Annual Abscondments IV: In Closing

2013 was a busy, busy year for Fernando's more roguish clientele, though the nefarious acts of thievery came in bursts: first late February/early March, then a second wave in July, and finally an end-of-year push in November. It proved Fernando's worst year yet in terms of lost inventory; twenty-one of Fernando's beloved and not-so-beloved movies were torn from his loving embrace and taken into the unexpected custody of a great wide spectrum of ne'er-do-wells.

This is their obituary.

Expendables 2, Wanderlust, The Notebook: A lady comes into the store, one who hadn't been in since the days of the old Keeper. She had some late fees from that elder age, $21. Fernando informed her of this fact and, against all odds, she agreed to pay them off.

So how'd that work out for you, Fernando? You earned $30 only to lose about $60 in inventory. Look on the bright side: if you keep this up there may be room for you on the executive board of a major financial institution. And on the brighter side, you no longer have a copy of The Notebook available to recommend as a dumb-silly romantic chick flick.

I Am Number 4: High school kid comes in and sets up account, rents one movie, never returns it. He came back to the store on one occasion in the company of some of his less-lawbreak-y peers and Fernando shamed him so thoroughly that he actually put down five bucks towards his debt. 

He still owes Fernando $35.

The Greatest Game Ever Played: Because if you're a thirty-something woman setting up an account whose sole purpose, apparently, is to steal something, best make it a mediocre movie about golf that had otherwise never been rented in all the years Fernando worked at and owned the Dominion.

New Year's Eve, War, 24: Redemption: Remember the guy from way, way back who trashed a copy of Ice Age and then visited the store not long after Fernando took over in the misguided hopes that new ownership would erase his debt? Yeah, he, Fernando later learned, at some point hooked up with a gullible young lady who set up an account and, apparently, rented for him by proxy. Three pieces of Fernando's inventory went missing but at least two of those three were uninspiring renters even when they were fresh and new and the third, while a decent, testosterone-laden popcorn flick, was not of any particular importance in the grand scheme of things.

But hey if either of them ever return to the store down the road I can feel justified affixing the "saga" tag to this affair.

Warm Bodies, Cabin in the Woods, 127 Hours: Kind of a twofer with the next entry. See below.

Beautiful Creatures, Real Steel: Okay, so, two guys in their late teens/early twenties come to the store at the same time and both of them set up accounts to rent some movies. One of them is from Happyrock, about thirty miles away; the other is more local and claims an address in Melvinsburg. Fernando checks out the licenses and gets phone numbers from them (one of which is a local land line) and rents to them.

When the movies had been out for three days, Fernando calls them up in turn to request that they bring them back in. The cell phone goes to not-set-up voicemail and Fernando leaves a message. The other one rings and rings and no one picks up. The following day, Fernando tries again. Still voicemail, still no response.

This repeats for a number of additional days until, finally, somebody picks up on the landline, a woman.

Fernando explains the situation to her and asks that she inform the young man that his movies are still out and if he could return them promptly. The woman tells Fernando that he is "out of state for work." Fernando asks that she pass along his request and to check around if, perhaps, the movies were sitting there at home. She agrees to do precisely that.

Buuuuut she never called him back, and Fernando also never did get in contact via cell phone with the guy from Happyrock.

Stand Up Guys, Prometheus: A middle-aged woman comes in to rent a pair of movies and they don't make it back. When he calls her up to find out what is going on, she tells him that she gave them to her son to drop off on his way back to school. Fernando lets her know that her son never did drop them off, and that he would appreciate it if she could double-check with him to make sure they make it back the next time he comes home.

Nope.

Star Trek: Into Darkness, The Muppets: Okay, sometimes people wake up on the stupid side of life. This pair of customers set up an account back in April, after having just moved into the area, and had been absolutely exemplary renters up til then. They were genial, treated Fernando like an actual person, and almost never late; when they were, they killed off their late fees immediately.

Then, one afternoon, they rented the above movies and they didn't make it back over the next three days. Fernando found this peculiar, so he called them up. One of them answered and told him that their car had taken a dump on them and that they were terribly sorry about everything, and that they would bring them back promptly once they found someone to give them a ride down to the Dominion, for they resided well into the boonies. This sounded good to Fernando, so he wished them the best and told them they could hash out everyone once the movies got back in.

Alas, they never did, and all of Fernando's subsequent calls went unanswered. What a pity, what a waste.

Now You See Me, Despicable Me: The girl who'd gotten a sorta-but-not-really divorce from her boyfriend a few years back dropped by and rented these movies, which never came back. She ignored Fernando's requests to return them, and now Fernando's sympathies lie with her jilted ex, wherever he may be.

The most embarrassing part is that she used a full stamp card for a free rental on Despicable Me. Would she have had it if Fernando had been less kind when she initially asked him to divvy up their communal stamps?

The Purge, Disaster Movie: Fernando tries not to judge people based on their last names and familial relations, but sometimes circumstances make it so incredibly hard to do. The young lady who rented this, by all appearances, comes from a family of thieves: her parents rented some things back under the Old Keeper's watch and never returned them. Then her older sister rented some things a few years back and never returned them.

Now, of course, she has rented some things and never returned them.

Fuck it, the next time somebody with that last name stops in, Fernando is going to be King Dick and let his prejudices run their fullest course.

Not a day goes by on which Fernando does not lament the passing of every one of these unfortunate abductees. Yes, even you, The Greatest Game Ever Played, even you. In fact, your loss is felt most keenly of all.

