Ages and ages ago a guy came in. He's small, not much larger than me, with slicked back blonde hair, and has a particularly rodent-like cast to his features. When he speaks it's almost completely unintelligible, you can understand if you listened very very carefully, but for me it was singularly unpleasant. The first time I encountered him he held me hostage in the DVD room mumbling about his preferences for what felt like an eternity. Lest I extend the conversation I didn't ask him to repeat himself, and got the hell away as soon as I could. I pleaded with Crystal to take over with him, because he gave me the screaming heebie-jeebies, and she said she would. But when he came up to the counter, she was busy, so I was roped into helping him. He kept up a constant litany of his quiet unintelligible mumbling, but after a while I started to acclimate to his way of talking and understood some of it. From what I could surmise, he was asking me if semen stuck in my throat when I swallowed. My eyes blazed, and I would have loved to spit n his face and inform him I wouldn't know, but I couldn't be completely sure of what he'd said, and he caught my look and fell silent. He asked to be shown different toys, and asked questions that he had to repeat several times before I could understand him. When he finally had to pay all his cards were summarily rejected, and he handed over a small pile of unpleasantly damp bills. I snarled at his back as he left, and hoped never to see him again.
He came in yesterday. I didn't remember him immediately, it's been almost a year since our last encounter, but when the small blonde man came in I looked over at my coworker Christian in a way that says, "total creeper, please handle?" And he did. I remembered him as soon as he greeted us, his particular brand of psycho-babble is hard to forget. He headed straight for DVDs, and I filled Christian in on his last time in the store. He looked horrified by the comment and said he'd help the guy. I thanked him profusely, and puttered around the counter. But soon the man came up to ask for help. I was easily the rudest I've ever been to a customer. He was trying to catch my eye and I physically turned my back on him and looked at Christian. He slid smoothly between us and led the man over to DVDs.
When he was finally ready to check out he came up with his movies and I walked away. But like last time his cards kept getting declined. Our counters are set up like a circle, with two breaks in them to pass through, and two registers, with a counter top and drawers in the center with a body-form mannequin. I stood behind the middle counter, shielded from the mouse-man by the body form. But as I glanced over I saw him leaning to keep me in sight. I immediately dropped to a squat on my side of the counter, behind the middle island. He was thus very effectively blocked from seeing me.
Christian patiently bore with him while he tried to arrive at a total that his cards wouldn't decline, and when the man was rung up Christian walked around the island to stand next to me. We exchanged grimaces, and he looked over as the mouse-man finally collected his bag and said, "Have a nice day!" But instead of just returning the pleasantry, the man came around to the side of the counter where I was crouching and leaned over it. I pretended not to notice, and didn't look up. To me specifically he said, "See you around, later."
Me and Christian slowly looked at each other, my face set in an unhappy frown. He laughed at my expression but said, "That look he just gave you was a serial killer look, and it said, 'you're going to be my next victim.'" After I'd almost forgotten it later, when it was dark outside he added out of the blue, "If you'd seen the full look, you'd have nightmares tonight."
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