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curious-minx · 4 years

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Lost Treasures

Short story based around the recently shut down Fletcher, NC thrift store called Lost Treasures.

Memorabilia store owner Trent Darcy is heaving himself ontop of his store’s rooftop all while carrying his plastic tortoise shell strapped to his back. Upon reaching the roof Trent begins lolling towards his store sign Lost Treasures snuggling up inside of the Old English script letter O, which for a man of Trent’s capacity proved a valiant challenge. Down below, a clearly plagiarized mascot from the Nintendo corporation appears stenciled across the store’s feeble shopping display. This spritely maintenance man with a goatee and Medterrenan swarthiness is waving out while holding a large gold Button behind his back like a smoking gun. His eyes crossed out and replaced with large crude Xs. The city of Hendo pleaded with the memorabilia store owner that his store could be left empty wearing a graceful expanding sticker declaring Foreclosure, For Sale! A man wearing a typical outfit most associated with the death of the working class American’s ambitions, a full khaki suit and denim jacket, is shouting through his cupped hands heavenwards, his man is a walking ambonation declares Trent with all of his might, which considering the strains of his orthopedic shell his declarations are only audible to Trent’s own inner ear. Trent begins pacing.

“Mr. Trent Darcy, I beg of you to please come down! I am here on the behalf of te town of Hendo to let you know that you are well within your rights to resist this demolition. A full on demolition crew is pricey business. I get that. Once they start demolishing your former building they are then likely to spread their bulldozing onwards and outwards towards just anywhere. They are insatiable and unreasonable degenerates, but at least they’re not the government.. Put that samurai sword down Trent. You’re making me nervous!” as soon as the khaki denim man mentions his nerves, Marfa Poonce wirls her rifle around and fires off several rounds, all shots missing around Trent.

Officer Poonce wipes her gun down with an offensive cloth and keeps staring down up at Trent as she says as loudly as anyone would call across a cubicle,“I’m gonna go get me some okra fried donuts do you want anything?” Trent hears each word crystal clear.

“No Marfa! Get the fuck out of here you dirty rotten cop!” spittles the demolition Crew representative, a sinewy and scarred body wearing black out goggles with a tube running from his nose to a device inside his pocket. The rest of his clothes are the same color as his flesh, a gray and chalky. He sizes up the billowing armored cop wielding fetid destruction in all of her puffy and padded horror. Marfa Poonce turns her body camera off and scratches at her badge. She evaporates into a bile and donut soaked pit of charred organs, billowing around the shopping center, the sound of one thunderhead clapping.

“You understand that I won’t back down. I’m putting the sword away it’s way too sentimental of a sword to be used against a nobody like you. Now me, my enfeebled struggling botanist wife, and our clefted son are going to be gathered right here. Not inside this lettering but somewhere else nice inside the store, and then you’re going to demolish my store and only then” Trent waddles down from the rooftop and pokes inside the emptied out Lost Treasures, a lone copy of a VHS of that one movie that emotionally scarred you in your childhood that is different for everybody remains in a dust covered box. The demolition representative follows Trent inside, clicking on his head lamp calculating every movement to avoid accumulation of as much of the stench of failed capitalism as possible. The demolition representative had to go home to his partner who said they could smell him before he’s even thinking about turning into the driveway. He will have to sleep in the underground isolation chamber and constantly hose himself off for hours, steam, rinse, eco-bleach, and then maybe even inject hair dye.

“This is ridiculous. Me and the wrecking crew can’t come swinging blaze a glory while you and your whole brood sit and munching on pocky sticks.”

“Then you’ll construct us an opera box or some sort of observation deck in which me and my brood can sit and watch the demolition safely and out of harms way. This is not a negotiation.” Trent begins the slow and careful descent into his car, shaped and designed after an electrical rodent that he always admired since birth but refused to say the name of the creature. The name held too much weight in Trent’s mouth.

“The demolition team build a structure?” The demolition expert is banging on the roof of Trent’s Pickachu car. The Pickachu car alarm begins off which is a recreation of the actual soundbite of the electrical rat being hit with a rock type attack. Trent heaves himself out of the car, holding back the tears being produced from the shredding and the shocking of his muscles. The demolition representative immediately backs off of the vehicle and leans up against the storefront glass he turns around and then shouts, “Hey isn’t that a copy of Gremlins 3: Rude Awakenings? Christ alive that movie scared the shit out of me! My ma and pa got into so many fights over trying to remember who was the one to blame for exposing me to this curious nightmare. Looks like it's in pretty good condition. Can-can-I have it?” The demolition representative before spitting out the request was already tucking it away in his rubber flesh colored suit.

“Do we have a deal?” Trent scowls and turns his tough guy Doosan Bears baseball cap around and lets the folds of his face meld into one sour pucker.

