The Dooms of a Reptilian Boy

The boy at the counter resembled a skeleton with a thin layer of skin on. He was busy looking at a fly. He was unblinking, mesmerized by the flying pest, a pale countenance taut with concentration. His round head bobbled on a swivel, jerking frantically from side to side like a psych ward patient waiting for his meds to kick in. 

The fly settled on a lamp. The glow of the bulb illuminated the little hairy body and voluminous dark eyes. The counter boy eyed it moving along the covering of the shade, hypnotized. His big emerald eyes shone behind big celluloid glasses. He observed as a scientist would, but in his own way, through magnified lenses of doom. His nostrils flared up like a pissed-off bull. He swatted with the plastic swatter. The fly drifted off easily into a shadow. 

Cling. Cling.

The little bells, hung on the door, rang out with a shrill cry. He despised those bells. A ray of wintry sun burst through the opening. As the door shut, a furl of heat flew high into the vault and crooned into oblivion.

A pretty girl entered the electronics store. She wore military boots with clumps of ice frozen over the steel toes. Her jet-black hair was woven in a singular braid, stiff on her collarbone from the February cold. She had honey-lemon eyes. Pretty eyes.

The counter boy reeled his giraffe-like neck to inspect the disturbance coming in. A pretty girl with cool military boots. How awful. Worse than the fly. He gripped the plastic swatter, squeezing it with vitriol for all the attractive things and all the pestilent things alike. In a frazzle, he would kill both if he could. If only the outside world would relinquish its fancy morals and revert to its animalistic virtues. He would squeeze them with force and watch their juices fly out from them like the popping of a pimple. A delight. A hobby, if only.

The fly returned from a dark corner. It zipped past the counter boy, flying through his greasy hair parted down the middle with an unhygienic comb. It landed on the lamp, warming its ugly little legs.

The counter boy focused with the swatter, his pale skin luminescent under the light. He struck the lamp with an annihilating blow. The inertia of the act unplugged the cord, and shards of ceramic fell to the carpet. Broken pieces were scattered about, next to salt grains and puddles of melted snow. The pretty girl tried to help. She picked up a piece, but the boy whipped her with a reptilian tongue.

“Don’t touch that. I’ll do it,” the boy spat.

He motioned through the western swinging doors, barring the counter space from the customers. 

“What do you want? I’m very busy.” He began to assemble the broken lamp.

“I’d like to buy a used TV.”

“Third aisle. All the way in the back.”

The boy returned from the ground with a ceramic vestige. He placed the clutter on the glass counter.

“If you need me, just yell,” he said. He pointed to a metallic pin attached to his lapel. A name was written in bold: Darron.

“Thanks, Darron. I’ll do that.” She smiled politely, and moved into the store with apprehension.

The aisles were stacked high and disordered with electronic gadgets from the 80’s and 90’s. Radios. Talkboys. Pagers. DVD players. Satellites. All kinds of stuff. Electronic antiques that many would consider junk. Fairly priced junk. But junk.

Military boots girl found the aisle with the used TVs. Many of the screens were obscured with a film of dust. Artful cobwebs adjoined the TVs with threads of silk. The height of the stack reached close to the ceiling. She was afraid to touch anything, thinking that a heap could topple at any second. She imagined an avalanche of TVs spilling over her head, crushing her. A strange death. She browsed through the poorly lit section, unsure of how to choose.

Cling. Cling.

Far away, military boots girl could hear the muffled pacing of footsteps. They stomped on the sizzling carpet. A customer spoke unintelligibly to the counter boy, their voices lost to the compressed clutter of junk.

Doom... Doom... 

A soundless stir.

Military boots girl turned her head in a jerk, her attention focused on the back of the aisle where it was dark.

Then came the sound of scurrying paws or a fingernail scratching at the interior of one of the screens. She stood still, hopeful to hear it again.

The voices in the front were booming now, the counter boy saying something corrosive to a customer. She decided to investigate.

She shifted through the maze of electronics. The shouting grew more and more tempered. Insults flew one after the other.

“And!? Look at you! Queen Elizabeth I! Have you even been outside this year? You look as pale as the undead! Are you wearing makeup or something? Leave your mother’s makeup bag alone. It doesn’t need handling.”

