Tom looked at the woman next to him in line. She was fat, greasy, obnoxious. She was way too close.
He noticed he was angrier today than most days. He blamed it on the crowd.
It was Thanksgiving evening, just after seven. Standing in line at Target, he felt as if the seconds were crawling – keeping their distance from eight o’clock, when the doors would open.
This wasn’t his first Black Friday sale though, he had prepared himself for this. But still, that lady – that freaking lady. Did she have to be so close? Did she have to be so loud? His head was still hurting, and by the feeling of things, he was working towards a massive sinus headache – right behind his eyes.
He checked his watch: 7:14.
Breathing out a defeated sigh, he pulled his phone from his pocket. He had missed two calls from his wife and one call from a number he didn’t recognize. Pulling his gloves off, he touched his wife’s name, pressed ‘call back’, and waited as it began to ring.
“Hello?” he heard his wife’s voice on the other end.
“Hey, I saw you called…” he said, trying to talk over the general buzz of the crowd.
“Yeah, I just got a call from the hospital. They said that your lab results from this morning were in and they wanted to go over them with you. I guess they tried to call you, but you didn’t answer…” He heard her say.
That afternoon, Tom had gone into his hospital’s 24 hour Urgent Care because he didn’t feel quite right. When he woke up, he felt as if he hadn’t slept five minutes (even though he had slept at least 7 hours). He was groggy, confused, irritable, and sore. Earlier that day, it had felt like the flu – though after paying his 40 dollar deductible, his flu test had come back negative and he had been sent to the lab for further testing.
The hospital had offered to let him stay while the results came back, but with it being Thanksgiving, he had opted to go on home. His symptoms had lessened slightly, and he was able to have a nice dinner with his family before they all went their separate ways for Black Friday shopping.
Tom hated Black Friday. It was too loud, too crowded, and people always brought out their worst attitudes. But, he and his wife knew that if they wanted to get a jump on Christmas every year, they didn’t have the option of avoiding some of the sales that were out there. So, he had chosen Target while his wife had chosen another store. It seemed like an equal evil.
But he hadn’t expected the bitch in line next to him to be so irritating, and he hadn’t predicted the headache.
“Thanks hon, I’ll call them in the morning. I can barely even hear you right now.” He said, straining to hear whether or not she was fine with this answer.
He couldn’t hear anything on the other end. He couldn’t hear anything but the lady next to him. He looked up from the pavement at her. Open-mouthed, she stood there, transfixed on her own phone as she played some mindless game. She looked so stupid.
He looked back at his phone. The call timer was still counting.
“I love you, and I’ll see you at home.” He shouted while pressing ‘end’.
Putting the phone back in his pocket, he resigned to think of something other than the whale next to him, but now he was starting to smell her. He didn’t know if the headache was amplifying smells to him, but for some reason, she smelled rancid. He hadn’t noticed that before. He shoved his hands in his pockets and straightened his jacket, turning to the side.
His stomach was starting to church, and that headache – that damn headache. He could feel the pressure behind his eyeballs.
Suddenly, the crowd shifted. As the cow in front of him shifted her weight backwards in his direction, she bumped straight into him. Thrown off balance, he glanced ahead and could see that there was movement towards the front of the line. He checked his watch again: 7:20 – it was far too early for the doors to be opening.
He tried to regain his composure and steady himself, but his head was throbbing and all he could think about was the monster in front of him. Did she have to be that fat? Did she have to be that much of an eyesore? He started to think about how she hadn’t said “Excuse me” when she caused him to have to move. He looked at her again. She had pocketed her phone and stood staring straight ahead.
Tom wondered if she had one single coherent thought in her head.
He decided that he was mad enough about her not excusing herself that he wanted to say something. He tapped her shoulder.
She was large enough that she had to move her feet three times in order to turn her entire body around to face him. She stared at him with her mascara caked lifeless eyes, her nose was red and running from the cold. This made him angrier. He could feel his blood boiling.
“You bumped into me a minute ago and didn’t say ‘excuse me’.” He started. “I think you owe me an apology.”
She stared at him without saying anything. He wondered if she had heard him through her huge, fat ears.
