The Winner: Part Four

"Hello sir, and welcome to Wal-Mart," the wrinkled old greeter says to me as I step through the automatic doors of the store. His smile quickly turns to one of either concern or disgust as soon as he gets a good look and whiff of me.

I say nothing, I just glower back at him with an expression that says "mention the obvious and I'll rip out your dentures out and shove them up your ass so far you'll be picking falsies out of your grapefruit-sized prostate until next month's Social Security check arrives," or, more succinctly, "Don't fuck with me." He doesn't, and I continue on past him.

The store is insanely crowded. Of course, this is the day after Thanksgiving, the official start of the Christmas retail season. Every aisle is clogged with fat brood sows in flip-flops and curlers with their horde of welfare children, maybe a husband with a Dale Earnhart T-Shirt barely covering his beer gut. They all shovel cheap crap into their carts like China factories are going to cease to exist tomorrow. Wal-Mart is always the most depressing of retailers, and around Christmas it's doubly so. It is nothing but a pen filled with people hollowed out by their gluttony.

And then there's me, walking around it with a load of shit in my pants that's starting to itch really badly and is sure to leave a rash. I shuffle as quickly as I can towards Men's Apparel so I can grab a new pair of pants, making sure to glower at anyone who comes near me. The "Don't Fuck With Me" stare works wonders. It doesn't stop people from talking about you, but it does prevent people from doing it up close. I am dangerous. Any person who walks around in public after taking a dump in their pants obviously doesn't give a shit, so to speak.

Whatever else this situation is, at least I know that in the future I can look back on it fondly. As soon as I get to the Lottery Commission office, I will likely never have to step foot in a Wal-Mart ever again. I'll be buying suits at Armani and cars at Ferrari. I'll be able to look down on people who shop at Pottery Barn as lower class plebes, much less the trash that infects Wal-Mart. The thought of this put a sinister curl to my sneer that probably makes me look even more ominous.

As I walk around the clothing department looking for the first pair of size 36 slacks I can yank off the rack, I become aware of two men who are obviously in "loss prevention" shadowing me. Two thick-browed assholes with mustaches that probably didn't meet the police academy's minimum IQ levels. I ignore them, since I'm not technically doing anything wrong and don't intend to. I'm just doing it with shit in my pants.

I find a pair of size 36 khakis, grab them, and immediately make a bee-line towards the checkout aisles, all of which are clogged with shopping carts. I get into the shortest line behind some lady and her little boy who is busy picking his nose. The little bastard looks at me as he pulls his finger out of his nose, a thick cord of snot following it, and sticks it in his mouth. My stomach quivers just a little bit at the sight of this.

The little boy smiles at me, then tugs on his mother's arm. "Mommy, I think that man made a doodie-doo in his pants."

"Just ignore him," his mother says. She's too engrossed in the tabloid adventures of Britney and K-Fed to care about me.

But the little boy keeps staring at me. He tries to get his mother's attention again. "Mommy, I thought you said that big boys don't make doodie-doo in their pants?"

His mother doesn't even look up from her magazine this time. Needless to say, I want to slam this little bastard's face into the rack of chewing gum until his jaw is broken, but I control my rage. I just need to get through this and I'll be fine.

About ten minutes pass and finally it's my turn at the register. The cashier has a disgusted look on her face when I step up, but scans my pants anyway. $16.78 with tax. "Do you take checks?" I ask.

She rolls her eyes impatiently. "Only in-state and you must have a driver's license. And no temporary checks."

No problem, I have ID and my checks are pre-printed. "Can I write it over the amount for cash back?"

Again, she nods like I'm a retard. "Yes. There's a three dollar fee for every twenty dollars over the purchase price."

Normally, I'd balk at this, but fuck it. I'm rich now, and it'll take care of the little problem of securing transportation downtown. I scribble out the check, hand her my ID. She actually scrutinizes it, then runs the check through the MICR reader. For a second, I'm worried that my check will come back declined or something, but her register pops open, she hands me a twenty dollar bill and a receipt. "Would you like a bag sir?"

I don't say thank you or take a bag. I just grab my new pants and the receipt and head straight for the bathrooms next to the customer service counter.

I find the big wheelchair stall in the back with the "Baby Changing Station" and shut the door. I quickly peel my beshitted pants off of me. Looking inside the seat, it is a mess. The shit is somewhere between the consistency of diarhea and solid, peanut-filled crap. Feeling around behind me, the turd as spread itself all up and down my buttcrack, and has been smeared all the way from nearly the small of my back up down to my inner thigh. The stench is overwhelming and I gag a few times.

I start cleaning myself up, using all the toilet paper and the wet naps from the baby changing station and have barely made a dent in the beige brown mass. There's no one else in the bathroom, so I step out of the stall, pantsless, and stick my butt up on the counter by sink, hoping I can get some warm water up there to clean myself. It takes a minute for the water to warm up, and my anus clenches up at the cold, but I still manage to wash the majority of the crap out of my crack.

