cheapdimestorehood

Snooki wore chunky jewelry and layers of long, wispy sweaters over her mini-dress. She had her live-chat screen projected onto the wall of her studio apartment. She mentioned something about a “big sister” before embracing me in a hug. We giggled as we pulled apart.

“Oh yea,” I said towards the screen, “Snooki’s my little sister.” Everyone in the chatroom laughed. It wasn’t until I looked at our little square that I realized how much Snooki and I looked alike. I mean, mom had told me numerous times as well as a friend agreeing, but I never really saw it.

Snooki showed me towards her closet where there hung dozens of the same articles of clothing. She told me she tried to start her own clothing line, but no one was interested. I looked at the price tag of one of the shirts. Shocked with it only being $8.99, I told Snooki I would love to buy clothes from her. Customers began filing into the apartment to purchase clothes as well. I picked up another beautiful bohemian shirt. It was $24.99 but worth it. Snooki brought me over to a set of fitting rooms which essentially were just metal poles holding up these beige curtains. We weren’t allowed to hog a fitting room, so we all had to share with a partner. Snooki went behind the curtain with me.

Suddenly the curtains disappeared and we were all on this tunnel-of-love-type ride. Whoever we were sharing a fitting room with was who we were paired with on the ride. As we neared the end, I noticed that the front seat had a boy and a girl with bright pink streaks in her black hair.

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” a priest appeared at the end of the tunnel. The two in the front seat kissed.

His face was buried between my upper thighs. I thrust my hips harder, grinding against his lips. He was eating me out but no matter how hard I concentrated, I couldn’t orgasm. Channing Tatum was my best friend, roommate, and, coincidentally, friend with benefits. Everything was completely platonic and there were no feelings between us, but I couldn’t let him know that he wasn’t good enough for me to orgasm. I moaned loudly and faked a quick orgasm. He sat up and wiped his mouth on his forearm. I got up and walked out onto the balcony. He joined me at the little round table for a smoke.

I was on a motorcycle. I was riding through the desert, but the ground beneath me was split and I had to jump from log to log. Fire blazed in the endless abyss. I missed the log and clenched my eyes shut as I fell into the fiery pit. Realizing I didn’t feel anything, I opened my eyes to find I was back at the starting line.

With a knife in hand, I walked through the creepy hotel. It was empty and dark and I knew it was filled with zombies. There was a big throne-like chair in the middle of the hallway just by the lobby. Its back was to me and zombie groans came from whoever was sitting in the chair. I came up to the side and stabbed down at the zombie. I looked down to find it was just a baby. I pocketed the knife and went towards one of the rooms along the hallway. It was an auditorium filled with people.

I suddenly realized that there was no logical way for me to be in a hotel filled with zombies, then find out one of the rooms was safe, filled with people who were oblivious to the creatures just outside the door.

This was a dream.

Walking down the aisle, I glanced down each row to see who was in my dream. I spotted Jenal sitting near the front, probably with the entire gang. But then I saw him. He was a boy from freshman year that I had a crush on. I saw him everyday, but we’d never talked. After I moved, he tracked me down on Myspace and told me he’d always been in love with me. But then I met Nick, a kid at my new school who I became good friends with. The boy was pissed off, acting like I was cheating on him. I was so fed up with his jealousy that one day I told him to never call me again. He left around twenty voicemails of him sobbing into the phone and apologizing. I never talked to him after that.

I went up to him. He was shocked to find me here. “Follow me,” was all I said. Forgetting I had already established that this was a dream, I had the weird feeling again that this could be a dream. As we walked down the dim hallway, I looked over at the boy. I reached up to hook arms with him. He shoved me off him. He was still angry. This was real.

I wanted to sit down and talk with him. We’d never talked anything out and there was this heavy tension between us. We went towards the movie theatre but the couches in the lobby were all taken. One of the movie ushers saw us and told us there were more seats upstairs. We took the elevator to the second floor to find that there were even more people on those couches.

Nearby, there was an entrance to a casino part of the hotel. I grabbed the boy’s hand and pulled him inside. There was a bench by the wall so I sat him down.

“I’m sorry about everything,” was all I said to him. He grabbed me by the waist and pulled me down on top of him, lifting me by my thighs so I was now straddling him. He kissed me long and hard. It was all the tension and pent-up anger that we’d held between us that poured out into the kiss and made it the more passionate.

We were outside, waiting for the bus. Under the shade of the bus stop, I let go of the boy’s hand and walked out into the rain. I couldn’t feel the water though; it was like I was numb. I traced my fingertips over my lips.

