Creep

As anyone knows, there’s more to see at your local mall than the stores. The people there are a spectacle in and of themselves. While visiting yesterday to pick up a few gifts, I saw an old man muttering to himself in the food court. It’s a testament to the progress of the 21st Century when you see a person talking to themselves and the first thing you do is look for a cell phone or bluetooth headset. Of course, people talk to themselves all the time. I do it almost constantly. On closer inspection, he wasn’t talking to himself, but rather a small baby doll he had set on the table in front of him. The doll, by itself, would be creepy, as dolls often are. A doll in the possession of an old man is creepier. An old man talking to a doll puts the creep factor through the roof. I waited to see if he was waiting for his grand-daughter, but he was sitting by himself at a table for two. Technically, he could still be waiting, even if my imaginary grand-daughter was in factually imaginary.

Then there was some freak walking around wearing what he likely thought were wankster clothes, looking strung out on something and too old to still be dressing that way. There’s a short time frame between the ages of fifteen and twenty-three when a white man-child can dress how he thinks stereotypical black people do and only look ridiculous instead of downright pathetic. That’s not the kicker, though, that’s simply an everyday observation. The strangest thing about him was he had an industrial-sized bag of Cheerios strapped to his chest like one might carry a baby in a ghetto Snuggli, and he was snacking on it like there was no tomorrow. Cheerios make a healthy snack, but you typically wouldn’t need to carry around twenty pounds of it on your person like you just finished raiding a Cheerios factory in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. There was a group of teenagers at the food court wearing booty shorts that would likely get them kicked out of school and the dude walks by and practically puts his face in their asses he’s staring so hard. Then he turned around a minute later and walked back with the Pedo-smile on his face, like he was being discrete about his intentions.

Then there was some lady parked next to us in the underground lot. For some reason, as we passed her discount used car, I had a bad feeling about her, like something was off, but all she was doing was looking over her purchases. As I tried to put the baby stroller in the car she immediately stuck her head out her window and said, “I’d hate to tell you, but you just had your last night of sleep,” which sounds vaguely threatening, especially if you don’t immediately latch on to the context. It reminded me of the old lady in that terrible, terrible movie, “Legion,” that makes nice with the pregnant waitress, then tells her, “Your baby is going to fucking burn.” I don’t know why procreating and transporting your ensuing child around make people want to comment. It’s like half the people who ask about your baby have mental farts and panic when they open their mouths.

The second I pulled into the underground lot I saw the strange zombie man that walks around my town. He has some sort of defect that turns him into this hunched, limping thing. It could be that he had a stroke, or that he’s mentally disabled. As far as I can tell from a distance there’s nothing overly wrong with him, except for his entire posture and gait, but if you saw him at night you’d shoot him like he had a bag of Skittles in his pocket.