An Odd Occurrence

The rug scratched the bottoms of Rucland’s feet somewhat roughly. Rucland wondered why rugs had always had such a cherished name among the realm of comfort.

He paused in mid stride and bent over so low to examine the miniature carpet that a passerby might suspect him of performing yoga. The strands tickled his nose as he attempted to guess what material it was made out of, but it was one that he had never felt before.
         
He stood up and pushed his thick glasses back up his nose.
         
“Um, excuse me.” he waved to an employee in a red apron. The man was balding and his nametag red rather arrogantly: Fred, 11 years of service.
         
“Yes, how may I help you?”
         
“Well, this is a rug right?” Rucland asked pointing beneath where he was standing.
         
“Why yes, it is. Are you wanting to buy it? I think we might have a sale going on.”
         
“Oh, oh no.” Rucland said as though his stomach had just threatened to come up. “It’s awful! Well just feel it!”
         
Fred looked down, wondering at Rucland’s disgust.
         
“Sir you- you’re not wearing any shoes!” he said pointing.
         
“I know.”
         
“Well-,” Fred scratched his head, “you’re inside a store you know?”
         
“I know.”
         
“Well you’re supposed to wear shoes!” Fred’s slightly pink face crammed in several different ways.
         
“Then how am I supposed to test the rugs?” Rucland asked.
         
“Uh, with your hands?” Fred’s voice was bathed in sarcasm.
         
“Wait, wait.” Rucland shook his head and his hands simultaneously. “You’re telling me that I have to test something with my hands that only my feet are going to feel? My feet are the privileged ones of comfort in this store and not my hands!”
         
“Sir, it is against the rules to enter any store without shoes.”
         
“I don’t see how you can call this place a store with something like this in it.” Rucland pointed down again.
         
“Sir, this isn’t just any store, it’s a carpet store!”
         
“Then why is this in here? Feel it! Come on! Try it for yourself.”
         
Fred’s complexion mingled with the color red momentarily as he shifted his weight. “I already know what it feels like and it feels good!”
         
“Then test it out if you’re so confident!” Rucland pointed up in a declarative way.
         
“Fine, if that will make you happy I’ll show you.”
         
“Yes, it will make me happy.” Fred bent down. “I mean,” Rucland continued, “you call this a carpet store, and then you have something like this in here!”
         
“Whoa, whoa!” Fred said rising.
         
“Hey, you didn’t feel it!”
         
“Sir, I can’t have you talking about my carpets that way!”
         
“It’s not a carpet, it’s a rug.” Rucland crossed his arms.
         
“Whatever! All I’m saying is to please be respectful when it comes to carpets and rugs. They’re respectful to you when you’re walking on them.”
         
“Just feel it.” Rucland raised his chin. His eyes unblinkingly rigid. Fred stared back for a moment. The silence in the store kept on beat by the metronoming of Fred’s tapping foot against his patch of rugless tile floor.
         
“Fine!” he shouted, his arms thrown upwards. He bent down and rubbed the rug with both hands.
         
“You can’t do it with your hands!”
         
“It feels good to me.” Fred rose back to his feet; a smile sprawled across his face.
         
“No, that doesn’t count! You can’t do it with your hands!”
         
“Touch is touch, my friend, and it was good.” Fred leaned back and gave a large stretch, his smile unfaltering.
         
“I’m telling you that it isn’t the same!”
         
“You sound a little frantic there, buddy. What, mad cause you lost? It’s okay. We can all be wrong about some things. God gives us some leeway.”
         
“I’m telling you that this carpet feels terrible. It’s not comfortable.”
         
“Then why are you still standing on it?” Fred declared, his finger accusing. “I think you really like it! You secretly do or something. Ah! You’re trying to get me to cut you a deal aren’t you? Ha! I see.” Fred nodded, his smile shifting.
         
“No, no way. There’s no way. I would never buy this carpet.”
         
“You mean rug.”
         
“Yes! I mean rug!” Rucland shouted.
         
“You’re sounding a little defensive there. Okay, if you don’t like it then why don’t you step off it?”
         
Rucland hesitated. His eyes floated from his feet to the tile.
         
“Hmm?” Fred leaned forward, his staring eyes widening.
         
“I can’t. The floor’s too cold.”
         
“Oh, I see. You mean that the rug is comforting you from the cold of the floor?”
         
“Why don’t you step onto it with your feet? Are you scared?”
         
“No, no I’m not.” Fred stepped back once.
         
“Then do it!”
         
“Sir, I can’t remove my shoes. It’s against the rules.”
         
“Forget the rules! You want to test this don’t you? The right way? It is a carpet store, you said so yourself. How can you be an expert if you test them with your hands and not your feet?”
         
“I’m telling you it’s the same! But whatever! I’ll do it! Will you be happy then?”
         
Rucland nodded.
         
Fred sighed and bent down to his shoes. His finger traversed the laces somewhat slowly as they loosened and fell to the floor untied.
         
“And the socks.” Rucland stated. Fred nodded briefly, removed them, and pushed them into the empty shoes.
         