“My lips are cold,” I looked up at him. He smiled and wrapped his arms around me, kissing me. Then I felt someone else wrap their arms around me from behind and pull me away. It was Channing. I didn’t know he was here. Channing held me to him as he glared at the boy I was just kissing.

“Is that your boyfriend?” the boy asked angrily before abruptly spinning around and walking away. I shoved Channing’s arms off me as I went after the boy. Channing caught up to me and wrapped his arms around me again to stop me from going after him. My hands tightened into fists as I desperately hit Channing’s arms, fighting to get out of his firm grasp.

“Let him go,” Channing said quietly. I relaxed, realizing he was only doing this because that boy was part of my past. I tried to work things out with him but it only ended up just as it was before. And I had to get over it. I had to get over the fact that there will never not be that tension between us; we were never meant to be friends. No matter how much I wanted him to accept my apology for breaking his heart back then, history was just repeating itself and wanting me accept that it was never meant for him to forgive me. And Channing was just looking out for me. He just wanted me to move on.

I entered the cafeteria. There was a reunion for the class of 2010 (or as the school liked to call it “Generation X”.) Weaving through the crowd, I finally saw a familiar face.

“Allie!” I called out. Letting go of her boyfriend’s hand, we leaned in and gave each other a peck on the lips. We took a seat at one of the tables and talked. A minute later, I told her I had to get going. I remember I’d been drafted for the war. We stood up and gave each other another quick peck.

“Group on rooftop,” a static-y voice said through my headset. I steered my fighter plane lower, spotting a group who was setting up stationary machine guns on the flat roof of one of the buildings.

“Firing,” I announced while pressing a button and launching a missile.

“Cancel! Cancel!” the voice said in panic, “Ally group!” My eyes went wide. There was no way I could cancel the attack now. The metal cylinder headed straight towards the building, exploding and massacring those on top. The line went quiet. The air was silent. There wasn’t a single explosion or gunshot to be heard. We didn’t know what to do. Our allies undoubtedly thought we’d betrayed them and were rethinking their strategy. “…We just started a war with Germany,” the man’s voice cut through the silence.

An orange cat came up to the glass backdoor. “We’re getting strays again!” I called up to dad upstairs. I slid the door open. The cat ran away in fright. Then I noticed a sloth slowly crawling towards the door mat. I picked it up and went to dad’s room. “We’re getting sloths now!” I said in disbelief.

“I really have to make my flight,” Will Smith complained. Madison Pettis and I ran through the shops of one of the casinos. We were supposed to be showing the celebrity around Vegas, but we were trying to sabotage his plans of going back home. We laughed as he struggled to catch up with us. Getting lost in a crowd of tourists, Will dodged aside and ran up an escalator. I quickly went after him.

“Where are you going?” Madison came running after me. We decided to just let him go. We went down the walkway of shops, coming across a little store that sold tea.

“Is there a tea that can get you high?” I asked the man behind the counter. He pointed down through the glass at something called “Himalayan Sand.” He fixed us each a cup but it just tasted like lemonade. “Where’s ‘Wing C’?” I asked Madison. I know I parked in ‘Wing C,’ but had no idea how to get back. We picked up a map of the place. As we walked, I kept turning the map, not understanding the layout. I began singing a song that was stuck in my head, “They say the neon lights are bright-“

“-on broadway!” the old lady walking behind me joined in.

I opened the door to my new apartment. I’d just graduated college and was now a detective, moving into a new place with a friend who’d just become a detective as well. He looked an awful lot like Jerry O’Connell (and for the sake of this, I’ll refer to him as “Jerry”). A turquoise stone keychain on the floor caught my eye. I picked it up and hooked it onto my apartment key. As we stepped back out to fetch our boxes from downstairs, a man two apartments down stood with his arms folded as he leaned back against his doorway.

“You’re moving in?” he asked. We both answered with an excited ‘yea.’ “Hey,” he pointed at my keys, “that’s Rachel’s keychain.” The man went on to tell us about the previous resident and how she had gone missing. After all the investigations, the case was unsolved and we were the first to move in after. His eyes darted around before he added in a whisper that he’d heard she was held captive prior to her murder.

As we came back up with our boxes, Jerry and I talked of how suspicious how much the man knew about Rachel. It was justifiable since they were neighbors, but he really didn’t seem the type to make friends.

