Dark Marks and Bookmarks

Working at a tiny, "well-curated" bookstore in an esteemed private research library/historic landmark in Chicago's upper-crusty Gold Coast means your customers are going to tend to be drenched in perfume and politesse. Their tastes are fine. They will usually enjoy slim hardbacks about Queens doing silly things like reading, Philip Roth novels, and travel literature. Especially chronicles of romping through Italy. They can also be THE HOUNDS OF HELL. Nay, the PURSE DOGS OF HELL.

And some of them even work here.

One demon hellbitch in particular is always well-dressed and evil. She never smiles or speaks above an irritated, droning whisper. Her color palette is cream and grey and beige. Smooth, soft colors. Deceptively enrobing the bitchass viper beneath.

She graces me with her presence every other week or so, never missing a fraying seam on my workaday peasant garb, or a blemish on my cheek. My reading material usually chafes her brain as well: this time she caught me surfing jezebel.com, a feminista pop culture e-rag that is usually witty...except for when they post gigantic (and dreamy) pictures of Jake Gyllenhaal that fill the screen.

She throws items down at me, clucks her tongue ever so, and gives off the impression that she has never experienced joy in her entire life. Think Cruella De Vil, if Cruella De Vil didn't love killing puppies for sport and outerwear.

After she painedly paid her fee today, I googled her very specific and ridiculous Norse-sounding name to see what dirt I could dig up. Who knows, maybe she was a dominatrix in younger, happier days. Or a serial killer.

But what I found was even better than all that.

Someone put her in Harry Potter fanfiction.

Yep.

Her AND her granddaughter, who, I fact-checked, is indeed named Julie. Some creep out there has quite the thing for ol' Julie and her "soft, near-perfect skin, even whiter against the small mole on her cheek". My meanie is a wheezing crone who offers her services to the Deatheaters.

How appropriate!