I entered the Bizarro Plaza with a shopping list and trained eyes. I couldn’t tell who or what was lurking here. I was surrounded by masked, fully-cloaked figures. The Plaza’s no judgement policy, where everyone got free deceptive attire, might have prevented my face from immediately being sucked off the moment I stepped inside, but also prevented me from seeing who might suck my face off later. 

It was going to be a quick shop. I only had three items on the list and the third was nonessential at best, completely paranoid at worst. The first shop was a lightning bolt, flying across the wall. You had to jump at just the right time, or the wall would make an attempt at friendship. I had consistently failed to reach the shop the traditional way, much to my dismay, but I had another in.  

It took me a few minutes to find one of the masked staff-members, a security guard, stationed in front of the sanity bank. He expected me to make a withdrawal, so I easily reached him and strode back the way I came. 

I quickly figured out how to activate the official Bizarro issue Plaza Convenient Locomotion Device. Within moments I was in the fourth aisle of Monstrous Mops, watching the mall whizz by outside. I always found it peculiar how there was a whole shop dedicated to mops. What I didn’t find peculiar was how the shop moved. Massive mops armed with razor-sharp bristles and buckets of acid ploughed angrily through the wall while exhausted staff members worked in a blur to alter the opposite wall, so the shop always remained the same size. 

I went over to the masked staff-member at the counter, who was a little too tall to be human. “What do you want because if it’s not to buy something I really don’t care,” it mindlessly warbled as its head butted against the wall. 

“Hook me up with something a human body could control,” I replied nonchalantly. “But I don’t want something tame. Unbridled furiosity is the reason I come here for mops.” It appeared confused by my request, so I added: “How about this? Get me a bargain on a mop you can’t sell. You know the type. Too physically weak for a mighty customer, but too feisty for a weak one.” 

The creature seemed satisfied by this offer because it filed my order quickly, as if it was worried I would change my mind before it could get what was essentially free money. 

I exited via the official Bizarro issue Convenient Locomotion Device. As my atoms flew out the door, the creature squealed in horror: “Wait, are you that little bod-.” My ears dissolved before it could finish, but I guessed my reputation preceded me. 

After my atoms stopped buzzing around and having fun forming pieces of furniture, I continued to the next shop. Wabaro’s Bar of Bartering was a unique store where you traded the physical and the non-physical. A place where many a desperate mortal traded their souls for unending riches, health and even coffee, but technically through some mysterious arcane force named Wabaro you could obtain just about anything in the universe. For varying costs. 

The moment I stepped into the dark room I felt as if I was floating through emptiness, hearing a voice that boomed from every direction with the might of thunder. It roared: “As part of the Kissmas in July sale, true love is 50% off. Crazy date nights are also buy one get one free. Unfortunately, mathematical genius now costs a foundational childhood memory to accommodate for the bargains.”
“Maybe don’t tell people how you’re accommodating for your sales next-time, buddy,” I whispered into the darkness.
I swore I could almost hear an annoyed sigh before the voice replied: “Everyone tries to tell me how to run my business. The reason my customer-base is non-existent is because I’m new here. Not because I’m incompetent.” It sounded as if it was trying to convince itself of that unlikely fact.
I grinned and made my order: “I want an honest, knowledgeable explanation of which local preschool has the best toilet facilities.”
“Hm, that’s going to be expensive. High demand you know.”
There was a pause as the voice thought until it continued in that tone that reminded me of a 4D loudspeaker. “I know! Eighteen slightly overripe bananas and one of those cool socks with holes for the toes.”
“I’ll do it if you’ll take fifteen bananas and half of the sock.”
“I’d rather take 302 green needles than a rip-off deal like that,” the voice laughed.
“Okay then greedy. Sixteen bananas and one-third of the sock.”
“Seventeen bananas and one-eighth of the sock and that’s final,” the voice thudded forcefully.
I grinned even wider and went in for the kill. “Three bananas, one-hundred and thirty-third of the sock, and two smooshed Mars bars.”
“Fine,” the voice moaned, clearly pained by its own weakness. Before I could respond I found myself outside the store holding a two-thousand-page essay on preschool toilets. Going to be good reading. 

The final shop on my list was tucked into the back corner of Bizarro Plaza. The Night Court was the place where the cruellest, most wicked children of hell lounged around, sharing stories of dim-witted humans they’ve consumed and elaborate plots they’re putting into place. This was where you went when you wanted to get: eaten, decapitated, decimated, possessed, mind-controlled, transformed into a leech, separated into body parts and rearranged into a mangled mess, given permanent diarrhoea, or negatively altered or eliminated in some other way. 