Boxes now littered our living room floor. But I was down the hall, sneaking into our neighbor’s apartment. The font door was left unlocked, so I quietly and slowly opened it to find the man sprawled out onto a recliner chair in his living room with his back towards the kitchen. I crept into the kitchen and noticed a paper poking out from underneath the stove. I slid it out to find a salvation army pamphlet, a receipt for a textbook, and Rachel’s driver’s license on top. A spot in the small wall that separated the living room from the kitchen was crumbling apart. The man was watching a River Phoenix movie. With my obsession, I would’ve been able to tell what movie it was, but this movie was different. River was dressed as Mike “The Dike” from My Own Private Idaho, but was a completely different character in a completely different movie.

With Jerry at the wheel, we drove back home from the office. We had searched up Rachel’s name and were reassured that there was nothing stating she was ever held captive. I called the number on the salvation army pamphlet to ask what their relation to Rachel was. The manager explained that she was very poor and had an agreement that if she worked for them, in return they would cover part of her school expenses.

I held up Rachel’s driver’s license and my eyes went wide. It looked as though Rachel had attempted to punch holes in the laminated plastic. Jerry looked over and followed my gaze to the perforations before muttering a surprised ‘what the hell?’ I suddenly came to a realization. “She was held captive, right?” I asked. Jerry nodded, intrigued with where I was going. “What if she marked it everyday?” I continued, “And she wanted whoever to find this to know how long they’d kept her.” On the drive back home, we thought over all the evidence and had figured it out. We knew exactly what had happened to Rachel:

She’d just gotten home. As she opened her front door, her neighbor attacked her, consequently breaking one of her keychains and allowing it to fall to the floor. He then dragged her back to his apartment. He threw the receipt and pamphlet from her hands aside, unknowingly tossing them under the stove. Locked in his bedroom, she would slip her driver’s license — her only belonging at this point — out of her back-pocket and mark it everyday. Trying to escape resulted in a brutal struggle in the kitchen. Her weak, starved body was thrown up against the wall which gave in. Knowing it would be her last day alive, she crawled over to the stove and slipped her license under the crevice in hopes someone would find it.

Jerry and I made it back to our apartment. There was our suspicious neighbor, leaning against his doorway with his arms crossed, monitoring the halls like the paranoid sociopath he was. We squinted our eyes at him. He looked at us with confusion. As we walked inside, his eyes trailed down to the pamphlet and receipt in my hands. The color drained from his face when he recognized that they were those of which that should have been secretly left untouched under his stove.

I was never close to Danny in elementary school, and I disliked him in middle school. Back then, he was just some kid in the neighborhood that I never talked to. I was friends with Brandon though — the boy who lived across the street from Danny — but solely because we sat in front of each other in class. Brandon and I used to talk all through class, but I immediately stopped and began ignoring him when a classmate asked if we liked each other. We talked so much that us liking each other was quickly becoming a rumor.

I was sent back in time to when I was in 5th grade. Danny, Gio, and I were friends just as we are present day. The whole school had gone on a field trip to Europe, but were allowed to go our separate ways to do whatever we pleased. I shared a hotel room with Gio and Danny. Our door was open, for Danny’s cousin and his friend were going to stop by. I was in the bathroom, fixing my makeup for a show we were going to later on tonight.

“Oh shit!” Gio and Danny ducked into the bathroom as well. I stepped out and just caught a glimpse of Brandon walking down the hallway, passing the door to our room. We knew we weren’t allowed to change the past, so we had to keep our friendship a secret. Gio hopped up onto the counter as Danny took a seat at the edge of the bathtub. We talked and I realized how much I truly appreciated that they treated me as if I were just one of the guys.

Finished fixing my red lipstick, we took a seat on the bed as Danny’s cousin walked in with his friend. They were maybe in only second grade, but I remember seeing his cousin’s friend and thinking he was going to be gorgeous when he grew up.

The three of us sat in the theatre, watching an orchestra. Gio and I had brought these long, thin, fiber optic cables the length of fishing poles. We kept putting them in the way of the spotlight that lit up the stage. We laughed as the theatre filled with gasps, for it cast a huge shadow of claw-like hands.

“Davy Jones will not be making an appearance,” a loud voice boomed onto the crackly speakers. My stomach dropped. I remembered the only reason I wanted to come was because I heard Davy Jones would be here. I frowned as the announcement continued, “He did not meet the height requirement to enter the theatre. He’s only 38 inches tall.”

The young prince was gorgeous. He was in his early twenties, sitting at the dining table with his new wife. As they talked, I cleared the table for I was the servant in their beautiful mansion.

In my bathroom in the attic, I noticed that — as I showered — pink water swirled at my feet. I put my hand to my face to find my nose was bleeding. I got dressed and tied my hair into a sloppy bun. Remembering I was supposed to be cleaning the master bedroom, I went down to the prince’s room.

