The Emporium of New Orleans

I stumbled in from off the

crazy Mardi Gras street,

covered in glitter, beads

and reeking of copious amounts

of booze. An old bell clanged

over my head as I entered.

“Welcome to the Emporium,” said

the old man behind the large

wooden counter.

“Sorry, I just needed to catch my

breath from all the craziness on the

streets. Too much crazy,” I said.

“That’s fine young man, fine,” said the

old man, “plenty of others have done

the exact same. Feel free to browse

while you regain your composure.”

He puffed on a large pipe as he leaned

against the large weathered counter.

“Say, what do you sell in here,” I asked.

“Oh, we’ve got it all. It’s an Emporium

after all,” said the old man.

He did not look up from the faded

newspaper on the counter.

“Everything, you say,” I asked.

“Mm-hm,” said the old man.

I scanned the various shelves,

cluttered with all kinds of curious

and odd collectibles. Antique dolls,

sepia toned framed photos, jars of

yellowed liquids, taxidermy owls,

rodents and squirrels. A giant

moose head on the wall, wearing

a Mardi Gras crown.

“Sure does look like everything,” I said.

I wiped some glitter from the corner of

my cheek. “But have you got anything

for this depression I’ve been going through,”

I asked, thinking myself quite the smarty.

“Sure we do, we’ve got it all. Just step right

back into our parlor there and

your depression will melt away

like chocolate on a hot fudge

Sundae.”

I gave the man a glance, askew.

“It’s true young man, we’ve got

it all,” smiled the old man.

“A parlor to cure my depression,

I’ve have to say, I have my doubts.”

I said.

“Sure, sure,” said the old man, “it’s

not too hard at all. Just step though

that doorway there, let the noise of

Mardi Gras fade behind you and in no

time at all, your depression will have

equally faded.”

“Just through these doors,” I asked.

“Just through that doorway young man,” he said.

He pointed with his pipe.

I adjusted the beads around my neck and

stepped through the doorway, leading down

a long corridor. I could no longer

hear the sounds of revelry on the street.

I wondered if this could be true, could this

unbearable sadness that’s been weighing me

down be lifted through this simple magical

New Orleans store, this Emporium.

I came to a door and gave it a knock,

there was no answer so I gave the knob

a turn.

The door opened up, into an alley, behind

the store. There was no parlor. The noise

of the citywide party echoed off the tall brick

walls in the alley.

I put my hands on my hips and looked back

at the door I have exited through. It shut

hard behind me. 

I started to laugh. The laughter swelled

up from my stomach and I held

my belly as I chuckled.

My chuckle became a deep laugh

as I burst out in an uncontrollable fit

of riotous cackling.    

There were hysterical tears weeping

from the corners of my eyes and

for once I felt like a true fool,

and not the fool I thought I was.

This made my chuckle even harder

until I was sitting on the cobbled alley

surface. Smiling.

I was joy for a moment.

I wasn’t sad.

I was just there, laughing in an alley,

and nothing seemed wrong

about any of it.

The Corn Maze of Doom

                The haunted trail through the cornfields was supposed to be the be all and end all of terrifying Halloween experiences. At least according to the extremely loud radio commercials that seemed to air every ten minutes. Instead it was long lines, crowded groups of annoying teenagers perfumed heavily with booze and pot and extreme dampness. The only horrors to be found were in the ticket prices and the amount of mud we’d have to wash off of our clothes. It just wasn’t scary. Nothing seemed scary anymore. The real world had proven to be a more terrifying place than any cheaply concocted corn maze.

               

                We made our way back toward the area where our car was parked. It was another muddy field to walk through. There were no lights overhead so finding the car amid the rows of hastily parked vehicles was to be a challenge. Jennifer and I weaved through row after row of dark colored cars trying to find ours. She was pressing the key fob on and off so the alarm would beep on and off as a way to essentially echo-locate it. She was not pleased. She was irritated. She was cold. She was wet and it seemed like she wanted to murder me.

                She had mentioned a week or so prior to our cornfield excursion that she wanted to do something scary for Halloween. She wanted a little fright to spice up our usual tradition of going to a friend’s costume party and then just going home. She couldn’t stay awake for a horror movie usually and she always felt like the whole day was sort of a waste. It just wasn’t like her childhood Halloween’s so she asked me to come up with something scary.

                I do not much care for Halloween. I don’t like costumes and I don’t really like the pomp of it all. I have an aversion to the smell of Halloween make-up. I hate the crowds of costume parties. I despise the one couple, the one that every couple knows, that really goes all out on their costume putting everyone’s cheaply/homemade costume to shame. It bugs me that they’ll spend $300 on a costume but only bring a six-pack of beer to the party. So, I was actually sort of pleased to come up with something different to do.

