The poster read “Occupy Chapters.” It had started big with Occupy City, then Neighborhood, then College, and had spread in a sporadic manner until it simply became a matter of convenience. Occupying Craft Stores were especially popular because they sold markers and signs. By now it was all just alphabetical.
I went because I was desperate to make it big on Youtube. Every fat kid who messes up a cover of Lady Gaga gets a partnership, surely a little clip of a riot could get a few thousand hits. I was imagining sports riots, smoke bombs, police brutality.
What I found was a hardly a protest at all. The shelves were barren, as though people had suddenly become interested in books again. Most of the merchandise on the racks were chachkis that had little to do with literature. I found myself entranced by a pen that hollered like a monkey every time you put it to the page. The overwhelming majority of the ‘protesters’ were a collection of gangly amputees and what I could only surmise were the recipients of plastic surgery from a person with no thumbs.
Don’t get me wrong – this is not an attack on the disabled because I fully believe that they have better things to do than hang out protesting books. These people appeared to have willingly sacrificed their own limbs and facial features for the opportunity to mimic Tim Burton creations. They stretched up the bookshelves like stretchy hands, all dressed in thin, black turtlenecks. Their foreheads couldn’t furrow with emotion.
The man closest to me had two metal fingers. I wondered if it made his hands cold in the winter. I started at him for a minute or two until he slithered so far into the books that he melted into them and disappeared altogether. This seemed to be quite a popular activity.
I sat on the floor reading a novel. It was something about a high school girl. Hardly nail-biting, but I’d taken it off the shelf and I was comfortable on the carpet so it seemed like far too much effort to replace it with real literature. Next to me was a rack of globe cozies – you know, for when your glove gets cold. At the top it bore what would have been the world’s largest monkey clambering over the North Pole. What was up with all the monkeys?
A short man with two metal legs clacked over to me. He walked with crutches on both arms. When he reached my feet he put his elbows on my knees and leaned over the book.
“It’s a store, not a library,” he hissed. His smile was awkwardly large, as though he’d spent a lot of time practicing his leer.
“I’m… I’m going to buy it,” I said. He didn’t move. I could feel the full weight of his body and his elbows dug deep into my legs. “I don’t get it. I thought the point of the occupy movement was to fuck with the big companies. Aren’t you all ‘down with Chapters?’” He still didn’t move so I got up to buy the book. I felt guilty and didn’t want him to think I was just buying this teenage tripe because he told me to so I also snatched a monkey pen and the globe cozy. His smile followed me to the counter. His crutches sounded robotic as he stalked behind me.
The lady at the counter smiled a broad, toothy grin. She seemed completely unperturbed by the armless, legless spider people who decorated the store. She gift-wrapped the pen for me.
“Wow, you sure like monkeys!” Her voice was the colour pink.
“Love ‘em,” I mumbled.
She put my purchases in a wide, paper shopping bag with a fuchsia dog painted on the side. Tissue paper bubbled out the top.
I snatched it and hurried outside only to find a mob of angry, screaming protestors. I guess they got too riled up before they reached the store.
There were gasmasks everywhere. Young men wore scarves above their noses as they hoisted large signs bearing angry paragraphs. Police were corralling people behind walls of yellow tape. They kept their batons visible, held tight in their fists. They were yelling “Down with Chapters! Down with Chapters!” while the teenagers threw rocks yelling “Words are the revolution of tomorrow!”
I took out my cell phone – I had a video camera but 3.5 megapixels seems so much more unplanned and legitimate. A girl next to me who asked what I’d bought distracted me and I suddenly felt compelled to tell her the tale of the man with no legs.
My mother’s voice suddenly appeared as she walked past. “Chase has been stabbed,” she said.
I knew a girl in elementary school whose cousin’s name was Chase. While I’d never met him, he was the person who sprang to mind whenever I heard the name. To be honest, when I looked up I did not look for the stabbing but instead to see if I could catch the eye of the girl who I had not spoken to since I was eight years old. It was not until I noticed the red splattered across the bridge of my converse shoes that it occurred that I too am named Chase.