Friday, November 30, 2007

 

The two men were sitting on cardboard boxes, awash in a sea of the same. The halogen lamps above could not quite cut through the dank dust of the warehouse. The larger of the two men wore a heavy coat and knitted stocking cap. His knit gloves had the fingers cut out. He held a clipboard in his right hand and a pen in his left. He made tick marks as he talked.
"Ok, Derrick. What're we out of?"
"Well," said the smaller man, breathing on and rubbing together his hands for warmth, "We got no more 'them mushrooms."
"I don't see no mushrooms on the list." The big man bared his teeth for a moment.
"Not mushroom. You know. Them tree ear things that grow on the insides of the boxes?"
"Ain't no tree ears neither. Here, I'll put it under 'Fungus-comma-general.' What else. I seen empty boxes over th' East wing."
"Yeah, them boxes with the lifesize samurai fighter. We're out o' them."
"What? We just got them in!"
"Yeah, but they're popular. I can't help if folk like them. You want to tell folk what to buy? You tell them to buy remoras. We got crates of them down basement."
"Yeah? We got lots of sharks left over?"
"Nah, we been out o' sharks since Wednesday."
"Well. what good are sharks without remoras, I asks ya'. Some people don't know nothin from nothin." The big man made a note on his pad. "Folk don't like no remoras but they want sharks. All of it just comes down to image."
"Yup." The smaller man shrugged.
"What else we out of?" The big man flipped a page and tapped the end of his pen on the page, making tiny dots of ink.

by MisterNihil 7:51 PM

 

no more fungus, samurai sharks

by Fred 2:31 PM