Of course, while I have my ass in the sink, somebody comes into the bathroom. It's one of the loss prevention men.

"Sir you cannot have unpaid merchandise in the restrooms and...WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?"

"Washing my ass," I say. "And I already paid for the pants. I have the receipt."

The loss prevention officer's face turns bright red and he looks like he's gonna have a heart attack. "GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THE SINK NOW!"

I wasn't quite clean yet, but it was good enough for jazz. The sink, however, was filled with little bits of my crap floating in shitty water. Oh well...

"NOW PUT YOUR PANTS BACK ON! DO IT NOW!" then he pulls out his walkie-talkie and talks into it. "Unit 1 this is Unit 2, we've got a Code 10 in the men's restroom. I repeat, we've got a Code 10, over..."

I grab my new pair of pants and put them on. They're a little long in cuffs (actually a lot long, I'd have to roll them up) but otherwise they fit fine. I didn't bother taking off the tags since this asshole looked impatient. I'd do it in an alley somewhere.

As soon as I have them on, the officer grabs me by my arm and says, "Sir, you are hereby permenantly banned from the store premesis. Please follow me."

I tug my arm away from him. "Chill out jack. What's the problem? I told you I paid for the jeans..." I pull out the receipt and wave it in front of him.

His face just gets redder. "Then...then you're banned for vandalizing our bathrooms. We don't cotton to vandalizers here at Wal-Mart!"

"Well, let me just grab my pants over there and you and Wal-Mart can go passionately fuck themselves, Opie." Especially since those pants contained my precious lottery ticket and my cash.

The other loss prevention officer who was stalking me earlier came into the restroom now. "Hey Bubba, it looks like we got a smart-mouthed one here. You're coming with us!" both of them grab my arms and start pulling me towards the door.

I know it's a girly thing to do, but I bite the first one's hand. He screams and his grip looseness enough for me to get away. I ran back towards the stall where my shitty pants were laying. There was no way I was leaving without them. They were my entire future was in it. As I'm running though, the long cuffs of the pants tripped me up and fell face down on the tile, banging against my jaw harshly. It is especially painful considering I'd had my jaw reconstructed less than a year before.

The loss prevention officers fall on me just as a turn over on my back. I quickly learn they are also *armed* loss prevention since now one of them had a .38 snub-nose in my face.

"Just try it motherfucker! Just try it again! I want you to do try it, scumbag! I'll blow your face apart you fucking motherfucker you!" he lifts some of his weight off me and says to his partner. "If I say he reached for my gun, will you back me up?"

"Jeremy, settle down..." the other one says. "Let's just take him out of the store..."

"No, I gots to get me a piece of this..." he sneers, drooling with rage. His saliva drips on my face.

"Jeremy Michael! You best follow procedure if you don't want to get written up!"

He grunts in disappointment, grabs me by the scruff of my neck and lifts me up. He flings me against the wall and sticks his finger in my face. "If I ever run into you again, scumbag, me and my friend..." he runs his thumb over the cylinder of the .38, "will be sending you straight to Jesus. Praise be."

Like I said before, having been shot before, guns don't scare me so much anymore. Besides, this was the second time I've had a gun in my face in less than an hour, so I was more annoyed by this than anything.

"Look," I say. "Just let me get my pants there and I'll be out of here forever. They're full of shit, you don't want them."

He looks at me quizzically. "What's in there that's so important to you son?"

Oh no. I say, "My...wallet."

The guard goes over to the pants, gets the wallet out and hands it to me. "P...U! You are one foul motherfucker! Now let's go!"

The two guards grab my arms and lead me out of the store, and I go peacefully. I can't tip them off about what's really inside those pants, or I'm fucked for sure. As they lead me out of the store, I hear the old greeter guy say "Thanks for shopping at Wal-Mart!"

Once we're outside, they give me a quick shove and I trip on my cuffs again, banging my knee painfully. The one who I guess is called Jeremy Michael looks at me and says. "I never forget a face, and if I see anywhere near this store again, I will have your ass!" Then he spits on me and says, "Have a nice day."

I get up and walk away, trying to think of a way I can get back in the store to retrieve my pants with my precious lottery ticket inside. My knees were shook I was so scared. They were sure to throw those pants in the garbage soon. Maybe I could just wait until someone took the garbage out and then go dumpster diving.

Or, there was another option.

I cross the street and run back to the 7-11. I go into the store, buy a candy bar to get some change for my twenty, then run back to phones. I grab the receiver and furiously dial a number.

"Hello? Peanutz residence."

"Mom," I yell breathlessly. "It's Poopy. I need your help."