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Mech Death Match on Aisle 5
Jul. 19th, 2011 11:31 pmSo, here I am shopping up at the East Side Kroger off the corner of Fuck You Street and Doomed Boulevard.
“Yeah, Honey, um, they don’t have ‘low fat’ fiber wafers, they only have ‘reduced fat’. Is that alright? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah…, I, I, yeah, yeah, I know you said ‘low fat.’ I’m saying they don’t have ‘low fat’. They have ‘reduced fat’. Now what I want to know is if that’s cool… or is this going to turn into a whole David Mamet routine here?” I cradle the phone with my right shoulder and hold up the box looking for the skull and crossbones or radiation warning that I must be missing. “No, I’m not fucking with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know… I just don’t think there’s a difference. What? Yeah, I’m holding the box right here, why? Bullshit. Where?”
I flip to the right hand side of the box, scan it all the down at the bottom, where printed in a text size measured just barely above a quantum level – “Not A Low Fat Food.”
“Fuck!” I mouth the word with every muscle in my face.
“Yeah, I uh, I see it. Yeah, sorry. I’ll, uh, yeah… I’ll look for something else. Love you, Baby. Bye.”
I click off the phone and look over to my right. A little boy sits in his basket section of the shopping cart shaking his head sadly at me.
Aisle Five. Snacks and I’m looking for a zero calorie miracle. I need a carb-free slice of Chocolate Heaven with a sugarless helping of Mea Culpa ice cream on the side. What I’ve got to choose from is a thousand flavors of corn syrup instead.
Then, out of the corner of my eye I spot my ex. Right there, still looking as young and s beautiful as she did all those years ago when I broke up with her.
Little Debbie smiles back at me, from the corner of the last box of Swiss Cake Rolls on the shelves.
Abandoning my cart, as if awakening from a long sleep, I step towards her, my hand extended lovingly for her embrace…
“Getcher hands off her, Boy!” A deep baritone-boom of a voice explodes to my right. “She’s spoken for!”
With super-weasel reflexes, I bolt to my right ready to proclaim my innocence even as I search wildly for the nearest avenue of escape.
There I see him. Old guy in a Pimp Purple mobility scooter. Gray rain cap. Owl sized eyes through bullet proof thick glasses. White shirt and green sweater despite the inferno Summer broiling outside. Brown slacks that cut off mid shin to reveal the full sock garters.
“Excuse me…?” I say cautiously.
“You heard me!” The old man growls the words and revs the engine on his scooter until it purrs with the menace of a Harley straddled by a mummy on PCP. “She’s mine.”
“The hell she is, you Old Fool!” The words explode from behind me all the way to the left of the aisle. I turn away from the old guy and see another mechanized scooter. This one mounted by a morbidly obese… man, woman, I really couldn’t tell from the distance. The scooter was lime green, all tricked out with rims on the wheels and chrome sparkling along the handlebars. “I done told you already she’s going home with me.”
“Not with you jabbering away there, she ain’t!” And the old guy revs up his scooter and bursts like a rocket, well a 2mph rocket but a rocket nonetheless, down the aisle racing for that last box of Swiss Cake Rolls.
Super Size, meanwhile jabs a sausage sized finger into a button on his steering bar. The hydraulics on the back two wheels of the scooter lurch up in a series of mechanized shrugs as a concussive s bass line rumbles down the lane. He revs his mean machine up and fires after the box with a speed rivaling the fastest tortoises on the planet.
“Sweet Jesus!” I scream with unrestrained terror before diving, yes diving, down behind my cart for safety. A minute later – a very, very long minute later - by which I mean the kind of minute that can only be experienced during bad karaoke and red traffic lights – the two roll up to each other.
They begin grasping and fumbling for the box but neither one can reach quite high enough to secure purchase of the prize.
Technically I could help, I figure, but I thought it best to cower and crouch behind the shopping cart because, really, I had nothing else to do.
Eventually they began trading slaps and using their scooters to viciously bump each other out of the way.
