Off to the Store we go

Anetta Lawrence made her way up the road shoving past the overly dramatic, obscenely joyful citizens of Luffsville to the local bar. Exasperated from yesterday's failure to find treasure, she had decided to relocate and find a treasure with a less difficult location. She had been hoping to find something with the convenience of a map that happened to showcase an overly large 'X' located directly on the spot of which the treasure was buried, therefore eliminating the extra effort used to find it. But the problem of the matter was, how could she gather information on a treasure OR treasure map without revealing that she was indeed a pirate? I mean, it was hard enough to fake her identity when arriving to her part time job in a large sailing vessel with a Jolly Roger flag flailing atop of it. From the beginning it had always been difficult for her to ignore the response she got from local male singles in the bar to know she was a pirate, luckily Anetta had learned early in life how difficult it had been to seduce boys in her pirate attire. She found herself angered when they would say 'Hey, I'm a pirate too and I'm in search of some booty.' After all, she was the sexual predator for boys, not the other way around.

Now Anetta, concentrating only on treasure and ways to keep her secret identity hidden was currently oblivious to the terrified, trembling, ginger haired lad that stood a few yards in front of her. Unfortunately for that poor unsuspecting child, today was not his lucky day, instead, on this day he would learn what it feels like to be trampled by an aggravated, low brain capacity, in disguised, and most likely PMSing female. It hadn't even crossed her mind that the large dump in the road was a child and not a pothole until a scrap of her extensive, faded black waitress uniform got caught in one of the poor child's teeth.

"Unfortunate, very unfortunate." She noted taking a long glance behind her at the flailing, crying miserable little boy. She had no desire to apologize; after all, it was he that had been in her way. Nor had she intended on starting a conversation with her quick remark.

"Yes, very unfortunate ma'm. The poor boy was just pronounced blind by the local practitioner, it's a sin that is that his parents let him wander into the busy streets like that." Sympathized an overweight, balding man with a long beard. Her eyes had been quickly drawn to his beard which, for some reason, had some sort of insanely unnatural left curve to it. He looked kind of like a bloated Santa Clause that had been trapped in a tornado and hadn't yet fixed his appearance.

"No, it was unfortunate that I would be late for work because of a wandering blind kid and a plump middle aged man who's beard favors the left side of his face over the right." She hissed, tearing the faded material from the child's mouth tooth and all. Unbothered by the incident with the small child Anetta continued up the road to the local tavern. Which oddly enough, seemed to frown down upon her as she approached it. But by the looks of the old tavern with its rotting exterior, paint-chipped sign, cracked window, and moose antlers that hung proudly above the creaky old door, frowning was all it was capable of, and most likely all you could expect from it.

Aggravated and somewhat dazed, Anetta trudged up to the wooden door of the tavern just in time to escape the rain. 'Perfect' She thought as she took one last look at the tavern which read 'Jake's' across the already dampened sign, 'It's crying'. One could only assume that if your place of employment was crying before you entered it, nothing good could come from it. But Anetta had no other choice, her newly acquired baby capuchin had decided to do its duty all over the newly painted and waxed vessel and of course, despite the fact that her crew had scrubbed the whole ship down twice, the smell remained. Unable to think of another way to get rid of the revolting smell Anetta had took it upon herself to work up some money and buy air freshener. After entering the musty smelling bar she immediately regretted her choice of setting sail to Luffsville. Even in the dreariest of places everyone was abnormally overjoyed. 'Smiley' , 'Happy', 'euphoric'…

It was all so demonic looking. The town's folk reminded her of a freaked out little girl on acid absentmindedly staring into a lava lamp. Smiles from ear to ear, eyes unnaturally widened, glances that made your insides shiver-

"Yes." She thought out loud, "I would rather see rapists and murderers any day compared to this."

"Oh there you are!" Bellowed a man equally as large as the one she had met a few paragraphs before.