“Sure sure sure, now get out of here! I will personally see to making sure that You’ll have your safety box,but I can’t say for sure it will be able to fit you and what is sure to be your beastly family. That said the Demolition Experts of Hendo are bonded to their word.” The demolition representative pushes Trent out of the store and locks him out. Trent stumbles backwards and catches himself his flip flops sticking to the pavement releasing a squelching hiss with every heavy step taken back into his Pickachu car and then drives across the street to an opposite parking lot for a different shopping center and gets into his actual vehicle of choice the Nerd Van. All of the action figures from franchises big and small, bobble heads, hula hoopers, and even one Black Buddha all precariously cluttered in salute on his dashboard were shaking with anticipation for his return. Trent tried his best to ignore his icon gang whose only crime was thinking the world of him.

Trent drives the eight miles back to his unspectacular open faced neighborhood comprised with rambling shacks, mcmansions, anonymous trailer parlors and Trent’s squat one story home. The yard, much to the annoyance of his neighbors, was utterly barren rough silty clay and sand except for one proud purple cactus that towered above the Trent residence sharing a blooming bushel’s worth of shade.

Inside the house was devoid of Trent’s wife Delia and son Agnus “The Flex” were nowhere to be seen. Trent flings his shoes off his feet without bending down and collapses into his easy chair. Before allowing himself the grace of a hard earned slumber he made sure to program an alarm on his phone in the morning. He knew he wouldn’t need the alarm because Delia would wake him up anway tending to her screaming mottled plants in the master bathroom she turned into a greenhouse. Agnus would be sizzling up some kind of different egg, he made sure to have a different type of egg for every day of the week, Trent kept getting mysterious charges for parrot eggs and want to bruise Agnus’ ego black and rude, but he always managed to dodge Trent’s questioning. Sometimes he would just stuff money in Flint’s cup of chalky morning Jose.

Trent woke up to his phone’s alarm feebly wheezing as if the phone was mocking Trent’s condition. Trent plugs the phone in and blearily searches the house for Delia and Agnus who remain elusive. They probably beat him there. Knowing how much they wanted to see all of his hopes and dreams get flattened out was the kind of bonding time each was hoping was going to fix all of their internal familial strife. How much longer was Agnus planning on sticking around? Will his mid life crisis be moving out of his parents house? Trent hoped not and then he found himself openly weeping, calling out for Agnus and Delia resigning to their absent responses and getting himself dressed and ready for the big day. A triple XL tuxedo print t shirt and respectable camouflage khaki trousers with a lot of zippers and pockets, all mostly functioning. He puts on a pair of black dress socks and slips them into his black flip flops and goes outside and sighs at the sight of the Nerd Van missing. He reaches into his apps and summons up a ride share. The ride should only cost $5.99 plus a tip depending on the smell of the car. Trent was willing to pay any price for demolition day.

A ragtag ragoo racer pulls up the driver, a gaunt Mexican woman that looks like a stren vampiric boarding school teacher in a telenovela with a touch of calibrated goth. Her pouting lips said “hop in and let’s ride,” but her smoky eyes said, “but you’ll not leave the same person.” Fine by Trent who sloshed himself into the back of her sleek and shiny new car that smelled like a Tuscan Leather gimp’s kiss. Trent begins calculating an exorbitant tip.

“You know you can ride in front if you like. Especially if you’re all beat up.” the driver says in a clear and distant voice, a gossamer transmission. How could someone with such striking features, whose expressive face takes up your eyeballs’ entire attention, could have such a feeble and creaky voice/ Trent remains silent and tries to stare out the window covered in pyramid stickers. She manages to get Trent to Lost Treasure in five less minutes than it takes Trent to drive. He wishes he could just get one good glimpse outside to figure out what her route looked like. Four stars, and he tips her five dollars. The powder iceberg blue bullet of a car peels out of the shopping center and drives up into the opposing side of traffic, thankfully there are no oncoming cars and disappears from view.

“Watchu you looking at Trent?” asks Agnus who is wearing a domed helmet and heavy goggles that make his eyes look depthless.

“I think the lady who drove me here may be some kind of famous person. I missed you this morning, and last night too. Where were you and mama bear?” Trent says as he begins the ascent up into the observatory box suspended from a crane. Trent and Agnus squeeze inside the box gasping with air with Delia. Agnus is desperately trying to avoid touching either of his parents by closing his eyes and shaking back and forth.

Lost Treasures is torn down, each pillar and column displaced into rubble, the ceiling scrapped and dismantled, glass raining down in sheets, the whole enterprise is now a dust cloud and debris. The demolition crew makes sure to go about the whole process as solemnly as possible. Turns out having spectators made the whole crew uneasy and where they normally would have triumphed and gone ahead and committed acts of inevitable far reaching destruction on other doomed businesses. The exposed wall of the connecting empty for sale building was covered up with a thick fresh wall of concrete and the demolition crew slinked away without even destroying the observation box. Trent tries calling out “You’re forgetting the platinum rule of demolition: Make some smash em’ up fun!” the demolition representative shrugs and silently responds that they would come back for it some other time. With no one to operate the crane Flint, Agnus and Delia were left stranded and suspended, or they would have been if not for Delia being wise enough to bring along her pocket ivy tucked in her bra. Delia produces thick and stable roping strands of ivy that provide the trapped family with a means of returning to soil.

#short story #short fiction #north carolina #thrift store #vintage #surrealism

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