Author's Note: All characters are over 18. Many thanks to u/kenjisato and u/aphrodisiacxxx for their editorial help!
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"Call it Fate, call it Luck, call it Karma. I believe that everything happens for a reason"
- Dr Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters
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I'd expected my time at the mall to involve several things. I'd expected to walk away with something from the bookstore. I'd expected to get Panda for lunch. Hell I'd expected (well, hoped) that I'd manage to snag something neat from the Estate Shop (they had a sword last time I went in there which hadn't been that long ago).
What I'd not expected was a curvaceous, corseted, gorgeous goth to be bouncing up and down on my cock while moaning in delight.
Perhaps I should explain.
There'd been a number of changes at the mall, most of which involved invoking the various 'unmasked gods' that had taken charge of 'USAmerican' culture over the last few years (there'd been a 'Paradigm Shift' or something like that, so they'd apparently decided it was time to come out into the world). Wealth, god of wealth and influence, had a modest shrine next to the ATM while various gods of blended cookery had shrines in the food court, alongside some shrines to what folks might consider to be more 'traditional' gods, and generally they were pretty fun to go visit and look at.
Me, I was interested in the supposedly Fantastic shrine that ALTZ!!, a local scene shop, had put up to the twin gods of Goth. Word had it that the pair had recently appointed one of its managers (nobody knew which one) to be one of their prophets so the once-humble mall store had become a sort of mecca for the local goth crowd for a few months. Thus, the shrine.
When I walked in, it was fairly dead. There was a one employee working the register (a young, skinny, dark haired guy dressed like he didn't have a care in the world), another one Pretending to stock the shelves (a young woman who looked like she could have been the other's twin in both taste and looks), a number of half-stocked racks, and a couple other customers, a man and a woman, standing over by the clothing racks near the shrine.
The male customer was a greasy, pale, looming fellow with long black hair full of enough product that I was surprised he'd not collapsed from overheating. He wore fishnets anywhere you might see skin below the neck and his clothes were so tight that if he'd had any curves, literally any at all, you'd've been able to see them in excruciatingly crisp detail. It was a look that could've worked for him if he didn't have a continuous sneer that gave him the unbelievably punchable face of an absolute asshole.
The female customer, meanwhile, was stunning. She wasn't tall, hovering at about five foot nothing, but what she didn't have in height she More than made up for in voluptuousness, up top and down below. She had the kind of body musicians wrote songs about 400 years ago and brought the phrases 'huge tracts of land' and 'pixar mom bod' to mind. Her hair was a fantastic shade of neon blue and while her outfit wasn't anything to write home about, she was clearly here to change that.
"Really? Those boots, on you? Stick to Converses."
"Shut up, ass. I think they look cool."
Unfortunately, her male companion seemed to be the absolute worst choice of person to be her guide in that endeavour.
I tried to leave them be. Maybe I'd judged him too soon, or they had the kind of toxic friendship where they just always brought the worst out in each other. The longer I browsed, though, the more I heard him shoot down clothes and outfits that would have looked Amazing on her with deeper and angrier vitriol.
Really, Anything would have looked amazing on her, but he seemed bound and determined to only find clothes that would make her look frumpy and drab. Furthermore, he just kept Critiquing her, and not in the fun way friends do on occasion when they're trying to steer you away from the edge of a cliff. It was as if he wanted to find every positive thought she had about herself and poison it. I made a half-hearted attempt to keep the two of them out of mind, but his voice kept piercing through my thoughts like an icepick into a glacial wall.
***
"You're a little thick to pull off a dress like that, Penelope."
"Fuck you, Damian."
***
"Oh sure, wear that if you want to look like you rolled out of bed. Like, literally rolled. Get it? Like fat rolls?"
"I get it, dickhead; it just wasn't funny."
***
"You should just stay away from anything that looks elastic, which means those thigh highs are Out. You have to have a body like mine or Andrea's to really pull off that kind of stuff."
"How is my body any different from hers?"
"Do I need to spell it out, Penelope? You don't want to look like a wastoid, do you?"
***
Each time they snapped at each other, she'd eventually set the piece of clothing back and he'd look smug as a cat that got the dog blamed for a mess. What's more, anytime the young woman, Penelope, even had a Chance to drift away from him, he'd be right back at her side, quick as lightning, ready to verbally tear apart whatever she'd found. She seemed able enough to spar back with him, but that kind of shit could wear you down over time, even if you knew it wasn't true.
I took a deep breath and went over to the shrine. It wasn't the fanciest thing, like Wealth's was; but what it had, was full of community and life, unlike Wealth's. There was a sketch someone had made of the Twin Gods, little trinkets and doodads around it, and a pinboard covered with letters thanking the twins for coming out into the world. In the middle was a small fountain of water with a note stuck to the front and a small stack of dixie cups next to it.
I read the words under my breath. "While the water in this fountain is continually blessed by the twins, the fountain itself is maintained by the staff. Please leave it clean, don't double dip a cup, and don't take more water than you Really Need." Under that was an additional note scrawled in pencil that read "that means you, clarence. talk to agg if you HAVE to have witchy stuff," and I snorted a laugh.
"I just need a bit," I said to myself, as I dipped a finger into the fountain and dabbed my forehead with a speck of water.
Almost as Soon as the water touched my head, I felt a tingle and the man's voice pierced my thoughts once more. I looked over at him and saw that he was doubled over with laughter. Penelope was standing next to a wall of rather fetching corsets and looked as if she wanted to wither away.
"Like, seriously, you? In that? Fuck, in Any of these? Never gonna happen. You'd look like a beached whale," said the guy, wheezing as he put his hand on her shoulder to... I don't know, keep from falling over while he laughed, I suppose.
Something inside of me snapped.
"That is Such a crock of horseshit, you dense Ichabod Crane mother Fucker." I felt the words practically bubble out of me. Penelope and the two employees began to laugh while the guy stopped his shrieking, howling, laughter, and looked over at me like he'd only just realized that he wasn't the center of the universe.
