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Newsgroups: spk.phoenix
Subject: The Piranha...
From: Dave.Laird@phoenix.circuit.com (Dave Laird)
Date: 31 Dec 97 10:06:30

Hello Everyone!

The following is a continuation of a series I have enjoyed for nearly three
years, that of chance urban encounters, all that have a strange or haunting
flavor to them. This one was just written today, and although it has some
rough spots, I thought you might enjoy it.

                                 The Piranha
                                by Dave Laird
                     Copyright Applied for Dec 31, 1997

You drop by a small office supply store, hoping to quickly grab a box of
push pins. Actually, you are looking for a typewriter ribbon for that
clattering old but forever reliable Royal typewriter you keep in the closet
for when the kids won't let you near the family computer, which is almost
any day of the week.

You chose this office supply store off the beaten track, rather than the
super-duper, megastore on the main thoroughfare, one, because it is nearby
your miserly office, and two, because the peach-faced glowing and perfectly-
proportioned clerk at the Megamonster Superstore says your typewriter
doesn't exist anymore. "Bullshit, it doesn't exist anymore, you remonstrate
at the time. I use the damn thing every week." Finally, you give up in
disgust, and have begun the quest for a new ribbon for the old typewriter,
wondering the while if it hasn't finally met its end.

At first, the office supply place even seems to exude an air of homeyness,
right down to the badly mangled bicycle leaning up against the storefront.
You pause momentarily by the front door, contemplating the hand-painted
yellow bicycle with purple spots trying to remember where you saw it, but
the thought eludes you entirely.

You aren't inside the door for ten seconds when the piranha strikes. A
slightly bulbous woman springs forth from behind a curtain in back, and
pinning you against the front door with her gaze, growls, "Can I help you?"

Although you are across the room from her, she LOOKS like she has body odor.
In fact the entire shop appears to be in a state of frumpishness, vaguely
reminiscent of St. Vincent De Paul where faceless old women gather each
morning for gossip and bargain-shopping. You notice that some of the price
tags hanging gaily from the merchandise are actually yellow pages torn from
sticky pads. On the end of the front counter, a stack of office supply
wholesale catalogs leans precariously to one side, nearby where a solitary
cup of coffee is steaming.

"I...I'm looking for a typewriter ribbon for my old Royal HH typewriter,"
you stammer, wondering the whole time what it is about the woman standing
with arms akimbo, that so disturbs you.

Her eyes blink once, like a computer screen as it completes one transaction
and prepares for the next. "Will there be anything else, sir?"

"Uh, no," but then you lick your lips thinking better of it, and hastily
add, "Well, actually perhaps a box of plastic stick pins like I use on a
bulletin board at the house."

Once more the Piranha wordlessly blinks, giving every impression that she
just calculated not only the location, price and sales tax for each item,
but in seconds she is apt to spit out a cash register receipt from her
mouth.

"I'll be right back" she rumbles deep in her chest, and mysteriously
disappears back behind the curtain from whence she first arrived. An old-
fashioned steam radiator painted an austere gold color unexpectedly gives
off a steam fart, and in the distance, as if heard from down a drain pipe,
all manner of clatters, crashes and other noises are heard. Your nervousness
increases as minutes flee.

Scarcely seconds before you were about to flee the store in a self-induced
panic, the Piranha reappears, bearing a suspiciously familiar typewriter
ribbon in one hand, and a box of stick pins in the other.

"I hope these will be satisfactory, sir," she announces as she walks behind
the front counter. "Will there be anything else for you today?" She attempts
to smile, but instead of reassuring you, she triggers the visual and
auditory memory in your mind of shattering glass, like the time when the
kids playing a quick game of baseball in the upstairs hallway shattered the
twenty foot plate glass mirror in the hallway, sending pieces of glass down
the stairs and kids screaming in all four directions. You wince at the
thought as even today, when you walk down that hallway in your bare feet,
you occasionally encounter tiny shards of glass embedded in the carpet.

"Uh, no, thanks, that'll be all for today."

To your surprise, she neither spits the cash register tape out of her mouth,
nor does she do anything otherworldly, for that matter. In fact, she doesn't
have body odor, warts or any other physical or psychological ailment that
you can see at such close range. Rather she rings up the sale on an
old-fashioned mechanical cash register, politely handing you your receipt
and a sack containing your ribbon and push pins.

Migod, then there's that smile again. You stammer, stutter and finally after
four attempts at conversational english, you flee the store, leaving the
Piranha gazing after you.

Somehow, you are not surprised later that evening, when you take the new
typewriter ribbon out of the sack, to discover that it, indeed, is the
correct ribbon for your venerable old Royal, and to celebrate its return to
functionality, you sit up half the night idly typing away on a story about
the Piranha and her smile that was like shattering glass.

Dave

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