The question remains: What promises does 2014 hold? This Fernando cannot say. Truth be told, he seems to have driven away most of the assholes and recent weeks down at the Dominion have been, well, enjoyable. No entitled women coming to manipulate him into free things. No characters from days gone by stopping by to put into motion their inscrutable goals. No curious and random new faces with wretched spatial judgment.

Just the normal, genial customer base who rents movies, returns them mostly on time, and clears up any small late fees with a humble apology.

In short, the Chronicles seem to have wound down. Like in every closed system, the occurrence of random and interesting things decays as entropy increases and said system approaches a uniform, vacuous state. Rather than continue to draw out the unnecessary by milking a franchise (such as this is) until even its bones have been rendered down and snorted by a dwindling number of consumers (such as it is), as is the case with a certain industry that revolves around the production and distribution of motion pictures, it is time, I feel, to bring this book to a close.

There shall be other happenings, other tales of woe and dread, and even occasional tales of uplifting experience, I'm certain. Entropy is almost inevitably stalled out in the short term by random occurrences. Perhaps a fluctuation in fate will jar a new wave of content appropriate for the Chronicles of Fernando H. Stevens.

But until and unless there is such a time, let me tell you of a man who, in the late summer of 2010, made the lifechanging decision to cast his lot into the realm of weblogging through the collation and recording of happenings of great intrigue and of possible interest to souls other than himself. The wrangling with irate word processing programs, the mostly-kept rigor of deadlines, and the random acts of God which threatened the stability and structural integrity of his Chronicles did not daunt him. 

That man was one Fernando H. Stevens.

He had a blast, and he hopes you did too.

Priority

One of Fernando's regulars comes into the store one afternoon not long after opening and takes a quick look at the new release rack. "All your Wolverine is already out?" he asks, scowling.

"More like they haven't yet gotten in. I'm expecting all of them back today."

"Okay, how about this," Fernando's customer says. The Keeper hears the skritch of velcro as one of the other rental tags is torn off its case. "Hold this one for me and when the other comes in I'll come down and pick it up."

"That I certainly can do," Fernando says, taking the tag from the gentleman and placing it reverently on the desk in his office. "Did you want me to give you a call?"

"Nah, I'm gonna be running around for a little while anyhow. I'll stop by after I get gas at the station and see if you got it in."

Fernando nods. "Sounds good. If it gets in, I'll hang onto it for you. No promises, though."

And so Fernando's customer departs to complete his errands. A few minutes later a car pulls into the parking lot and a family of father, mother, and daughter clamber out. Fernando is fairly certain they owe him money, but not positive; he could not recall their names, since they had not visited the store in a rather long while, but verification would be swift and sure once he asked their indentity and he took a gander at the late list.

Anyhow, they fan out throughout the store and the two adults chat amongst themselves. Mainly they complain that all of Fernando's copies of Wolverine are out and they rather rudely, in that passive-aggressive not-a-whisper, point out that the Dominion "never has anything good in."

Ignoring or overlooking, of course, that if copies of the goddamn movies are present at opening from the night before without having been rented, the business model is doing something terribly wrong.

The daughter asks if they can rent something else but the mother (who is the one Fernando suspects of owing money) puts her foot down and tells the youngster that if the movies the grown-ups want isn't in, she "doesn't deserve" to rent Smurfs 2. At this moment, two more vehicles crunch over the snow in the parking lot simultaneously. One of them is the gentleman who had just been in. The other one is a truck owned by a man who had, on the previous day, come in and rented Wolverine. Fernando rises from his chair, scoops up the other tag which he had been asked to hold, and walks up to the counter to begin filling out a rental slip in anticipation of things to come.

Fernando's earlier visitor parked slightly closer to the front door, so he is the one inside first. "Did it make it?" he asks.

Fernando points over the man's shoulder at the second gent crossing the parking lot, who carries a stack of three movies. "He's got one, right there."

"Attaboy."

The mother, having deduced something potentially interesting albeit irrelevant to her own sad life is amiss, has since sidled closer to the counter to listen in on the conversation. The father and daughter are off in the kids' section of the store doing Pazuzu-knows-what.

The chimes tinkle and the second man enters. Fernando takes the films from him. "Thank you much." He sets two of them behind the counter and leaves the third, Wolverine. The second man squeezes past the mother, who lurks near the archway, with a low, "Excuse me," and browses the rental racks.

"Which ones did you bring back?" she asks him.

"Uh, The Thing, 2 Guns, and Wolverine," he answers.

Meanwhile, the transaction between Fernando and the first man has been completed. "Thank you much," Fernando says as the man walks out with his movies. "Have a good evening." He gathers up the rental slip and sets it on his desk, then goes about returning the rental tags for the other two movies to their cases out on the floor. He is peripherally aware of the woman approaching the counter.

"Yeah, I heard you got a Wolverine in." the woman tells Fernando.

Fernando briefly glances over at her. "I did, but it just went out again," he says, replacing the remaining cases on the shelf.

"I wanted that one."

"I'm sorry," Fernando tells her. "I am expecting my other copies back, if you would like me to hold one for you and let you know when it gets in."

"Why did you let that other guy just have it?"

Fernando blinks. "Because he asked nicely for me to hold a copy for him." He pauses, mulling over precisely how large a dick he wanted to be at this moment. He arrives at the conclusion "titanic." "And if I had put it out onto the floor, I would not have kept that promise."

The woman's mouth becomes a hard line and she fixes a death glare upon Fernando's uncaring self. The Keeper repeats his earlier offer, "Did you want me to hold one for you and give you a call if I get it in?"

"No," she hisses, sotto voce. "We're leaving."

"Alright. Have a good evening." With that, Fernando weaves through the rental racks to return the other two tags to their homes.