Finally, Super Size had had enough of this bullshit. One last jab of her finger on the center of the steering bar.
Suddenly she was surrounded by a throbbing aura of every known color in the neon spectrum. Her body floated, yes floated, out of the air to hang suspended. The mobility scooter disassembled, as a series of robot spider arms emerged underneath its shell and began cocooning Super Size in metallic plates of sparkling chrome.
When the process was completed, and the neon rainbow aura vanished as inexplicably as it arrived, a ten foot high chrome and lime green robot stood there.
“Go, go, Gadget Ass-Whupping!” Super Sized roars in her mechanized battle suit, jumping backwards into flight and unleashes a barrage of screeching micro-missiles towards the old guy.
Before he can react he is engulfed in a billowing explosion that annihilates everything in a three foot radius around him… except for the lone box of Swiss Roll Cakes… standing defiantly unscorched along the flaming carnage of the shelves. Black smoke gushes down the aisle. Shoppers continue to pass by the exits unconcerned, chatting away on cell phone calls or idly checking out the manager’s specials.
Super Size lands and begins stomping down the aisle, with scuttling steps that rattle the cage of my cart. S/he reaches towards the coquettish Debbie, servo fingers whirring as they expand in anticipation…
… only to be smacked away by another robotically enhanced fist. This one Pimp Purple with the luster of the shell not so much as smudged from the barrage. Before s/he can react another fist emerges out of the smoke and smashes right into hir helmet.
Super Sized goes flying again… but only briefly before crashing into the shelves, showering hir in a cascade of loaves of bread.
Stepping out of the gloom and carnage, Old Guy, in his practically identical except purple mech battle suit, emerges.
Super Sized scrambles to hir feet, thrusts her arms forward, where two miniaturized machine guns pop up from the dorsal of the wrists and open up with a chattering fire. Bullets whiz all down the aisle. Ricochet harmlessly off the shell. Shredding boxes of cookies and snack cakes into crumb clouds around him– all except of course, the cherished last stash of Debbies.
Old Guy responds back. A large tube rises out of his left shoulder, connected to a small box. The tube lowers parallel with the floor and a beam of some unidentified blue energy fires and explodes the right wrist cannon on Super Sized.
“Activate Light Shank Your Ass!” S/he claps hir hands and from between hir palms a sword of glowing red light extends.
Super Sized releases a roar that would send all the devils in the seven howling circles to shiver with fear and charges.
“Bring it!” Old Guy barks and two wands of iridescent white grow between the palms of his clenched servo-fists. Links of a hard light chain form between the two wands and the Old Guy begins weaving them around his body at Bruce Lee Speed (somewhere below hyper and mach speeds).
Super Sized lunges forward with a bushido worthy strike straight for the Old Guy’s skull. Instead he side steps her and lets hir momentum carry her staggering right by. In a blur he trips the feet out from under hir and delivers a back handed nunchuck strike to the back of hir helmet.
Super Sized goes down hard. S/he tries futilely to get back on hir feet but only receives an armor plated boot check across the chops for hir efforts.
“Stay down!” He bellows and Super Sized’s armor deconstructs and shifts back into a toppled scooter. Super Size lays there sprawled out facedown amongst the ashes of crumbs and flattened bullets.
Old Guy strikes a panel on his breast plating and the suit disassembles into a cluster of parts and reassembles back into the scooter. The pilot, left hovering in mid-air during the suit’s metamorphosis, floats gently back down into the seat… but not before snatching the box of Swiss Cakes off the shelf.
Prize secured, he rolls off leisurely down the aisle towards the unconcerned public.
I pick myself up, wheel my cart past the carnage as fast as I can and before anyone makes me for the damage. Right before I can take the turn to escape, I almost slip on something, my balance maintained solely because I was holding on to the cart. I look down.
“Heaven Culpa Cream Cakes” the logo says with text adorned by angel wings and a yellow halo floating over it all benevolently. Right below the words – “Low Fat!”
