Patty Mills walked through the mall, looking for a present that he could send back home for his cousin’s birthday. Gazing idly into the display windows, he dismissed most of the products he saw. The preferences of Americans were much different than those of an Aboriginal Australian.
He looked up to see what the next store was. As soon as he read the name, he stopped in his tracks.
Bed Bath and Beyond.
“No,” he told himself. “I am done with towels.” But he felt that familiar stirring in his loins, the feeling of sick arousal that he had not felt for over a year. His heart began to race as he thought of the huge piles of towels that were certainly inside the store. The soft, waveable towels, practically begging to be caressed, adored, and then, abused.
He had been purposely avoiding towel stores ever since the crime wave he had perpetrated, staging multiple break-ins just to feed his towel fetish. How foolish it had been to come to the mall, where the object of his temptation would be present! As he stood in the middle of the hallway, forcing people to go around him, he thought about how nice it would be just to go into the towel section and wave a terry bath towel, perhaps purple or blue in color, just for a few seconds to take the edge off.
He was halfway to the entrance when he stopped himself. “I don’t need towels. Remember what Tim said,” he whispered, scared of what might happen if he even got one foot inside the Bed Bath and Beyond threshold. He thought back to Tim Duncan’s smiling face, consoling him, telling him that towels were just a replacement for his mother’s stern discipline growing up. That the towels would never bring him true happiness. It was so true. And now that he had reconciled with his mother, the towels were no longer necessary. So why was the bulge in his pants growing more pronounced with every passing second?
“NO!” he yelled, sprinting away from the store. “DO NOT TEMPT ME, TOWELS!” Passersby looked on with interest and concern as Patty sprinted all the way to the food court and out the door.
Sitting in his car, breathing heavily and dripping sweat despite the coolness of the day, Patty let his head rest on the steering wheel. That had been way too close. From now on, he was doing all his shopping online.