A nameless man with a wool tuque stormed out of the store.

“And what about you?!” the counter boy shouted at a closing door. “Have you ever seen a nimbus cloud?! A cumulus?! Well, I have, pal! Lots of them! I’ve experienced life!”

“Uh, Darron?” She said softly.

“What?!”

“I need your advice.”

She followed the counter boy to the third aisle. He walked like a scarecrow through a cornfield. All shoulders and stiff legs. He turned left, then right, then left again, slithering through the labyrinth to aisle three.

“Which one do you want?” he spat, vexed.

“Which one works?”

“This one is fine. Vintage. 1990. Color. Wood finish. 50 bucks.”

“I think that one rattles. I heard something earlier.”

“I don’t hear nothing. You must be hearing things. That’s odd for a girl your age. Hearing things out of nowhere. You a schizo?”

"A what?"

Doom... Doom...

“You see, I told you. What is that?” She said with aplomb.

“Maybe it’s defective. I don’t know. How about that one?" He pointed to a similar-looking TV.

“Japanese. Black. Sexy. 1992. 50 bucks.”

“Does it work?”

The counter boy looked at her with venomous contempt.

“Does a fly die like the rest of us?”

“What?”

“Yes. It works. 50 bucks. As cheap as I can go.”

“Well, how do you know it works?”

He pointed at the metallic pin on his lapel. At a name: Darron. Clerk extraordinaire.

“That’s how I know.” He pressed the power button. The TV turned on. It glowed a bluish hue and buzzed with electricity. The girl looked puzzled.

“How did you do that? It’s not even plugged in.”

He pointed to the pin again. Darron. Condescending clerk of the ages. Clerk extraordinaire.

“Okay. I’ll admit it looks good. But, if I take it home and it doesn’t work, can I get my money back?”

“Sure. Whatever turns you on. I’ll even write you a governmental receipt. If it doesn’t work, you can sue.”

At the counter, the Japanese TV was paid for. The counter boy was back at home, holding his swatter, grinning a halitosis grin.

Military boots girl picked up the TV off the glass. A tombstone of a TV. She advanced toward the door, her back in an arch from the weight of it. She pressed through the metal frame with her shoulders.

“It's a pull.” He directed her attention with his eyes and chin to a piece of electric tape with the word PULL.

She struggled to wrap a spare finger around the knob. She shifted awkwardly, peeling the door ajar with her elbow. She turned in a loop against the wintry air.

“Thanks for the help. Jackass.”

The counter boy missed the insult. The fly had returned in a grim fashion, zipping past his pale, icy face. Military boots girl disappeared into the blizzard.

--

Outside, a sweet procession of snowflakes fell from the purple and grey February sky. Military boots girl was comfortable on a love seat. Her grandfather, Frank, was stomach sleeping on a couch, his mouth agape and drooling on the upholstery. He snored fervently like an old tree shaking in the fall. A technicolor rainbow glowed on his slack skin. The glow motioned through the darkness, emanating from a brand new vintage TV.

The Japanese TV had been a great gift for Frank’s 71st birthday. His old TV had broken, and he had nothing to fall asleep to, no buzzing noises to cradle him.

A VHS tape was playing an old movie about Marie Antoinette. In the final moments, a revolting group of French revolutionaries urged the death of the Dauphine of France. They tossed spoiled vegetables like baseballs. She rolled on a dismal cart, statuesque, a defeated expression blazoned on her pretty face. One French peasant screamed at her, a death-hungry rattle in his voice, his eyes full of fire.

“What the…?”

Military boots girl stared at the screen. She couldn’t believe it. She gasped for air, her heart skipping a beat.

“It's that counter boy!”

An extra in the movie. Playacting as a French peasant.

Under her butt, she scrambled for the remote. Rewind. Stop. Play. Freeze frame.

There he was. The counter boy. Clear as day.

Doom... Doom...

The carpet vibrated with a soft, deep hum.

A side panel from the Japanese TV burst open like a fallen medieval gate. It lay on the maroon carpet.

A black reptile, the size of a chameleon, crept out on two hind legs. A bipedal nightmare of a thing. Its face was a bubble screen, identical to the screen on the TV.