He started to repeat himself when she sneezed in his face.
He reeled back. “You disgusting…” he began.
“Sorry.” She said, and waddle-turned back around.
He used his coat sleeve to wipe his face off as he wished that his wife had been with him. His wife always carried hand sanitizer in her purse. He thought about how people like the woman in front of him were the reason that hand sanitizer needed to exist in the first place. He wanted to scream at the woman. He wanted to scream in pain from his headache.
He wanted to hurt her.
As he started to entertain thoughts of what he would do to her, he realized that she was now coughing. She coughed large, open mouthed coughs into the air around her. He noticed that she wasn’t even trying to cover her mouth.
“Say something!” his mind screamed at him. “Tell her what an annoying and disgusting waste of life she is!"
The crowd shifted again, causing her to bump into him once more. She had more weight behind her body this time and almost knocked him down.
She was coughing again. Tom had had enough.
He tapped her on the shoulder again, though she didn’t turn. He tapped again, harder.
“Stop it!” he heard her say, breathily from the other side of her large head. She coughed again.
He tapped again, and again. He wanted to punch her. His brain was whistling, his chest was hurting – he had to do something about this horrible, horrible thing next to him.
He cleared his throat and raised his hand to tap once more, and then it happened.
The woman in front of him wheeled around to face him, and fell onto him. With her added weight, he lost his balance and fell backwards where those behind him quickly spread out, causing he and the woman to fall to the ground.
“Get off of me!” He shouted, trying to wriggle free. Then, he felt a sharp pain in his chest. She was biting him.
Without thinking, he punched the woman in the head. He heard gasps from all around him as he shoved her off of him. She fought against the momentum of his shove and tried to go for him again, though he was much faster. He was on his feet before she had time to get near him again. She started to crawl towards him. People on every side were backing away. Some screamed. Some pulled their phones out to record the event.
The woman rose to her knees and then to her feet, pushing her purse aside as she came after him. Tom backed off of the curb and into the parking lot.
“Someone help!” he yelled to the crowd. Nobody moved.
Fortunately, before long, one of the police officers stationed at the store’s entrance had noticed the commotion. As Tom continued backing up, he could now hear the low guttural sounds that the woman was making. Her eyes had started to weep and she was trying to get to him as fast as her large body would allow. He glanced down and saw that the woman had managed to tear his shirt and break the skin on his chest. He could tell that the wound wasn’t bad, thought he blood took him by surprise.
The police officer tried to subdue the woman, though she turned on him as well. Tom took the opportunity to gain some distance. As the woman closed the distance between she and the officer, the officer warned her that he would have to arrest her if she continued. She didn’t slow.
There were screams from the crowd as the officer’s pepper spray was caught by the wind. Tom saw a long red stream leave the officer’s can and cover the woman’s face, though she continued unfazed. Tom turned as he heard two more officers running down the sidewalk to help the first.
The next half hour flew by like a dream, or a television show heard from another room.
The three officers were able to hold the woman down long enough to handcuff her and get her to the curb, her girth working against her. Though, she had managed to bite one officer on the face and one on the hand before it was all said and done.
Two officers had taken her away while the third waited for backup and the EMT’s to arrive. Tom’s chest had been bandaged, and he gave his statement.
The doors were opened at eight, and those who had been engrossed in the scene had lost interest so that they could return to their fight over whatever deal they’d stood in line to get.
Tom was told that he was free to go, and that he could go on in to shop, though with the adrenaline from the experience added to his initial headache, he chose to just go home.
As he returned to his car, he was surprised to find that his heart had barely slowed. He replayed the events of the night, and asked himself if things would have gone differently if he hadn’t been so irritable. His headache had clearly gotten the best of him, though he was shocked at how much his simple complaining had bothered the woman in front of him.
He glanced down at his chest and saw that he was starting to bleed through his bandage. He thought about swinging back by the Urgent Care to have it looked at and to find out what his labs had turned up. Though, as he turned the key to start the car, he shook that idea away.
His wife would be at her store already. He’d call her on the way home to tell her what had just happened. He decided to go home early to wait for his family to return.
He took a deep breath to try to slow his overactive heart, and pulled out of the parking lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment