by Freeman Hall
It needed a plot twist.
For the next five hours I rewrote the scene twenty times.
Before I knew it, my computer clock displayed 2:00 a.m.
I was more confused than ever.
And exhausted.
So many possibilities swirled around my head.
Then the mind wandering started.
I don’t think I like the way my haircut turned out, and the color reminds me of Big Bird. I hope that sexy-hot guy from the gym calls me. I can’t believe it cost seven hundred dollars to fix brakes on a car. And what’s going to happen when I go back to work tomorrow? I probably had thousands returned. FUCK! It’s the end of the pay period and there are only two days left. Cammie told me it wasn’t busy today. Maybe all the sales will happen tomorrow. I hope so. I sure could use the money. A new Linkin Park CD just came out and there’s this cool Affliction tee I want, oh and my car brakes! How the fuck am I going to pay that bill next month?
Too many thoughts. Too many words and images. All blurring together.
My eyelids became droopy.
Everything went black.
Then white.
A blank white page.
Black Courier font words magically typed across it.
A script!
Cammie the Vampire Slayer
An original screenplay by Queer-Eye Handbag Guy
Down at the bottom on the left corner it said:
Revised final draft
July 18, 2020
Rewritten 302 times
Represented by NRA
Produced by SPCA
Authenticated by FBI
Then those famous screenplay words appeared.
FADE IN
Followed by a screenplay writing itself.
EXT. BIG FANCY HANDBAG DEPARTMENT — ESTABLISH
FREEMAN is lost in a fog amongst tangles of leather handbags hanging from metal fixtures. He hears SCREAMS and begins to run, weaving in and out of the handbag trees. As he comes out of the bag forest, his eyes grow wide with TERROR. In a clearing near the Corral, he witnesses THE VAMPIRE BAVARO holding DOUCHE by the neck.
DOUCHE
I don’t have another Marc Jacobs in Petal Pink! That’s the last one. I swear!
VAMPIRE BAVARO
Listen to me, Foreign Woman. It’s scratched. I want another one! At discount!
BAVARO suddenly spots Freeman.
VAMPIRE BAVARO
Jefferson! So nice of you to join us.
She drops Douche to the floor like a rag doll. Douche isn’t moving. She’s been sucked dry. Freeman’s glad, but joy turns to worry upon seeing a terrified MARSHA and JULES cowering in a corner by the Coach Shop.
VAMPIRE BAVARO
Jefferson, I require your assistance! Come to me . . . now!!!
FREEMAN
No way, you bloodsucking psycho! Not this time!
Freeman bolts for the Corral. The Vampire Bavaro is right on his tail.
VAMPIRE BAVARO
Don’t you dare run from me, Jefferson. Things are an awful mess, and I need you to fix them. You have to give me the discount I deserve. I want 100% off!
Freeman reaches the register and pushes a black key on the keyboard. All of a sudden a spotlight shoots into the air and hits the ceiling. The image is just like Batman’s signal, only instead of displaying a bat silhouette, Cammie’s Signal is two letter C’s crossing each other — like the Coco Chanel logo.
MARSHA
You did it! The Cammie Signal! Save us, Cammie!
Bavaro has Freeman pinned on the glass counter. He tries to fend her off using an Isabella Fiore tote that has a rhinestone-studded crucifix on it. Bavaro SCREAMS momentarily at the sight of the jewel-encrusted cross on the handbag, but is not stopped. She opens her mouth to reveal her razor-sharp teeth soaked in Douche’s blood. She’s about to bite Freeman’s face off when out of the fog a shadow appears on the ledge high above the Corral.
CAMMIE THE VAMPIRE SLAYER!
CAMMIE has on a Chanel cheerleading outfit in black and white, complete with Chanel utility belt. The CC logo is bold and powerful on her chest. On her feet are black Converse Chuck Taylors. On her shoulder is a quilted Chanel tote. Cammie quickly puts on some Chanel lip gloss. She drops the tote and pulls out a Chanel Flail — a quilted leather stick with a gold ball hanging from it.
