Make yourself comfortable. I'm about to tell you a story.”

The behemoth snarled, rattling everything in my shop. “What’re ya on about?” she asked.

“Oh,” I said, and turned to face my latest customer. “I didn’t notice you come in.” That was a lie.

She scoffed. “Not like ya can miss me,” she said. And why shouldn’t she be proud of her size?

As if my thoughts were heard and caused offense, eyebrows—thick as my thighs—knitted forward into an angry V. I could use those.

“Been in this shop too long already anyways,” she said. Five minutes. Tops. “I ain’t got time for no story.”

There’s always time for a story.

“Well, you’re in luck then,” I said. “Because I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Ain’t no one else in here,” she said, shuddering. “Is there?”

“No.” Not yet. “Just you. And me. And my masks.” I gestured motion with my hand, careful not to touch her jagged hide. “Walk with me.”

The behemoth obeyed my command.

Huge muscles rippled down her neck as it craned from side to side, scanning my collection—those in the display room anyway. I expected one of her massive tusks to go crashing through a glass case or a wall. But they never did. I could use those.

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“What’s the deal with the masks anyway?” she asked.

If she needed ask, she was inadequately prepared for their purchase. This was not a store to go wandering in.

“Their deal,” I said, mimicking her voice’s earthquake timbre perfectly and winning her attention, “is that they’re as much a part of me as, say, this hand.” I paused, held it up and let it writhe as if choreographing crystal orbs.

She leaned in, huffed.

I flipped my hand so that its palm faced the shop’s floor. My fingers continued to gyre, though bent up instead of down like corrupted caterpillars spitting at the sky.

Unphased by the display—the strangeness perhaps lost on the owner of such gargantuan paws—the behemoth ignored me.

Instead, massive dead eyes, coal, studied the rows of hanging masks.

Then, one mask held her gaze too long.

“This,” she boomed. “This one is for me.”

Most customer’s asked questions. Like, ‘Which one do you recommend?’ Most receive better outcomes than what I predicted for her.

It was an aggressive thing, this mask. All reds and purples—pomegranates, not sweet enough to move her—and greys—granite, too hard to teach her any lessons. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

“That is not the mask for you,” I said.

“I. Want. This. Mask.” Her breath and spittle battered my greatcoat, its tails flapping behind me. When I stood my ground, she asked, “Something wrong with it?”

“Not at all.”

“Well why can’t I have it then?”

“It’s not that you cannot have it,” I answered. “It is merely that—”

“How many coins ya want for it?”

Coins. Ridiculous. Had her contact explained nothing? “I want not for coins.”

“Well what do ya want for then?” she asked. “In exchange for a mask.” She jutted her tusks towards it. “This mask.”

I grinned my widest, most bald-faced grin.

The behemoth knew not what lay ahead but the mask had its hooks deep within her.

And that, tragically, meant one thing: I would get what I wanted.