He ignores her so thoroughly that he does not even give a cursory glance over his shoulder when the door chimes jingle twice in rapid succession from the family's departure.

The second man rents three movies and has the social grace not to comment on what had just transpired.

Monstrous

The lady who tried to fleece Fernando out of rentals multiple times in the past decided to return to the store one evening. Why, Fernando had no idea, as he had been fairly certain that he had driven her away with his no-nonsense tone and immovable position on giving her an endless chain of gratis rentals. Maybe she was a glutton for punishment, or her avarice fueled a temptation that could not be resisted.

Nonetheless, Fernando greets her and she, not surprisingly, does not respond, caught up as she was in her own world and doubtless plotting her next move. So Fernando returns his attention to the internet while she browses the store. She comes up a few minutes later with a pair of tags for Turbo and Monsters, Inc. Fernando fills out the slip and takes her money and she leaves.

The following day, her vehicle pulls into the parking lot and she climbs out with her movies. The chimes jingle and before Fernando knows it, she stands before his counter, her perpetually irate expression made even more intimidating and vampiric, for her lips are pressed together so tightly as to not exist at all. "This one didn't work for me." She holds the case for Monsters, Inc. in her hand vertically, so Fernando can clearly see the colorful surface of the disc in case he needed to be reminded about how his inventory looked.

"That's no good," Fernando says, rising from his seat and crossing the office. "Let me take a look at it."

"It just didn't play at all," she insists, setting the case down on the countertop rather than passing it over into Fernando's outstretched hand.

"Peculiar. Let me pop it in my player and see. What exactly didn't work about it?"

"It wouldn't load at all. It just spun in the disc holder." She pauses for a breath, then appends with a generous dollop of vitriol, "This is not the first time this has happened."

Fernando ignores that. He powers on his DVD player and places the disc on the tray. When he pushes the button to close said tray, the woman suddenly shouts, "I didn't use a DVD player!"

Fernando looks over his shoulder and blinks rather confusedly. "Then...what? Like a game console?"

"XBox."

The DVD player faintly hums and churns. "Three-sixty?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's probably the cause of your problem. This disc was pressed in what, like 2001? It's older than some of my customers. Newer players, especially ones in consoles, don't like playing nice with geriatric discs like this one."

The woman puffs out a snort through her nostrils.

Fernando follows that up with a question. "Did you ever try this in an actual, like, DVD player?"

The woman folds her arms across her chest. "No."

"Perhaps you should try that tonight and see if the disc treats you better in that instance." Fernando pushes the power button to his television and, lo and behold, there's the DVD's title screen featuring music by Randy Newton. "It seems to be working fine for me." He pushes the eject button, replaces the disc in its case, and passes it back over to the woman.

She looks as though she wants to say something more, but decides against it and instead skulks out.

One Hour

Fernando sits at his computer one evening when a minivan pulls up and a guy comes in. He had rented some movies earlier that week and returned them two days late, racking up a neat twelve dollars in late fees. He picks out a couple of films, comes up to the counter, and says to Fernando, “I also have some late fees.”

“Yep, twelve bucks. Did you want to put something down on them?”

“Yeah, I'll pay that off.” So he does, and Fernando hands over the change, and the man leaves.

Not one minute later, a woman storms into the store and waves the cases at Fernando. “How much were these movies?”

“Those came to eight dollars.”

“They're four bucks each?”

“Yes.”

“And why was the late fee twelve dollars?”

“Because you had out three movies for two days.”

She slams the cases down on the counter and crosses her arms. “Two nights?”

“Yes, they were returned at around eight on the second night out. The movies are due back at seven.”

“And you charged two nights for that?”

“Yes.”

“For one hour?”

“Yes.”

“I want my money back.”

“Alright.” Fernando shrugs, rises, and heads on over. He places the movies she'd just rented on his desk and then pops open the till to hand over eight dollars.

She looks down at the money, then back up at Fernando. “What is this?” she hisses.

“Your refund.”

“I want all of it back.”

“I'm sorry, the late fees which were assessed are a debt that needed reckoning.”

“I want all of it back,” she repeats.

“Sorry, I'm not giving you back the twelve dollars in late charges you owed me.”

“I'll tell the police you ripped me off.”

“Go right ahead. I have the signed rental form back here and the daily rate of late charges posted here, there, and there.” Fernando points for emphasis.

“We're never renting from this place ever again!” she shouts as she storms out.

“And I wish you all the best. Have a good evening.”

Peek-a-Boo

A pair of high school age young men come into the store one evening. Fernando has never seen either of them before. They are loud and abrasive and general annoyances who run up and down the new release aisle opening case after case, then replacing the plastic DVD houses on the rack, still ajar.

“Hey, how come these are empty?” one of them asks after they've gone through and peeked inside the case of every film on the Top Ten list.

“I find it a risky proposition to keep my wares out on the floor where anyone can help himself to them without oversight. Is there something I can help you with?”

Rather than take Fernando up on his offer, they depart.

Still Not a Time Traveler

The Conjuring is a film that a not insignificant portion of Fernando's customer base had been waiting on for some time. When, sometime in September, he was finally able to give people a release date, he was inundated with requests to reserve a copy for whomever on said date. Fernando pointed out that he wasn't even sure how many copies he would be getting, exactly, and that he did not want to pull an airline and overbook the reservations and leave some poor souls hanging, so he told the people, “Come back mid-October, like the fifteenth or so, and ask again then.

So, it's now mid-October, and an older woman comes into the store with grandchildren in tow. Fernando says “grandchildren” because this lady is, for all intents and purposes, a rental proxy for her daughter, someone Fernando rightly told off way back in the day when he informed her that she had thirty-eight dollars in late fees dating back to 2006 and that, no, he would not rent to her unless she put money towards it. Fernando still rents to her, since she pays off the inevitable late fees racked up under her name.

