The Demon of North Andover

It was the first day of my long-awaited vacation when I encountered this demon. I had so many things on my pre-holiday checklist I wanted to get a good start on everything and I started about 11 in the morning at the Stop n' Shop on Route 114 in North Andover. To my surprise, everyone else had decided the same thing - the store was pretty well packed. When I'd collected everything, I got in line; I was third. At the end of this line was me. Directly ahead of me was a woman of about 60. Directly ahead of her was an ice cold soccer mom with two loud children who were old enough to know better, but didn't. She was laying out her food on the conveyer belt while her children punched each other and squashed candy bars in the line rack. She never even glanced at them, even as they pushed each other into the cart of the woman behind them, nearly upending her twice. Possibly the demon was busy trying to think of the most effective way of killing the people behind her.

I still hadn't realized that this woman was a demon - I was thumbing through a magazine I'd picked up. But I looked up at her third or fourth loud sneeze and uncovered whooping cough, which she was using to spray all of the food on the conveyor belt - hers and the items of the woman behind her. The 60-year old woman, who had just had her own cart shoved into her midsection twice by the demon's spawn, finally felt compelled to say something.

"Excuse me," she said, "But would you mind covering your mouth? You're sneezing all over everyone's food."

The demon turned and faced the line of us behind her. She had one of those sharp, ugly, faces sculpted by women who believe that exercising themselves into bony cords and angles made them attractive. I swear I had seen her jogging determinedly along one of the town's major roadways in the dark, ignoring all of the motorists who had to swerve around her at the last minute, cursing her idiotic stupidity for not once considering using reflectors. Now she turned and faced all of us with red, glowing eyes. Spittle pooled at the corner of her mouth. Apparently, this demon took exception to being asked to show some holiday compassion for shoppers behind her. I hadn't noticed that an elderly couple had gotten in line behind me with only a few items in their cart.

The demon took a deep breath, opened her mouth as wide as she could and, deliberately, maliciously sneezed all over all of us: the woman behind her, me, the couple behind me, and a child of another woman who was standing to the side of his mother in the next queue over. We all backed up in the shock of it, feeling her spit all over our faces, our hands, our food, in our eyes, ears, nose, mouth. It was the one of the most disgusting acts of virulent hostility I'd ever seen. I mean, who DOES that? No human being does that. Who deliberately infects elderly people, for godssake, knowing full well that she could be handing them their death sentence? Nazis? Violent criminals? Demon soccer moms from North Andover, Massachusetts?

And who decides that the perfect way to spend time when you're sick and infectious is at a supermarket, sneezing and coughing on everyone else's food? Did she honestly think this made her some sort of Santa Madonna Martyr Mommie worthy of a Hallmark Parade and a Mommie Crown on Mother's Day?  But that was the demon's lesson on how to respond to people who have asked you - quite politely, I thought - to cover your mouth when you sneeze - as though she should have been inside of the store in the first place. And she did it while her spawn watched, so the good townsfolk might want to think twice about the North Andover school system, with this demon's spawn on the class rosters.

Within 48 hours I had bronchial pneumonia and was in the emergency room of a nearby hospital, with an oxygen mask over my face. They told me later I had been a lovely shade of blue when my physician sent me over to them in an ambulance. I couldn't breathe; and my chest was rattling like a gourd every time I breathed. I had such a high fever that I was drifting in and out of dreams that made me believe I was dying. The evil Soccer Mom of North Andover appeared in those dreams on two separate occasions as a full fledged demon, so that is how I think of her. I missed Christmas, I missed New Year's Eve. I missed my entire vacation. It has been 13 days since she did her foul deed, and I'm still hearing that dry chest rattle every time I inhale.

I don't even want to know what happened to the 60-year woman ahead of me, or the elderly couple behind me - the demon was so virulent I doubt any of them survived it.

Originally published:  Jan. 2nd, 2008 at 2:08 AM