I stepped out of the searing afternoon light and into Michael's, the craft fortress on the edge of…read moretown, looking for bubble wrap. Just needed something to protect a few bottles and maybe muffle the screaming of the engine when the radiator finally gives up, but the truth is, to keep packing for our move. What I got instead was a ticket to a plastic purgatory.
They say they're an arts and crafts store, however it seems that right now, it's the beginning of a Halloween market of small monsters.
The first thing I saw was a display of Venus Fly Traps, from that movie - gosh, the bame evades me, its 5 in the morningand i just got home so please excuse the choppyness and sloppinessand forgetfulness.
Giant, green mouths stretched wide, packed with rows of impossibly white, needle-sharp plastic teeth. The biggest ones were mounted high, waiting for a neck to walk under. Below them sat potted plants that they'd labelled with a straight face as 'Potted Finicky'. There was a whole grove of 'em, all with "FEED ME" signs hanging off their stems. The mouths were open, hungry, and perfectly cool, just waiting for something soft to wander into their orbit.
I kept walking, trying to remember what a bubble wrap roll looked like becausei was becomingincreasingly distracted and that's when I saw the skeleton crew. It was a line-up of awesome nightmarish bodies of bones.
A faceless thing shrouded in burlap and rags, with long, gangly arms that looked like they'd snap in a high wind, stood next to a skeleton wearing its ribcage like a pinstripe suit. A phantom bride, draped in a grey, rotting lace veil, leered out from empty, bulging glass eyes. Her hand, a set of yellowed bone-claws, rested delicately on her own ribcage. Next to her, a skeleton in a leather cap was staring out from behind a bushy, fake mustache, as if the only thing missing from this parade was a cheap magician to direct them off their hooks and into to town.
They stood motionless on a shelf which saddened me, an army of the dead waiting for a punchline that never arrived.
Then came the villages. Shelves of miniature, dark buildings lit from within by purple and yellow lights. The Spooky Town Collection, they called it. A massive, gothic structure, dripping with purple turrets and balconies, overlooked a street where tiny skeletons sat on porches, waiting. I saw signs advertising a 'Shoppe of Horrid Hamlet' and 'Dr. Creep's Apothecary'. An illuminated haunted tree, twisted with purple light, sat on a patch of dead-looking moss. You could get your whole little graveyard arranged just so, complete with miniature headstones and a Tiny-Tots Funeral Home.
It was like watching a society that had completely run out of ways to fear the inevitable, and now I just wanted to buy it for $19.99 and put it on a shelf, but im trying to get rid of stuff.
I never found the bubble wrap.
I left with nothing but a headache and the sense that if I stayed too long, one of those tiny skeletons would start talking to me about layaway plans.
