Julianne's Story

Help Me

The butcher was nowhere in sight. Maybe he was on a break. Who could she turn to now? Breathing deeply, she brought her left hand to the left side of her face. Through her fingers, she looked back at the woman with the pork. She had yet to make a decision. Julianne chewed at the inside of her cheek and looked back at the gloved woman. Her name tag said July.

     July would not be able to fend off the perp. What weapons did she possess? All she had was the ability to not leave fingerprints.

     Julianne entertained the notion of buying the skewers for weapons sake, and it would only make sense to also buy the potatoes. The steak would require a side. Seldom would steak sit on a plate alone, after all. If she didn’t make up her mind soon about what to do she would rapidly approach an impasse. She was sure the man had moved from the toiletries and now watched her as she stood at the counter.

     Acting rather cool, she moseyed the length of the meat counter, and upon reaching it, headed briskly to the deli. She would have to do without the skewers. Narrowly avoiding another collision with a tall man, she bumped into a basket of bananas, sending the yellow crescent shapes to a bruised death on the freshly waxed floor.

     “Oops,” she heard a deep voice say.

     Julianne heaped the bananas back to their basket. A quick inspection showed they were not damaged badly enough to warrant a pity purchase. She looked up at a wry smile through a black beard. A tall grizzly man towered over her. Not sure whether or not it was the bananas or the beard, Julianne felt a warmth move through her body. Here she was trying to escape the clutches of a man such as this one, and she had run right into a savior. She looked around for a companion, searched his hairy hand for a ring, and seeing neither, smiled her best at him. Married men were seldom appropriate as a hero.

     “Forgive me,” she said. A new fantasy was rapidly asserting itself. With equal rapidity, she contemplated the amount of time she would have to play this new thing out before the stalker got the upper hand. Did he already have the upper hand? If he did, what on earth was she doing standing awkwardly and silently before this large, hairy man?

     Her senses were bombarded; colorful fruits and vegetables; delectable smells of rinds and moisture… one in particular was an earthy sort. Julianne took it to be the man’s natural smell. More likely it was his aftershave. This thought made her giggle as he clearly had no use for aftershave; that was unless he used it in other areas. She permitted herself to imagine him splashing a small bottle’s contents onto the “V” within his pants.

     Julianne was in limbo between fantasies. It was as if she were floating in a blurry space between the two large men and all of the symbols and the stories that they represented. On one side was the large smelly drunkard; fear was commonplace with him. When she thought of him she could smell the rankness of her sweat as the bacteria on her body festered on the perspiration. He made her cringe with sickening importance. It was all darkness on his side.

     With the large, grizzly, manly-smelling man, she could feel softness and hardness. Both of which pleased her and sent her skin automatically into gooseflesh. His woodsy and leathery smell sent her traipsing barefoot through a heavy wood. Fog hung low around her ankles. He would be in a clearing, waiting for her, hot with anticipation.

     “Are you okay, ma’am?”

     She was giving all of this way too much thought. Was she okay? It remained to be seen. If she could make it to her car without the stalker dragging her off to his muddy, old pick-up then, yes, she would be okay. It occurred to her that she had yet to make any purchases. What had she come here for? She had a list, didn’t she?

     This place in her mind between the two men was a sticky zone. She couldn’t distinguish a reality and at the same time, she was taken out of the fantasies she created. They were too alike. Was that a wooden smell she detected, or was it a mask—a cover up? She couldn’t tell in this space between the two that wasn’t really anywhere. It was hardly the deli/fruit section where her physical body now stood.

     Without answering, she grabbed at the bananas. A couple broke off of the bunch and she booked it to the check-out counters.