The Interplanetary Flaneur - Friday Flash

The interplanetary window shopper noticed that tote bags were not the only thing bearing logographical logos. Since T-shirts too evinced mottos and slogans. Projected outwards by the aspect of human bodies. “Babe” read one fleshy awning. “Foxy” exhibited another. A rapid straw poll revealed it to be the female who had best mastered (mistressed?) this pithy self-promotion. For one male’s stressed fabric, while barely stretching to cover his rotund abdomen, artlessly self-diagnosed “Beer Monster”. A second bannered the legend “I’m With Stupid!”, underscored with a cartoonishly sleeved and cuffed arm pointing to the right of him. Where could be found... nothing. Was this the point perhaps, that he was far too superior to hang around with a stupid person? Or was it more, that stupid though his absconded partner reputedly was, he still managed to give his pal the slip? But for now, these seemed like doodlings. Mere first drafts of bon mots, compared with the delicious proverbials emblazoned across female hoardings.
Here approaching was another citation, “No Angel” , with the added flourish of a halo. She slackened her progress in order to juggle with her packages, seeking to locate a distress signal emanating from somewhere deep within her bundle. He too wound his gait down, counterfeiting rifling through jacket pockets with what he took to be casual insouciance, but must have more resembled the flapping arms of an anthropomorphic chicken impression. At least that’s how he gauged the daggers being shot at him by files of pedestrians, as they arced around him, before resuturing their surgical headway. He becalmed his arms and settled for blowing his nose as his excuse for loitering.
She had by now found the instrument and was mouthing into it. Yes, just as he had initially surmised; the geometrical middle of the halo precisely, and he did mean with the utmost exactitude, cradled the lady's glandular protuberance. Or, he supposed you could say, that the protuberance transected the halo’s epicentre. Further research was mandatory. Only, by now the woman had caught his studious contemplation and whipped around on her heel, presenting her uninscribed back to him as she continued her confabulation.
He had been dabbing at his nose beyond the chafe-free threshold and so he desisted. There were plenteous messages in flow. “Forbidden Fruit” admonished one embossed in pink. “No Prisoners” counselled another in lime green. “Out Of Your League” trumpeted a third, bedecked in burgundy. This was cryptographic heaven! “Post-Modern Irony” inveigled the next, abutting a roundel target. And was the centre of the bullseye framing her nipple too? He cottoned on. These were not secret codes, rather free-ranging broadcasts. Roving sandwich boards, only without the disfiguration of such a ridiculous mantle. He had a strong inkling to digitise all this for later reclamation. But he sensed this was not a sound stratagem.
He refluxed another reflected in a boutique window, imparting just two letters, “T” and “O” . This failed to spark any recognition, so he stopped at the selfsame display as she, though he was scanning the glass pane rather than what lay beyond it. “TO”, “TO” , still not ringing any bells. Of course basic physics! A vitreous optical reversal! It was “OT” . As in Occupational Therapy! As the women ceded her vigil and chanced turn in his direction, he noticed an occluded wrinkle worming out from the penumbra of the “O” , converting it to a “Q”. “QT” , he muttered, as her gaze narrowed in passing him.
This was curious and beginning to irk him. For he had detected a constant pattern on the distaff’s side of the perusal exchange. Some had their smiles dislodged from their countenances, while others merely stared straight through him. Oh well, no time to ruminate, for along came a further sample, bearing no words, rather a line drawing (sulci and all) of a brain over each mammary. Its very incongruity forced him to ponder as to whether this ought to belong to the subset under consideration, even as she sauntered by. Was she indeed possessed of two brains? A reference to a twin, or a consort perhaps? ( “I’m With Brilliant” sans directional indicator?) But then why was it that somebody else’s cerebellum held joint title over her bosom? And then it struck him, not two brains, but “Brains 2” . “Two.” “Too!” That was too much! Another level altogether. Now he fully comprehended the sliding scale of the communication engendered. Some, were more up front than others.
He was suddenly dazzled by a shard of light piercing his eye. He shielded his brow with his hand, before plucking sufficient pique to peek beneath his peak. What assailed him was a spangle of bouncing light. He reacted quickly during the waning period and appointed that he was being scintillated by a sharp reflection from a woman’s posterior. Swerving hither and thither as she walked in advance of him. Then it hit him with crystal clarity, except it being on the return swing, he was actually temporarily somewhat blinded. Something was embedded upon the non-reflective matt black material her bottom was upholstered in. Studs of some sort. Rhinestones. Sequins. Who knew? Not him certainly. That was not a canon he’d ever referenced. He was about to veer away, when he tumbled to the non-symmetrical arrangement of the tail-mounted cats’ eyes. It behoved him to penetrate the pattern, for he refused to allow himself to be further stymied in his fact-finding mission. He needed to synchronise his sway to match hers, in order to efface the parallax that was shaking his vertical hold as he zoomed in.
And then it coalesced upon his retina. Her stippled rear was speaking to him! Not literally of course. But the coloured pimples picked out a word all the same. In petite calligraphy, since the word appeared to have four syllables, when she was not exactly trailing a wide load. “Bootylicious”. ‘Booty’, he knew, referred to treasure, piratical or otherwise. Assuredly the suggestion of ill-gotten gain. A plundered yield. But ‘licious’? As he was later to discover from his user interface pandect, no such lexigraphical construction formally existed. It politely inquired as to whether he had intended one of the following: ‘luscious’; ‘loci’s’; ‘vicious’; ‘delicious’; ‘malicious’; and when it feebly proffered ‘lice’ as his possible erratum, he shut off further consultation. However, since the delineation was located proprietorially above her gluteus maximus, he gauged it as a continuation of the T-shirt telescoping trend. Or maybe even its apotheosis.