                The evening started pleasant enough. A small candlelit dinner between Jennifer and I at a nice fall themed restaurant. We could talk to each other normally over the gentle background music, instead of yelling at full volume at some party or in a bar. We held hands and professed our love for each other and how much we enjoyed spending this kind of quality time together. We both had hectic schedules and lives so having these few moments to just be with each other was nice. She was excited about the prospect of the Haunted Corn Maze of Doom too. Which made me feel like I had actually done something that makes her happy. Instead of just mildly not annoyed with everything I do. She seemed genuinely happy.

                Her mood started to darken as we pulled into the parking lot for the Maize Maze of Doom. It was just dusk and the air smelled slightly of pig manure and rotting leaves. There were a lot of other people it seemed who had a similar idea of a haunted trail and it was already crowded. They walked in front of the car like we weren’t even there, milling about like zombies, as we tried to find a place to park. We finally pulled next to a row of cars and reminded each other to remember where we parked. Jennifer put on a brave face when I asked her if she was ready to go in and if she was prepared for the horrors of corn that awaited. I was similarly enthused.  

                Our tickets were scanned by a young woman woefully under-dressed for the tepid Autumn temperatures. Jennifer and she exchanged a strange look in the language that only women speak to each other while also being extremely overly polite. I asked her what that was all about but Jennifer said it was nothing. I know better than to pry too much into those deep evolutionary inner-workings.

                We made our way to the line and began our hour long wait. The Haunted corn maze was a sprawling complex of trails and fields in which there were various stations of horror set up. You were to wind your way along the paths, unguided, and have your fears realized by the denizens of this cursed field.  Jennifer said she wished I had told her to wear different shoes. I said that I told her we were going to be outside so I assumed she would wear outside shoes. She was wearing thin sort of tennis shoes without socks. Her smile had completely faded now, replaced with tight while lines where her lips usually are.

The line to go to these various stations of horror was backed-up with families, strollers, small children that shouldn’t be going to a haunted trail, teenagers with nothing better to do, high teenagers wherein this was the best they could do, and adults in various stages of inebriation.  There was so much chatter that I couldn’t tell one conversation from the next. As the sun was setting the chill in the air thickened as did the dragons breath wafting up from the cold crowds. I rubbed Jennifer on her shoulders to keep her warm and assured her that as soon as we got moving, she’d feel better.

                At last our time came, along with a group of 12 other people, to enter the Corn Maze of Doom. I felt relieved that we would finally get started and maybe build some solid Halloween memories. Something different than the routine. An adventure of sorts to reminisce about absently on Halloween’s when we are old people. We tromped through some underbrush and emerged with the group in front of a large plywood vampire, painted with various rules, regulations and health warnings. A person in a hillbilly costume, or an actual hillbilly as it was hard to tell, informed us of the path we were to take and to have a Spooktacular time in the Corn Maze of Doom. He pointed towards a dirt path and off we went.

                A woman in our group immediately sprained her ankle as we took our first few steps onto the dirt path. She screamed louder and more terrifyingly than anything we had seen to date. She fell into the arms of the man she was with. I turned to Jennifer and shrugged and encouraged her to just move forward. That lady shouldn’t have been wearing sandals anyway I said to Jennifer.

                We wound our way with our smaller group through the rather short maze. By short I mean that the corn wasn’t very high, considering there had been a drought all summer it was no surprise that we could easily navigate the corn maze of doom.  The doom within the corn maze was mostly teenagers stopping to make out with each other and poorly designed horror stations, one guy with a chainsaw, one guy with an ax, one guy in a police uniform, who might have been an actual cop. Jennifer never screamed, jumped or seemed at all scared by any of the lame attractions. She pulled me along as I stopped to laugh at the shoddy and unbelievably cheap decoration and set ups. The shocks and scares were pale in comparison to all the real-world events we were trying to escape from; no amount of Hannibal Lector’s or Jason Voorhees, could clear actual life from our minds.

                We reached the end of the maze in under 20 minutes and Jennifer was done. Her feet were wet and she was probably never going to want to hang out on Halloween with me ever again. She hit the car key fob again and to our delight, our car was finally located just a few feet away.  We hustled over to it and jumped in. I started the car and immediately turned the heat on.

                “I’m sorry this was such a disaster,” I said, “I’d hoped this would be a fun thing to do. You know, something different. I get the feeling you were pretty miserable so I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, I hated it too.”

                Jennifer was quietly rubbing her cold feet. Her hair just poking out from under the hood of her sweatshirt.

                “I’m glad we did this together. I’m glad we both hated this,” she said, “I wouldn’t have wanted to hate this with anyone other than you.”

                She leaned over and kissed me. A sweet warm kiss despite us both being cold. It was a marvelous kiss, the sort you replay over and over in your memory until you die.

                She leaned back into her seat, still rubbing her feet.

                “Happy Halloween,” she said, “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

                I smiled, thinking; sure, perhaps the world is a really terrifying place, but no amount of fear and the horrors of our times could ever be bigger than the love between two people; who hated stupid Halloween activities together.