The Canadian Mart Shopping Experience

             Standing in the middle of a monk-like room, I regained consciousness, frightened, crying. I had nothing on but a white-cotton-slip dress. Barefooted, I ran toward the bed and grabbed the comforter. Strange enough, the air conditioner was blasting on high.

            The only thought swirling through my mind was that the abbess or abbott of this abbey could have provided its guests with more duvet covers. 

 

Suddenly, my throat began to tickle, and I started coughing. I had always been allergic to air conditioners. I got on the bed to open the rectangular window hovering above it. The fresh summer air soothed me immediately. I could see a Victorian-type garden with white benches in it. Someone opened the door at that moment. The screeching sound permeated through my body. I turned to see a man and a woman in their 20s entering the room.

 

            “She’s awake,” the man said. “I suppose you’re wondering what is—”

 

  “Why do you have me here?” I said, assuming that I had been kidnapped. “How did you get me out of a Canadian Mart with my SuperClean closet organizers. The parking lot was full.”

 

            “About 20 years ago, there was a deadly virus released over the planet by millions of drones. The only survivors happened to be in the Canadian Mart stores at the time of the attacks,” she explained, slowly.

           

“I don’t understand. I’ve been asleep for the last 20 years? WTH?”

 

“Yes, it was a side effect of the micro amount of the virus that seeped into the stores through their ventilation systems,” the man said.

 

And then on cue, the man added: “The year is 2060. We only have one country now, consisting of 25 thousand citizens living in communes. You’re in the Canadian Mart Trauma Centre unit: Chronic Sleepwalkers. We kept you locked up in this room for your safety.”

 

“How are you both here?!”

 

          “Our parents were also shopping with us at the Canadian Mart, near our house, for discounted toys,” he said.

 

           He paused and let his sister continue, explaining the rest of the course of events.

 

“People who had experienced severe traumas before the attack remain in comas longer. Our parents were both what we now call the “nappers.” Their lives were relatively uneventful. Explaining why they ended up waking up over their shopping carts an hour after the attacks, the woman answered, “As children, we were wide awake; we did not have a lot of emotional baggage.”

 

“Who attacked us?!”

 

“There was an underground world movement called the Scarcity Survival Society. They crowdfunded in the black market, and the billionaires were generous to save their bloodlines. As you remember, we were running out of natural resources.

 

There were only about 3,000 commoners like us who survived.

 

“Unfortunately, the world leaders did not deem the Scarcity Survival Group a threat,” she said.

 

“Do you remember your name?” he asked abruptly.

 

“Yes, my name is Aella Aiden . . . What was in the Canadian Mart stores that helped save us?”

 

“The Canadian Marts were the only stores left back then to carry plastic. We’re still researching, but we think the plastic saved us,” the woman said.

 

They approached me and injected me with a red liquid substance. I felt this electrical charge in my brain. They held me as my entire body was affected by jerking muscle movements, like when I had lost my mother at six.

 

My mother had gone on a meditation retreat to relax from her work as a human rights attorney. One night, while walking the grounds alone, she was killed by a serial murderer. who had escaped from the local women’s prison. She needed my mother’s clothes to change and keep running. Apparently, my mother resisted.

 

Post tragedy, my father, a wealthy banker working 20 hours per day, sent me to a boarding school to be raised. I rarely saw or heard from him. But at 14, the headmistress pulled me out of class to take a phone call from my grandfather.

 

He announced stoically that a window being replaced in one of the skyscrapers had fallen on my dad and killed him during his business trip to Manhattan. However, this story was concocted for my protection. His girlfriend murdered him in a fit of rage. She had heard on the streets that she was not the only underage prostitute he had professed his love to.

 

Only a few years later, my last living relative, my grandfather, an avid reader, took a couple of Klonopin to relax, but fell asleep in his favourite armchair reading. He left his pillar candle lit on his end table next to his his pile of finance magazines, making the entire estate burn down. Luckily, I was at a sleepover party.

 

It was only weeks before I was supposed to pursue my studies at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. It felt like someone had put my heart in a blender and discarded the smoothie left behind in their garbage disposal. He was my last living relative, and I was now alone in the great big world. I felt like a princess who knew she would never be able to sleep in her princess bed again.

 

Luckily, he left me a decent inheritance, enabling me to pursue my studies and lead a stress-free existence. This is how I ended up living in McGill’s student ghetto, having to organize my new two-bedroom apartment. The Canadian Mart Stores had the best discounts back then, especially if you shopped in-store.”

 

“Her convulsions have stopped,” the man said.

 

“She has finished releasing her traumas,” the woman specified. “This will give her the strength to face and adjust to her new reality.”

 

 I sobbed and sobbed. The substance helped me release all the anguish of remembering what I had been through in my life and all the living that I had missed while I was asleep.

 

Once calm, I asked,” How did the billionaires coordinate their survival?”

 

“Who else could afford to pay $100 million for the vaccine to have resistance to the venom?” he said.

 

“And now for our survival, we must live with these people?”

 

“They let us be… You will be assigned your own house to live in.”

 

The only good thing about this place is that no one needs money, so you can do anything you dream of doing. You go to the head billionaire, Billy Tessler, and he gives you the funds.

 

“But they never socialize with us. And never forget that,” she said. ‘It’s the only rule we have to follow.”

 

“While most people and the planet is gone, status inequality has not gone extinct,” I said and mulled over.