"Tell me, sweetie, what’s wrong with you?" Jim asked mildly his
little daughter, Sara.
"You gonna sell me dad. Aren’t you?" She said,
blinking away her tears.
Jim burst into a fit of cackles then hugged his daughter.
"I know you’re a smart kid, but this time you really outdid
yourself."
He paused a moment, striking a permanent stubble of six days
grown beard. Then, he continued, "On second thought, you
aren’t completely wrong."
Sara stared unbelievingly at her dad. The color
immediately drained from her cheeks. She recoiled back,
shocked and terrorized.
Unfazed, her father rolled up his sleeve, revealing a pattern
on his right forearm. "Look here, sweetie! We all have
barcodes in this house, even the furniture," he said, winking at
her. "Which makes us all for sale." He added, sourly,
before he stretched his plastic arm out of the toy-house window to
the peeping barcode scanner.