"Our new waitress, fine as can be I see. Maybe we'll even get more customers with you working here." He grinned, broadcasting a view of his crocked, orange tinted, slimy looking teeth. Anetta gulped, taking an awkward step back and bumping into a rounded table. "Ehhh…Boss?" She asked nervously, and hoping the answer be no. Though inside she knew she wouldn't be that lucky.

"Yes, why yes! I'm Jake, owner of this diamond in the rough tavern, and you young lady must be Anetta Lawrence, out new waitress." He bellowed, his voice deep and his breath reaching every section of her nostrils. Onions, garlic, or maybe even monkey poop. Whatever he was eating wasn't the most pleasant thing, she realized trying to hold her breath and restrain from breathing anywhere too close to him. "Yep, that would be me, and don't worry, I know what I need to do. I've been a waitress for bars many times before this so just sit back and I'll get to work." She replied, trying with all her might not to gag. Jake nodded and Anetta quickly dashed off and began serving stiff drinks to the creepy, over dramatic looking customers. As she worked she made sure to listen carefully for any sign of a lost treasure, or a treasure map or even an old pirate legend. Anything would be good, or at least, better then this. 'There has to be something. Some sort of treasure somewhere that someone knows about.' She assured herself as she moved her way further around the crowed room then necessary delivering drinks.

Though as her 8 hour shift reared its last five minutes and she still hadn't heard anything her hope for this town started to fade. There was not one talk of treasure, or even an indirect indication to one. Frustrated and again angered she collected her pay of 64 dollars from the foul smelling Jake and marched her way toward the gloomy, rotting framed wooden door. But as she passed a middle aged man with graying and receding hair she came to a dead stop. Had she just heard the word 'Treasure'?

Trying to look unsuspicious she jumps behind a large vase that stood a little over three feet tall full of flowers which was conveniently near the table. Anetta strains her ears desperately to hear the conversation between the man and his buddies.

"Oh it's a real good treasure he has all right."

"He's from Sweden isn't he?"

"Yeah, and I hear there's some pretty good booty involved."

"And the shop's only a block down the road, rentals it is."

"I hear it's called 'Black Market XXX'."

"He mostly likes that bondage stuff. But still, he's got quite the treasure."

'Treasure' and 'booty'… They were definitely pirate words, she agreed after a moment of thinking. Though she couldn't help but think that the words 'Sweden' and 'bondage' were familiar to her somehow. Oh well, it was not time now to think about familiarities. Instead it was time to treasure hunt. Of course, after she picked up some air freshener from the local supermarket that is.

Her new satisfaction left her feeling happy as she left Jake's tavern, luckily for her the supermarket was right across the road to pick up some air freshener quickly before she forgot her new objective, Anetta was after all, not the brightest girl in the pirating business. She dashed into the supermarket quickly and stopped at the air freshener isle, looking closely at all the brands and apparent scents that they had. But after smelling a few she found herself completely drawn to the 'Febreeze Holiday Warmth & Winter Evening' not only because of the reasonable price but because it smelled a lot like her favorite scent of 'Tag Body spray'. After overpaying the clerk and insisting he keep the change she dashed out of the store and headed down the road, almost trampling another unsuspecting young child. Fortunately this one wasn't blind and moved quickly out of her way. The whole way there all she could think about were shining gold coins and all the extravagant dinners she could buy with them. Lately she hadn't been able to afford a decent meal and was looking forward to a turkey or steaks or even a hot fudge sundae would be nice. But as she approached the rental store she noted that for a black market, this building looked extremely green. It had no windows, just a large metal door in the center of the building and a small sign that said 'Black Market XXX'. Surely to someone of intelligence this would come off as odd or suspicious, but not to Anetta.

She approached the door with little caution and tried turning the handle. Surprisingly for her, it didn't budge. So this time she took a more forward approach and started banging her fists against the metal door, yelling "Hellooo?" as she did so. Dazed and confused by why someone would lock an entrance to a store, she barely noticed a metal latch unhook from the top of the door revealing a long rectangular peep hole.

