Places to Visit: Tuffins
From the floor comes an incomprehensible screaming of grey; potholes with more years behind them than nearby buildings, cracked and flaking white paint marking boundaries for the metal machines meandering their way around this decidedly monotone area of commerce. Towering above me is a great pane of metal, painted a dreary green and marked with off-white glyphs reading: “Tuffins”. Cautiously, I make my way across the car park towards one of two double doors - neither is marked entrance, and neither is marked exit.
"Batteries. You’re here for batteries”, I repeat the mantra to myself over and over as I step beyond the threshold and into the building. Immediately, a figure rushes out from behind a stack of dead plants, face obscured by the windbreaker of a large beige coat he stops just short of me and mumbles, “orry” before continuing on and disappearing out of the same door I had just entered. I mustn’t become distracted by the locals. I’m here for batteries.
A face that has never known sleep watches me carefully as I enter the store proper, beyond the plant room. The warden of this place can be cruel, but I know to avoid her ire. I do not smile, instead simply walking briskly past and towards the aisles. First I must pass the meat counter, the smell hitting me before I spot the first of many slabs of grey flesh behind the glass contraption. Flies sit on a few, while others sit in a pool of reddish-grey water. One appears to be moving, twitching slightly, but perhaps that is a trick of the light.
"You’re here for batteries”, aisle after aisle after aisle passes me by - so much so that already I have lost track of time. I only just walked in here, I know that. I walked through the door, then there was the plant man, then the watcher, then the meat, then… which aisle is this? Looking along it I see shelves that stretch beyond the horizon, tightly stacked with jars. Inspecting them closer each jar seems to contain a substance of different hues labelled things like “relish”, “sauce”, or “food companion”. I examine these for a while. These are not what I am here for; I am here for batteries.
Three or four more aisles pass me by as I continue my search; looking down each I see clear plastic bottles of grey liquid, giant rolls of plain paper and card, assorted metal rods of differing shapes and sizes, and in the last I see plastic buckets filled with small metal tubes - at last. I sit myself down in front of the closest bucket and begin hunting. Some tubes are long and thin, these will not do. One tube is long, thick, and pointed. I find four tubes that are labelled, “NYLAX-4a”. More and more of these cylinders I pull out of the tub and yet there always seems to be the same amount left over. By now I have created a pile of these tubes beside me, occasionally one will roll from the top to the bottom, bouncing and knocking more tubes loose along the way. They scatter about the floor around me and yet I keep looking and so more tubes replace those lost from the top of my pile. The tips of my fingers are raw and sore from handling the metal, picking and plucking and dropping and rolling and picking and plucking and look now for soon I will have what I need and soon too you will see you will find exactly what you need is right here, on the cold speckled floor of your local Tuffins, laughing and bleeding from the fingers as they make their little battery piles. Batteries. You are here for batteries.