.”

   “No,,, ZULUS! Freaking Zulus! With spears?”

   “The box said keep those shrunken heads out of sunlight, we may need,,”

   “WE?”

   Wendy sighed with a smile, walked into the dangerous area within Carla’s fist range, and hugged her friend for almost a minute.

   “He said, ‘Awa-Ki Awai,’ what’s that mean?”

   “Goodness,” Wendy handed the smiling warrior a third red block, causing him to giggle and clap. “That means, “You are my property”, you were nearly the sex servant of a long-dead African Warrior!” Wendy smiled, lost instantly in a fantasy daydream. When she returned, She saw Carla was not amused.

   “This just takes a second.” Wendy went in the office, returning two minutes later in a black cotton dress, with a bird’s foot. “Mmm, this spear is Okoume wood, very nice.”

   By the time Carla had washed her plate and turned off the tea, and turned around, there was no smelly warrior, no wood spear, only a shrunken head, a box, and a bird foot. And Wendy putting all three on a shelf marked “Display Only”. The young blonde Shoppe owner grabbed her purse and threw Carla hers.

   “I’m buying ok?”

   “You are sooo, buying!”

   The lights snapped off, all the sconce candles and the great fireplace went out with a turn of a knob. Wendy pulled her full length white fur coat around her, helping Carla with her jeans jacket. The two girls took a deep breath of the bracing cold night air, and jumped in Carla’s little car. Carla waited till the car was stopped again to speak, both girls fixing their bras for maximum effect in the parking lot of the Haven.

   “Wendy?”

   “Mm Hmm?”

   “How the Hell do you speak Ancient Zulu?”