As soon as I opened the door, a big, dusty gust of musky air hits me right in the face. The smell forced me to cringe up my nose. I blinked a few times and looked around. I saw lots of different things on the store shelves: dolls, jack-in-the-boxes, ships in a bottle, candles, snow globes, paper weights, everything! There was even a wall with lunch boxes from the 1930’s hanging on it!

I kept searching and searching around for something I could buy with my $10, when all of a sudden, my cell phone started ringing. I looked at the caller I.D. and it said “Mom”.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Andrew, I need you to do me a favor. Your sister has a dance competition coming up. Her routine requires a chair with rubber stoppers, so I need you to use the $10 I gave you to get those stoppers.”

“What? Mom, I only get one allowance a month! Can’t she use her allowance?”

“Andrew, don’t be difficult with me. I’ll give you another $10 if you do me this one favor and then you can buy whatever you want. Be back for dinner, baby,” she replied as she hung up the phone.

“Looking for rubber stoppers I hear?” a very soft, wispy voice that sounded exactly like Jennifer Tilly said right behind me.

I swiveled myself around and found a tall, middle aged woman with very light blond hair tied up in a bun. She had on thick glasses and a long dress that reached down to her ankles. I was a little scared, she was so silent as she snuck up behind me that I had no idea she was there.

“Um… yes ma’am. Rubber stoppers for a chair please.”

“Here, I think I’ve got exactly what you need.”

I followed her as she brought me to the cash register. She turned her back to me as she was looking through several boxes aligned against the door.

“I couldn’t help, but overhear, your mom is making you use your allowance to do her shopping?” the lady asked me.

“Ye-yes ma’am.”

“What a shame. $10 isn’t much for a boy your age. I bet you wish you could… I don’t know… have things go your way?”

“I wish that every day! How do you know that?”

“I was your age once, you know. It’s hard to get things your way when you’re so young. I think I have a little something for you.”

She kept her back turned to me as she dug through the boxes. She finally pulled out two small plastic bags. One was full of clear white rubber stoppers and the other was full of black rubber stoppers.

“I’m sorry ma’am, I only need one bag of rubber stoppers,” I told her.

“Darling, I am only giving you one bag of rubber stoppers! Will these clear ones work for your sister’s chair?”

“Yes ma’am, but I don’t need those black rubber stoppers.”

“Oh, these aren’t just any rubber stoppers. They’re very special stoppers.”

“Special? How? They’re just rubber stoppers.”

“Here I’ll show you.”

The lady opened the bag, grabbed one of the black rubber stoppers, and then wrote something on it with pencil. She peeled off the paper from the sticky back of the stopper, and then stuck it onto my arm.

I stood there for a few seconds, silent and confused. Right as I was about to say, “Why on earth did you just do that,” my arm suddenly started to move all on its own. I had no idea what was going on, I tried to tell my arm to stop and I even tried to use my other arm to stop it, but it was completely out of my control! My arm reached into my pocket, pulled out the $10, and then handed it over to the woman.

“Your total will be $10,” the woman finally said, as she took the dollar out of my hand.

“What… what happened to me?” I frantically asked her.

“Read the little message on the stopper.”

I pulled it off and read the words. It was a little hard to read because the pencil is against the black color, but it said, “I will pay $10.”

“You see, sweetie. These aren’t rubber stoppers, they’re rubber controllers.”

“Rubber controllers?”

“That’s right, write a little something on them, stick it on some lucky fella, and they’ll treat you like a king!”

“I’m- I’m sorry ma’am, but I can’t just-”

“All sales are final, sir,” the lady interrupted as she passed me a paper bag with the two bags of stoppers. “Have a wonderful day.”

“Ma’am, I don’t want to -”

“Thank you, young man! Have a wonderful day!”

I decided not to argue anymore with her over the rubber stoppers. However, my brain plain couldn't figure out what is going on; the whole situation was plain odd.

“I’m sorry, lady, but this is just weird. You built a store within three days, there’s dust in the air like it’s been here for 50 years, and of all the random things I could possibly need, you have the very thing I needed right behind your desk! Also, rubber stoppers that control people’s minds? How is that even possible?”

She kept on a straight face and answered, “I hope you’ll be happy, Andrew.”

“How did you know my name? There’s no way you heard my mom over the phone.”

“I hope you’ll be happy.”

I was just too confused about this whole thing. I don’t say anything else. I turned around and left the store.