The kids are set loose in the family section while the matron wanders the floor yammering into her cell phone and getting snappish with her conversational partner, since all the movies said partner desired (The Heat, Hangover 3, and This Is the End) were absent from the rental racks, and they stubbornly remained absent even after the old lady asked Fernando if he was hiding copies behind the counter. The matron also took the opportunity to make a passive-aggressive jibe to the person on the phone at Fernando's expense, because, after all, “the guy running the joint doesn't know anything.”

Then she asks, “Do you have The Conjuring?”

“Sorry, that doesn't come out until Tuesday.”

“It says there that you have it.”

Fernando's eyes rotate in their sockets to double-check his sign in case someone had tampered with it, but, no, the header still reads UPCOMING RELEASES FOR OCTOBER 2013. “It's not yet the twenty-second.”

“I seen it on display at Wal-Mart.”

“Perhaps you could then go to Wal-Mart and buy a copy. I'm not surprised they have access to better time travel technology than I do.”

With that, the woman returns to the rental racks and eventually decides to rent This Is 40.

That's Just, Like, Your Opinion, Man

One afternoon a semi-regular customer who waitresses at a greasy spoon diner-slash-gas station in nearby Peeweeston comes in. She browses the Adopt-a-Movie Box for a short while before selecting a title from it to claim as her very own. As Fernando retrieves the film and inspects the disc to make sure it doesn't look like someone knifed it, she tells him, “A weird lady came into the restaurant last night.”

“Weird? Weird how?” Fernando asks, snapping open his rental case and moving the movie in question to its new home.

“Well, she was really quiet and kept to herself. Like, she didn't talk much even when I went to serve her. So she comes up to pay and then she asks me, 'Do you guys do a lot of business here with people coming through?' And I'm like, 'Well, yeah.' And she said, 'I thought the sign would maybe turn people off from coming in.'”

This establishment, you see, does not adhere to a Fernandesque view of keeping the personal and business life of its proprietor good and separate. No, the owner of this joint instead proudly puts his politics on display, not in the last through a rather large sign which reads, in big bold letters, “DEFEAT OBAMA.”

This is the deep kind of political discourse Fernando's rural neighbors embrace.

Fernando's customer continues, “So I looked at her and I said, 'I don't know why you would think that,' and she goes, 'The man in the shirt over there doesn't help things either.' So I look and there's a guy who always comes in and he's wearing the same shirt I've seen him wear a bunch of times.”

“And which shirt is this?” Fernando asks, more out of obligation to be a good conversationalist than because he finds this tale of any interest.

“It's one of those ones that reads, 'Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Steve Jobs, and Bob Hope. Now we got no cash, no jobs, and no hope.'”

“Classy,” Fernando says in a deadpan tone.

“Right? Why couldn't she just keep her opinion to herself?” his customer says, mistakenly believing that Fernando's thrown his lot in with the bumpkin who attires himself with puerile talking points.

Fernando shrugs. “Why be upset?”

“Nobody needs to hear about any of that.”

“I notice you don't seem to have any problem with the guy in the shirt.”

“No, why would I?”

“Because he's doing the exact same thing.”

“No he's not. He's not bothering anybody with it.”

“Weird. It sounded to me like it was bothering somebody.”

Fernando's guest looks at him for a moment as though she is about to retort with something, but instead she closes her mouth, scoops up her movie, and departs.

Imaginary Karma

One Friday afternoon the skies have opened in a cacophony of static bliss and rainfall. Fernando sits in his office at around quarter after one, nursing a cup of coffee. He needs to buy more creamer, as he just used the last of it in the current cup.

As he sips, someone knocks at the door. It is not a polite, regular knock, but instead one which is staccato and brutally insistent, of a like quality as if someone with the exact opposite talents of Dave Grohl had taken up drumming and chose plate glass as the percussive medium. Fernando ignores it, hoping that it will go away.

Alas, the knocking migrates from the front door to the office windows. Fernando's body is doubtless visible to anyone peeking in under the drawn blinds and he would rather face his problems head-on over hiding from them, so he swings his chair around with a resigned sigh and heads to the door to investigate. It could perhaps be one of the cultists who pass through the area around this time of year, though Fernando doubts they have the spiritual dedication necessary to peddle their theological wares in a thunderstorm.

But, no, a tanned, middle-aged man waits there, one who has never visited the store. Fernando pops open the door and leans against the metal frame. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, I want to rent movies,” the man says. His eyes are intent and locked on the store's interior beyond Fernando, and he takes a step towards the Dominion.

Under other circumstances, Fernando might have welcomed the wanderer inside the store's walls, as Fernando does much enjoy earning income off the leasing of his properties, but today he does not budge. Spite and ire have taken root and Fernando is having none of it. “I'm sorry, I'm not open yet.”

“The hell, you're here.”

“Yes, but the store is not yet open. It opens at two.”

“What time is it now?”

“About quarter, twenty after one.”

“So if I come back in about half an hour, you'll be open.”

“If you come back at two, I'll be open.”

The man either does not hear or chooses to disregard Fernando's clarification, but the important thing is that he backs away and Fernando is able to retreat into the dark, comforting embrace of an empty store for a while longer. He does not depart, no, but instead chooses to wait inside his vehicle, which sits out in the parking lot.

Approximately half an hour later, at 1:48, Fernando relates the earlier portions of this very tale to one of his companions via the marvels of the internet. Suddenly, someone pulls at the door. Not a gentle tug, no, but a righteous heave the likes of which have not rattled the office's movie shelves in nearly five years. But the Dominion's hymen holds fast, and the invader is denied.