“Did I do that?” It said in a nasally voice.

A clip of Steve Urkel snapping his suspenders played on his face. The catchphrase sounded from two antennas, erect on his temples. They acted as loudspeakers.

A dark halo surrounded the creature. It swirled in an abstract blur, circling the head like a nebulous crown of perennial bad weather.  

Doom... Doom... His two feet stomped on the carpet.

Military Boots girl tried to dash away, but the advancing horror sprang on her, its sharp tail piercing her thigh like a syringe. She fell to the ground. Grandpa Frank slept through the supernatural ordeal.

The black reptile observed the girl from the balcony of the armchair. She shrank on the carpet, a metamorphosis. Her body recoiled into itself, getting smaller and smaller by the second.

As the shrinking continued, the black creature approached the girl. It picked her up like a bridegroom at a sham wedding. Then, it carried her unceremoniously with doomed paces toward the TV. 

--

Inside the Japanese TV, Military boots girl sat Indian style on an elevated platform. She had the posture of a rag doll. To her right, she noticed a gigantic panel lying flat on the maroon carpet. She was the size of a pea, and everything around her seemed vast and complex.

A beam of light, similar to an X-ray machine, shone across her bosom. In front of her was a capsule, a vacuum tube, leading to the screen.

To the right, down below, a plume of smoke billowed from a crowned halo. The black reptile stood as a sentry next to the power button.  

“Hi-De-Ho There, Neighbour.” It said to her in a jolly voice.

A clip of Wilson Wilson played. A friendly neighbour spoke through the pickets of a fence.

He pressed the power on. The Japanese TV lit up from the interior.

“Excellent.” It said in an evil voice.

A clip of Mr. Burns played, rubbing his fingers in avaricious delight.

Two emerald eyeballs shone on the big screen. They sat within their bony orbits on a colossal visage. The counter boy wasn’t wearing his big celluloid glasses. He looked into the camera of a smartphone with a caustic, pale face. She could see them clearly, his eyes. Two reptilian eyes with vertical slits.

“Welcome to the experience of a lifetime! I am Dr. Shull. Darron to you. Businessman of the stars and clerk extraordinaire. I am here in the matter of a client. You are not her. In a moment, my esteemed colleague, Doom number 3, will assist you in your galactic travels. You will be transported to a parallel universe. Let me give you a short history lesson. One day, in September of 1927, in a laboratory in San Francisco, a universe was created. A genius, Philo Farnsworth, transmitted the first image on a dissector camera tube. And presto, a big bang, a universe was born. Invisible to all humans. A universe where all films, sitcoms, cartoons — all programming of any sort — exist in a real dimension, as elaborate worlds, but not as you know them. There are infinitesimal differences but nothing that would scare off an alley cat. Where you are going, you will be a Queen. Isn’t that fun!? You will be a replacement for the Dauphine of France. My client. You have been Marie Antoinette your entire life, and you didn’t even know it. Now. Enough with the pleasantries and boring chit-chat. Let's begin. Or shall I say, end. Doom."

The black reptile pressed the rewind button, to the right of the power. The capsule in front of her began to whirl and buzz. A light grew blinding in her eyes. Her body was lifted into the air and in a fraction of a second, she was suctioned into the vacuum.

--

An angry mob of French revolutionaries screamed at Military boots girl. She rolled on a pathetic wooden cart to a scaffold, to her execution. A guillotine glimmered in a grey sky, ready to behead a Queen.

She wore a shabby black dress. It was the only garment remaining from a plush, overstocked wardrobe fit for royalty. Her slovenly blonde hair and her bare feet, caked in mud, gave her the appearance of a frump.

From somewhere, a tomato sailed through the air. It smacked her in the face. She felt the blow. And she felt the juices, the seeds and the wet peel squashed on her cheek. She felt everything. She stared at the blade. She would feel that too.

“Et voilà! Une journée magnifique pour la mort! Dauphine de la France! Bon voyage!” A French boy cried out from the cobblestone street. “Be honest. How’s my French?!

Counter boy stared at her with an impish grin. His boyish laughter was drowned out by the hostile mob.