It was the morning of the ninth of September of the year 1986 when my Wyrm first came to me. But, of course, he wasn't a serpent then. 

Not yet.

And there wasn’t anything to distinguish that day from any other nor him from another customer. When I look back at it, I think that may have been what was so terrifying about it all; nothing was different, nothing made either of us stand out or special beyond the cruelty of chance. It was merely the first coincidence in a forthcoming series of increasingly morbid coincidences.

His arrival was announced by the twinkle of the bell that hung above the store’s door, something that rang whenever anyone and everyone passed the threshold. As I’ve said, there was nothing to discern him from any other customer that visited Cavell & Cavell General.

He was a small man, smaller than most, that wore a dark leather jacket two sizes too large that hung loosely from a slight frame. His hair was black (or perhaps dark brown but was so stained with motor oil that it just turned black), half of it tied back while the rest hung loose just enough to barely brush against his shoulders. Aviators that reflected everything crisply like black mirrors sat neatly atop his head as he entered, hands shoved in his pockets and the smell of exhaust, cigarettes, and the intestines of automotives clinging intimately to him.

Nothing was remarkable about him as I stacked a shelf with off-brand sleep medication, the tile cool against my knees, biting through denim fabric with cold, blunt teeth. I only saw him when he walked down my aisle and scanned the shelves for whatever he required. I shifted my legs and hunched my posture to make myself appear as small as possible, so that I wouldn’t take up so much room (which was always a difficult task, being a woman far too tall and far too broad for my own good). He passed by me, combat boots scuffing dryly against the tiles, and our gazes met briefly. No words were exchanged, but he did the tight-lipped smile typical to Midwesterners when they were too tired to be polite but didn’t want to be rude.

He just grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen, made curt but pleasant small talk with Mom at the register (the typical “how are you doing today?” banter that was only done to fill awkward silence), and left. I could only remember how blue his eyes were.

✴⛎︎✴

He came back a week later and bought another bottle of ibuprofen, and also a Coke. 

He was dressed the same, aviators pushed up, worn leather jacket over a baggy, denim jumpsuit (with a name tag reading “JACK” embroidered over his left breast in red thread) stained with grease and the legs tucked into the narrow tops of his boots. 

The only thing that was different was that I was working the register this time since Mom was out for lunch with Grandma. For the whole twenty-eight years of my life I’d breathed, ate, drank, and lived this general store so I lacked the worry of being unable to manage it alone, despite whatever preconceived notions Mom held. Besides, with how many people that preferred getting their more modern medications and fancy vitamins made with even fancier, organic ingredients (and not the hokey pokey off-brand medications that might be vitamins or might be placebos that Mom and Grandma were more partial to when it came to making a quick buck) from the newer, glitzier, and pricier grocery stores and shopping centers built up in Northridge, I was hardly worried about the days being as busy as anticipated. Of course, there were downtown residents that stopped by for cheaper medicines, workers stopping by for a quick lunch, or tourists stopping in for things ranging from band-aids, bottled sodas, maps, directions to the natural history and art museums, to complain about the too-cold winters and too-hot summers, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. Regardless, business had been dwindling, slowly but surely, within recent years, and I found myself struggling to care. It meant I’d have to talk with fewer people and accidentally expose the social ineptitude that’d forever been buried within me, never to go away despite doing this for all my life, and for that I'd little reason to complain the way Mom did.

Now, as I’ve said, my Wyrm was a short man, perhaps no taller than five-foot-ten, as he stood nearly parallel to my collarbone, and he needed to look up at me to flash another tight-lipped grin as he set his things on the counter. He uttered a quick, swift “Hey” before ducking his hands, which sported fingerless gloves, into his pockets.

“How are we doing today?” I asked, gaze kept down as I entered the product codes of his soda and ibuprofen into the register. (Another reason why I had been silently grateful for Mom’s absence: she always found a way to criticize me for how low I spoke, how it was too soft, too monotone. It’d always been hard for me to reach a higher timbre around strangers, and not getting over this earlier in life, as I encounter strangers practically every moment of every day, is a regret I still carry with me. She should’ve been grateful that I was capable of greeting and serving customers at all, that I’d been smart enough to answer whatever questions they may have or run the register or handle money. But Florence Cavell was a notoriously fickle woman that was difficult to please, especially when it came to me.)

There was the course shifting of leather as he lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Just another Tuesday. It’s nice though, I can’t complain too much. Can’t believe it’s already gonna be almost October,” he spoke in a voice that was nasal and reedy, and his vowels resonated highly in the back of his throat in a way way that told me that he must be from up north, in the part of Wisconsin swaddled by forests and lakes and wildlife.

I nodded, and I thought I smiled but I didn’t feel it on my lips. “Need to get out to South Shore Park soon, I think. Don’t want to waste the weather away before the cold comes. Can’t squander the sun, y’know?”

He nodded in agreement as he took the medication and soda from me. He then smiled just wide enough to show a flash of teeth, and I saw a gap where a left canine should have been, and his front teeth are marred by several chips and grooves. But despite this, his smile was warm and charming enough - friendly, I told myself - as it reached his eyes before he hid them behind his aviators again, and left.