This flusters the mystery guest, who says to himself (loudly enough that Fernando can make out the words through the wall), “This asshole, tells me to come back in half an hour....” Then Fernando hears a car door slam. An engine starts up and revs a few times, and the vehicle pulls out with a defiant and monstrous roar.

Moments later, Fernando hears the piercing shriek of a cop dude's siren from somewhere off to the Dominion's right, perhaps from the lands claimed by Sweaty Bill or Lint's Gas. Its scream lowers in pitch and recedes into the distance. Fernando heads to the front door to check out what is happening, but Cop Dude has vanished around the bend in the highway by the time he reaches his destination.

Fernando chooses to believe Cop Dude was upset at Fernando's untimely visitor for throwing a tantrum and making a loud nuisance of himself when he did not get his way. It is a rewarding untruth, one that leaves Fernando clinging to the hope that justice does exist in some fashion in the world.

Your Attention, Please

A young lady enters the store one afternoon and selects a movie to rent. She had been in before, but always as a second fiddle to another of Fernando's customers, and this is her first time being the name on the slip. Unfortunately for Fernando, he has no idea what her name is. He retrieves the movie for her in the hopes that she'll finish the matter which demands all her attention by the time he returns.

Alas, she does not. “Could I get your name please?” he asks her as he returns to his place at the counter.

The young woman is, however, still engrossed in texting, perhaps with another of Fernando's patrons who had experienced some ineptitude when it came to social niceties. She does not look up from her important work and mumbles something which sounds vaguely like “Tannnnnyehlleh.”

Fernando presses his lips together. “I'm sorry, I didn't get that.”

She ignores him.

Okay then. Fernando fills out the slip for a Tascribblescribblescribble. It is not as though his penmanship would have rendered the proper name in any way more legible. She still has given Fernando no attention. “There is an additional service charge, you know.”

“Kay puttionere.” She still has not looked up nor paused in her texting, and doesn't seem to care that Fernando is making things up whole cloth.

“It's fifty dollars.”

“What?” She looks up, finally, but she does not seem upset by this grossly inflated number. She hadn't heard Fernando, but she does place a five dollar bill on the countertop.

“It's fifty dollars.”

Now she's confused. Still not outraged, like most people might be, but it's a step up from apathetic. “Why is it so much?”

“You ought to start paying attention to the words which other people say."

“Wait what? Hold on.” She returns to her texting.

Fernando takes the bill and puts it in the till. One reaps what one sows. “You're all set.” She ignores that too.

Fernando walks away and returns to his business in the office. At some later point during the day, when he happens to glance over his shoulder at the counter, the young lady had gathered enough of an attention span to collect her movie and walk out.

Sigh

Fernando has just fixed a cup of coffee in the back room and is returning to his post within the Dominion's office. As he navigates the racks of rental cases, a pickup truck with a closed-up bed pulls up in front of the Dominion. The driver parks parallel to the store's front, which is not usually a problem, except that he is directly in front of the Dominion's door. A middle-aged man and his wife clamber out.

Fernando has just reentered the office and set down his coffee when the chimes jingle. Without preamble, the man, who is a tall and broad middle-aged sort with a battering ram of a paunch fastened to his abdomen, booms out, “You got any good wilderness movies?”

“Um...I'm not sure what you mean. You mean like The Grey?” That seems to Fernando like a decent wilderness movie, insofar as it has wilderness as an antagonistic force acting upon the protagonist.

This is insufficient for Fernando's guest. “No, I don't want none of that shit with vampires and werewolves. Try again.” Maybe he thought Fernando had made reference to Fifty Shades of Grey, which doesn't even exist on film at this time. At least Fernando assumes Fifty Shades of Grey involves vampires, since it's Twilight fanfic that transmogrified into the next big thing containing flat female characters the mostly-female readership can use to live vapid and perfectionist fantasies. It could be that it doesn't, and Fernando lacks the basic interest to even search Wikipedia for a synopsis of the book's plot.

Regardless, Fernando's guest's words left the Keeper a bit stunned. Fernando had expected to be rebuffed, since this man seemed like a alpha-male kind of guy who asserts dominance over others through contrarian behavior. He hadn't expected it to be so curt and effective. This leaves our hero speechless for a few seconds.

A few seconds is all the boisterous visitor needs to continue his verbal assault. “Can't think of anything?” he asks. “The hell kind of guy are you, working at a movie store but you don't know what people want?”

Fernando is now gearing up to dig deep into his snark reserves and set this confrontation on the express lane to Hell. Instead, the man's wife steps in. “Honey, look. Paranormal Activity 4.”

The man doesn't even turn around to look at her when he says, “Quiet. I'm talking with the man.”

So that's nice.

The woman's attempt to defuse the situation has given Fernando additional time to take stock of his situation. He probably would lose in a head-to-head clash. Fernando must be as water, to absorb his guest's ridicule with stoicism and to avoid being baited. He shall be the bigger man. So Fernando says, “The Grey is actually Liam Neeson and his plane crashing in the Alaskan wilderness. There are wolves, but they're the normal kind, not the were-kind.” Fernando did not use the adjective “lycanthropic.” In hindsight, he ought to have.

But the guy ignores Fernando's words and ambles into the store. The next few minutes are a span of time which will forever leave a dark stain upon the Dominion's generally welcoming and jovial aura. The wife points out a wide variety of movies which might be taken for rental. In every case, the man rebuffs her choices as being “stupid” or “retarded.” When she stumbles upon Rise of the Planet of the Apes and points out the existence of this film, her husband says, “We're already living in a country run by one. Don't need to watch a movie with a planet run by 'em.”

