Cleanup in Aisle Hell

Pool Noodles and the Dark Chicken

All trussed up and nowhere to go

I Jack-Sparrow-chased my wife around the Superstore, wearing a toy mechanical claw in one hand and a flailing pool noodle in my other. I didn’t want to buy them. I just wanted to hunt, infect, and weaponize my wife, and make an ally in my fight against bad people and other stuff. She had to make it difficult by acting as though she didn’t know me.

I would have succeeded if it weren’t for the chicken.

I can still see it now. It’s imprinted on my perception in every waking moment.

The Dark Chicken.

I continued my campaign, following my wife through the deli section, past the organic, non-hormone injected chicken breast and mega tubes of 85% lean ground beef, whooping and slurring about rum and insolence, and maybe getting french fries for dinner that night. As I passed the swinging doors between the deli and dairy sections, I stopped as if hit by an invisible wall of hot manufactured air.

I slowly turned and the evil poultry's scarlet eyes peered across the dark storeroom. Its eyes were Goldfinger's crotch laser and I was Bond’s crotch.

Its silhouette was so black it swallowed up the darkness around it. As if summoning it, the soft, red glowing embers of its eyes pulse to life, piercing the wafting frost left by Jerry — he left the cooler open again.

My wife, oblivious to such obvious danger, compared egg prices. As I steeled myself for battle, I grabbed the generic rum from the grocery cart with my claw without breaking eye contact. I crack the seal, oblivious to the spilled spirits down the front of my witty novelty tee shirt. My wife swatted my hand. I took a pull off the bottle and realized I had grabbed her bottle of Boone’s Farm Apple Blossom Flavored Citrus Wine.

Convincing myself that I was not at a high school party in the basement of Chris Flemming’s when his parents had gone to Cabo, I rose up, washed the taste of Apple Blossom vomit down with the spiced goodness of Admiral Addams Rum, I secured my pool noodle and toy claw and ran into the gaping maw of The Dark Chicken.

As I hit the threshold of fate at the entrance of the storeroom, I heard my wife sigh and exclaim, “I’ll meet you in Electronics.”

But I totally took it as her breathless pleading for me to stop being such a hero.

She needn’t worry. The battle was over swiftly.

All said and done, I fit in the cart quite nicely. Store Manager Kelli insisted my wife — who is not speaking to me, by the way — purchase me, as I not only made quite a mess fighting the emissary of darkness but I was also trussed up and ready to roast on the bottom of the cart. My only consolation was that I was thawing all the frozen.