So, my eyes are locked on this smoking hot babe on aisle seven. She must have been pushing late twenties like myself. This girl turns out of the blue and catches me in the act. I pretend to look at the linguine box in front of me, as my cheeks turn red. The goddess approaches and whispers into my ear.
“Don’t be embarrassed. I was checking you out one aisle over.”
Her words make my body want to melt into a pool of rainbows and plushies. That voice. My god, the voice of an angel. Before you know it, we are seeing each other every other night. Turns out, she lives in a van. The van life. Not tied down. Always on the road, always traveling. I’m still living with my parents, so I latch onto her instantly when she asks if I want to move in with her.
I didn’t exactly have a career going for me. Retail by day, single player gaming by night. This woman though, Katrina, has apparently amassed quite the savings over the years, so picking up odd jobs here and there is all we intended to do during our road life together.
The van is a bit smaller than anticipated, but not a deal breaker. I soon learn that Katrina likes to really move around. We never stay in the same place for more than one night. Whether it’s a grocery store or big box retail store parking lot, as soon as we wake up from our first night, we are on the move again.
But let me rewind a bit. Katrina has a kink. During our first night sleeping together in her van, she pulls out this adult-sized bear costume. And let me tell you, she must have spent a fortune on this thing. Looks like a real bear you would encounter while camping. But before your dirty mind goes down the path you think I’m headed; the bear costume actually served a different purpose. She wanted me to chase her in it.
When the parking lots emptied and we were the only vehicle left in the lot at night, Katrina had me dress up in the bear costume and hide from afar. I would then proceed to chase her towards the van, as she tried run away and escape. She said it was a real turn on for her. I just played along and had fun with it. Problem was as soon as I caught up with her and entered the van, it was as if time shot forward from foreplay to post hookup, where I’m leaning back against the pillow, dangling a cigarette from my lips. It was like blacking out during those erotic moments that I should have remembered the most. I could not explain why my memory was erasing during the most exciting part of the night.
The bear antics continued night after night. Exhaustion and boredom kicked into gear. To break the monotony, I paid attention to my surroundings, little oddities around me as I ran like a sweaty idiot in my furry costume. The first bizarre realization occurred. Right before I stepped into the van, the weather turned to shit. Dark clouds, thunderstorms, flashes of lightning. Everywhere we stayed, the weather always seemed to worsen during our little bear chase.
So, one evening, as Katrina spotted me near the dumpster—her signal to start running—I stopped myself at the van door, didn’t go in. Instead, I peered through the back window. As the clouds whirled above me and rain shot down on my costume, I saw the unimaginable: two Katrinas. One of them was pinned down on the bed and slowly morphed into a homeless man. A man I recalled seeing walking out of the parking lot before our little nightly ritual began.
But what happened next made me physically ill and shiver in fear. Katrina’s head expanded. A tube-like mouth that resembled an elephant trunk extended out and clamped onto the man’s face. The top of Katrina’s head opened up and another transparent tube grew in length, puncturing a hole in the rooftop. A white light shot up through the sky. I glanced back at Katrina, who was now sucking the man through the tube. Piece by piece, his flesh now resembled bloody dough. His condensed remains traveled through this towering tube that shot up through the clouds.
I fell back to the ground in shock, ripping off the bear costume head, as I tried to compose myself. As I sat there in a daze, Katrina stepped out of the van.
“You finally caught me in the act, you poor thing. Well, I managed to collect nineteen humans. It’s a start. I guess this means—as you humans say—things are over between us. I will have to find another one to work with.”
My mind had trouble processing what exactly was happening, but no further explanation was needed when Katrina climbed back aboard the van, which shot into the sky like a hipster UFO, disappearing amongst the clouds.
Katrina was clearly not from our planet. She must have been an alien. So, if there is one piece of advice I can pass along to you tonight, it’s that if someone asks you to dress up in a bear costume and chase them through a deserted parking lot into their van, you better run in the opposite direction, far away from them.