CAMMIE
Let him go, Bavaro. Your bloodsucking days are over!
VAMPIRE BAVARO
You! The girl I dislike immensely!
CAMMIE
That’s right, bitch, and you’re going to dislike me even more once I kick your motherfuckin’ ass to next Tuesday!
VAMPIRE BAVARO
We’ll just see about that! No one speaks to me like that at this store and gets away with it.
Cammie and Bavaro lunge at each other like two rabid dogs.
Cammie SMACKS Bavaro in the face with her Chanel Flail. There’s a BURNING SOUND as the ball momentarily sticks to Bavaro’s cheek. The CC emblem is now branded permanently on Bravaro’s seared jowl.
VAMPIRE BAVARO
You will pay for that!
She grabs the Chanel Flail, tears the ball from it, and smacks Cammie in the head. Then the two roll around the floor, screaming and pulling each other’s hair. Supernatural cat fight!
Bavaro hurdles Cammie into a display case full of evening bags.
Cammie stomach-kicks Bavaro into a wall of glass shelves holding Allure bags.
Bavaro pushes a handbag tree on top of Cammie.
Cammie body-slams Bavaro into the clearance table.
They go back and forth in a salesperson-customer death match and destroy the department. THE GENERAL stands nearby and SCREAMS when she sees the mess.
Cammie attempts to choke Bavaro with the cheap LeSportsac shoulder satchel.
Bavaro tries to stuff old receipts in Cammie’s mouth.
Cammie pulls a scan-gun from her Chanel utility belt and fires a laser blast into Bavaro’s eyes, momentarily blinding her, but Bavaro reaches for a microfiber Hobo International messenger bag with a really long strap. She gets the strap around Cammie’s neck and begins choking her. Cammie falls to her knees. Bavaro is on top of her.
VAMPIRE BAVARO
How do you like that, blondie? Not so full of yourself anymore, are you? You are the worst salesperson in this store, and I’m going to drain you till there’s nothing left.
Cammie struggles. It looks like this might be it. Bavaro appears to have control.
But Cammie grabs a nearby Isabella Fiore hobo covered in silver studs and whacks the Vampire Bavaro, knocking her into a table of Juicy Couture cosmetic bags.
CAMMIE
We are not taking any more shit from you Bavaro!
Bavaro appears momentarily disoriented. Cammie yanks her by the hair and throws her to the floor. Straddling her bloodsucking prey, she holds the broken Chanel Flail to Bavaro’s neck.
CAMMIE
Free, get the wooden hanger out of my tote.
Freeman digs in the Chanel bag. Finds it. Throws it.
Cammie catches the hanger with one hand.
CAMMIE
YOUR BLOODSUCKING BITCH ASS IS DONE TERRORIZING US!
Cammie drives the wooden hanger into Bavaro’s heart.
She lets out a piercing SCREAM.
CAMMIE
Free, toss me that Marc Jacobs Venetia in metallic silver.
Freeman hurls the satchel like a football. Cammie catches it by the handles.
Using it as a HAMMER, she drives the wooden hanger deep into Bavaro.
VAMPIRE BAVARO
NOOOOO!!! I WILL NOT LEAVE! NOOOOOO!!
CAMMIE
And by the way, bitch, MY NAME IS CAMMIE!
With one last pound, the hanger plunges as far as it can go into Barvaro’s chest. The top snaps off.
The Vampire Bavaro stops moving.
Cammie jumps off the former Bloodsucker and straightens her Chanel skirt.
Bavaro’s body shrivels
up and turns into cotton candy.
Freeman, Jules, and Marsha crowd around Cammie, cheering. But she is serious. Ready for the next monstrous battle at The Big Fancy.
CAMMIE
I must go now. A rabid Discount Rat is loose in Lingerie. But know this, the war is not over. Wherever there is a Bloodsucker terrorizing a Retail Slave, I will be there.