So that's nice.

Finally they reach a consensus, and by that Fernando means that the man found Larry the Cable Guy: Delta Farce and told his wife that this is what they're going to watch. He selects the tag and brings it up to the counter, his wife trailing. Fernando sets to filling out the rental slip. “Can I get your name?”

“Morocco Mali.”

Fernando says, “One second,” and checks in his records. He exists therein. Damn. Fernando checks the late fee lists. He's not on there. Double-damn.

So Fernando fills out the rental slip and takes the monies which are owed him. Once the couple leaves, he collapses into his chair and shakes his head.

Apparently two dollars is now enough to compromise one's scruples in the business world.

After Hours

The blessed time has arrived where Fernando may rise from his throne and lock down the Dominion in an elaborate closing ceremony. Fernando has a bit of after-hours work to accomplish, some checks that need to be written and some bills that must be paid, in addition to his daily accounting ritual. Fernando does not enjoy doing any of this while the store is open, as he prefers to remain undistracted when doing actual work and hopes to avoid the possibility of overly curious souls asking stupid questions.

He has just flourished a signature upon a check which is to be sent to the old Keeper as payment for debts incurred when Fernando hears tapping at his front door. Since it is by now fifteen minutes past eight, Fernando's desire to earn three or so dollars is vastly overshadowed by his desire to not have to deal with the public for the rest of the evening. He ignores the tapping and seals the check within an envelope instead.

The tapping transitions to arrhythmic pounding. Fernando continues ignoring it.

Then Fernando hears pounding upon his office window. The shades are drawn. “Hey, I know you're in there! I can see you!”

Fernando shoves his chair back and trundles down one of the aisles into the back room. He has just been filled with the mighty need to consume coffee. As a tangential benefit, maybe now that Fernando cannot be seen, this unwelcome annoyance will forget he exists.

Maybe it worked the way Fernando envisioned, maybe the guy just got frustrated and left, but nobody was there when Fernando returned to the front with a fresh mug of miracle liquid.

Don't go to a restaurant when it's closed expecting to be served a steak, and don't bother Fernando when he's not on the clock.

Play to Win

VHS Guy had been making regular appearances at the Dominion of late, just making Fernando's day complete by showing up to not rent movies and walking out some minutes later. Fernando's interactions with him ranged from curt to smarmy.

One evening he enters the store and pretends to browse the Adopt-A-Movie Box. “Hey, uh, how come I ain't won this drawing all the years I been coming in here?” He sets a brown paper bag on the ground before the counter. Whatever its contents are, they rustle loudly as the weight settles to the carpeted floor.

Unfortunately, another person is browsing the shelves so Fernando cannot be as dismissive as he likes. “Oh. Well, one needs to enter the drawing in order to increase one's odds of being drawn.”

“Alright. I'm just gonna fill out this winning ticket then.” VHS Guy snatched up one of Fernando's pens and paws through the box of paper slips he keeps near the drawing bucket, probably seeking the largest rectangle he can find.

“Um, it really doesn't work that way. You need to rent or buy something in order to enter.”

“I been coming here.”

“Yes. But. You haven't rented anything. I run this as sort of a thank-you to my customers, the ones who come in and help me to keep this place open.”

“I been coming here,” VHS Guy repeats, because this has always been a successful argumentative tactic.

At this point there is little more Fernando can think of to further clarify what the words he has been saying mean without coming off as a right massive boner to his other customer and the entire rest of the planet. So he does the same thing VHS Guy had just done: repetition. “The drawing is for people who've rented or bought something.”

VHS Guy ignores these words and babbles to himself. “What goes on here? Name? Name's good.” He folds his slip of paper with a flourish and deposits it in the bright red drawing bucket. “Okay then.” He leans down to scoop up his crinkly bag and walks out.

Silence fills the store.

The other customer speaks. “That was a little bit weird,” she says.

“You have no idea.”

Spoiler alert: VHS Guy doesn't win the drawing.

Arguing Against Tautology

A shabby man Fernando has never seen before enters the Dominion one day. He's frumpled and chunky and wears clothes that make Fernando's fashion sense seem positively enlightened.

“Hello!” Fernando greets him as the door jingles shut.

“Hey, where's your movies?” the man asks.

“Right over here,” Fernando says, striding out of the office and into the obvious. “New releases are right here on these racks, with the newest of the new on this shelf and the top ten rentals up top here. Everything else goes back chronologically. The rest is broken up into genres, so you've got kids' and family over there, sci-fi on the back side of this rack, action on the three spaced out in the middle here, comedy beyond that and wrapping around into horror, which wraps around to the outside wall over there. Drama's next to that and then war and westerns have their own little sections there and there.” Fernando gesticulates fervently during his speech, pointing to each section of the store as he comes to it.

The guy doesn't really seem to have taken any of that in. “Where's the new ones?”

“Ri-right here.”

Shabby Mack trundles into the aisle and stops very near to Fernando. Fernando shuffles away, in part because personal space is not a hypothetical and in part because a miasma of booze envelops the man in a ghastly cocoon. Roll a d20, save against poison. Mmm, nope.

Fernando moves a little bit farther away. “If there's anything in particular you're looking for, just let me know and I'll track it down for you.”

Shabby Mack grunts and looks around the store. “How come these cost more?” he asks.

“Well, they're newer.”

“Yeah and?”

“Um...that's it, actually. They're newer, so they cost more.”

“That don't seem fair.”

Fernando shrugs. “New things cost more than old things. That's just the way things go.”

Shabby Mack rotates and faces Fernando. He opens his mouth. “BBBRRRRRRREEEEEEEEP!”

