Hand-Soap Dispenser Mimic

One supermarket, one department store, a medical centre, a chemist, a dentist, a paediatrician, two optometrists, a hair dresser, a barber, a phone repairer, a key cutter, a bottle-o, a sushi place, a bahn-mi place, a massage parlour, one E.B. Games, the requisite post-office/newsagent, an Asian grocery, a giftware store, a health shop and one vacant tenancy. TL;DR, a mid-range suburban shopping centre. Five toilets, thirteen bins and a long car park accumulating garbage overnight. One cleaner: Yvette. Also, a Godfreys.

 Yvette's latest problem is the male staff toilet needs a new hand-soap dispenser. The boss insisted that the new dispenser match those installed in the other toilets. The boss instructed Yvette to get one from their cleaning supplies shop on her weekly purchase of the bare minimum toiletries. Yvette found that the cleaning supplies shop did not stock that particular type of dispenser and never had. Yvette's solution to this problem is a Hand-Soap Dispenser Mimic.

So Yvette goes to the Mimic Stall. The Mimic Stall is one stall within the pop-up black market. During the summer heat, the black market usually pops up in the concrete pipe running underneath the car park, between creek and drain way, but has currently retreated to the shopping centre roof to avoid the rain or, rather, rain two hours past which has accumulated over 23 km² to become a torrent. Yvette unlocks the gate to the ladder and climbs, find the roof buzzing with the lunch rush.

(One of the stalls is Johno's 'Eat my Ass'. Johno is a food bio-chemist and early adopter of lab-grown meat, 'lab-grown' meaning that a small piece of flesh is biopsied from a living organism and placed in goo that grows the particular flesh and its marbling. The technology is not yet there to replicate the quality or price of slaughtered meat, but Johno had an epiphany: the forefront of the ethical meat market is the meat least ethical to kill. Johno has a pink scar on his right buttock and his fajitas smell tangy with lime and peppers.)

The Mimic Stall is three shelves of miscellanea - brassieres, copper pipes, theorems, ect - because anything can be a mimic. Yvette anticipates the nervous titling in spleen and, two breaths as deep as inconspicuity allows, approaches the stall-holder with her request. The stall-holder has a Hand-Soap Dispenser Mimic in a box somewhere:

'But, full disclosure, mimics bite.'

'The male staff toilet doesn't have a urinal, so it rarely gets used.' Yvette assures. 'Besides. Men? Soap?'

'Checks out.' The stall-holder smiles prettily. 'Are you paying cash or credit.'

A common, if bad, joke: 'Gotta' think of my tax return.'

Meaning: barter, whaddaya' want?

Stall-holder: 'Preferably another mimic. Have you heard of this pizza shop -'

'Yeah nah, I will not take on the Beast of Newton. That dumpster has killed five men and I have no desire to establish gender quotas.'

Eye-roll: 'Fair enough.'

In lieu, Yvette turns to the wider market and, raising arms above head: 'Who has tribute to lay before a sex goddess?'

A few people, hesitating to commit lab-grown cannibalism, glance at Yvette but no tribute, nor person, is laid.

'That never works.'

Part of reason why being that most people assume that 'sex goddess' means 'dynamite in the sack', which is actually a very foolish way of carrying dynamite. Yvette, middle-aged 'de-va-say', does not fit the Hollywood stereotype. 'Sex goddess' here instead means 'employed in divine machinations within the sex portfolio'. Yvette secured this position with a résumé bolstered by a year-long stint as the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at a school currently embroiled in accusations of transphobia - she proved to be one of the better educators to hold the position, having given all her students Glocks.

The sex goddess thing is more of a side hustle because most sexual maladies are cured with supplements sold over email. Yvette still occasionally performs divine machinations in customers' sex lives (better missionary, fewer gobbies, more butt stuff ect.) in exchange for tribute. She met two such customers at The Dirt, an illegal bar that only serves professional cleaners. The Dirt's gimmick is that is never cleaned.

Luna sipped lemon-lime-and-what's-the-last-one? about 25 months ago: 'There's this guy at work and I want him but I don't want to want him.'

'Marriage. I -' Yvette knocked glass of Little Giant Adelaide Hills Nebbiolo over and no one gave a shit. 'Marriage. I dig.'

In exchange for eliminating this particular lust of Luna's, Yvette received the Explosive Hidden Tooth. A hidden tooth is usually a false tooth, replacing a rear molar, which contains a lethal poison that allows a shinobi to take their own life. This particular hidden tooth substitutes poison with explosives, offering results which are just as swift but leaving much less doubt. Luna, studying radiography but picking up general medical expertise along the way, made the Explosive Hidden Tooth after refining the radioactive waste that she was supposed to dispose into the hospital's trough.

'And, as you say,' Back in the present, Yvette tries eleveator pitch. 'mimics bite.'

'Yes, I do know someone looking for a mimic with more bite.' The stallholder concedes. 'But this sounds like a single-use item. Not environmentally friendly. Also, is this tooth radioactive?'

'You know what?' Yvette had been drunk. 'I don't know.'

Onto the second item, flashbacking to The Dirt again by about 20 blog posts ago. Everybody was standing because all seats were covered in broken glass.

Luke had commiserated: 'There's this woman at work and she wants me and so I want her but I don't want to be that guy.'

'Perfume.' Yvette sympathised. 'I dig.'

In exchange for eliminating this particular lust of Luke's, Yvette received Gustav Odenkirk's Wine Journal (1991-1992), which Luke had salvaged from a plane that he cleaned. This wine journal is remarkable in that it was actually used.: as in, Gustav actually took tasting notes which people can actually read. A snippet:

...notes of pomegranate and vanilla (oaking a frappato!?) followed by smooth tannins and a raid by Jerry's templar boys. Suzie and I leapt from the balcony and took one of their cop-mobiles, but we couldn't get the sirens to work. We made do and opened the windows. She was the 'weee' and I was the 'wooo'.

Yvette continues sales pitch: 'It's a must read for anyone interested in wine and the shadowy wars fought between factions vying to control humanity's destiny.'

'Interesting Venn diagram.'

'Which is useful for the treasure-minded historian. It's a primary, if boozy, source.' Yvette continues. 'Ph.D kids have to pay student debt somehow. Chemistry - meth. History - looting.'

'And I'm supposed to sell this book to a historian instead of selling them a mimic? What sort of person do you think I am?'

'Honestly, I don't.'

'What?'

'What you do,' Yvette steels her smile. 'is discount this book for the treasure hunter who agrees to give you any mimic chests they find on their adventures.'