Buzzfeed, Boys, Black Magic

springy motherf*ckers

I was unhappy.

"You're always frowning," Janice said. She must have just arrived. She was unzipping her rain jacket behind me. "Did you know that every time you frown, you shorten your life by 5 days?"

"Sources?" I unclipped Cody's nametag.

"Deepak Chopra," she said.

"Oh sure, the moon landing was faked, but you can trust Deepak Chopra." I attached my nametag to Cody's vest, held my breath, and slipped it over my shoulders. I started for the door.

"You reek," Janice crinkled her nose as I passed her.

"It's Cody-" I said.

"It's disgusting," Janice unzipped her bag, and fumbled through it.

"It's CODY," I said. And before I could blink:

"Hold still," Janice retrieved a can of something, and sprayed it in my face, like I was a rapist and it were mace. It was in fact drugstore vanilla body mist. I could taste it. My eyes stung.

"It's not me!" I waved my hands as if to protect myself, "it's the damn vest!"

Janice started aggressively spraying my torso.

"Vile," she said.

I walked out of the coatroom in a cloud of artificial vanilla and faded skunk.

***

"How can you do that?" The eleven-year-old in the WWF shirt was clearly pissed at me. It was 1:45 PM. Her summer camp- the third of the day- had infiltrated the animal science exhibit.

"It's my job," I said.

"You get paid to murder," she said. "You are an assassin."

"That's cool," a boy standing nearby perked his ears toward our conversation. He bugged his eyes at me. "You ever watch a man die?"

"First, that's not what the word assassin means." I began.

"You kill for money, right?" WWF would not quit. "What else does an assassin do?"

"Do you speak Russian?" The boy asked me.

"Don't be a racist," WWF chided him.

"SECOND," I raised my voice before I remembered my paycheck depended on how well I tolerate pubescent angst and general public stupidity. "They're crickets. And I don't kill them, the tarantula does-"

"You're feeding them to the tarantula. YOU'RE killing them," WWF's cheeks were turning pink.

"Wait," the boy's eyes bounced from WWF to me. "Do you kill people or just crickets?"

"CRICKETS are just as important as PEOPLE." I wasn't sure whether WWF now directed her anger at me or the boy.

"I can't not feed the tarantula," I said, in as calming a voice as I could muster. "If I don't feed it crickets, I will be murdering the tarantula."

"You could feed it tofu." WWF said,

"So you only kill crickets," the boy seemed to want to reaffirm his now completely-dwindled interest in me.

"I don't kill them," I said, but I had had enough. I opened up the cricket container and grabbed two of the springy buggers with my forceps. I yanked open the tarantula tank and dropped both crickets to their eight-legged demise.

"You're a monster," WWF said, and before I could even process what happened next, she snatched the cricket container from where I had set it on the display counter.