Hero

10AM

Harry sits on the counter of the cashier in their CD shop. It's a slow day, as are all lazy Sundays.

It's almost noon and only five people have browsed through the shop. Each leaving without purchasing anything.

Though Harry tries not to judge people by their appearances, the sixth customer to come in their shop is just too ridiculous. He's strangely wearing a stick-on name tag: ’STEVEN’ and a Chinese straw hat. He complains, in a deep accent, “This is a music store, so why isn’t there any music playing? It’s too silent and unwelcoming!”

Since the accident, Javier no longer satisfied her need for music. The radio is never turned on in her car, the shop never even utters a single note and her headphones are somewhere deep in her room in a dusty box. Everywhere surrounding her was suffocating in silence.

Seeing tears swell in Javier’s eyes, Harry tries to spook the customer with his ghost-ness but to his non-existent luck, the guy is a ghost enthusiast. Great. Steven screams a bit: “Oho! What do we have here?” and takes out his ‘ghost-vision’ goggles (as said on the label) from what Harry could only guess as his ghost hunting backpack. But surprisingly, the goggles weren’t a scam on little kids and has actually worked. The man runs away: “I see da ghost, I see da ghost!” after witnessing Harry through the lenses. Okay, maybe the luck-fairies did do him one last favour.

He turns to his wife and smiles in relief as he observes her laughing from the absurdity.

By late afternoon, the shop was gainging considerably more business, as one girl that came in bought ten 5 Seconds of Summer CD’s. Fuelled by his success in his previous attempt, Harry entertaines Javier by making customers walk into him and seeing their reactions from the coldness. But this comes to an abrupt halt after a group of young, female customers decides that the place was too creepy and left.

The couple chats about meaningless topics like movies and pants colours on boybands while the sun set on their little world. Another customer becomes creeped out when the shopkeeper keeps talking to herself about socks with those individual toes and abruptly runs out of the store. Javier decides that she was definitely not helping with her shop’s ability to earn profit.