Tammi G and a Season in Hell: Part II

Oh god.  What was happening?  Tammi sped up, braked, and turned for what seemed like an hour before we arrived at the mall’s parking garage.  She found a spot, jerked the emergency brake up, got out of the vehicle, and slammed the door shut.  I had barely escaped the ‘Stang, but Tammi was already on my side of the car manhandling me.  She clenched my left wrist and dragged me forward to…..Jesus…..Forever 21.  We approached the entrance doors as a crone in her mid-sixties began walking out with three shopping bags.  I held the door open for her, and she squinted over at me.  I suggested she have a nice day, and this must have triggered her in some way because her squint turned into a possessed, frantic stare.  Her eyes glazed over, and she bared and gnashed her teeth.  She didn’t move her lips, but I heard a screeching voice whiz by my ear that said, “I am the slave of my baptism.  Parents, you have been my undoing and your own.  Poor innocent!—Hell has no power over pagans.”  I gulped while Tammi impatiently pushed me through the gates.  I was legitimately terrified now. 

Surveying the clientele didn’t subdue my fear any; every rabid and tacky forty-two year-old zombie on earth was crawling around the floors of this decrepit Temple of Doom.  Tammi was still wearing her swimsuit with the side cut-outs as she barreled her way through the loathsome crowd, and grabbed every fucking hideous clothing item in sight.  I wanted to kill her.  An unwanted soft voice in my head burst into song: “In low dives where we’d get drunk, he used to weep for those around us, cattle of misery.  O seasons, O castles!  What soul is without sin?”  I was beginning to feel sick now.  “Let no one come near me,” I thought with some tired resistance.  “I must smell scorched I’m sure.”  Things were already spiraling out of control for me, but Tammi still felt pretty raw about her car’s white interior, so she forced me to help hold her enormous stack of clothes while waiting in line behind three dozen Undeads or so.  I gazed across the store at one of the mannequins that was positioned like she was about to take a dump through the bootie shorts she was wearing, and felt jealous.

I felt like I was stuck halfway through a chimney by the time it was Tammi’s turn to try on her chosen apparel.  The dressing room attendant, with a name tag that said ‘Arthur’ on it, looked at her selection and said, “Oh these look cute!  How many items do you have with you….How many items?”  Tammi and I fumbled through the pile of garments in our arms, trying to make a tally.  Out of nowhere, Arthur leaned into me, pinched my bicep with his cold fingers, and expressed, “I do not like women: love must be reinvented, that’s obvious.  A secure position is all they’re capable of desiring now.  Criminals disgust like castrates; as for me, I am intact, and I don’t care.” I nudged Tammi to see if she heard any of that, but her eyes were drawn to the Shiny Objects section across the store.  She dropped every ‘item’ right in front of the attendant’s feet, and stormed over toward the accessories.  I gave Arthur a look of embarrassment and handed him my pile before ambling after Tammi.

Standing there in front of the fucking-ugly-cheap-ass-bangle bin, Tammi looked at me maliciously, and swooped every piece of jewelry into her giant shopping bag.  She started heading toward the registers, but I ran around and stopped her in her tracks.  “Listen here, you piece of shit.  The lipstick will come out of your seat if we clean it soon.  You have tortured me enough today….I have swallowed a monstrous dose of poison.—Thrice blessed be the counsel that came to me!—My entrails are on fire….Now, uh, let’s go!”  Tammi understood.  Her game was over.  She dropped the bag, and we headed out of the gates.  

I spoke not one word to my best friend the entire car ride back to my apartment.  Didn’t wave goodbye to her as I exited the car; didn’t care if she hit a fucking tree on her way out of my parking lot.   My living room was dark, just how I wanted it.  I plopped down on the couch and cracked open a beer.  I took two swigs and considered calling a mental institution because I wasn’t sure if anything I experienced that day was real.  However, I have finished, I think, the tale of my hell.  It was really hell; the old hell, the one whose doors were opened by the son of man.