A noxious cloud of stomach-gas assails Fernando, who staggers back and desperately fans the air.

“That's what I think,” Shabby Mack says. He exits the store.

Fernando, now deader on the inside, returns to the office and considers getting out of the business for the first time.

Coincidence vs. Contrivance

A lady rents a couple of movies one day in December. She has with her a gaggle of four children, their ages ranging from eight to three. The transaction concludes without conflict; she selects her movies, pays, and leaves. Hell, her kids didn't even do obnoxious things to the store.

About an hour after she'd gone, the phone rings.

-Ring ring ring-

“Hello, Dominion of Movies.”

“This is Indonesia Radula. I was just in to rent some movies.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to get Men in Black 3 but instead you gave me Paranorman.”

Well, she certainly selected Paranorman as one of her rentals. Fernando digs through the rental slips to double-check that he hadn't done a stupid thing and given her the wrong movie.

“Hmm...well, it seems that the tag I got was for Paranorman. That's no big deal, though. If you wanted to come down and swap it out, I'd be more than happy to.”

“I'm not going back down there.”

Drat. Fernando fortunately has a second-string response to placate disgruntled customers. Sometimes Fernando fucks up. “Okay, then the next time you come in I can make Men in Black available to you, gratis.”

“That's good.” Then she hangs up.

Three weeks later she returns, kids once again in tow. “Yeah, I called a while back about getting a free rental,” she informs Fernando. Her tone is condescending and waspish, but that cannot be allowed to rattle Fernando nor change the fact that he gave the woman his word that she'd be getting a free rental.

“Indeed,” Fernando says. He happens to have a copy of Men in Black 3 in and he retrieves it for the woman's benefit. “Here you go.”

“I want to get a different one.”

Well, one new release is priced the same as any other new release. “Sure thing.”

She throws down two tags, Frankenweenie and The Odd Life of Timothy Green. Fernando fills out the slip and fetches the movies for her. She pays for the one and leaves.

About an hour after she'd gone, the phone rings.

-Ring ring ring-

“Hello, Dominion of Movies.”

“This is Indonesia. It happened again.”

“What did?”

“You gave me the wrong movie.”

“I did.” Fernando's tone is dry, and he retrieves her slip.

“Yeah, you gave me Frankenweenie but I wanted Hotel Transylvania.”

“I got the tag for Frankenweenie.”

“Yeah. That's not the one that I wanted.”

“That's the tag that I received.”

“But you gave me the wrong movie.”

“Curious.”

Nobody speaks for the span of ten seconds. Then the woman asks, “What are you going to do about it?”

“If you'd like to come down and exchange them, that can be arranged.”

“I don't want to come back down there tonight.”

Second verse, same as the first. Fortunately, Fernando possesses a measure of longitudinal awareness which extends back at least three weeks. “Ah. In that case, I'm afraid there's little I can do.”

These words are not taken well at all. “This the same thing that happened last time I rented!”

“That is quite the odd coincidence, isn't it?”

“Wh-what--”

“I got a tag for Frankenweenie. How should I know that that isn't the movie that you actually wanted? Besides, this exact thing happened the last time you were in and that strikes me as a little weird.”

The lady hangs up on Fernando in a huff.

Tact

A lady comes into the store one evening. “Which movie is better, Dark Knight Rises or Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter?”

“I preferred The Dark Knight Rises myself,” Fernando answers.

“Oh, why is that? The other one not very good?”

Fernando shrugs. “I'm just more a fan of the Batman franchise, I suppose. Abe Lincoln is by no means a bad movie. It's one of those that realizes its premise is so absurd that it has no choice but to embrace it, and the movie becomes better--”

The woman asked a question of Fernando but did not seem to have much of a desire to hear his answer, for she pulled out her cell phone and started doing things on it during his response. Once Fernando notices that she is thoroughly ignoring him, he returns to his computer and his work, tuning out the woman's presence in his store as she converses with her compatriot.

After a few minutes she finishes up and expects Fernando's attention. “Hey, you never answered my question!”

“Actually I did.”

“No you didn't. I was on the phone.”

“Precisely.”

She gives Fernando a look of profound confusion, then understanding spreads over her face like the creeping sunrise over the land, then she walks out.

Yes, Really

A lady comes into the store one rainy evening. She had rented out two new releases a few days earlier. “So, these are a little late.”

Fernando reclaims his property. “Did you want to kill off the late fee on them now?”

“Yeah, sure,” she says, pulling out her money satchel. “How much is it?”

“Fourteen dollars.”

The woman looks at Fernando in shock. “You're kidding me.”

“Afraid not.”

“I don't see how it could be that much.”

“You did have them out for five days.”

“That's just stupid. There's no reason it could be that much.”

Fernando shrugs. “Were I to have charged the full rental amount for each additional night rather than the somewhat lesser amount which I do, your total would have come to thirty-five dollars.”

“Jesus. I just forgot them in my car for a few days and now you're charging me fourteen dollars,” she grouses as she digs out money.

Fernando does not mention to her that it's not his fault that she neglected to return the movies in a timely manner. That would be crass of him.

She throws a ten and a five over the counter at Fernando. The paper flutters to the floor. “There's your fourteen dollars.”

Mmm.

Fernando stoops to retrieve the money. “Indeed.” He makes the dollar in change from the till and passes it over to her. “Have a pleasant evening.”

His politeness and responsibilities to this wretch of a customer exhausted, Fernando returns to his computer without a backward glance. The woman sees herself out.