I bite my lip. I look around. No mechs, ninjas, robot samurai or any of that shit. Coast clear. I scoop up the box and head straight for the check-out.
“Yeah, Honey, um, they don’t have ‘low fat’ fiber wafers, they only have ‘reduced fat’. Is that alright? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah…, I, I, yeah, yeah, I know you said ‘low fat.’ I’m saying they don’t have ‘low fat’. They have ‘reduced fat’. Now what I want to know is if that’s cool… or is this going to turn into a whole David Mamet routine here?” I cradle the phone with my right shoulder and hold up the box looking for the skull and crossbones or radiation warning that I must be missing. “No, I’m not fucking with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know… I just don’t think there’s a difference. What? Yeah, I’m holding the box right here, why? Bullshit. Where?”
I flip to the right hand side of the box, scan it all the down at the bottom, where printed in a text size measured just barely above a quantum level – “Not A Low Fat Food.”
“Fuck!” I mouth the word with every muscle in my face.
“Yeah, I uh, I see it. Yeah, sorry. I’ll, uh, yeah… I’ll look for something else. Love you, Baby. Bye.”
I click off the phone and look over to my right. A little boy sits in his basket section of the shopping cart shaking his head sadly at me.
Aisle Five. Snacks and I’m looking for a zero calorie miracle. I need a carb-free slice of Chocolate Heaven with a sugarless helping of Mea Culpa ice cream on the side. What I’ve got to choose from is a thousand flavors of corn syrup instead.
Then, out of the corner of my eye I spot my ex. Right there, still looking as young and s beautiful as she did all those years ago when I broke up with her.
Little Debbie smiles back at me, from the corner of the last box of Swiss Cake Rolls on the shelves.
Abandoning my cart, as if awakening from a long sleep, I step towards her, my hand extended lovingly for her embrace…
“Getcher hands off her, Boy!” A deep baritone-boom of a voice explodes to my right. “She’s spoken for!”
With super-weasel reflexes, I bolt to my right ready to proclaim my innocence even as I search wildly for the nearest avenue of escape.
There I see him. Old guy in a Pimp Purple mobility scooter. Gray rain cap. Owl sized eyes through bullet proof thick glasses. White shirt and green sweater despite the inferno Summer broiling outside. Brown slacks that cut off mid shin to reveal the full sock garters.
“Excuse me…?” I say cautiously.
“You heard me!” The old man growls the words and revs the engine on his scooter until it purrs with the menace of a Harley straddled by a mummy on PCP. “She’s mine.”
“The hell she is, you Old Fool!” The words explode from behind me all the way to the left of the aisle. I turn away from the old guy and see another mechanized scooter. This one mounted by a morbidly obese… man, woman, I really couldn’t tell from the distance. The scooter was lime green, all tricked out with rims on the wheels and chrome sparkling along the handlebars. “I done told you already she’s going home with me.”
“Not with you jabbering away there, she ain’t!” And the old guy revs up his scooter and bursts like a rocket, well a 2mph rocket but a rocket nonetheless, down the aisle racing for that last box of Swiss Cake Rolls.
Super Size, meanwhile jabs a sausage sized finger into a button on his steering bar. The hydraulics on the back two wheels of the scooter lurch up in a series of mechanized shrugs as a concussive s bass line rumbles down the lane. He revs his mean machine up and fires after the box with a speed rivaling the fastest tortoises on the planet.
“Sweet Jesus!” I scream with unrestrained terror before diving, yes diving, down behind my cart for safety. A minute later – a very, very long minute later - by which I mean the kind of minute that can only be experienced during bad karaoke and red traffic lights – the two roll up to each other.
They begin grasping and fumbling for the box but neither one can reach quite high enough to secure purchase of the prize.
Technically I could help, I figure, but I thought it best to cower and crouch behind the shopping cart because, really, I had nothing else to do.
Eventually they began trading slaps and using their scooters to viciously bump each other out of the way.
Finally, Super Size had had enough of this bullshit. One last jab of her finger on the center of the steering bar.
