Having to stop due to an obese woman blocking the aisle, while bending over to reaching for something on a lower shelf, Dryadia tore open the Eskimo Pie and bit into it, expecting it to be warm and soft like her beloved Mars bars.   To her shock the bar was rock hard, and ice cold, seeming to sting her teeth and gums with acid-like cold.

“Eeeeeeeeeiii!” shrieked the dryad in shock after spitting out the ice cream.

“Aaaaaaaaaaah!” shrieked the fat woman as the ice cream pelted her on the backside as she bent forward.

As the woman looked round to confront her “attacker”, Dryadia dropped the Eskimo Pie and shape-shifted into a brown wood hat wrack.

*      *      *

“What’s wrong?” asked the shop keeper, Bernie Ling, a tall Asian man in his late twenties, hearing the woman scream.

“Someone just threw something at me,” insisted the fat woman looking around.

The attendant raced to the back of the store expecting to find the attacker.   Instead all he saw was the woman and the hat stand behind her.

“How did that get there?” asked Bernie, pointing to the hat wrack.   Looking about the floor he saw the chewed Eskimo Pie and seeing a splodge of vanilla ice cream on the back of the woman’s dress he realised what she had been hit with.   Bending to pick up the chewed ice cream he heard running footsteps at the front of the store and saw two teenage boys run outside.   Darn kids! he thought, wrongly accusing them of throwing the Eskimo Pie at the woman who was now busily rubbing down the back of her dress with a Kleenex tissue.

*      *      *

2.

At the end of a long twelve-hour shift, Bernie Ling was relieved to see his replacement, Robbie Pavlidis, striding past the petrol pumps on the way to relieve him for the grave yard shift.

“How’s tricks?” asked Robbie, by way of greeting as he strode into the station shop.

“Not too bad,” said Bernie, a little hesitantly.

Sensing his friend’s uncertainty, Robbie asked, “What’s up?”