Cammie bolts for the aisle sprinting toward the escalator.
INT. HANDBAG DEPARTMENT — LATER
Freeman, Marsha, and Jules are cleaning up the catastrophic mess of handbags the Vampire Bavaro left behind. Suddenly, there’s a loud HOWL. They all look at each other scared. Out of the fog steps TEDDY BEAR LADY. She is 7 feet tall and hairy as hell, looking like a possessed grizzly bear with yellow eyes and jagged teeth.
TEDDY BEAR LADY
The Good Lord sent me . . . RAAAAAAAWRRRRR!
Everyone SCREAMS.
Teddy Bear Lady lumbers toward them, SCREAMING . . .
SCREAMING . . .
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”
I jerked up from my keyboard pillow like it was on fire.
My skull alarm clock displayed 10:00 a.m.
For a moment I panicked, but then I remembered I was working the closing shift.
Close call.
What a long-ass, hideous nightmare.
Bavaro’s bloodsucking face was left burning my mind’s eye.
I stumbled to the kitchen, trying to shake it off.
Must wake up. Need coffee. Must make coffee.
I spilled water and coffee grounds, and knocked over mugs, blinded by flashes of Cammie’s Chanel logo. What a way to end my three days off from The Big Fancy. Practically no writing done.
Total disaster.
Hundreds of dream experts contend that images occurring during sleep should be viewed symbolically, rather than literally.
They don’t know shit.
Some seven hours after waking from this Big Nightmare, I rounded a fixture in the Marc Jacobs Shop and ran smack into the real Vampire Bavaro.
Her pockmarked face was pale, her black-widow hair pinned up on her head in a bun, and she had on a white oversized T-shirt, black leggings, and Keds. She looked too comfortable for my own good.
“JEFFERSON! There you are. I require your assistance,” Marguerite proclaimed in her most dramatic voice. “I have a coupon from another store for a Marc Jacobs; Debbie has one on hold, but it’s scratched, and the blond girl I dislike immensely never called me back. Everything is a God-awful mess.”
I almost passed out.
No garlic or crosses at my immediate disposal. The Bloodsucking bitch had me right where she wanted me.
ACT 3
Misfire and Brimstone at The Big Fancy
Ready your pitchforks.
You are now entering the third floor of hell.
Sale Smack-Down
“No, everything is not on sale,” I said through grated teeth. “Only the things with sale signs are on sale. All of the tables are on sale and those fixtures. That’s it. Nothing else!”
The customer looked around, then pointed to the Marc Jacobs shop and asked, “What about those? Are those on sale over there?”
I wanted to hit her.
Instead I turned around and walked away.
We were under Discount Rat attack.
It was The Big Fancy’s biggest sale of the year: the Once a Year Sale.
The Ultimate Retail Hell.
We had replaced our regular fixtures and glass tables with big wooden bins and filled them with a combination of new handbags on sale for a limited time and permanent markdowns. Hordes of hungry sale shoppers surrounded the tables, pawing and pilfering, throwing bags everywhere. When the tables got completely surrounded, I couldn’t help but compare the menagerie to a bunch of pigs at their troughs. From open to close, the place was trashed, looking like a nuclear hand-bag explosion. Bags on the floor. Bags missing stuffing and crumpled up on the counter. Bags hanging off shelves by their straps. At one point, a woman bumped into me and said, “It’s a zoo in here!”
I looked over at the sale troughs, and replied, “I could not agree with you more.”
Besides General Judy, there were ten of us staffed for the Once aYear Sale. The Big Fancy was all about overstaffing — believing it created a “survival of the fittest” environment and got the store more sales. However, by noon, we all thought ten was too many, as we constantly bumped into each other and approached customers who had already been approached. My Handbag Angels looked out for me, and I for them; we handed off customers to each other and protected the ones we had. We made sure the Demon Squad stayed in check, but it was impossible to stop Douche and Tiffany. They were like great white sale sharks, gobbling up customers in packs. The extra salespeople hired for the event never stood a chance. They sold nothing. Using their amazing fashion prowess, Jules and Cammie raked in the sales, beating Tiffany, but not Douche. Marsha held her own because she’d been there so long and had a lot of regulars, while Marci pretty much drowned because her talking slowed down each transaction.
