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The Eclectic Pen - fractures.

By: Carl R. (carl)  
Date Submitted: 1/3/2009
Last Updated: 1/3/2009
Genre: Literature & Fiction » Short Stories & Anthologies
Words: 224
Rating:

I stood up. Walking out across the parking lot, a graveyard of giant white skeleton ribs, no focus. The cracks in the charcoal asphalt mirrored my cracks in perception--sensory stimulation only leaking in. There's an old grease-patty joint across the way. Stepping on the spine, I count vacant parking spots. I count ribs. I count myself up to 'almost composed.' Then I traverse the concrete median, climbing up one side, sinking down the other. Grass is here but it doesn't grow I don't think--it isn't green. My body, like a rusty, crusted system of pulleys churns forward and through the building's door. Don't look around; never look around. Creeping over the crudded tiles towards the register and the abomination behind it, I feel my pockets for change. "Can I he'p you?" "Soda." The banging of the register and the clacking of the receipt-machine spew through the fractures in my head. "I said, that'll be one-seventy-nine, hun," she repeats. I stuff a couple bills into that wretched claw of hers and after she makes some more racket she slides some paper and change across the counter. The smell of dirty oil and piss sews itself through the air. Can't trust anything but the soda.

The Eclectic Pen » All Stories by Carl R. (carl)

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