He sat on his bed with his back hunched as he silently cried. I sat next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at me. I was shocked at how broken he looked. I’d never seen him like this. I asked what was wrong. He said his mother had just died, yet his wife had no sympathy; she was only happy that it soon would be announced that she was now queen. He sobbed even more, upset that the woman he was with had only married him for the royalty and riches. I hugged him to me as he cried on my shoulder.

He finally pulled away and looked at me with a sort of appreciation as if to say ‘thank you.’ Everyone in the house seemed to be consumed in politics and he’d never had someone there as an actual friend. He started leaning in. Just as our lips were about to touch, his wife came up the stairs. We quickly pulled apart and I stood up. She came into the room as I excused myself and went back up to mine.

It was nighttime. The lights in my bedroom were off, but the window cast a dreamy blue tone on the walls. I went up to the window that looked over the city. The town sparkled just as the stars did, making it impossible to see where the city ended and where the sky began. It was beautiful. I reached into these coffee cans on my window sill where I kept colored powdered chalk. I grabbed a handful each of purple and orange. I held them in loose fists as I twirled around, dancing to nothing in particular.

My black tank top and leggings became dusted with purple and orange. My hair was lightly covered in a coat of powdered tints. With each step, my feet created patterns in the chalk that layered the wooden floor. The colors whirled around me as I spun, creating clouds of purple and orange that played with the blue hue from the outside world.

The prince emerged from the thick cloud. He’d probably been standing there watching me, but I was too mesmerized by the mess of colors to notice. His hands immediately cupped my cheeks as his lips crashed onto mine.

Channing Tatum and I walked through the house on tip-toes. The floors were covered in scattered papers and coloring books and toys, and it was the only way we could avoid stepping on anything. When we were little, we were best friends as well as next door neighbors. We’d have sleepovers every night and basically lived at each others houses. After not keeping in touch for all these years, we were back to clear up the house in order to sell it. I couldn’t tell whose house this was — I couldn’t remember if this was his room at his house or my room at mine.

I went towards the closet. There was a plastic hanging compartment for shoes. Instead of shoes though, there were papers rolled into the pockets. I unraveled a stack to find pictures and comic strips of Johnny Bravo. With his hands full of toys, Channing looked over at the papers in my hand and laughed, remembering how I used to have the biggest crush on the cartoon character.

Blushing, I looked up at Channing who was suppressing his laughter. I realized the look on his face reminded of that young boy I shared my childhood with. But we were strangers now and I hated that feeling. We hadn’t spoken a word since we met up in the house, but I wanted to tell him I missed him.

I opened my mouth to say something, but suddenly jolted awake. I wasn’t back at my old house with my gorgeous childhood friend; I was laying on my front atop a massage table. I turned my head and looked up to find Jackie Chan massaging my shoulders. Jackie was one of my good friends now and I hung out at his shop a lot. A woman pushed the curtains aside and said she was here for her appointment. There were other tables, but I still went out and sat in the waiting area of the small Asian shop. I thought about how real the dream seemed. I wanted to go back to that dream. I wanted to see how it would’ve played out. I stepped through the curtains to the backroom. I laid down on my previous table and closed my eyes, hoping to drift back to sleep.

We were sitting in some section of a thrift store that was made to look like a living room. Slightly used couches surrounded a small television set where a video was playing. It was showing the introduction to the game. Apparently me sitting down to watch had consequently entered myself. The point was to travel through time and not get caught by any of the societies we were to encounter. If we were to get caught, we would be given a list of things the society wanted us to do to redeem ourselves in order to move on.

Laying on a pile of toys scattered in one of the isles, I held a SpongeBob toothbrush to my chest, not wanting to leave the store. Dad came up and told me I needed to start. I refused and stared up at the ceiling, afraid I wouldn’t be able to find my way back and end up being stuck in another century. Dad reached down and yanked me up by my arms.

I was suddenly in a lot, filled with silver, ’50s, Airstream trailers. Orange and brown paisley-patterned cloths embellished the windows. Bohemian curtains took the place of doors. I was in the seventies, thrown into a hippie society. As I quietly crept past one of the trailers, the curtain door was pushed to the side and a woman adorned in loose-fitting, dangly clothes spotted me. My shoulders slumped over and she took me inside. She sat me at her table where another man sat. They handed me a paper. It looked just like one of the routines from the “Rituals” section of “creepypasta.com.” I was to do something along the lines of; light a candle at midnight and call upon some sort of spirit.