Fred noticed that the strange little man had been right about the coldness of the tile floor. He stood for a moment, barefoot before the rug.
         
“Come on, you can do it.” Rucland whispered. Fred nodded, looked up at the ceiling, closed his eyes, and lifted his right foot into the air. His weight shifted as he leaned forward. He could feel the air scraping against his cheeks as he exchanged places with it.
         
It had been a couple days since Fred had stepped onto an actual rug and he prepared himself for the return to his childhood that the comforting sensation always brought.

The base of his foot lightly brushed the material and he brought his other foot to join, completing his step. He felt every filament nestled against his skin. Fred opened his eyes. His childhood memories crashing.

“Oh my God.”

“Well?” Rucland asked.

“It’s terrible.”

“I told you!”

“What’s going on here!?!” a large woman with a red apron similar to Fred’s stood ten feet behind them with her hands gripping her hips. Her nametag was much larger than Fred’s and read: Bertha Manager. Her red hair had been curled so much that it reminded Rucland of curly fries.

“Oh, nothing.” Rucland yelped.

“I was just helping this customer.” Fred said straightening his stance. Bertha narrowed her eyes and looked from man to man.

“You’ve been over here awfully long.” she snapped.

“He’s picking out a rug.”

“Yeah, and I can’t really decide, so he’s giving me his opinion.”

Bertha squinted some more at the two men before saying “alright,” and turned to walk away.

“So what are we-.” Rucland started.

“Shh!” Fred whispered. “Wait ‘til she’s gone!” Bertha walked to the other side of the store and began straightening carpets in a section titled: Full Coverage.

“Okay, that was a close one.” Fred said cautiously looking over his shoulder.

“What are we going to do?” Rucland asked, his glasses magnifying the fear in his eyes.

“There’s only one thing we can do, get rid of it!”

“But how?”

“I’m not sure.” Fred looked around again. “Here, you be the lookout while I roll it up.”
Rucland tip-toed halfway behind an aisle and poked one eye around towards Bertha. Fred bent down and pushed the mystery fabric into a cylinder shape with artistic precision.

“We’ll burn it out back.” Fred whispered. Rucland gasped, but a smile destroyed his surprise. “Alright, keep your eyes on her. We need to make it to the back door.”

“Okay.” Rucland nodded and looked up again. “Ah! She’s gone! She’s gone!”

“What? Where?”

“I don’t know!”

“Okay, keep looking though!” Fred pulled the rug and dove into the aisle. Hunched over with the rug on his shoulder, he crept to the other end, looked around, and motioned for Rucland to follow.

Sweat pinched at Rucland’s eyes as he skimpered down the aisle. The carpet cleaning products seemed endless on either side of him, and he imagined Bertha’s squinting eyes behind them.

“Come on!” Fred called, motioning towards his own hunched figure.

Rucland clasped Fred’s shoulder breathing somewhat rapidly either out of fear or from running. “Where do you think she went? We’re in the corner of the store.”

“I don’t know,” Fred crouched, his eyes suspicious of the entire store, “but she’s out there.”

Moments trickled by. Sweat dampened each forehead. Rucland shifted from foot to foot, his bare feet moving back and forth on the tile floor.

“Hmm.” Fred itched the stubble of his chin. “It’s a little too quiet for my liking.”

“What do you mean?” Rucland squeaked.

“Nothing.” Fred shook his head without looking back. He motioned for Rucland to stay where he was and crawled on his stomach out from the aisle. The tile was cold against his stomach but it did not matter next to what he knew had to be done.

A loud noise vibrated from the tile, in the distance at first but gradually getting closer- the sound of wooden heeled shoes against the floor. Fred tensed his muscles together trying to get as small as he could and crawled towards the back door.

“Did you find what you were looking for, sir?” the voice came from behind Fred, chilling his blood in his veins.

“Oh yes, thank you.” Rucland peeped.

“Okay, just checking.” No sound came for a few moments. Fred lay as still as he could. “Where did the employee who was helping you go?” the suspicious voice floated around the store before landing on Rucland and Fred. She still hadn’t seen him behind her on the floor.

“Um, I think he’s around here somewhere.” Rucland was almost to the point of hyperventilating. Bertha squinted her eyes at him. The heels began again on the floor, much more slowly this time, but they were fainter with each step.

Rucland wiped his forehead on his sleeve and crept to where Fred was laying.

“Thank God she didn’t see me.” he gasped.

“I know, that was crazy.” Fred stood up and walked out the back door. He threw the rug into an empty dumpster and lit a match. It was strange how easily the rug ignited, like it was meant to be. The outlines of two men could be made out behind all the smoke leaving the great dumpster, and if a passerby could have seen through it, they would have seen two contented smiles staring upwards towards the sky.

After a few minutes, the smoke died down and Fred rubbed his hands together. “Well, is there anything else I can help you with?”

Rucland looked at him, his eyes large in his glasses and the happiness behind the eyes almost uncontained. “No thanks, I was just browsing.”