The Woman of Legend

I am likely never to forget the elderly woman who tried to hug-rape me. It remains still a very vivid memory, but, at the time, I held out hope that it would fade into the back of my mind and eventually just fizzle away into nothing. It wasn't long after the initial incident that I realized that forgetting Amelia just...wasn't in the cards for me. Or for anyone else who's path she would cross.

It had been about a month since Amelia had entered into my life, and I hadn't seen her since. She hadn't returned to the comic book store to collect on that hug she never got from me, and I hadn't had to hide from her at any of the local hot spots, so I was just living my life, assuming that she would no longer be of any relevance to my day-to-day business.

I walked into one of the local eateries before my shift was starting, hoping to get some sort of pastries to get me through the day, and came to stand at the counter waiting to be served. The two baristas behind the counter acknowledged me, but were so deep in conversation that the non-speaker mouthed "just one second" to me, and I nodded back, since I wasn't in a hurry.

Normally, I wouldn't have been eaves-dropping on someone else's conversation, but, since it was happening directly in front of me, and they were kind of wasting my time, I didn't think it would be seen as quite so rude.

"And the old woman just comes right over, wraps her arms around me, and says something about Jesus!" This immediately caught my attention. It also made me extremely nervous, and I started to worry that I would turn around and find myself face to face with that same old woman. "That's hilarious!" the other barista exclaimed, doubling over in laughter, while the first one shook her head furiously. "No! It was creepy!" Through her laughter the other barista asked what the first did about it, "I didn't know what to do, so I just stood there! I mean, what do you do?"

"I'm sorry..." I started, getting their attention on me. The barista apologised, and shifted so that she was looking at me, and clearly was about to ask me what I wanted when I cut her off "are you...I mean, I didn't mean to be listening, but are you, by any chance, talking about a woman named Amelia?"

"Oh my god, don't tell me it's your grandmother," the barista's tone made it clear that, if Amelia had been my grandmother, I was to tell her that she was insane. "No, it's just...a few weeks back, that same woman came through my work and tried to hug me, too." The second barista was howling with laughter, her voice growing more high-pitched every second. "She tried to hug me, but I wouldn't come out from behind the counter, and she just sat in the store waiting for me..."

"LIKE YOU OWED IT TO HER!" the barista screamed, pointing a finger at me as though I had confirmed her greatest suspicions. "THIS WOMAN IS CRAZY! Seriously, someone needs to have her committed. She could hug all the nut-jobs she wanted in the crazy house and we wouldn't have to deal with it!"

The barista immediately forgot about helping me and launched into this tirade about how Amelia had been off her rocker and needed to stay off the streets so that the public at large wouldn't have to deal with her. I'm not quite sure how anyone could have been quite so offended at an old woman hugging you, but I didn't want to tell this girl that much. She seemed to be under the impression that Amelia was some sort of vagrant and might have passed on some sort of disease through hugging.

"It's just not fair to the rest of us! What if we had been trapped in an elevator, or on a bus? Would I have had to hug her for the entirety of the event? What if she didn't let go? What if I had been forced to hug her twice because the elevator ride just went on that long? What if the bus broke down and I was made to take her home because the driver assumed we knew each other?"

"Well...I don't think it's as serious as all that," as soon as I said it, I knew she had been turned against me. "YOU didn't even have to HUG her! YOU managed to get AWAY from her!" And then she turned to her friend, still laughing, and went off on her for a few minutes, then stormed away from the counter.

The second barista was still in fits on the floor, and the barista who had been ready to serve me not too long ago was clearly unable to come back to work due to anger management issues.

So I was forced to leave and go to work without pastries. And now I was worried about Amelia coming back. Bad start to the day. On the other hand, it was really comforting to know that Amelia was just wandering around town giving out hugs, and the incident wasn't isolated to just me, so it's not like she had been stalking me for the kill or anything. But, seriously, I still didn't want to hug her.