“Oh, nice! A gang bang!” Sandy walked by the monitor and said, while speaking very loudly and not entirely standing up straight. Ah. So that’s what a gang bang was. I had heard the term before. An entire gang, “banging” one person. It made very literal sense.
Sandy stumbled past me, mumbling, “I’ll be right back,” and passed out in our back room, on top of a stack of magazines, boxes of DVDs, and piles of unopened mail. I would have been concerned, but she looked quite comfortable sleeping back there. I grabbed her large gaudy faux fur leopard print coat and put it on top of her.
When I came back, I noticed my favorite couple being subtly frisky in between the store shelves. Cherise sat on a plastic folding chair in the corner of the store, while Chuck was on his knees, putting different pairs of heels on her and massaging her feet. In reality this was a folding chair that was collecting dust in the storage cabinet until tonight, but the poise and presence that Cherise had made it look like a majestic throne. She put on our tallest pair of stilettos, nine inches, black patent leather, and he licked her toes. Chuck created a tall tower of shoeboxes, of all the pairs of heels that Cherise liked. He snapped my attention away from the monitor of moving bodies, and focused it on him.
“I’ll take all of these,” he said.
“Of course!” I answered, as he continued to worship Cherise’s feet.
I began ringing up the various pairs of high heels. Clear ones, pink ones, sparkly red ones, open-toe and close-toe ones, and some were thigh-high boots. I imagined their house having a giant walk-in closet with multiple levels, like the ones seen on the TV show Million Dollar Listing, with a secret speakeasy-style wall that swung around and revealed all her various shoes and dildos and anything else scandalous from the part of her life that I get to see and not everyone else does.
Couples came and went as I rang things up. Someone with a ski mask walked in the door, alone. That was pretty kinky. I liked all the different types of people this event was bringing in. Perhaps he was the guy who was supposed to double penetrate the couple? His mask was made of cotton—perhaps I could get him to swap that out for something leather; I did have some new nifty leather masks in stock.
And then—he pulled out a gun.
“Freeze! Nobody move! Everyone put your hands up!”
I’d never had a gun pointed at me before. I just learned what a gang bang was not even thirty minutes ago. I had so much life left to live. I really didn’t want to die. Did this store have an alarm? Was Sandy going to wake up?! What the hell was I supposed to do?!
I looked at Chuck and Cherise who were rightfully panicking in the corner of the store. I felt horrible. I brought them here. If they died this would be all my fault.
“If I see anyone touch their phone, I’ll blow their fucking head off.”
He locked the door. I held my hands up, trembling.
“Open the register,” he said. Fuck. I was so disappointed in myself. This had to have been the highest grossing night of sales in the entire time I’ve worked here and the money is going to be completely gone. Sandy would be at a loss for all the expensive products that were used. I felt horrible. Oh yeah, I was also afraid to die. For someone who read so much Sylvia Plath and Edgar Alan Poe in college and romanticized death so much, it was a truly sobering feeling now being faced with actual death. There was nothing beautiful or poetic about this; it was humiliating. I wanted to throw up, and I felt like an asshole taking for granted all that time I spent in life being miserable. There were so many beautiful things to live for. Like Amanda. I really didn’t want to die.
I started taking money out of the register and I looked to the right of me where the shopping bags usually were and noticed they were gone.
“I… I don’t have anything to put it in, um, did you bring a bag, do you want me to just hand this to you? I don’t know how this works.”
“What do you mean? You don’t have any bags?!”
“We ran out! This was a busy night! We don’t usually use this many bags but tonight we used a lot of bags!” I was crying.
“Take this!! Take this!” Cherise panicked, holding up her Givenchy bag that was probably worth more than what I make in a year.
“You can take my wallet, my credit cards, and anything in there! Take it! Please—whatever you want,” she cried.
I couldn’t stop crying. I knew they had a child. They even came ahead of time to make sure this place was legit, and now they’re being held up at gunpoint. I noticed, in the monitor, Jen and her disgruntled husband had given up on trying to have an orgasm and they were walking out. Fuck! No—I wish they would just stay in there. Can I signal to them somehow? Everyone in the gang bang room was hanging out naked, smoking cigarettes, which technically wasn’t allowed in there but now was not the time to bring that up.
They walked out of view of the monitor, with all their toys that failed them, and walked into the main room of the store. The robber noticed them and quickly shifted his stance and pointed his gun at them.
“Where the fuck did you come from? Put your hands up!” The husband had a very high-pitched girly scream, and Jen’s was deep and husky. They dropped their stash of toys, their various vibrating wands and dildos fell to the ground, and they put their hands up.
The robber grabbed Cherise’s purse and began looking through it. He threw out all her credit cards and took several hundred dollars in cash. He took out a small bottle of perfume and threw it on the ground. It smashed on the floor and now there was a strong scent of her beautiful grass aroma throughout the store. If we all died, at least it would smell amazing in here. He took her cell phone out of the bag and threw it on the ground. Damn. That was definitely the brand new iPhone, and there was no way AppleCare was going to cover that.
My own cell was sitting right next to the register on silent (usually it sits in my pocket but my fancy dress this evening had none) and I could see an incoming call from Amanda. Fuck! Should I risk my whole life and pick up the phone?
She called several times. This was so infuriating; Amanda finally calls me and I can’t pick up the phone, because it will induce me getting my head blown off.
The robber was still rifling through Cherise’s bag. There was a lot in there and I’m not sure what he was looking for. I think he just enjoyed going through all her precious belongings and destroying them. A very rude payback for her, when she just so graciously offered her own bag for him to put his fucking stolen money into.
I scanned the room. The poor customers were so afraid, but I actually noticed that Jen was literally smiling from ear to ear, and she had such a large head, so this was an incredibly large smile. And then she let out an incredibly out of character girly giggle. The robber pointed the gun directly at her, and literally put it up to her head. Everyone else screamed.
“What the fuck is so funny?!” he screamed. And she let out an incredibly loud, sexy moan.