Finger Play

The lady who rented Season of the Witch a while back returns to the store. Perhaps she is a masochist on the level of Fernando, who knows? She carries with her a full stamp card retrieved from who-knows-where, but since Fernando is not aware that anyone is forging stamp cards it must be legit. She selects a movie, FDR: American Badass and brings the tag to the counter. This woman has not learned anything about selecting movies with an iota of quality, because this movie is pretty close to Bloodlust Zombies-level horrible.

It still inexplicably rents. Fernando imagines that beer consumption helps out in that respect.

“Yes, I've got a free rental,” she tells him.

Fernando counts the stamps on the card to ensure all is in order. “Indeed so.” He writes up the rental slip and retrieves the disc. Once he passes it over to the woman, she opens up the case and takes it out. She immediately starts rubbing her fingertips over the disc's underside, leaving smudges of finger-detritus everywhere. As she does this, she addresses Fernando in the haughty manner of which only the irrepressibly self-entitled are capable.

“I want to make sure this isn't scratched or damaged, like the last one. I would prefer that this one plays right.”

“Well, a good way to do the opposite of that is to smear up the underside of the disc with your fingers.” Fernando takes the DVD from her and fetches a cloth and his disc cleaner to undo the damage she has wrought.

“Hmph,” she sniffs as Fernando wipes away the filth.

When he finishes he replaces the disc in its case. “There should be no problems with this one.” He passes the disc and case back over to her.

“We'll see,” she tells Fernando, then leaves.

Since Fernando did not receive a passive-aggressive note with the disc the next day, he assumes that his prediction carried through.

Potence

A guy and his girlfriend come into the store one afternoon. Fernando greets them but they ignore him, as the dude is talking on his cell phone and the girl did not seem to want to engage in social niceties with anybody.

Fernando turns back to his computer as the guy continues his conversation. He speaks quite loudly and the volume on his cell phone is also cranked up, to the point that Fernando can hear the noises coming out of it from about twenty feet away. He tunes the conversation out, as he has no interest in prying.

Fernando snaps back to attention when he hears the gent say the words, “I'm telling you, they ain't got nothing here.” He half-swivels his chair about to make sure no one is in need of his inestimable services, but the man is intent upon his cell. Fernando can hear the conversational partner saying words and there is the sound of a crying baby in the background.

“No, I'm serious,” the guy says. “They ain't got nothing new.” A pause, some word-exchange happens. “No, I don't see it.” Another pause. “Hang on, I'll ask.”

The guy turns to Fernando. “Hey, you got Cowgirls and Angels here?”

“Do you mean Cowboys and Aliens?”

“No, I mean Cowgirls and Angels.”

“No, then I'm afraid I do not.”

The man focuses his attention on the cell phone as Fernando is about to continue, so Fernando stops. “No, he doesn't have it.” Pause. “I'm not going to Family Video.” Pause. “I don't care if your daughter got it from there! This place don't have it!”

The pair leaves. Fernando watches them go in bemusement.

As Fernando was about to tell the gent before he was cut off, Cowgirls and Angels was not due for release until October 2^nd, so it would have been a great feat of prowess indeed had Fernando broken the rules of time, space, and product release dates.

Season of the Bitch

A lady rents Season of the Witch one evening. The next day Fernando finds the movie in his dropbox, but with a folded piece of paper inside. Curious, Fernando reads what is written thereon:

“Scratched badly. Would not play. You owe me a rental.”

Fernando scowls at the paper, then at the disc. He lifts the DVD out of its holder and inspects the bottom. Minor marring does exist on the disc's underside, but that's to be expected of a movie that came out over a year prior. Certainly that small bit of wear should not render the disc unplayable.

More to the point, Fernando does not react well to people who order him around as though they are his betters.

Seeing as it was not even eleven in the morning, Fernando pops the movie in, prepares some coffee, and settles down to watch it through. Tangentially, Fernando shares reviewers' opinions that it is a plodding mess without any real tension or reason for viewers to invest in the characters. It could have been something much better than it was, perhaps some sort of guilty pleasure dark fantasy adventure romp like Van Helsing (though that movie is helped out a great deal by the presence of the charming Kate Beckinsale), but instead the creators squandered Ron Perlman's potential for cinematic gravitas.

As a result, after twenty-odd minutes Fernando is playing a game of League of Legends while the movie continues in the background.

Once the not-so-scary demon is slain and all the characters who aren't Nicolas Cage are inured, Fernando shuts off the DVD player and television and gives the lady a call.

-Ring ring ring ring ring-

“Hello?”

“Yes, this is Fernando calling from the Dominion of Movies. I received your note.”

“Oh, good.”

“Yeah, I just gave the movie a playthrough. It played just fine for me and there's no evidence at all of 'bad scratching.'”

“You can't have done it already. You only opened half an hour ago.”

“Contrary to popular belief, I must give up on my busy social schedule to arrive at the store early. I've been here all morning. That being said, if you would like to rerent Season of the Witch today or some other time you are more than welcome.”

“It won't work on my player.”

“Perhaps the DVD player on which it was played is in need of cleaning. Like I said, you are welcome to have it gratis some other time.”

“I don't want that one. I want a different one.”

“How far in did you get before it skipped?”

“What?”

“How far in did you get before it skipped? When did it start acting up?”

“In the middle.”

“What scene was it? What was happening?”

Silence. Fernando waits a few moments before continuing.

“I'm sorry. You can have Season of the Witch or you can have nothing.”

“I don't want that one!” the woman shouts.

“I'm sorry. I won't be held responsible for people choosing a crappy movie and regretting it afterwards, then trying to leverage it into something better. Have a good day.”

He hangs up.

The woman in question is a white lady in her 50s. Being an asshole grifter really does cross all demographic boundaries.