To whom it may concern

Harley Holmes had fine blonde hair, and blue eyes that shone so bright that it sometimes almost hid the tiny specks of red that burned at their centre. He smiled a smile that showed slightly too many of his perfect, pearl-like baby teeth, and approached the lady at the end of the queue.

"Hi," he said, tilting his head to look up at her as she waited patiently in line.

"Hi," she said, smiling down at this little boy with his round and ruddy cheeks. She glanced about, wondering where his parents might be, but he had already moved on to the woman in front of her.

"Hi," he said, tiny hands clutching a packet of Haribo and a box of pancake mix.

"Hi," she said, adjusting her grip on a shopping basket overflowing with potato chips. She would have said more, but Harley was already moving towards the man ahead of her.

"Hello," he said, and the man nodded back and asked how he was doing, in the friendly sort of way that grown people address small children.

"I'm shopping," said Harley, presenting his Haribo and pancake mix for appraisal.

The man nodded again, and perhaps would have said more had the cashier not called for the next customer.

"You go on," said the man, and Harley beamed at him before approaching the register.

The clerk, who wore a shapeless cardigan over a neatly-pressed dress shirt despite looking all of nineteen, looked at the crumbled two-dollar bill he'd been offered and shook his head.

"Sorry little man," he said. "That'll get you the pancakes or the jellies, but not both."

"I'll pay for it," said the three people who had been ahead of Harley in the checkout queue, and Harley grinned a gleaming crocodile grin at each of them.

Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

( Read more... )

The ice-cream counter had turned into something horrible, and for once it wasn't the result of the Eerie Dairy's creative approach to flavour combinations.

Marshall and Simon watched glumly as Mister Radford sealed up the last economy sized tub of Rocky Road, handing it off to another Radford, this one younger but dressed in an identical uniform. The second Radford disappeared behind a beaded curtain marked "Employees Only", cradling the ice-cream like it was a sleeping child.

"A salad bar, Radford?" asked Marshall. "Are you serious?"

Radford shrugged.

"Times are changing, boys," he said. "This is what my customers want."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

( Read more... )

Ongoing Verse: Lost

( Read more... )

"Excuse me?" said the ghost, it's sepulchral tones echoing throughout the empty store.

Radford exchanged a glance with his newest trainee cashier, Radford.

"I said, would you like to purchase a Bag for Life for fifteen cents?" he repeated.

The ghost stared at him with black and hollow eye-sockets. It puffed up it's translucent chest and levitated a few millimetres out of sheer outrage.

"Young man," it said, because all men are young to the dead, "Do I look as if I require a Bag for Life?"

"My apologies, ma'am," said Radford, changing tack with the practiced smoothness of a lifetime salesman. He refolded the white polythene grocery bag and tucked it back beneath the counter. "Perhaps I can interest you in our Shopping Shroud of Eternity instead?"

He removed a black cardboard box from the shelving beside the till, pulling the flaps back and turning it so that the ghost could see the wares within.

"Hmm," said the ghost, it's drooping mouth turning up a little at one corner. "Well, I suppose it might do. How much do you charge?"

"A dollar," said Radford.

The ghost's mis-matched sockets surveyed the contents of the box. It's drippy ectoplasmic fingers twitched in anticipation as Radford pulled one of the Shrouds loose, unfurling it across the sales counter in a ripple of thick black plastic. Below the reinforced handles, the World o' Stuff logo stood out in a blaze of neon pinks and blues and yellows.

Radford glanced about, lowering his voice conspiratorially.

"This is a very exclusive item," he confided. "Reserved for our spectral customers only, and we'd appreciate your discretion if anyone asks you where you got it."

The ghost handed over a silver dollar, still cold from the grave. Radford smiled and began bagging it's purchases.

When the ghost had drifted back through the book-lined wall at the rear of the store, Radford looked at his boss.

"Those are the same exact bags as the Bags for Life," he said. "They're just black."

"That's where you're wrong, my young apprentice," said Radford, pulling out a handheld embossing machine and fiddling with the parallel wheels. It clicked in rapid succession, spitting out a strip of black tape into which the legend "LIMITED EDITION" had been stamped. He pasted it to the box of black Bags for Life, adopting a studiedly casual angle in the placement of the label.

"Ta-da!" he said.

( Read the rest of the Trusted Associates verse here )