The Pawnshop

It was finally nine o’clock, so I flipped the sign on my little pawn shop to “Open”. Christ, another Monday already. I couldn’t even recall how long I’d been running this shop, but I really wanted to close it and retire. The whole neighborhood had gone insane. Yesterday, some guy who looked like Scott Baio came in and tried to sell a gold watch. Hell, it might have been Scott Baio for all I knew. Unbelievable.

As I walked back towards the counter, I heard the door open. My back was to whoever it was, so I didn’t know what kind of freak had graced me with his presence. I turned around and, though the man was hideous, I showed no surprise.

“How’s it going buddy. Got some good stuff to pawn today?”

The man stared at me with his one good eye. The other socket was covered by a patch. At least I think it was a patch. He was wearing a Zorro-type mask, so all I could see was blackness in his right eye; kind of like Kenneth Lay’s soul. He also had on some sort of ballerina unitard along with hot pink hiking boots. He was hatless, but his hair formed three horns, like a mini triceratops.

“Sir, I have for you the find of a lifetime! You’ll be telling all your pawn shop union friends about this at your secret meeting beneath Mt. Saint Helens next week. I am about to make you a legend!!”

“Well, that’s great, just great. It’s crazy how you knew about those secret meetings. So, what do you have there?” I asked him.

There are no secret meetings and there is no pawn shop union. After years of agreeing with the customer, nothing surprised me. He could have ripped off his mask and had Paris Hilton engraved into his eye socket and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

He approached me with a jeweler’s box that an engagement ring would come in. It was closed and he was holding it like he was about to propose to me. I slowly reached under the counter and grabbed my lucky “Freak Baton”.

“How much would you pay for something like this? It’s one of a kind! No one else is going to have anything this special.” He said to me as he opened the box in my face.

My jaw dropped and my hand fell off the baton. I looked at him incredulously. I was finally at a loss for words. “Um…is that plastic?”

“No, this is as real as they come.”

“But, how did you get it? And where did you get it?”

“It’s mine! I just took it out and put it in the box. Pretty nice, eh? You don’t see that shade of blue too often, do you?”

“No, you really don’t. Um, sir, I don’t know how to break it to you. I am really…uh…not in the market for, um, a human eye ball. I just don’t see what I would do with it. Plus, it looks like you didn’t do a great job separating it from the nerve endings.”

His face dropped. “But, then what the hell am I supposed to do with this eye? I take it out to sell it and you can’t use it? Now, I have to wear this patch all over the place and feel like Christopher freakin’ Robin!”

“Christopher Robin didn’t wear a patch. I think you…”

“Shut up!!” He cut me off. “Damn it. So, you have no use for an eye at all? I’ll take a trade. Maybe for that shovel??”

“No, I really don’t need an eye here.”

“Great! That’s the last time I take advice from that bitch Ann Landers!”

“Ann Landers told you to take your eye out and sell it to a pawn shop?”

“Not in so many words, no. She said to keep the house and rent it out as another source of income, but it was the way she said it. I knew what she meant.”

“Um…I don’t know what to do with that.”

“How about you shove it up you ass along with that hamster and block of cheese?” He screamed at me as he stormed out of my store.

I turned towards the back of the store to compose my thoughts, when I heard the door open again. I rolled my eyes and turned around to see the next freak that would brighten my doorstep.