"You can't rush art," Dustin said with dignity.
"Agh!" Connor said disgusted. "Gross! You had to tell me that?! And you had to put it that way?!"
"Yeah, guess not. So what were you doing way over here anyway?"
Connor smiled and nodded. "Number fifty-six," he said proudly.
Dustin glanced at the list in his hand. "Nice!" he held his hand up to high five him.
As they were walking along to the clothing department, Connor suddenly stopped.
"What's wrong?" Dustin asked when he realized he was walking alone.
"Um…did you wash your hands?" Connor asked.
"Of course I washed my hands!" Dustin said. "Geez! I'm not two! …Why?"
"You might want to wash them again…"
"…Why?"
"I dunno…because of number fifty-six…maybe"
Dustin stood thinking about it for a moment before realizing what Connor was getting at. "Agh! Connor! That's disgusting!"
"Sorry!" Connor said hurriedly. "I didn't think about it!"
"Gross!" Dustin held out his hand in front of him as if it had an infectious disease, and ran back to the men's room. Connor was about to follow him when he noticed a worker standing nearby, staring at him as Dustin ran off.
"Sorry about him," Connor said as he casually followed after. "He's got a germ thing. Public places aren't really his cup-a-tea."
The worker nodded knowingly. "We have free disinfectant stations at every entrance and exit," he said before going back to his shelving.
After they had both washed their hands thoroughly, and narrowly avoided a soap fight after Dustin made a comment about getting Connor's cooties, they went back out to the store and on their way to the clothing department.
"I'm going to take the men's section," Dustin said.
"Alright," Connor replied, as they turned in opposite directions. "I'll be in children's."
Dustin stopped walking. "Children's? Dude, you're going to get arrested for being a pedophile or something."
"I am not."
"Fine. Whatever. Don't call me when you need someone to pay your bail."
"Fine. I won't."
"Fine."
"Fine."
They turned and walked down their respective aisles.
Dustin nonchalantly browsed through the men's sections, shooing away the few employees who asked him if he needed assistance, before finally dropping to the floor and crawling into a rack of shirts. He got comfortable and sat there, waiting for someone to walk by. After a few minutes, he heard the shuffling of someone's feet. He turned himself around and saw the feet a few racks away from the one he was camped out in the middle of. Then the feet walked right next to his rack, and he sat up a bit taller and whispered harshly "The fat man walks alone."
If Dustin hadn't ducked down right away, he would have seen a rather skinny man of about 20, glance around nervously before shaking his head. "Just imagining things," he muttered, before moving on.
Dustin smothered his mouth with his hand just before another pair of feet came by, and he managed again to whisper something. "Not that one," he said, as this next victim picked up a shirt.
"Huh?" the person said, spinning around wildly to see who was there.
"The yellow one," Dustin said.
"Um…okay…" the person said. He put down the red shirt and picked out a yellow one of the same design. "…thanks…?" he said uncertainly, as he backed away.
Connor, meanwhile, was crouching in the middle of a smaller clothes rack in the children's section.
"Mommy, mommy!" he heard a young girl's voice say. "I'm going over there!"
"But, honey," the mother, he presumed, said. "Those are boys clothes."
"But they have batman on them!" The girl said. "NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA BATMAN!"
"Alright, alright!" The mom said. "Fine. But use your inside voice!"
As the girl walked past Connor's rack, he said in a high pitched voice "Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me!"
The girl stopped and looked at his rack. "Which one?" she asked, seemingly amazed that the clothes were talking to her.
Cake. Connor thought to himself, as the girl reached out for a batman shirt.
"This one?"
"No, me!"
"This one?"
"Not yet."
"What about this one?"
"Yay! That's it!"
"Cool! Thanks, clothes!" Connor snorted to himself as the girl ran back to show her mom her new shirt. "Mommy, mommy! Look at the one the clothes told me to get!"
"Oh, great," the mother said, though she sounded less than thrilled. "Another power rangers shirt…don't you have enough of those honey?"
"But the voice told me to get this one!"
"…Voice?" The mother asked, trying to sound curious, but obviously more terrified. "What voice?"
"The voice of the clothes. I was walking by, and he told me to get this one. I like it much better than the batman shirt anyways."
"The voice in the clothes…?"
"Yep! The clothes in this store talk! Isn't that so cool, mommy!?"
"Uh-huh," the mother said absentmindedly. "Right…well, um, I tell you what honey, remember that security guard we saw when we were coming in?"
"The one who wouldn't let me sit in his car?" the girl said grumpily.
"That's the one," the mother said bluntly. "Let's go find him and ask him again…after we tell him there's a creep in the children's department…" she added quietly to herself as they hurried away.
Aw man. Connor thought to himself. I wanna ride in a cop car. Wait a minute…creep? And…now's a good time to use that speed, McKnight…
He hastily crawled out of the clothing rack and hurried back to find Dustin, who was already strolling towards him.
"Hey," Dustin said as they got closer. "I wish Maddie was around for that. It was great!"
"Yeah, great," Connor said, glancing around, and noticing a mother and daughter talking to a security guard at the end of the aisle. "But her and Tori are busy distracting the rest of security."
"What do you mean the rest of security?"
"Um, nothing. Let's get back to bedding."
"What's the rush?"
"You were right about the pedophile thing," Connor said, pushing Dustin down the aisle.
"I was? Wait, someone actually called you a pedophile?" Dustin asked disbelievingly. "No way! Ha ha! I told you that was going to happen!"
"Shut up," Connor snapped. "And let's go!"
"Alright, alright. Hold your horses. I'm coming."
Dustin managed to fall a few steps behind, at which point he glanced behind them to see a store security guard and a manager searching through various clothing racks in the children's clothing section. Chuckling to himself, he hurried to catch up with Connor as they headed back to bedding.
Things to do at Wal-Mart when you're bored #62: Hide in the clothing racks and when people browse through, say things like "the fat man walks alone," and scare them into believing that the clothes are talking to them.