As for me? I survived. Almost.
Despite The Big Fancy’s overstaffing, I had done really well with sales during the morning hours. But it wasn’t long before the parade of Big Fancy Serpents and Bloodsuckers had taken their toll on me. Patty harangued me for at least a half-hour, wanting deescounts on everything. I finally snapped and said, “Patty, I’m cutting you off. No more deescounts for you. You’ve reached your deescount limit and you don’t have a designated driver.” She had no clue what I meant, just as I had no clue what the fuck Teddy Bear Lady was doing charging down the main aisle wearing dirty Lion King slippers. Did they have secret pockets? And there was her nemesis, the other Virginia, whom I tried to avoid, but she cornered me by the DKNY sale bags and gave me details about her gall bladder attack the night before. Of course, my Shoposaurus Carnotaurus came in and devoured half the store. It was fun parading Lorraine around as always, but also stressful and tiring — as always. She did drop ten grand though, so I was one Retail Slave who had nothing to complain about. That is, until the Vampire Bavaro and Mrs. Beaumont showed up within minutes of each other. After waiting on them, my head got a little fuzzier, my clothes a little sweatier, and my vision blurrier.
What’s my name? Where am I? I sell handbags at The Big Fancy? You got to be fuckin’ kidding me!
As lunchtime arrived, the department resembled a retail Vietnam War. All the chaotic shit that happens during sales happened. The registers went offline at least twice, making us wait ten minutes for an approval. The phone rang every ten seconds. Judy screamed at us because our sales were down from last year and we were missing the department goal. Cammie and Marci fought over sales. Tiffany and Jules fought over sales. Douche and everyone fought over sales.
Every time I turned around, something was missing a ticket.
“There’s no price on this wallet?” a customer said.
I bent down and picked up a tag from its spot on the floor next to her feet.
“Well what about these five others?” she demanded.
“They’re missing because people are eating them,” I said.
For a minute she looked like she believed me.
By late afternoon, The Big Fancy was in the throes of Once a Year Sale mania.
I had to tell a lady there were no overnight holds on sale bags. She snapped at me and said, “Listen here, young man. I am the customer. You put no conditions on me. I do as I wish. If I want you to hold these bags till my funeral, you’ll hold them. Got it?” I took the bags, thinking if only.
I then spent ten minutes explaining to a woman that 25% off an original price does not mean an additional 25% off. The woman kept arguing saying “But that would mean it’s an additional 25% off!” Finally I went all Sale Hell Bitch on her: “Does it say ‘additional’ on the sign? NO! They are NOT an additional percentage off. THEY ARE 25 PERCENT OFF ORIGINAL! THAT’S IT!”
Then, for the millionth time, a
woman came up to me and asked, “Why isn’t everything on sale?”
I bitched back at her, “Because life isn’t fair.”
The sale questions continued to pummel me:
“I found it on the sale table; shouldn’t it be on sale even if the price is not marked?”
“It’s not my fault someone dropped it on the sale table even though it’s not on sale. Shouldn’t I get it on sale anyway!”
“Can’t you just put it on sale?”
“Will you give me an extra discount?”
“How much is it with tax?”
“There’s a mark on the bottom of this bag, can you clean it off?”
“Is this the right sale price?”
“Can you call another store and get me one in black?”
“Is that the final sale price?”
“Is there an additional amount off?”
“Is this all you have on sale?”
“Why isn’t everything on sale? I thought the whole store was on sale!”
I couldn’t take any more. Queer-Eye Handbag Guy was going to kill a Discount Rat!
Let me just squeeze these leather handbag straps tighter around your neck and you can go to a place where everything is on sale and get an additional 20% no matter what!