✴⛎︎✴

After that, my Wyrm (I assume that his name was Jack, based off of his jumpsuit’s name tag) started coming to the shop every day over the course of a week-and-a-half. And he always came around 12:30 P.M.

He would buy himself a prepackaged sandwich with a bottle of Coke, Mom would check him out, and he still smelled of cigarettes, motorbike, and automotives. I would watch him scarf the sandwich down right outside the door, moving with the jerking fervor of a starved dog. Nothing ever deviated from this.

Such became a new routine that, unexplainable to me, I would find myself looking forward to. For starters, after the first three days of merely walking into the store, he started riding a motorbike and parking it right in front of the store. It was a loud thing, shaking the building right to its foundations and making the glass in the windows hum. Whenever he’d leave, it wouldn’t be until the thing’s guttural growls faded away down the street that Mom would sniff a bit, curling her lip before making a comment about “hooligans” like him  and their loud machines causing no good. To her, a man on his motorbike in grease-stained leathers and an kept countenance was a stain against the pristine whiteness of her store (despite nearly every other customer being no different than Jack in cleanliness and appearance), a loud echo to the otherwise still silence in her life. 

But I couldn’t help but find it exciting. And that was what drew me in: Jack was friendly to me, and he was exciting because he unsettled my mother.

On these days, Jack and I never really spoke beyond obligatory customer-cashier niceties. He always regarded me with a curt nod, a grin, and a “hey, how are ya?” that’d occasionally be followed by “any plans for tonight?” or “gonna catch that Brewers game this weekend?”, and I’d come to notice how with every interaction we had, his smile would soften further, there’d be a pleasant crinkle at the corners of his eyes, and he’d ask questions to make our conversations longer, if even for just a single heartbeat.

The fifth day of his visits was a little different.

He came in slightly earlier than normal, I was working the register, listening to the music from the box radio Mom kept on the countertop by the register playing some sort of classical music that I knew wasn’t Mozart or Beethoven and was too dull to be anything memorable. I was finishing with a customer (an elderly regular named Manny Gacria that came in every other week to buy cough drops as though they were candy) as Mom was out with Grandma again. That day was especially sunny, and they’d wanted to soak up the sun at the Riverwalk.

Ever since Grandma started living with us two years ago (after Mom was hell-bent on the fact that nursing homes were a place of doom and gloom for Grandma’s generation; a large, building-shaped coffin, she said) they’d been going out more and more, and Mom spent more time with her than with me - which was something I couldn’t bring myself to complain about, except it felt as though Mom spent all her positive energy (as minimal as it was), smiles, and laughs on Grandma. Whenever she and I shared a space for longer than ten minutes her smile was always that too-wide, too-loud mask she donned for customers, a mask that instantly fell the moment that door closed. So, to see Jack again and to have his company, that brought with it genuine grins and friendliness, had become a welcomed, exciting thing.

“There you go, Manny, all set,” I said, trying to add some elevation to my tone so as to not come across as horribly indifferent to his habitual purchase.

Manny had known me long enough to know I meant nothing by my lack of inflection, however, and he nodded all the same, taking the bag of honey-flavored cough candies. His grey bottlebrush mustache fanned over smiling lips. “Thanks much, Temperance. See you next time.”

The bell twinkled as he departed, and Jack was revealed to have been behind him during the whole transaction. He stepped up to the counter in the crisp whisper of leather and clomp of his boots against the tile. Aviators were placed atop his head of slick dark hair as he set a bag of chips and a bottle of Coke atop the counter.

“So, Temperance, eh?” He asked as I began to check him out, hands settled in his jacket pockets. “It’s a nice name. One of those virtues, right? I dunno, I don’t read much enough to know.”

I paused, then nodded, keeping my gaze downward despite how he looked at me. “Mm-hm,” I hummed, and before I could even stop myself, I added, “My mother likes to say that she’s too cheap to buy us name tags, but I theorize that she doesn’t allow a name tag so it can encourage me to talk with customers.”

Jack scoffed a small, amiable, laugh at that. “Encourage? What are you? Five?”

For a moment, there was that sting of offense that pierced ice-cold in my chest when I assumed he was talking down to me, but I relaxed a little when I realized that his jab was aimed at Mom.

I shrugged. “She’s always been that way, though. Too late to change her nature, I’m afraid.”

“Ah,” he mused softly. After a beat of music-filled quiet, he continued, “I’m Jack, by the way. I’m in here a lot, if you can’t tell,” he had a toying smirk, as if we hadn’t already become nameless acquaintances, “anyways, I always feel bad about not introducing myself. I’m too scared to do so in front of your mother, quite frankly.”

I shrugged, but was amused. “Glad to know I’m not the only one scared of her. I’d be wary of introducing myself to her, too. Witches and evil fairies can do wicked things to you once they’ve your name,” I said, though I’m unsure of how much I was joking as I pushed the chips and drink towards him. “Enjoy your lunch, Jack.”

“Well, I’ll keep my name safe from the wicked wiles of your mom,” he smiled, showing those chipped teeth, nodding as he fixed his aviators, and took his things. “Thanks, Temperance, see you next time.”

I audibly gasped with how my heart jumped at the words “next time.”