been using it for two days. She was no expert.
Wendall’s half-memories of yesterday were important. She was dangerous company, and he would be better off keeping his distance.
Diana hadn’t thought much of Wendall in the time they’d worked together. Now he embodied that ultimate normality that had gone missing from her life. Something she’d taken for granted when it’d been around. Something that actively avoided her now.
She’d fix that by ignoring the weirdness and concentrating on the ordinary. So even though there was a shadowy bloblike entity browsing skis in sporting goods and a snaky thing swimming through the air, she ignored these things and thought about selling coats.
She was going to sell an assload of coats. To prove that she could, and to make up for burning down the store, even if that now technically had never happened. And also because she wanted to do something normal.
A mother with two children in tow stepped into her section. Diana, smiling perhaps a bit too widely, approached.
“Can I help you, miss?”
The woman acknowledged Diana in the vaguest manner, like a mosquito buzzing in her ear.
“I think it’s time the children bought some new jackets.”
The boys were noticeably annoyed by this.
“Mom,” whined one, “we just went jacket shopping last week.”
The woman ignored them and started looking through the racks. Diana, knowing the drill, stepped aside and waited to compliment the woman’s choices. She bought two new coats for the kids and two new coats for herself. It was an auspicious beginning, and Diana took it as a good omen.
No sooner had the family left than another man appeared. This one sneaked up while she was working the register. He was tall with sallow skin and a big, waxed mustache.
“Excuse me, young miss, but I seem to have a great need of a new coat.”
She smiled. “Right this way, sir.”
He bought the first garment she showed him. He paid in cash, then wandered away in a bit of a daze.
Almost immediately two more customers appeared to take his place. They were just as eager to buy, and all Diana had to do was point them toward the racks. A woman with a distant stare set her purchase on the counter.
“Anything else for you, miss?” asked Diana.
The woman’s gaze focused on Diana. “Oh… of course. Yes, something else.”
She grabbed a random coat within reach and put it beside her original purchase.
Diana got the nagging suspicion that normality was about to slip out of her fingers again.
“Do you really want that?” she asked.
“Yes, I do,” said the woman in staggering syllables, almost as if she didn’t know where the words came from. “I want a coat.”
“I want a coat too,” said the elderly woman in line behind her.
“Coats are good,” they said in unison. “We need coats.”
Wendall walked up beside her.
“Hey,” she said. “How’s it going?”
“I want to buy a coat,” he replied.
He reached for one of the garments beside the register. The customer grabbed him by the wrist.
“This is my coat.” There was an edge to her voice.
“Have you bought this coat?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“Then it’s not yours,” he replied. “I will buy this coat since you haven’t bought this coat yet.”
“Hey, I’m next to buy a coat,” said the old woman. “You can’t buy a coat before me.”
“No, I will buy all your coats too,” said Wendall. “One can never have too many coats.”
A new customer, carrying more jackets than he could reasonably hold and struggling to keep them all in his grasp, jumped in line. “These are my coats. You can’t have them.”
Diana sighed. Things were weird again. She tried to bring them under control. “Can everyone please stop saying the word
They all paused.
“But coats are important things,” they intoned in one cultish voice.
With that point of commonality settled, they resumed squabbling over who was in greatest need of a coat and who deserved the lion’s share of the sacred garments.
Diana lowered her head and muttered to herself and the universe.
“This isn’t what I had in mind.”
Only a moment later the coat department was brimming with customers, all of them fighting over purchases. Aung man with crunchy, unkempt hair tried to grab a garment from a frail middle-aged woman. Shrieking, she pounced on him.
There was madness as coat-mania caused the crowd to turn on each other. A dozen melees broke out. A group of children wrestled with a leather-clad biker. A blind man beat a chunky nerd with his cane. And a slimy tentacle monster battled a duck-like Neanderthal over a blue hoodie. The combatants were hampered by their refusal to put down their prized clothing, which limited the damage they could do to each other, but things were getting out of hand.
Diana focused her willpower.
“Stop it!”
The mob hesitated. A few people carried on halfheartedly. The feathery Neanderthal yanked away the hoodie. The tentacle monster growled.
“I said stop.” Diana sensed the shift in reality. “Everybody… just go home.”
“Go home,” they chanted in unison, turning and shuffling away.
“No, no. Stop.”
They stopped.
“Give me a second here. I need to think this through.”
She leaned against the counter and pondered. These magical powers were messed up, a monkey’s paw she couldn’t throw away.
“Okay, I have it,” she said. “I want you all to put down your coats and just go about the rest of your lives as if everything that just happened never actually took place. Oh, and it’s okay to like coats, just don’t like them too much. I guess what I’m saying is that coats are nice, but they’re nothing to kill someone over.”
“Coats are nice,” her cult agreed in unison, “but don’t kill for them.”
“Oh, and stop doing that, please. It’s starting to creep me out. Now go on. Get out of here.” She adopted the kind of gentle voice reserved for stray cats. “Shoo now.”
The short-lived Church of the Hallowed Windbreaker quietly dispersed. Diana spent the next half hour putting coats back on the racks. Her department remained empty until lunch rolled around. She grabbed a piece of warmed-over pizza at the food court and sat at the table with Vom and Smorgaz.
“I just don’t get it,” she said. “There has to be a way to turn this off.”
“Why would you want to turn it off?” asked Vom. “Most people are unwilling victims of reality.”
“And now I’m the victimizer.”
“You’re just being melodramatic.”
She slurped her soda, nibbled her pizza.
“It’s not right. People weren’t meant to have this kind of power.”
“Says who?”
“Says everyone.”
Vom shook his head. “Everyone is idiots.”
“Everyone
“Regardless of whether you were meant to have this kind of power, you have it,” said Vom. “And there’s no