"What?" The voice asked in a bit of an agitated tone. She stared up at him blankly; her head tilted a bit to the side.

"Ummm…" She stuttered, realizing that once she arrived here she had no further game plan. He raised an eyebrow, and she could tell by the way he looked at her with his greenish, brown eyes that he was smirking. "Well" He began casually, "if you have no further business here then maybe you should-"

"Wait! I, uhh, lost my pet…Moose?" She blurted while looking at his eyes to try and read if it was a valid reason or not. He stared at her for a while, and Anetta crossed her arms over her chest as though trying to project some sort of importance she thought she had.

"Moose?" He asked, his expression not hiding any of his amusement for her randomized answer. "Yes." She replied quickly, seriousness growing in her voice. Again she couldn't help but feel a connection between the words 'moose' and 'Sweden', and how it sounded familiar to her when put together. Even now, it was still no time to think about familiarities. Anetta had a task at hand and she wasn't capable of thinking about more then one thing at a time. 'Unless both subjects were closely related of course', She thought to herself. Distracted from her thoughts by the boy's sigh she looked up and realized the door was open. Anetta smiled wearily at the annoyed expression he wore on his face and proceeded in quickly. People with treasure, she noted, always seemed to look aggravated. So judging by his aggravated expression, he must have treasure. She didn't ponder on this for long though because the sound of the door closing and latching behind her broke her feeble concentration. She did however, realize why it was called a black market now. It was incredibly dark except for the randomly placed lights which gave the whole room sort of an eerie feel to it. Mesmerized by the array of shadows that were cast from each individual object Anetta almost didn't hear the increasingly annoyed boy's question. She turned around quickly to face him, suddenly realizing that he stood closer to her then she had first thought. With his face shadowed he looked sort of intimidating, though Anetta was sure he practiced looking intimidating before allowing someone in, probably to make them get in and out quicker.

"I'm on a hunt for booty and treasures and it lead me here." She replied in a mockingly aggravated tone. Though she couldn't help thinking how close at hand treasure was.

The boy smirked and rolled his eyes, replying quickly "Haven't we been over this already. I don't have the kind of 'booty' you're looking for."

Anetta pouted and folded her arms around her chest. "You haven't told me before, and prove it!" She hissed at him, hiding none of her frustration. He crossed his arms around his chest, this time mocking Anetta and replied calmly "Fine, go look in the back room. The door on the left."

Anetta eyed him suspiciously and walked slowly to the back room. She fumbled with the door knob and slowly walked in. It was dark, to dark to see. Palming over the side of the wall she found a small switch and flicked it on. Her legs froze, and buckled beneath her, Anetta's eyes froze on all of the videos that were placed around the room. There were breasts of all sizes and butts and sexuality and porn, it was all porn. Anetta flopped onto the floor, defeated. Another failure to find treasure.

She quickly got to her feet by the sound of the boys footsteps approaching.

"See? Didn't I tell you?" He smiled victoriously, enjoying every moment of Anetta's humiliating defeat. She looked at him, her misery thickly spread across her face. He stop smiling and his face turned serious. "Anetta we went through this before right?" He questioned looking somewhat worried by her reaction.

"…Before?"

He sighed and grabbed her arm, leading her back to the front room. "You came here a little over four months ago looking for treasure and I let you stay her for a while because you hadn't eaten in days." He explained, his annoyance quickly returning. He glanced over at her, rolling his eyes at her absent minded expression. The more she thought back the more she realized that she did in fact come here a while back and that there was a reason this place and those words seemed familiar. She glanced over at him and smiled. "So, there's food here?"

He muttered some swear words under his breath and shoved her out the door before she got to comfy. His wallet was still a bit empty from the last time she decided to stay, and she had only stayed for three days. But somehow she had managed to spend all of his life savings.

Anetta stared at the door in confusion, sighed and walked back toward the ship. She did get what she came for, despite the treasure disappointment. Now the ship would smell good. Really, really good.

End.

Today's lesson: Idiots should not eavesdrop.