With the list in hand, I was then sent into another time. I found myself in a desert, surrounded by teepees. As if waiting for me, a Native American chief — dressed in animal-skin pants with a typical tribal headdress atop his head — stood by a small wood-fire that blazed on the ground between us. He gave me a stern look for trespassing into his village, then called for his son. A beautiful Native American boy my age came out from behind the flap doors of his teepee as the older man went back into his.

The boy, wearing an animal-skin loin-cloth, handed me their list. I looked up at him, marveling at his beauty. I’ve always had a thing for Native American boys; their tan, glistening skin, their strong, chiseled facial features. I gave him a small smile, almost wishing I could stay in this era just to be around such exquisitely beautiful people. He looked taken aback, almost as if he’d never seen a smile before. The corners of his mouth curled up as his lips slightly parted, exposing a breath-taking smile.

Without thinking, I grabbed his hand and took him back into his teepee. I lustfully tackled him to the floor. He began kissing my neck as our hips grinded against each others. Feeling he had a hard-on, I pulled away and lifted his loin-cloth. Hovering over him, my face dropped when I saw how small his dick was. It was seriously GG Allin status small.

I got off him and picked up my list so I could leave. He didn’t seem to mind; he was still smiling dumbly in a daze at what had just happened. He stood up and took the list out of my hands, tossing it aside. He took my hands and stared at me adoringly as if wishing I could come back. I forced a smile and exited.

Back at the thrift store, I was sitting on the coffee table of the living room set. We were all back from the game. One of the other players sat next to me and wrapped his arm around my waist. I’d been let down by such a beautiful boy that I didn’t understand how someone not as good-looking could suffice. Disgusted, I scooted away from him.

The man pressed me back against my car parked at the end of his driveway. He’d called me over while his wife was away. She’d been flown out to get a makeover on some television show.

“I’ll give you sixteen to stay,” he said quietly, his eyes darting around the neighborhood to make sure no one was watching. I hoped he meant sixteen thousand, but I wasn’t sure if he was trying to trick me into being his mistress for only sixteen dollars.

I was in a junkyard, much like the one in Borderlands. I was having a smoke while sitting on the top of a yellow corvette with my legs through the open sunroof.

“Declaring war on ERA,” a robotic female voice announced. ERA was apparently the name of my gang.

It was the announcement I’d been waiting for.

I tossed the cigarette aside and dropped through the sunroof into the driver’s seat. I started the car, controlling the steering wheel with my left hand and reaching over towards the floor of the passenger’s seat with my right. I took hold of my RPG as I sped around the corner. I spotted Mike Nesmith hiding behind a pile of scrap metal and crates, firing at something — resembling a transformer — that was chasing me. My tires skidded to a stop. Mike jumped over the crates and got into the passenger’s seat.

Suddenly my view zoomed out to find I was only watching a screen with a game controller in my hand. Keith Coogan (circa ‘87-‘91) was next to me on the floor of the bedroom, holding another controller. He looked at me, his eyes squinted with lust. He immediately threw the controller aside before crawling on top of me. He started nibbling and sucking at my neck as his hand slipped down my pants.

I stepped out of the shower and held a towel to me as I went up to the touch-pad next to the door to shut off the water. My husband was an inventor and made our entire place high-tech. I pressed another button and a section of the wall slid open as a closet came into view. As I got dressed, my husband came in. He wrapped his arms around me while I towel-dried my hair. It was the first time I’d seen him in days. All week, he’d been downstairs working on a new invention.

“Stop inventing things,” I whined with a pout. He spun me around and excitedly told me his newest machine was done. He grabbed my hand and pulled me downstairs to our first floor. It looked like a mini-mart. We didn’t even leave the house anymore. Everything we needed was here at home and he continuously kept trying to make our lives easier.

He stepped up to this sort of cherry picker crane. But instead of the compartment for someone to stand in, there were two mechanical arms that resembled a claw. The claw reached into one of the crates full of soda, picked up a bottle, and began restocking the shelves of the freezer along the wall.

I was fed up with all of this. He didn’t sell his inventions. We weren’t making any money off any of this. He was only doing this so I would never have to work a day in my life. It seemed sweet at first, but now it was as if he didn’t think I could take care of the place, or myself, for that matter. As he proudly watched his newest invention, I took this as my chance to finally leave. I don’t even know how long it’d been since I left the house. He saw me walking briskly towards the automatic doors and pressed something on his remote. Suddenly the mechanical arms swung towards my direction, knocking over an entire shelf of food, and began pinching at the air as it tried to catch me.