A Dream, 12-13-10

My mom and I are in some small town in southwest Texas. There are lots of antique shops and I believe the main street is a dirt road. Its late in the day, and the sun is just about to dip into the horizon. We end up walking into this small shop to do some Christmas shopping right before the shop closes.

I don't know how long we were in the shop. It couldn't have been that long, but all of a sudden we were at the only checkout lane/register in the store with this huge (no, HUGE) pile of miscellaneous items we planned to purchase. Now, when I say miscellaneous, I mean completely random, and when I say pile, I mean a serious heap of stuff. There was everything in this pile from socks, to little pieces of candy, to soccer cones, to finger nail polish, to a folding chair, a laptop computer, a fishing reel, a basket of leaves, shirts, pants, belts, watches, bricks, bottled water, a lamp, a car tire, a flashlight, some kind of moon-shaped pendants, just a bunch of random stuff!

So, the only cashier was an older gray-haired man and I think he was also the shop keeper. After scanning about half the items, he shook his head, looked at his watch and said, "Here, you finish up", handing me the barcode scanner, so I guess we were supposed to finish our own transaction. There was also a couple in line behind us; they only had one item to purchase but it was too late to let them go in front so they just kind of stood behind us mumbling to themselves.

I started scanning the items one by one with the little hand-held scanner. Some of the items had their barcodes printed in hard to read areas, like little pieces of candy, and so what I knew was going to take a long time started to take forever.

After some time of scanning objects, with the pile not seeming to get any smaller (I think my mom was adding things to the pile as I was scanning) a familiar voice said in a low growl, "Here, let me finish this." Suddenly, the beast was standing behind the checkout counter, wearing a green and red apron and an elf's hat. He took the scanner into his paw and started scanning items. I blinked once, and my mom and I were suddenly standing outside the shop in the street. The sign on the shop's door said closed. There were about thirty bags filled with the stuff we'd purchased sitting all around us. I ran back to look through the shop window to see if the beast was still there, but the shop was completely dark.