I was telling myself I would have to be careful just as I turned a corner into a sneering cloud of sentient poisonous gas. The bluish-purple vapour got in my eyes and choked my lungs. I barely made it to the nearby restaurant and dived on somebody who looked to be a human woman in time. Luckily, I was right. 

 There were a few more close calls with Soul-Dementing Ashlords and even infants, which for them is a phase that lasts for three-billion years, Spawn of Mother Atgaros and Father Tubdu. The Soul-Dementing Ashlords thankfully weren’t interested in killing me. Instead, they wanted to use me for their strange form of asexual reproduction where they twist a human’s soul until their body also twists into a towering figure of sharp claws and flaky, death-white skin. The Spawn babies were much better. They were distracted by a FaceTime call with their parents, unfathomable eldritch gods who are actually the sources of all evil. “I wanna hab the mini-Cosmic Destoyer Comblex now!” 

The whiney two-and-a half billion year old toddlers kept screaming pointlessly after their parents cited the six billion years age recommendation, seemingly unaware that if they were one bit too annoying their parents could wipe their little chubby green cheeks from existence with a thought. I’ve always admired Mother Atgaros and Father Tubdu’s calm approach to parenting that has allowed them to bless the universe with generations of planet-devouring adolescent horrors. 

Eventually, I reached my final stop. Human Delights was a fantastic little store where you could by high-quality shrunken humans in jars. The system was quite ingenious so they didn’t starve or thirst inside the enchanted jars and when they came out, they would instantly pop back to normal size. Most of Human Delight’s customer-base were beings that ate mortals and wanted easily portable snacks for inter-dimensional road trips, but a few, such as me, had other purposes in mind. 

I knew that just being here was a ginormous risk and that this was incredibly paranoid, but I needed security. I picked up a jar with a little red-haired man inside. He screamed and banged on the purple glass as I approached the counter. The owner was the only person here, except for incorporeal beings, that went without mask or cloak. It appeared to just be an innocent little old man in an ugly yellow jacket, but in reality, it was something far worse. Worse than anything else here. Worse than anything imaginable. 

Through various reincarnations and transformations, the innocent little old man in an ugly yellow jacket was one with the enraged spirit who committed an act of unthinkable villainy that plunged our world into an eternal age of darkness. It changed the laws of physics so vacuum cleaners couldn’t properly clean corners. 

Just being around this thing sickened me to my bones so I quickly bought the human and made my way out, feeling as if I might vomit. Something made an attempt to bite my head off, but I didn’t care. 

I quickly determined which preschool to use based off of the toilets. I walked to the fence of St. Harold’s private school the next day. I had brought along my mop and it made quick work of that fence. Through I went, the bottled human cool in my pocket. Confused children turned to look at me. I strode to one and touched her on the arm. 

I experienced the very familiar sensation of my mind slipping into another’s body. Suddenly, I was looking up at a woman touching my arm. She started screaming before fainting. I took the bottled human from her pocket and put it into what was now my own. If I needed to escape, I would need an adult body after all. 

I made my stern command to the playground of curious children. “Teach me hopscotch immediately.” After a moment of silent befuddlement, they started drawing hopscotch lines with chalk and I grinned. 

Little did they know, little did anybody know, I was not human at all. I was a body-hopper, a mind transferred between humans, but in rare cases other creatures as well, by touch. It worked through clothes and the body-hopper had no say in the matter, so it was difficult for one of my kind to settle down in a single-body and live a normal human life. 

But why did I care about hopscotch. Such a silly, childish game. It was because I was an agent of Body-Hoppers Anonymous, a group devoted to preserving our kind, who usually died faster than strange forces could birth us. If the general human population ever discovered us, they would likely purge us. The only way to kill a body-hopper was to kill their current body of residence, but in the initial craze after the discovery some humans would likely forget they’re murdering their own kind to get at the newfound “enemy.” 

What would be extraordinarily helpful in such a scenario would be to have the children on our side. We had been watching for centuries and realised children have swayed many human conflicts: their faces have incredible manipulative properties. Wars have started and ended because children made cute expressions. But how would we get the children on our side? By being the closest thing they had to monarchs: hopscotch champions.