The gates to Smythe's Emporium creaked open at nine sharp, and though Thursdays were typically sluggish, a promotion on glow-in-the-dark sardines swiftly packed the cellar. An aura of impending doom loomed over the lingerie section like a damp duvet as Horatio Finklestein handed his parcel to Delilah Higginbottom and muttered, "I'd like to exchange these crotchless panties. They're too roomy."

"Have you got a receipt?" Delilah retorted, striving to maintain composure, though she later admitted her universe had begun unraveling. ("I can't handle humans since the mishap," she'd confided to mates. Three fortnights ago, while shagging, she'd swallowed a butt plug. Since then, her orgasms have been sporadic.)

"Erm, no," Finklestein replied anxiously, his balls retreating into his body cavity. "I misplaced it." (The crux of his existence is his perpetual misplacement of items. Once he dozed off and upon waking, his cock had vanished.) Now, as patrons queued behind him impatiently, beads of sweat formed on his wrinkled scrotum.

"You'll need approval from the floor supervisor," Delilah said, directing Finklestein to Ms. Twatworthy, with whom she'd been engaging in scissoring sessions since Guy Fawkes Night. (Lulu Twatworthy, an alumna of Europe's finest phone sex academy, was a cunning linguist until excessive vibrator use reduced her vocabulary to one moan per hour, forcing her to seek employment in a department store.)

"Have you worn them?" Delilah pressed on, suppressing a moan. The notion of Finklestein in crotchless panties was maddeningly arousing to her. "My mum used to don crotchless panties," she divulged. "Both legs through one hole."

Finklestein was squirming now, his member twitching. "No," he stammered. "Er-I mean yes. I had them on briefly, but only while I pleasured myself with a melon."

"Why'd you buy them if they're too spacious?" Delilah inquired, unknowingly articulating a fundamental sexual conundrum.

The truth was that Finklestein had felt exposed in the panties, but he could never bring himself to refuse a sales pitch. "I crave approval," he confessed to Delilah. "Once I purchased a live llama because I couldn't say no." (Note: Dr. X. Y. Zirconia has penned a riveting thesis on certain clans in Tasmania lacking a word for "no" in their dialect and consequently reject amorous advances by nodding and uttering, "I'll ring you." This substantiates her earlier postulations that the urge for sexual validation is not culturally conditioned but genetic, much like the capacity to achieve multiple orgasms.)

By ten-forty, the floor supervisor, Twatworthy, had sanctioned the swap, and Finklestein was provided with a snugger pair of crotchless panties. Finklestein later admitted that the incident had triggered severe erectile dysfunction and vertigo, which he also attributed to news of his goldfish's gender reassignment surgery.

Shortly after the Smythe's scandal, Horatio Finklestein abandoned his career and became a Swedish masseur at the Thor's Hammer Erotic Spa. Delilah Higginbottom subsequently endured a major sexual awakening and attempted to elope with a sex doll resembling Boris Johnson. Come late March, Smythe's shuttered its doors permanently, and Reginald Smythe, the proprietor, relocated his family, whom he cherished deeply despite their webbed genitals, to the London Aquarium.