Suddenly she was surrounded by a throbbing aura of every known color in the neon spectrum. Her body floated, yes floated, out of the air to hang suspended. The mobility scooter disassembled, as a series of robot spider arms emerged underneath its shell and began cocooning Super Size in metallic plates of sparkling chrome.
When the process was completed, and the neon rainbow aura vanished as inexplicably as it arrived, a ten foot high chrome and lime green robot stood there.
“Go, go, Gadget Ass-Whupping!” Super Sized roars in her mechanized battle suit, jumping backwards into flight and unleashes a barrage of screeching micro-missiles towards the old guy.
Before he can react he is engulfed in a billowing explosion that annihilates everything in a three foot radius around him… except for the lone box of Swiss Roll Cakes… standing defiantly unscorched along the flaming carnage of the shelves. Black smoke gushes down the aisle. Shoppers continue to pass by the exits unconcerned, chatting away on cell phone calls or idly checking out the manager’s specials.
Super Size lands and begins stomping down the aisle, with scuttling steps that rattle the cage of my cart. S/he reaches towards the coquettish Debbie, servo fingers whirring as they expand in anticipation…
… only to be smacked away by another robotically enhanced fist. This one Pimp Purple with the luster of the shell not so much as smudged from the barrage. Before s/he can react another fist emerges out of the smoke and smashes right into hir helmet.
Super Sized goes flying again… but only briefly before crashing into the shelves, showering hir in a cascade of loaves of bread.
Stepping out of the gloom and carnage, Old Guy, in his practically identical except purple mech battle suit, emerges.
Super Sized scrambles to hir feet, thrusts her arms forward, where two miniaturized machine guns pop up from the dorsal of the wrists and open up with a chattering fire. Bullets whiz all down the aisle. Ricochet harmlessly off the shell. Shredding boxes of cookies and snack cakes into crumb clouds around him– all except of course, the cherished last stash of Debbies.
Old Guy responds back. A large tube rises out of his left shoulder, connected to a small box. The tube lowers parallel with the floor and a beam of some unidentified blue energy fires and explodes the right wrist cannon on Super Sized.
“Activate Light Shank Your Ass!” S/he claps hir hands and from between hir palms a sword of glowing red light extends.
Super Sized releases a roar that would send all the devils in the seven howling circles to shiver with fear and charges.
“Bring it!” Old Guy barks and two wands of iridescent white grow between the palms of his clenched servo-fists. Links of a hard light chain form between the two wands and the Old Guy begins weaving them around his body at Bruce Lee Speed (somewhere below hyper and mach speeds).
Super Sized lunges forward with a bushido worthy strike straight for the Old Guy’s skull. Instead he side steps her and lets hir momentum carry her staggering right by. In a blur he trips the feet out from under hir and delivers a back handed nunchuck strike to the back of hir helmet.
Super Sized goes down hard. S/he tries futilely to get back on hir feet but only receives an armor plated boot check across the chops for hir efforts.
“Stay down!” He bellows and Super Sized’s armor deconstructs and shifts back into a toppled scooter. Super Size lays there sprawled out facedown amongst the ashes of crumbs and flattened bullets.
Old Guy strikes a panel on his breast plating and the suit disassembles into a cluster of parts and reassembles back into the scooter. The pilot, left hovering in mid-air during the suit’s metamorphosis, floats gently back down into the seat… but not before snatching the box of Swiss Cakes off the shelf.
Prize secured, he rolls off leisurely down the aisle towards the unconcerned public.
I pick myself up, wheel my cart past the carnage as fast as I can and before anyone makes me for the damage. Right before I can take the turn to escape, I almost slip on something, my balance maintained solely because I was holding on to the cart. I look down.
“Heaven Culpa Cream Cakes” the logo says with text adorned by angel wings and a yellow halo floating over it all benevolently. Right below the words – “Low Fat!”
I bite my lip. I look around. No mechs, ninjas, robot samurai or any of that shit. Coast clear. I scoop up the box and head straight for the check-out.